When Progress Doesn’t Look Like Progress
Blog by Maria Kondratchik, Senior Psychological Therapist (Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, BACP registered), 25 August 2026
Parents raising children who’ve experienced early trauma often notice something puzzling: real, lasting progress, followed by what feels like a sudden step backwards. Old behaviours can return just when things seemed to be settling, leaving parents wondering what went wrong. It’s a pattern Sheila Redfern explores in her book Reflective Parenting: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children.
The new second edition (2026) includes a chapter specifically about parenting children who have experienced early trauma, including children living with adoptive and foster families. One of the ideas I found particularly useful is Redfern’s description of “patchy progress.”
Parents often notice that change does not happen in the way they expected. A child may seem much more settled for several months. Bedtimes become easier. There are fewer arguments. School is going better. They begin to accept comfort, recover more quickly when upset, or manage situations that previously overwhelmed them.
And then, suddenly, things seem to go backwards.
Old behaviours return. A child who had become more independent becomes clingy again. Anger increases. Sleep deteriorates. School becomes difficult. Separations that seemed manageable suddenly cause distress.
For adoptive parents, these moments can be particularly discouraging. It is easy to wonder: What happened? We thought we had moved past this. Why are we back here again?
Redfern suggests that it can be helpful to think differently about these ups and downs. Progress for children who have experienced early trauma and instability is often uneven. A difficult period does not necessarily mean that previous progress has disappeared.
Sometimes there is a recognisable reason for the change.
Starting a new school, moving house, holidays, birthdays, difficulties with friends, puberty or changes within the family can all increase stress. These may be ordinary events in childhood, but for a child who has experienced significant uncertainty or disruption, transitions can carry particular emotional weight.
Sometimes the connection is much less obvious.
A smell, a touch, a particular feeling or situation may be associated with something from the child’s earlier experience without either the child or the parent immediately recognising the connection.
Redfern gives the example of Suzie, who moved to her adoptive family at four. Her parents noticed that whenever visitors came to the house, she became hyperactive and disruptive, hitting out and constantly seeking her mother’s attention.
It would have been easy to concentrate on the behaviour itself: Why does she always behave like this when we have people over?
Instead, her parents began to notice the pattern. Suzie seemed to become stressed when her environment changed. Visitors brought excitement and unpredictability that she was not yet able to manage. For a while, her parents reduced the number of visitors to give her more time to settle.
This is one of the things reflective parenting asks us to do: not only to respond to what is happening, but to remain curious about why it might be happening now.
- What has changed?
- Is something coming up?
- Has school become harder?
- Is there a birthday or anniversary approaching?
- Has something happened with a friend?
- Is the child being asked to manage a new kind of independence?
And sometimes there will be no obvious answer. Not every difficult week needs to be explained.
Perhaps the most reassuring part of Redfern’s idea is that development after difficult early experiences rarely follows a neat upward line. Children may make considerable progress and still become less able to cope when life places additional demands on them. At another point, capacities that seemed to have disappeared may become available again.
This means that when an old difficulty returns, we do not necessarily have to think, We are back at the beginning.
The child who is struggling today is not the same child they were a year ago. The relationship with their parents is not the same relationship. What has been learned and experienced together has not simply vanished because things have become difficult again.
Sometimes progress looks less like climbing a staircase and more like revisiting familiar places with a little more capacity each time. A bad week does not erase six good months.
For more on this idea, see Sheila Redfern, Reflective Parenting: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2026.
