Bonus: Live Q&A from Parent Connect Night (Season 1 Finale)

To close out Season 1, we took the Choices mic on the road. This bonus episode was recorded live at Connect Night, an evening for foster and adoptive parents, where families brought their most pressing questions straight to Maggie Dunn.

She answers what she'd tell a child grieving a bio parent they never met, how to know when a therapist is actually a good fit, the one key to connecting with a child who fights connection at every turn, and why the cheap imitations for intimacy, from pornography to enabling acquaintances, quietly hijack the attachment you're working so hard to build. Woven through all of it is the thread that ran through the whole season: real relationship is hard work, and children who have been through trauma deserve the real thing, not a substitute for it.

Thank you for being part of Season 1 of Choices. We'll see you next season, when the conversation turns to perspectives.

Disclaimer: The content shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. While Maggie Dunn is a licensed clinical professional, the conversations on this podcast are not intended to provide therapy, clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listening to this podcast does not create a therapist-client relationship. If you or someone you know needs mental health support, please seek guidance from a qualified professional in your area. If you are experiencing a crisis or emergency, call 911 or contact a local crisis support service immediately.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is going to wrap up our first season of the Choices Podcast. And to close it out, we've actually recorded a bonus episode live at one of our foster parent Connect nights. We took some questions live from the families who are living in this space where trauma and truth are actually colliding. Thank you so much for being a part of our first season, and we hope to see you next season. Now, here's our live bonus episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

They'll say that training, they give all this advice, but it doesn't actually work in real time. Am I the only one? Yeah, right? It doesn't work in real time. Well, they'll say, okay, because someone helped me understand why. Someone helped me understand maybe the chemistry of how their brain is worked or whatever that may be. So we had the idea here at House of Providence. I'm here with my friend Maggie Dunn, who is the co-founder of House of Providence. So we had the idea at House of Providence that we are going to begin a podcast. Okay. So you guys are getting able to see tonight our very first episode live. How exciting was that? So I have my dear, dear friend Maggie Dunn here, who, like I said, she is the co-founder of House of Providence, her and her husband Jay. They founded House of Providence about 13, 14 years ago. She has 25, 30 years of experience specifically as a foster and adoptive mom. She, and I would say this even if she wasn't sitting here, she is one of the wisest, godliest, kindest wealth of knowledge. Like the fact that we have Maggie done sitting here, we are lucky to hear from all of her training and all. Yes, here, right? So we have Maggie here who has taken time this evening to come and be with us to chat through some of your most pressing questions. And y'all had some incredible questions specifically for her tonight. So are you guys ready to hear some? You guys ready? Mag, would you like to say anything before we get started? I'm ready. All right, let's jump right in. Okay, Mag. How do you deal with questions or behaviors regarding abandonment feelings from bioparents that the child has not met and they have no recollection of?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Well, that is such a I'm glad for the caveat at the end that they really don't have a grid for that child or maybe or that parent and maybe haven't met that parent or have memory of that parent because um it's such a complex question. It's such a complex issue. Um so if the child doesn't really have a memory of those people, then I guess we're talking more um of a theory or a concept, the concept of my mom and where is she, as opposed to a child who says, Where is Susie so-and-so? My mother doesn't want me anymore. And so if you're dealing with more of a concept with the child, I think it's most important, and this seems intuitive, but none of us would be surprised that when you're in the valley with someone who's traversing something difficult, such as a child asking these deep questions, um, we can lose some of our maybe muscle memory and forget, like, what should I do? Listen, listen a lot. How do you feel about that? I say it hop all the time. Can you talk more about that? Tell me more. Or sometimes I'll just go like this and try kind of prodding them to keep going. And then they just keep going. And so I think helping them don't explain it to them in a way, oh, this is just a concept of a mom. You don't really miss your mom. I'm not saying that, but for you to understand this is a concept. Where is my mom? I miss my mom. I have questions about, and and it's fair to sometimes just validate that that's a question they have. I wonder that too. Boy, I wish we knew the answer to that. Sometimes just validating that that is really hard, and and you wonder that same thing. Um, something that we have found really helpful is to not only validate that wound, that missing of that parent, but to um speak about the fact that the parent is not there or available because of the parent's own brokenness, not because they wanted to leave that child. Then you can take away the personalization. They left me. I am leavable, I am rejected, I am abandoned. No, I would have been here for your mom if I could have. She has her own brokenness, her own wounds, and she's coming from that place as opposed to she's bad, she's done something bad, she's a bad person. We have to be very careful with our posture because our posture will inform our rhetoric with the child. And so I think it's really important that our posture be appropriate toward that person, and then we can properly explain it to the child. And it's okay to sit without answers, that's way safer than giving answers that aren't real or could be destructive. Don't make up something that's the kids will spot the BS a mile away. You know that. Because they're real good at often giving it to us. So don't make something up. I've said to my kids, I wish I knew the answer to that.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Thanks so much, Meg. I appreciate because I think as oftentimes as parents, we just want to fix everything, right? We see these babies, they're victims to what they've had to endure. And I so appreciate you talking about just sometimes validating them is enough that we don't have to fix everything. Thanks for that. All right, second great question. Obviously, there are honestly they're all great questions. It was hard just to pick a couple. How do you know if a therapist is a good fit?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Oh, that's a good one. It's probably I often can see so quickly when they're not a good fit, right? Um, and I would say for me as a therapist, um, well, let me start with this. I would never advocate to withhold mental health care, to withhold mental health treatment, but mental health care can be really, really dangerous, really destructive. Um not a lot of clinicians are experts in attachment. And when you as a therapist are, and and I say this as a therapist, therapists can be the great triangulators. And I what I mean by triangulation is there are three points in a triangle, and in triangulation, you have the victim, the perpetrator, and the rescuer. And a therapist is always situated as the rescuer. I'm gonna fix, I'm gonna help, I'm gonna comfort. And if that child who the time that they felt the safest, the most seen, the most steadied was when they were rescued because they were a victim. But if we constantly allow them to be situated as a victim, that becomes their identity. It's no longer something that they went through. And that and and victimhood is not an identity. Victimhood is something that you are enduring in real time. And so it's so important to find a therapist that is always going to push that child back toward connection with the parents and aligning 100% with the parents. The caveat would be not if the parent is abusive and the child needs to be rescued from you. So that's my only caveat of that. Short of that, they should always be working toward pushing them toward the parent, the caregiver. And if you know anything about clinical work and are worth your salt, you know that whatever you're processing with that client, you should only be working on those that are in the room. That's a that's a foundational piece as a therapist. So if you're not in the room, you shouldn't be the topic. And if they are not always pushing back toward you, connection, trust, building that trust. No, let's maybe we need to bring your mom in. I know she loves you. She is with you. Not like, oh yeah, that she probably was having a bad day. Maybe anytime they're satiating that triangulation red flag should go off.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Such good advice, truly. Especially because it's hard enough to find a therapist that insurance will take, right? And I mean, our most of us like, you know what, I'll pay for it out of pocket, but I don't want to pay out of pocket from someone that for someone that's terrible, right? And isn't helping anybody. So, next, what is the key to connection with a child who has endured a lot of trauma and has attachment issues?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

That could be um maybe a week's long conference, right? I will start with this. Maybe it dovetails nicely off of what we just talked about, because we can only deal with who's in the room. So I would say, let me just give one key to connection with a child who has endured a lot of trauma, really struggling. Um often what comes with that is what the big B word, behaviors, right? A lot of behaviors. Um, we know that our inner man informs our our outer man. And so if we are in chaos and turmoil and trauma inside, it's coming out and in behaviors. So I would say the key, a key, maybe not the key, a key to connecting with a child who has endured much starts with you. It starts with me, and another word, the F word, forgiveness. We have to consistently forgive. And not, I'm not saying tell mommy you're sorry. Okay, I forgive. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the first Corinthians 13 that keeps no record of wrongs. Because I could have a list, I can't even listen. I I've had the SWAT team show up at my house. I have, I could tell you things that I mean, we know this fostering, adopting, walking with children from hard places is not for the faint of heart. And if you don't walk in consistent forgiveness, real forgiveness, and I'm not talking about passivity or permissiveness because that's not me either, but I'm talking about genuinely, I don't have a grudge against this child. I give it to the Lord, I forgive them, I love them, I hold them accountable, I hold them to the highest positive that they can do. But genuine forgiveness and not keeping a record of wrongs, I would say, is the key to continuing to push into connection with the child. Because if you get sick of them, they're gonna know it. And the only way to consistently forgive 70 times seven is understanding how much the Lord has forgiven us and what he has done for us. Because I need more grace than anybody. Just ask my husband.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Thanks, Mag. What would you say? What are some keys to parenting a foster or adopted child who really does not cooperate with parents at all?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah. That's again another probably we could spend an entire afternoon just talking through and parsing this out. Um some things that come to mind. Um, well, I'll just I'll I'll just talk about one. Um, you know, here in the US, we have in 2025 schedules that are bananas, right? Is it just I had to cancel basketball practice for my daughter and swing another kid over into the Costco parking lot to meet my husband just to get here, right? I don't even know if I put my lip gloss on. I probably didn't. I didn't even check, right? Bananas. And so when we are caring for children who are profoundly traumatized and highly dysregulated and very sensitive to sensory input, we have to subtract to add connection. We have to. We have to slow down. If we want something as huge as attachment to develop, we have to make room for it. We have to, we have to subtract things like relationships, we have to subtract activities, we have to subtract things out of our schedule and slow things down. And for me, I am fast-paced, high capacity. I love to go, go, go, have fun, do things. I that's a sacrifice I have to make to sit and play parcheesy. I don't even know what that is, it just sounds like really boring and dumb. But right to slow down and just be present, not with my phone, not with my to-do list, all to sit and be present. And it's so counterintuitive in this culture, but it's critical, and there's not a way around it, but subtract out of our life if you really want to add connection.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

That's great. That's great. All right, we got two more. What advice do you have for what foster or adoptive parents should look for as pitfalls that specifically hinder attachment?

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah, this is a big one. This is a really big one, in my opinion. I wrote down a few notes on this. Um, I think that relationships are hard work.

unknown 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Marital relationships, real friendships, deep friendships. I'm not talking about the I send you a real once in a while on Instagram. That's not a friendship, in my opinion. Real relationships require work. And our society has so many cheap imitations for real relationships and intimacy and attachment are waning in general, which is why we see such an uptick in sociopathic behavior, sociopathy, and that again, that could be a whole nother uh topic to talk about. But I think the biggest thing we have to look for are these cheap imitations. Cheap imitations come in the form for, let's talk particularly for our kids who have attachment issues or trust issues, however you want to slice it. Um, and we're really working hard to attach. I would say I'll talk about just quickly two. Number one, pornography. Pornography is something that kids who are a little bit older and have an extreme attachment fear, they're gonna look for a cheap way to satiate that. And pornography is a huge problem in this um demographic. And if you if that makes you blush and you don't uh believe me, then you gotta check into reality. Um, I don't know how to say that nicer. Maybe you can edit that out of the podcast. Um, sorry, but that's it's the truth, and we owe it to our kids to um help them uh protect them when they aren't able to protect themselves from certain things. Um, I would say another one that maybe isn't as obvious, um, but equally as dangerous is um enabling acquaintances. These are people that you know as a family, but they're very enabling. They're um they're having these interactions with your child that they have zero responsibility in the day-to-day trenches for your kids. These might be people at church that are, oh, bless you. How are you know, the the always, your child is not a mission trip for this person to like feel good. I was nice to a foster kid today, or I was nice to an adopted kid today, right? I'm sorry that these people exist and they're everywhere. So I, you know, I had someone one time tell me that it hurt their feelings when I put my kid in time out so much. And I was like, good thing it's not about your feelings. I really don't care. Um, but these people, so I would say enabling acquaintances that are going to satiate that need for acceptance from your child that they should be getting from you, but they're so closed off because of their attachment issues, it can feel almost like an extra parental affair. Now, you know the safe people in your life because you want your child to have a plethora of relationships with good, safe adults. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the adults who um make passive remarks about anything the child did wrong or excusing things or those kind of things. Those really, really hinder attachment way more than you would realize.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

That's helpful. Right. So the last one, I feel like I could sit here and ask you 700 questions, Mag. Can you help us better understand why everyone says, why is everyone talking about attachment? Why is it such a big deal?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Attachment forms the building blocks for your identity. And when you don't have attachment, you don't have anything anchoring you to your people, where you belong. They're just out in the abyss alone, they don't even have things to bounce off of. So if if no one, if there's no one there to matter to you, then no one matters. And that is the breeding ground for sociopathic behavior. Additionally, attachment is where we get our inner dialogue, the inner voice that we internalize, that parental voice, and that's how we talk to ourselves and and know who we are. Attachment is the building block for identity. There are so many implications for attachment, and the attachment cycle is sort of attach, uh, detach and then connect. And often we come into our kids' lives so willingly, so happy to be there for them in their darkest hour, but understand we often enter the story at detach. So when they're very, very little, we're attaching. If you've been able to adopt a baby, foster someone from the hospital forward, that there are different pitfalls implications, but we are entering their story at detach. And so we have to find a way to back that truck up and establish connection. That's why it's so important we subtract to add connection. We have to bring it back to when you first have a baby, all you want to do is stay home and be in your PJs and right, yeah. We're exhausted. So attach, detach, connect. It's so critical to back that truck up and really attach to that child.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

So good. Thank you so much, Mag, for taking your time this evening. Thanks, everyone, for such incredible questions. Yes, yes, my pleasure. So it's super exciting. You got to see the very first episode, but stay tuned because we are going to have more episodes coming. It'll be exciting because we'll be able to have some lives, some lives that people can put in them, some questions. Like, what are some things that I keep asking everyone? But I don't have $6,000 to sit down with someone who has all this experience. Can you just tell me specifically in this one thing, right? Can we just all wish we just had that? So we're super excited, House of Providence. We take it so seriously, what the Lord has called us to do. And we are not hoarders. We're like, Lord, you've given us this wisdom, you've given us this knowledge, you've given us this experience. Yes, the internet has its pitfalls, but thank you. Let's use it to help others, right? So make sure you're staying tuned because we're gonna have our podcast where trauma and truth are gonna meet. And like Mag said, there's gonna be maybe some unfiltered things there, but isn't that all foster parenting and adopting, right? And they do not care about filtering. We're not going to either. So thanks so much again, Mag. We love you.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for the first season of the Choices Podcast, where trauma and truth collide. We hope you'll join us next season where our topic will be perspectives. We'll see you then.