I’ve been with EveryDay Strong since the very beginning. I did a lot of work with Women United a few years ago and I can remember the first group meeting we had that introduced EveryDay Strong. At the time, I had no idea the impact EveryDay Strong’s message would have on the functionality of my family.

My husband and I have two boys who we’ve adopted and just adore. Over the past few years, we’ve had a lot of behavioral problems with them, especially our oldest. It seems like we tried everything … therapists, psychologists, medication, hard discipline … you name it. Some things seemed to help, like the medication made it easier for our son to focus in school, but it didn’t take away all of our problems.

We kept meeting with doctors and adjusting medication, but it all seemed like a jumbled mess. I started to wonder why we weren’t discussing connection or behavior with these doctors. Because of my experience with EveryDay Strong, I’ve always been sensitive to making sure that my boy’s basic needs are met. Don’t get me wrong, the medication helped and was necessary, but I was beginning to see that medication wasn’t going to fix all of our problems.

It’s important to note that as parents, we are still making headway with this! Isn’t it funny how after you learn something new, you feel like you can conquer the world and solve all of your problems with the snap of your fingers? Then, you get frustrated, mess up at implementing the steps and seem to just spiral down again? We’ve all been there. But something that I learned from TBRI is that if you just try, even if you only implement these steps 40% of the time, you’ll still make a major difference in the life of your child. That has been very comforting for my husband and me as we have imperfectly worked on improving our connection with our boys.

Now we are working on improving behavior in a way that is safe and loving toward our children. Thank you EveryDay Strong for helping me realize that we all have needs that can only be met through relationships with our loved ones.