When Surrender Feels Like Betrayal: The Power of Love in Overcoming Childhood Trauma

I came across a news article in my local newspaper about a family that was ‘forced’ to ‘surrender’ their child to the local child and family services (C&FS) agency because they felt ill-equipped to care for their child through the tumultuous time in their life. The article shared that the 13-year-old was experiencing mental health flare-ups after two traumatic events within the past few years. The child’s mother decided that the best route for acquiring proper care for the child was through surrendering them to C&FS. In the same week, I was watching a Netflix documentary called “Hell Camp: Teenage Nightmare” that also depicted parents sending their ‘problem children’ off to a survivalist/wilderness ‘therapy’ camp for months at a time. Youths were kidnapped from their homes, sometimes even while sleeping in their beds in the night, transported to a remote location, and then survived outdoors far removed from civilization. What’s interesting is that in both cases, the children ended up enduring more trauma through the experience. For example, the news article describes how the family was concerned for the child’s well-being in the C&FS’ care because they were being moved between group homes, live-in treatment centres, and hotel rooms, still without access to proper mental health treatment. In the documentary, youths experienced psychological abuse, sexual abuse, forced labour, solitary confinement, inadequate health care, and in some cases, it cost the children their lives.

So let me rewind, my standpoint comes from that of an individual who had C&FS involvement as a child due to ongoing neglect and psychological abuse from my parents. Later, at 15-years-old, I was kicked out of my family’s home because I had become a so-called ‘problem child’. As I reflect as a thirty-something-year-old, I think about how child behaviour is really based on the combination of nature AND nurture. Of course, I was predisposed to mental health concerns due to my mother’s own mental health background, but the precipitating and perpetuating factors of the abuse paved the way for how I behaved in the home.

I’m reading a book right now called, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (2022) by Stephanie Foo. Now as I write this blog post I haven’t read it the full way through. However, the book has resonated with me because Foo discusses how when she was really little she had a glowing personality, but as she continued to age all while experiencing physical and psychological abuse from her parents, her personality became rougher, she became angry, defensive, volatile. She talks about something that I also experienced as a young person - this apathy and indifference in how you treat others that runs so deep within you. All because, when you are brought up in a world where you feel like no one cares about you, you not only don’t care about others, but you don’t know *how* to care about others. She then goes on to discuss how, as a child, her parents used to tell adults around her, including extended family members, that she was a bad daughter… when in reality, Foo explains that she would lash out as a form of self-preservation of what she was enduring on behalf of her parents at that time. The persistent emotional harm I received from those I lived with eventually hardened my heart, and this hardening was reinforced when I was gaslit by those in my outer circle, such as my extended family, friends of my parents, and school staff. Numerous times I tried blowing the whistle on what was happening in my home, but my parents would say I was a perpetual liar who couldn’t be trusted. Still to this day, I don’t have any relationship with my mother’s side of the family because they believe the stories about me that my mother told them.

I think about how what Foo describes (which is similar to my own experiences in many ways) in relation to the news article and Netflix series, and I wonder what these children were experiencing in their worlds that manifested into them behaving in such a way that their parents would ‘surrender’ them.

When I was 15 years old, I had had enough of the constant chip, chip, chipping away at my existence (Ahmed, 2016). I did not care how I treated others or how others felt about my behaviours because I did not believe anyone cared about me. On paper, I was a bad kid. But I wasn’t taught how to be kind, have compassion, or care. I had, and still struggle with, a scarcity mindset and was in a constant survival mode, which resulted in self-serving behaviours. I was excellent at lying, trusted no one, and was always thinking of myself. When you have to steal food, menstruation products, and other basic necessities from your own parents it does something to the psyche. And this mentality stays with you into adulthood. It was friends in university who showed me how to be kind, to share with others, and even how to have basic social skills and take care of myself properly. They were the ones who made me who I am today.

When I think about how my life could have been different, I wish my parents had shown me the love and affection I so desperately wanted. I do understand that mental health concerns and perhaps the inability of the adults around to acknowledge or take accountability for how they contributed to the situation largely attributed to how I was treated; however, I am also of the mind that individuals with these conditions have the autonomy to either make different choices or seek support. Basically, even if you, as a parent, are going through trauma, a mental health flare-up, or a challenging time, don’t let this create a disorganized (attachment) household environment for your child(ren)... Because they will likely mirror the behaviour they experience and develop their own unhealthy behaviours. Love your child unconditionally even if they are being difficult. It’s all they really need.

So let me rewind, my standpoint comes from that of an individual who had C&FS involvement as a child due to ongoing neglect and psychological abuse from my parents. Later, at 15-years-old, I was kicked out of my family’s home because I had become a so-called ‘problem child’. As I reflect as a thirty-something-year-old, I think about how child behaviour is really based on the combination of nature AND nurture. Of course, I was predisposed to mental health concerns due to my mother’s own mental health background, but the precipitating and perpetuating factors of the abuse paved the way for how I behaved in the home.

I’m reading a book right now called, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (2022) by Stephanie Foo. Now as I write this blog post I haven’t read it the full way through. However, the book has resonated with me because Foo discusses how when she was really little she had a glowing personality, but as she continued to age all while experiencing physical and psychological abuse from her parents, her personality became rougher, she became angry, defensive, volatile. She talks about something that I also experienced as a young person - this apathy and indifference in how you treat others that runs so deep within you. All because, when you are brought up in a world where you feel like no one cares about you, you not only don’t care about others, but you don’t know *how* to care about others. She then goes on to discuss how, as a child, her parents used to tell adults around her, including extended family members, that she was a bad daughter… when in reality, Foo explains that she would lash out as a form of self-preservation of what she was enduring on behalf of her parents at that time. The persistent emotional harm I received from those I lived with eventually hardened my heart, and this hardening was reinforced when I was gaslit by those in my outer circle, such as my extended family, friends of my parents, and school staff. Numerous times I tried blowing the whistle on what was happening in my home, but my parents would say I was a perpetual liar who couldn’t be trusted. Still to this day, I don’t have any relationship with my mother’s side of the family because they believe the stories about me that my mother told them.

I think about how what Foo describes (which is similar to my own experiences in many ways) in relation to the news article and Netflix series, and I wonder what these children were experiencing in their worlds that manifested into them behaving in such a way that their parents would ‘surrender’ them.

When I was 15 years old, I had had enough of the constant chip, chip, chipping away at my existence (Ahmed, 2016). I did not care how I treated others or how others felt about my behaviours because I did not believe anyone cared about me. On paper, I was a bad kid. But I wasn’t taught how to be kind, have compassion, or care. I had, and still struggle with, a scarcity mindset and was in a constant survival mode, which resulted in self-serving behaviours. I was excellent at lying, trusted no one, and was always thinking of myself. When you have to steal food, menstruation products, and other basic necessities from your own parents it does something to the psyche. And this mentality stays with you into adulthood. It was friends in university who showed me how to be kind, to share with others, and even how to have basic social skills and take care of myself properly. They were the ones who made me who I am today.

When I think about how my life could have been different, I wish my parents had shown me the love and affection I so desperately wanted. I do understand that mental health concerns and perhaps the inability of the adults around to acknowledge or take accountability for how they contributed to the situation largely attributed to how I was treated; however, I am also of the mind that individuals with these conditions have the autonomy to either make different choices or seek support. Basically, even if you, as a parent, are going through trauma, a mental health flare-up, or a challenging time, don’t let this create a disorganized (attachment) household environment for your child(ren)... Because they will likely mirror the behaviour they experience and develop their own unhealthy behaviours. Love your child unconditionally even if they are being difficult. It’s all they really need.