There are rules when it comes to raising children from hard places. It has taken me some time to understand them, and so I thought I would share what I have learned from my son and his spoons. I once heard of a spoon analogy with chronic illness, but it wasn’t until Israel, that I realized parts of it related to kids from hard places.
For the first few months, Israel demanded to carry a spoon all day, and at night he fell asleep with one clutched in his tiny fingers. The moment he awoke he would cry out “poon?” and we would quickly find it beneath the covers or grab a new one from the drawer. Every moment of every day was a little boy who held a spoon that was never used to eat. The spoon represented every moment he went without food, every minute he sat without company, every damn day that he spent sitting alone in a metal crib.
We thought the spoon represented a tenuous promise of future meals, but I’ve come to understand that it was so much bigger than that.
Perhaps one of the most difficult moments to witness when I first met Israel, was mealtime and my first introduction to his ‘spoons’. It was determined that the orphanage staff show me how well he could eat. Here was a 4 year-old child who was encouraged to use a spoon, when he had never held one before. His hand shook as he worked to use the spoon and tried not to spill. It was finally taken from him in frustration and the soup was shoveled in and the meal finished within three minutes.
I remember thinking how sad it was that a four year old had never fed himself or held a spoon before. So, we naively walked up the orphanage steps thinking we had already finished the hard work of adoption, only to find ourselves hunkering down into the trenches of healing a post-orphanage child; a post-institutionalized boy with a heart and mind that did not understand how to live a day that lacked in total and complete structure. Because what we didn’t understand in the beginning, was the rules of holding on to spoons.
We learned that he always needed to have a spoon in hand to ward off the fear and the darkness. We started stashing extras in the diaper bag, in the car and in our back pockets. I didn’t understand that family can’t fix trauma and love doesn’t erase bad experiences. Instead I came to realize the body keeps score and keeps record of all the hurts and pain. My son carried these in the form of a spoon. The spoon represented emotional investment. It soon became evident that every single moment he was in our family, we were requesting that he give up his spoon.
All my children carry spoons, but they have grown to understand that as their mother, I carry extras. They look to me in stressful and scary situations, and I hold out a spoon and say, “It’s okay we got this together, I will keep you safe.” Emotional investment is scary when you have been hurt by the very cure for childhood trauma: relationship. It takes a huge amount of effort to free yourself from the memory of trauma, and fear holds strong to our little ones. In order to help our children, we must first seek to understand them and the rules.
The rules of holding spoons.
- A child with a background of trauma cannot afford to give up their spoons, it is a matter of survival.
- You cannot simply just get up and go in the morning. It takes a spoon just to get moving. Remember that I often revisit traumatic events in my dreams.
- The tasks of my day, including the most simple; each one costs a spoon and this terrifies me. Every new or novel event is filtered through prior history.
- When I have given away all my spoons, I have lost my ability to survive. In my mind, the worst thing that ever happened to me, is about to happen again.
- Holding spoons is my strategy to stay safe. When you make me give up a spoon, a little bit of fear becomes terror; a little bit of anger becomes rage;
and a little bit of sadness becomes desolation. - Remember I must live life reserving spoons to survive. I am always prepared and on high alert. I live each day with the looming thought that this may be the day that something very dangerous and bad will happen. This is because bad things have happened before.
- I am always conscious of how many spoons I have, and I hold them close because my body will never forget I have experienced scary things.
- When I carry spoons, I don’t own myself anymore. Any loud sound, a bump from someone on the playground, or a worksheet in class that I don’t understand, can hijack me away.
- I will carry spoons my whole life. Trauma is stored on a cellular level.
And if trauma is not expressed, it will be stored deep within the mind to fester like a wound. So what we have learned is that what makes you resilient to trauma is to own yourself fully. Bessel van der Kolk
It has been two long years of carrying spoons. Every day is a new day to teach trust and love. A connected child will see you as the keeper of the spoons. My children have days they trust me with their spoons and they have days that they are clutched tightly in their fists. I have learned that being a keeper of the spoons is the greatest honor that we can ever hold. When my child looks to me for security and safety, this is what I live for. The moment when he cries out from his bed “Mommy”, instead of lying silently in bed clutching a spoon while tears slip down his cheeks. The day when instead of rocking with his inner pain in a corner, he seeks me out for comfort. The day I noticed my silverware drawer was full of spoons, these are the moments when I know that I am the keeper of spoons. I cannot take away his spoons, but I can teach him that a mommy is strong enough to help hold them safe.
As we raise children from hard places, as we work with children who have experienced trauma, let us always recognize the cost of spoons. And may we all be adults who can be strong and wise enough to be Keeper of the Spoons. The ones who recognize that the very cure for childhood trauma lies in the origin of pain. Relationships are scary and they cost a lot of spoons, but thank God we are strong enough to sit in the dark moments and help carry spoons.
