Parenting on Purpose

"Do you think B has trauma?" The 11/1/2-year-old chose the long ride home from the Lunar New Year Reunion Dinner to ask this important and quintessential question, which was made in relation to the older foster child.  "Definitely," came the reply from Daddy, as he drove the car. One for the road. Our foster kids for the season as they join us on a ride of a lifetime. "What exactly is trauma?" came the follow up question; and Daddy all but took a deep breath, before he launched into the following reply. "Trauma is when the body remembers something painful that happened in the past; when it responds in a way similar to how it did in the past, even though the event is no longer happening. So take for example someone in the past used a knife to threaten you and you responded in fear. And because you were young, you brain blocked out this painful memory in a bid to protect you. So even now when you see a knife, your body starts to tremble in a similar way