Learning to feel safe after a lifetime of being on guard is going to take time.
In adoption, fostering, or kinship care - “a lifetime of being on guard” can be a relatively short period of time - a few weeks, a few months, or a few years.
Sometimes people wonder (and unfortunately sometimes say out loud) “how come they’re not over it yet?”
It doesn’t work like that. We often find that the sense of threat remains for many years and sometimes, to a lesser extent, throughout life.
In NVR, we parent gently - providing the safety and containment that our children and young people need to increasingly to feel safe within their bodies, within their relationships, and in their communities.
We scaffold and support them to develop the skills they need to have the best life they can have, bringing in helpers whenever and wherever we can.
Because we’re committed to this journey for the long haul, we focus on our own needs as well as the needs of our children.
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