[Okay, how do you get a traumatized kid to open up so you know what's going on with them? So you know how to best help them?]
[Things he knows you don't do: push too hard in a direct way. His foster parents sometimes wanted to have a nice little feelings jam to try to help him and the too-direct questions clearly intended to solve the entire problem of...him, well they had always just made him moodier. Asking questions will sometimes get non-answers or half-truths or, in Branch's case when he was younger, it had gotten lots of sarcasm.]
[But his foster parents had failed at the thing he needed most: someone else acknowledging that yes it had hurt. Yes, it had been bad. It would have meant so much to hear from them "yes, we're still struggling too."]
[Branch isn't struggling but he has struggled and he knows that offering information, while not the most pleasant, might provide more of an inroads to the kid talking about things - whether now or later when he feels more comfortable.]
[If it was for anyone else other than a kid he was starting to feel responsible for...]
I was just curious if you were anything like me. I was an orphan.
no subject
[Things he knows you don't do: push too hard in a direct way. His foster parents sometimes wanted to have a nice little feelings jam to try to help him and the too-direct questions clearly intended to solve the entire problem of...him, well they had always just made him moodier. Asking questions will sometimes get non-answers or half-truths or, in Branch's case when he was younger, it had gotten lots of sarcasm.]
[But his foster parents had failed at the thing he needed most: someone else acknowledging that yes it had hurt. Yes, it had been bad. It would have meant so much to hear from them "yes, we're still struggling too."]
[Branch isn't struggling but he has struggled and he knows that offering information, while not the most pleasant, might provide more of an inroads to the kid talking about things - whether now or later when he feels more comfortable.]
[If it was for anyone else other than a kid he was starting to feel responsible for...]
I was just curious if you were anything like me. I was an orphan.