Stuffing The Heart

Dear Parent,

Most of our kids hoard, and many steal.  They are stuffing their environments to fill up a deep emptiness experienced by those who in childhood felt the death-grip of deprivation. Attachment breaks can cause deprivation so severe that our kids felt like they were dying.  All of that high-cortisol (stress hormone) feeling gets hardwired into their brains.  

Hardwiring lasts a long time, sometimes a lifetime.  That is why hoarding and stealing are monumentally difficult to curb in our children. Really, it is the feeling of deprivation that is so difficult to soothe. 

Hoarding is not about being messy, disgusting or selfish. Similarly, stealing is not about being immoral.  Hoarding and stealing are attempts to fill up an emptiness in the child's core.  Sometimes these are even dissociated parts from severe trauma.

What can you do? Understand and resist shaming.  Help your child be insightful about how they feel and why they hoard or steal. While you work on it together, designate little spots to stash away things--boxes, bins, chests for tucking away their own stuff. Require they return taken items with apologies. Forego punishment in favor of loving discussion. Model personal responsibility, self-awareness, and self-love.

Punishing hoarding will make it worse.

Love matters,

Ce

P.S. Check out the Love Matters Parenting Society membership for more support.