No behavior is maladaptive. Humans will often spend hours, days, etc, carefully approaching a growling, hissing, scratching, kicking animal that has been wounded or otherwise traumatized to offer cues of safety (i.e. food, water, slow careful movements, shelter, warmth, calm voice tone and gentle touch) in order to make a connection and gain trust. They will try over and over, willing to take the risk of being injured, often getting injured in the process. Wounded CHILDREN are usually not afforded the same treatment. Their kicking, screaming (sometimes hissing and growling) and lying is met with yelling, accusations, demands for compliance, threats of punishment, insistence upon self regulation and other skills not yet able to be mastered by a traumatized child's brain and nervous system. You don't bargain with or punish an upset animal so why would you do so with an upset child? Neither have the capacity to comprehend it through their fear (and YOU can't decide if they should feel fear or not, you don't have their felt experiences). Their nervous systems are continually scanning for cues of safety to determine if they can be vulnerable with you without judgement, censure, punishment or your own dysregulation. If the cues aren't received, their fight, flight and freeze responses will kick in to protect them. Don't let lack of regulation or unwillingness to meet a child where they are in their own nervous system be the reason they continue to be disconnected, distrustful and dysregulated throughout their lives. What they attempt in an effort to regulate or stop the pain and overwhelm like substance abuse and crime aren't the problem. The wounded child never receiving connection and healing is the problem.
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