The True Power of CRM Skills For Foster Youth & Families
In 2020 when I first started working with Coastal Horizons, in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina, my co-worker Amy talked about the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® Training she was giving. At that point, I was new and wanted to learn more about it so I went to my first 8-hour CRM training. Little did I know this training would become a new way of communicating with the children in my home.
See I am a single kinship/foster/adoptive/birth mother to at least four children, all of which have experience a great deal of trauma. At first, I started by using the skills on myself until I felt comfortable enough to walk my boys through some of the skills. I think it was when my then four-year-old was having a challenging time coping with his mother not contacting him, that it dawned on me to try the skills I was using for myself.
I asked him if he wanted to push against a wall with me to try and push it down. He was surprisingly willing. While I was walking him through noticing how the wall felt, and the sensations in his body he looked at me and said: "Granny, I don't feel angry anymore".
That is when I knew that these skills were going to be used in my home.
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