Shockingly, 34.8 million children are affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), making them more susceptible to chronic health concerns, behavioral challenges, and learning differences. Our children with hard starts often experience altered brain development, altered hormones, altered immunity, and even altered DNA.

Not only can this lead to a lifetime of chronic diseases, it can also be incredibly difficult to parent our children who’ve come to us through adoption, foster care, and kinship care. Challenges with attachment, emotional regulation, attention, focus, sensory processing, impulse control, tantrums, manipulation, and even aggression can derail our efforts to connect with our children and help them heal.

Thankfully, though, there’s good news.

Science is showing that using a whole-child approach is helping children overcome the toxic stress and impacts associated with ACEs. While building those necessary connecting relationships in a safe environment with our children, we can also embrace a wholistic lifestyle to further support our children’s bodies in their healing journeys.

What does that look like?

I believe there are six components of a wholistic lifestyle that are necessary to help our children heal and grow:

1. connecting relationships
2. wholesome nutrition
3. positive body movement
4. restorative sleep
5. grounding mindfulness practices
6. limiting household toxins

Here’s the thing. We know we can’t take away our children’s difficult starts. Those adverse childhood experiences may be a part of their stories, but we can help our children understand and know that their difficult starts don’t define who they are.  We can help them to develop healthy relationships, learn to trust, use their voice appropriately to get their needs met, learn to self-regulate, and understand their own worth and value and loveliness.

We can help them learn to become resilient.

Now, that doesn’t promise that they won’t have hard days and struggle with behaviors and family relationships. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that there’s still plenty of hard ahead. After all, there are no quick fixes.  But it does mean that we can work toward joyful interactions and have the tools to navigate those experiences while we empower our children to bounce back more quickly.  As Fred Rogers says, we want them to learn to bend with the wind, but not break.  And at the same time, we can help our families to be the source of joy and delight that we truly desire.

I know it can feel overwhelming to try to support our children in ways that are meaningful and healing. The needs often feel so great, leaving us discouraged and disempowered. Not only that, our own wellness and self care get put on the back burner because we’re throwing so much energy into caring for our children.  We’re exhausted and lonely and feeling like we’re constantly in survival mode.  But embracing a connecting, wholistic approach, bit by bit, can have lasting impacts in our children’s healing journeys and in our own overall health and wellness.  We can become families that thrive together as we fulfill our God-give purposes.

As a Health & Wellness Coach and Parent Trainer, I work with adoptive, foster, and kinship care families to implement the six components of a healing, wholistic lifestyle.  My goal is to empower families to seek healing from ACEs and find joy in each other with healthy wellness habits that support their bodies and connecting relationships that offer lifelong transformation.

I partner with families in several ways.  Click on the links below to learn about the ways we can work together: