Finding My Way to Family

Down the hill we go?

2010-11-17T10:15:00.002-06:00

Long silence, I know. No explanation, really, other than busyness.

All's been surprisingly good. The healing we've seen in P over the past 6-12 months has been really unbelievable. We are now able to look back some years and be amazed at ourselves: how did we ever survive all that? What irritates us now is nothing compared to the ground we've covered. Still progress to be made, but the healing and attachment are so clear that it is pretty easy to stay motivated and positive.

We've headed into the season of trauma-versaries. This is the season of abandonment, upheaval, orphanage placement, separation from all that was known. With P's bday thrown into the mix in early January. And Christmas is all around us already even though it's not even December; decorations are out in the stores here, and our city had its parade last weekend (we did not go).

We're seeing the effects on our two princes. They are both more agitated these last two weeks, with some craziness coming through. Again, it's all mild when compared to much of what we've lived in the past. No one's running away these days, for example. But nonsense questions are back, there's been a decline in table manners on the part of the RADling, and -- judging by the dark shadows under the eyes and seemingly constant sleepiness -- sleep issues appear to have returned. We amped up rocking/holding time this morning, strong sitting remains a mainstay, some of us are jumping a lot on the trampoline, and we're trying to do a lot of talking about feelings. Thanks to niacin, I believe, we are rarely met with defiance these days when we work with P to try to uncover his deep feelings.

This morning's events -- aka what prompted me to post today:

First, P spent the morning exhibiting extreme survivors guilt. He was full of talk about the dire circumstances he imagines his birth family in, how poor they must be, are they cold, are they hungry, it's not fair, how can he be here in Canada, he has too much, we have too much, they don't have enough, everyone in Ukraine is suffering, what if they are suffering, we must go there now, we must send money, can he have $100 to send them, he needs to get gifts for the kids in his birth family, he can just picture their faces when they unwrap his gift. In the midst of the morning routine, this was a boomerang. I was thrown for a loop and didn't know how to handle it. (Advice welcome!!!)

Second, while B and I were brushing our teeth, he declared that he had figured out who his real family was. His birth family. I stated that I thought he had two real families but that I see us all as his one big family because, really, M and I are joined to the boys' birth family through P and B. B thought about this for awhile. Then: "But my birth family is MORE my real family than you are because my birth mother borned me, and you did not do that." Stake through my heart.

I'm still here

2010-07-16T13:10:00.011-05:00

I apologize for my long absence. We endured The Regression of the Century (TRC - more on that shortly) from P in April and May. I was so occupied and exhausted by that each day that I was barely holding it together with work and all, which meant no blogging even though I probably could have benefitted from the support I know would have come my way if I had managed even one feeble post. Then end-of-semester at work kicked in. Then it became so long since I'd posted that it seemed like a giant task to try to get caught back up, so I just kept letting it slide.

During my absence, Lisa and Essie both checked on me (thanks!!). Then Brie returned but at a new blog, and I thought I might let her return prompt me to get back in the saddle, but still I let it continue to slide. And now J is offering a chance at a prize for linking to (or even just commenting on -- head on over there; you've got til Sunday night) her site where she recently got her 10,000th hit (congrats, J!). And that is what is finally getting me back to blogging, on this last day in the office before we leave for our beach holiday. (More on that in a minute.)

So let's get to it:

TRC was a doozy. P was totally dysregulated from early April through mid-May, no matter what we did to try to help him regulate or to head off any escalating dysregulation before it started. Tapping, hugging, rocking, rubbing, physical exertion, talking, discussing, breathing, bottle feeding; you name it we tried it. All things that have worked to varying degrees in the past just seemed powerless this time around. But it went way beyond that. Baby talk, food stealing (from teachers' refrigerator at school and from a store while grocery shopping with me), insomnia, extreme battles for control, constant low-grade defiance all returned. And it went on and on and felt endless. As I've posted before, we have noticed that at about six month intervals throughout P's healing, the regressions are noticably less frequent, shorter lived, and milder. There has been a steady observable progression in this manner over time. But TRC defied the pattern, and reminded us in a big way how non-linear healing from RAD and PTSD is.

Not surprisingly, TRC was bookended by some pretty significant events: five-years since landing in North America on the front end, and Mother's Day on the back end, although TRC extended beyond Mother's Day by about a week-and-a-half, I think because P's class was starting their "family life" unit the week after Mother's Day. In past years, when his class has covered family stuff, it has always been along the lines of bring in a baby picture of yourself. So P was extremely (and understandably; I know that other parents of international adoptees know how hard/sad it is that our kids so seldom have baby pictures of themselves) sad/worried/freaked out about the upcoming family life unit. For days, it was all he could talk about. Once it got going, it became clear that it was going to be fundamentally different than in past years because it was all about two main themes: division of household labour among family members; and human reproducation. P finds both these topics interesting, so once the unit got over the initial short-lived topic of all the ways in which families can be formed ("what is a family?"), he was okay. Seriously. TRC ended as though with a flick of a switch.

The school cracked down on P pretty hard (for them) for the food stealing this time around. (It was the third time he's been caught at school stealing food in five years, and the first time from teachers.) M and I were happy about that, as it really meant that we could leave the legal/ethical/moral issue of it between P and the school, which we have always thought was important so that P would view the school officials as solid authority figures. That freed us up to be focussing on the root causes with him at home, rather than putting us in the position of doing that while simultaneously consequencing. So that was good.

At one point in the middle of a very calm, regulated talk about the stealing and what hurts he might be feeling inside, P flew from very calm to extremely agitated the fastest I have ever seen him go. It took about half a second, and then he screamed at us "at least my birth mother cared about me." It was so out of the blue. And it connoted so much pain, especially when you factored in his look of utter anguish as he screamed it at us. It makes me think that TRC was a period of him really working through (struggling with?) some huge things that he's trying to reconcile in/about himself. We have since had many many very good talks about the relationship between loving someone, caring about someone, and treating the person in a caring and loving manner. These are difficult for me to talk definitively about because I am not totally convinced that you actually love someone -- even if you say you do -- if you routinely treat them unkindly or uncaringly. But I hesitate to be too "gray area" with this for P right now because I don't want him to feel that I am suggesting that his birth mother didn't/doesn't love him because I honestly don't see how she couldn't love these boys and think of them and wonder about them and want the best for them. Fortunately, P is a bright enough kid and intellectually old enough to understand that I seem to be struggling with this a bit, and to understand why (after I explain it a bit), and to understand that I want these talks to nourish his soul rather than chip away at his developing but still-new-enough-to-be-very-fragile self-worth.

Almost exactly since screaming that at us, P has been regulated and chipper. But more than that, he seems to have leap-frogged forward in some huge ways. He is articulating his feelings in much more mature ways, noticing his own dysregulation much more, taking responsibility when he screws something up (instead of the constant deflection of blame of the past). I am not doing a good job of describing it. It is this all-encompassing change in him that makes him seem developmentally on-track in ways he hasn't ever before. Not across the board, but in some really wonderful areas. And this has held for nearly two months now. It has been glorious. We have been able to grant him more freedoms (though in baby steps) and more privileges (again, baby steps), and maybe the best part of all, for me, is that I am finding myself becoming able to do these things with less and less of that nagging worry that stems from an assumption that these grants of privileges and freedoms will come back to burn me. This is such a liberating and fresh feeling, and I haven't experienced it before in parenting this particular kid, which doesn't really seem fair to either him or me, so it is a really welcome development. It has been so long that I've been so distrustful of P's ability to handle much of anything that I had not realized exactly how exhausting it was for me to have been in that mind-space all this time. It had become normal. I knew it was different from parents of other 10 year olds, but I didn't realize how tired I was. Now that we've evolved, I am getting a big sense of how tired I was. Again, I don't feel like I am describing this well.

In late April, B passed his belt promotion test at taekwondo and became a yellow stripe belt. He was so thrilled, and continues to be. Here he is with his instructors.

Sometime around that time, P got glasses. There is a long story of shame for M and me related to this that I will skip (for reasons of time and post length rather than shame, ha ha), but suffice it to say that we may have set a new record for the length of time parents manage to ignore their child's assertions that his eyes are worsening and he now needs glasses. Doesn't he wear them well, though, now that we got our act together?

Both boys gave very good piano recitals in early June. And P pulled off a first-class honours score in his grade 1 national piano exam. We were all thrilled by that. He has, at the age of 10, surpassed my level of musical knowledge (ever heard of a A- tonic scale? I hadn't!). Kudos to M for this, because he is the one who oversees piano practices at our house. P, to his credit, is mostly manageable about piano, and says that's because he likes it a lot and wants to go as far as he can with it. But it wasn't always like this and let me tell you: piano practices with parental supervision is a area that is ripe with RAD nonsense potential, as we have learned well over the years! So, again, kudos to M!

Somewhere in June (or maybe it was May), our city had a give-away weekend where people put stuff they don't want out at the curb and you could go around and take whatever you wanted off people's piles for free. This is oh so fun at our house, and P and B were up for walking many miles to get lots of free stuff. B scored a bunch of St*r W*rs books that he then tried to sell from our front porch. Too bad for him, no one was biting, not even his parents, at that hefty price ($25.99 in case you can't make it out in the picture).

In late June, Art City had their annual bike parade. This is an inner city arts NGO near our neighbourhood, and their annual bike parade is loads of fun. This year's theme was Planet of the Plant People. The themes are always a bit wacky, which adds to the fun. Here are P, M, and B after the boys decorated their bikes and M got his prop to carry in the parade but before the parade actually got underway. The second picture is of one of the "floats," which I was very impressed by because of how large and lifelike it was. The third picture is how long the parade stretched behind us. We were about midway between the front and back. You should see the faces of the drivers who get stuck at an intersection while this type of parade passes by. Many of them are less than thrilled, and their faces are priceless!

Sometime in the midst of things, P expressed once again a strong interest in cooking and baking. He has been (along with me and B) a bit of a foodie for a few years now, but until now he has stated that he wants to learn to cook and bake but then continues to just relish the reading of recipes. He is a subscriber to C*nadian Living, a magazine that is kind of like L*dies H*ome Journal, for the recipes, and pores over any recipes he comes across in any source. And he is a very adventurous eater. This time, when he mentioned learning to cook and bake, I jumped on it and offered to let him bake muffins. And that got a great thing started. Every weekend for about six weeks now, he has made a batch of muffins. (Note: I have built up the boys' kitchen skills over the years, so P ws starting from a pretty good base of knowledge in terms of where things are in the kitchen, kitchen safety, measuring ingredients, and so on.) This experience has been an interesting thing RAD-wise, as I decided to be very peripheral because I really didn't want the whole thing to become a low-grade RAD experience of control battle or self-sabotage or any unpleasantness between us. So I told P that I would be on hand to help or answer questions or whatever. The first batch was somewhat comical. P asked for no help whatsoever until he had the batter ready to go into the pans. That was when I got to see how runny the batter was! Below is a picture of that first batch of muffins. I commented that the batter looked runnier than muffin batter usually looks, but left it at that. The first batch, as you can see in the picture, surprised me by mostly turning out. But they were very very oily. P and B snarfed them down anyway. The next batch is where things got RAD interesting. P came to me and asked for help. This is a huge thing for him, so I was rejoicing internally when it happened. I just answered his question and left him to it once again. He asked for help and clarification several times throughout the process, and that second batch turned out fantastic, as have all subsequent batches. He is trying to get to 15 successful batches before he chooses another thing to learn. I am thinking a basic cake might be next but I will let him have input in the decision.

As I mentioned at the outset, this is my last day in the office for a month. !!!! We are headed to points south. First to my brother's home in Illinois. While there we will go to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. Then onward to NC for two weeks at the beach. It has been years since I've been to the beach, and P and B have never been, and M has never really spent much time there. I grew up in the US south going to the beach every summer, and I cannot wait to be there. It has been calling to me for a few years now. P, B, and M are also beside themselves with excitement. We will, of course, be doing lots of interventionist strategies to control for all the changes that lie ahead, but I am predicting things are going to go swimmingly (so to speak!).

Over and out for now. I will try to get another post up when we get back from our trip.

Five Years

2010-04-13T10:04:00.002-05:00

I owe an update, but today is for celebrating the five-year anniversary of our return to Canada as a family of four.

Five years ago right now, we were in Vienna waiting to board a flight to Toronto. We had left Kiev on an early morning flight. We got picked up from our flat at 4:30 am. P and B looked so adorable in their little sweatpants and t-shirts and little backpacks. Travelling with two newly adopted, older, post-institution, non-english-speaking children was quite the experience. Flying out of Kiev, we had four seats in a row -- 3 and then the aisle. M and the boys sat in the 3, and I sat across the aisle from M. M made the mistake of not sitting in between P and B. And then the breakfast trays arrived, complete with packets of ketchup and all sorts of things that seemed to multiply by the second. P and B got a fantastic chance to demonstrate their super-stellar fine motor skills! It was quite the introduction to chaos parenting for M, while I sat peacefully across the aisle getting to read a newspaper. M took full advantage of the adult-beverage service, which is apparently available 24 hours a day on all flights out of eastern Europe. No one in our family slept at all on any of our flights all day long. 3.5-year old B screamed the entire way across the Atlantic. I walked and walked the aisles of the plane with him, took him into the bathrooms, tried feeding him, etc, but nothing worked. A lady sitting behind us told us we should get our child under control. In Toronto, we had a 10-hour layover waiting for our 10 pm flight to our home city. We stood in line to try to change to an earlier flight, but that proved pointless except for that while in line behind an African American man we got to hear P pointing out the man to B and saying "caca" and "chocolate." Fun discovery. P and B wrought general havoc in various waiting and play structure areas. And then we went to our boarding area, where P, B, and M all fell sound asleep about 20 minutes before passengers travelling with small children were invited to board the plane. (What a mistake to board then!) P and B did NOT want to wake up. But since they were older than 2, they could not be on our laps -- they had to be seated in their own seats, upright, and with seat belts buckled. We were boarded and strapped in in plenty of time to witness the look of dread on all the other passengers' faces as they came down the aisle to the tune of two children screaming their heads off. M and I each had one kid with us on opposite sides of the aisle, so we each had one more row-mate coming, and we could see how eager everyone was to discover that they had the seats in our row. I got a really understanding man with me. He told me he was a dad and understood what we were going through. He even offered his fleece to P to use as a bit of a pillow. P and B screamed through take off, and then fell back to sleep when we reached cruising altitude. Then screamed continuously upon being returned to upright seat position for landing. M and I were so worn out by the time we got off the place in our city, that I went straight out to the taxis with our two screaming banshees and straight home (got a nice tolerant cab driver who seemed very relieved to leave us off at home), leaving M to collect all the luggage. By 2 am, we were all sound asleep. P and B awoke the next morning chipper as could be.

I cannot believe how these two wonders have changed my life. They are two of the most incredible people I am privileged to know, and I can't believe I got so lucky as to have them for my sons. Did I ever hit the jackpot.

I will try to post pictures in a post to come. We were still on a film camera in 2005, but I have a disk on my desk at the office that I am hoping has some pictures of that era on it. I'm at home today.

For lunch today, I am going to kidnap the boys from school and take them to one of our favourite lunch spots. They are going to be very surprised. M will walk over from his library office to meet up with us. And tonight, before rushing out to B's taekwondo class, we will have our traditional celebratory "Happy Family Day" cake and tell stories.

Five years. It feels like forever and the blink of an eye at the same time!

And they're off...

2010-03-25T10:52:00.002-05:00

M, P, and B hit the road for Edmonton at 8 this morning. I feel a really weird combination of giddiness at my temporary freedom from responsibility and lost at the removal of the structure those responsibilities give my life.

We have spent the past week getting "the men" organized and ready for their trip, and that seemed to give P a good preparatory period for his separation from me. By three days ago, he was keeping himself regulated once again and finding the strength to utter the words "I'm going to miss you soooooo much." That was a nice breakthrough. P's ambivalence has been pretty apparent to us, and then it was finally apparent enough to him to articulate it. These days, at this stage in his healing, I try to cue him less and wait for him to reach a point of identifying his feelings. Not always possible (nowhere near!), but I do try to make myself wait more to see what coping skills he'll choose to recruit and how much he'll choose to fight to let himself feel the actual difficult feelings without giving into the RAD impulses to mask with anger and control. Always rewarding to see him make the choices we would choose for him as well. He nearly sabotaged himself (out of a much-awaited in-the-car treat? out of a pleasant start to the day? out of pleasant interactions with me? not exactly sure what he was going for) through super-poor breakfast table manners this morning, which wasn't surprising so was easy to take in stride. I did cue him then by saying "Do you see as clearly as I do that RAD is choosing self-sabotage for you right now?" and he pulled it together almost immediately.

B has just been dying to get going! No ambivalence on his part. Though I did find a phone message at my office when I arrived this morning: "This is B*****. I love you and I'm going to call you everyday, so get ready!" He's such a goofball.

I'm eating appetizers for supper tonight! No work, as they're left over from a dinner party we hosted Saturday night. Hey, they need to be eaten!

The joke's on me!

2010-03-19T14:14:00.002-05:00

Ha ha ha. Spoke too soon. P raged on M yesterday evening. I had to be out at a neighbourhood meeting, so I wasn't home to experience it. P and B had their bikes out yesterday afternoon and evening for the first time of 2010. Lots of excitement about this from all four of us!!! In a race after supper, P cut off B's lane, causing B to crash and get scraped on the sidewalk. This is a classic happening around here with P, but you never get used to this as someone's winning strategy. I guess there was some initial lying about how this happened, but since M saw the whole thing there truly couldn't have been any real doubt in anyone's mind. When confronted by that reasoning, P threw a tantrum the likes of which we haven't seen in over a year (according to M last night and corroborated by P this morning). It included kicking. And a ton of screaming. Fun stuff. M was proud of himself that he didn't lose it along with P -- stayed completely calm and even used Christine's line of "I'm right here." So the tantrum didn't last all that long. P seemed very embarrassed this morning when I talked with him about it. Today he is back to more of his normal self -- didn't even strike me as in his regression anymore, though I seriously doubt that can be the case as the spring break separation from me hasn't actually occurred yet.

Yes, as Lisa commented to my last post, the upcoming mom-break is completely and totally cool. I can't wait. So many silly little self-indulgences are building up in my mind, such as cleaning the bathroom and having it stay sparkling for the entire week and being able to be on whatever schedule I want!

Nothing much but counting down

2010-03-18T13:38:00.002-05:00

I've been sort of ho-hum about blogging lately. Don't really feel like I have much to say. Life's been fairly repetitive. A week goes by, and then another week goes by. My teaching semester at work is winding down (we finish classes a good month ahead of US universities!). So the crunch is on at work, and this is one of the times of the year when I feel particularly pulled between work and home. But, again, this is routine.

Something that is maybe not so routine is P's current regression. We're on about day 5 of it. M and I noticed it in a big way on Sunday -- P put us through an agonizing day, forgetting how to play piano, write his name, and you name it. We're guessing this regression is triggered by the upcoming spring break trip (more below), but it could also be the fact that we're approaching our family's Adoption Day. Or it could be something else altogether! Anyway, while these regressions are always frustrating and exhausting, it is hard for me to get too wound up in complaining about it this time around because M and I are spending *more* of our time in this regression commenting to each other about the improvements we are clearly seeing in P in the midst of this regression than we're spending venting about the fact that we're in another regressive period. !! In other words, it recently hit us that our reaction to the regression this time around is a brand new thing. And it really truly is because we are witnessing real true change in P. Yes, he's regressing and it's irritating as all get-out. It's just that low-grade wear-you-down go back to the chatteriness and the distraction and the mild defiance and some passive aggressiveness and some minor/silly sneakiness. But this time around P has not had a single rage. Nor has he been disrespectful, nor has he escalated. He has barely even done RAD eyes at us, either the drilling into you RAD glare or the totally disassociative empty RAD look. There have been numerous times we've gotten to see him start down any of those negative reactions toward us and catch himself (without us calling him on it) and take a deep breath. One deep breath. And he gets himself under control. It really does make a difference when you can see the improvement so clearly. Plus, he is articulating this sort of battle that's going on in him. e.g.: "Did you see that, Mom? I started to let RAD make me do X, but then I didn't let it happen?" He has an awareness! And he's fighting. We need to get to the feelings level more than we are, now that I think about it.

On the taekwondo front, the dojang has told B that he will test for his belt promotion in April. He is so eager that I wish it could be sooner, but I completely trust the decisions of his instructors. B just got the news of the April testing at Tuesday evening's class, and he was tickled pink, so I'm finding it in myself to be satisfied too. It has been so much fun to watch him improve. He is getting more powerful and crisp in his movements and much more precise in all the body positions. And he just exudes confidence about it all, and it is completely an earned confidence. Very very cool.

In perhaps the best news of all, M and the boys are gearing up for their upcoming spring break trip out to Edmonton to visit M's side of the family. This is my husband: taking P and B, for the second year in a row, out to Edmonton by car without me. Last year all 3 of them had a ball, so this year M has added in a stop at the T-rex museum in Alberta. They leave next Thursday and come home just over a week later. It is perfect timing for me because it will allow me to just go whole-hog at work and get the semester's teaching work mostly finished off without any guilt. AND the big bonus is I will still be able to build in plenty of time for myself to just space out and recuperate from the general struggles of being a working mom and the specific exhaustion of parenting a radical kid. Aren't I lucky?

Catching up

2010-03-08T12:12:00.002-06:00

Going to bullet this post because there is no real topic.

B got his eighth tiger stripe at taekwondo last week. He is really hoping his instructors will decide he's ready to test for belt promotion on this month's date of March 20. It would be so awesome for him to earn his new belt this month. But I am starting to worry about his chances. I know he knows his stuff, so that's not the worry. The worry is that he gets so nervous in test-type situations. For example, he just freezes at piano recitals (but he does pull them off). The dojang does everything possible to prepare the kids so they can be relaxed, and hopefully that's going to be enough in B's case. He just needs to relax enough for his brain to access what it definitely knows. The having to wait and see is killing me. I wish he could test tomorrow so we could see how he's going to handle it.
P pulled out of his regressive streak last weekend. An almost magical turnaround executed on the last day of February. Could it really just be that the month of February was behind him? If not, the dates of onset and end of this streak were extremely coincidental. He is back to the "normal" we've started to get sort of used to: really pleasant and compliant and loving and helpful; far from perfect but perfectly acceptable in ways that allow us to relax a bit and just enjoy him!; socially about 7.5 years old; new addition is directly observable and huge efforts -- often successful now -- to control his initial kneejerk response to defy or speak disrespectfully when being called out on something. We are also seeing beautifully consistent eye contact (even when scared or angered), nice small non-RAD pupils in those eyes, and generally less RAD-daggers shooting from his eyes.
We are following Dia's, Christine's, and Lisa's lead and administering P 1500 mg of Vitamin B-3 (niacin) daily. He has pretty much taken charge of the process himself and handles it responsibly. The end-of-February turnaround in his demeanor may have had something to do with this, although the huge turn occurred on only day 2 of the niacin.
B attended a glow-in-the-dark mini-golf birthday party yesterday. The invitation said to wear white. B wore white shorts (why do we even own white shorts?) that stretched to his knees -- keep in mind it's March in Canada -- white socks that he pulled waaaaayy up, a blue button-down shirt with white buttons, and a blue, orange, and white flecked clip-on tie. It was very funny, although he was very serious about the outfit so we didn't chuckle in front of him. When we arrived, he was the only kid in a tie, and he wasn't the least bit concerned about it. And those white flecks on the tie looked super cool in the black lights. This boy just makes me chuckle so often.
M has been invited to be on a panel with Margaret Atwood. Needless to say, he said yes!
Is anyone besides me wondering whether Pioneer Woman knows the Cowboys on The Amazing Race?
On that note, over and out.

Taekwondo and volunteering

2010-03-01T10:07:00.003-06:00

Annie asked how taekwondo was working out with respect to RAD. I really don't know how taekwondo is going to work out with P and his RAD (RAD still has an ability to surprise me!), but I am expecting it to go great and to be helpful to P and to our family. That will not be our main purpose in starting him in taekwondo though. The main purpose is for P to get good regular exercise that he wants to do and that we feel especially works his body in ways that he specifically needs. Taekwondo is going to do that, and he has been practically begging to start on it since B started in August.

In our family, we are pretty big on getting enough physical activity for good health, mental health, focus, and sleep benefits. But P is less interested in moving than B. B is just a constantly moving, very physical kid. P gravitates more toward artistic pursuits, construction games/activities, and a ton of reading, and those things tend to keep him more sedentary. Also, he is extremely uncoordinated. (No idea if that's just his genetics or it's a result of his early childhood stuff, or just that he never got much exposure to movement early on, or what.) So finding physical activities that he's genuinely interested in doing, willing to exert his best effort at, and capable of doing at anything close to the level of the age group he'd be placed in has been something of a search. For example, with basketball and soccer he is not able to connect with the ball (catch, throw, shoot, kick -- just can't get his body parts working together to do those things) at anywhere near the level of most other 10 year old boys. With swimming, he is able to do all the arm motions and all the leg motions, but as soon as he is supposed to put the two together, it is rather sad to watch -- like watching someone squirming around a lot while staying in one place on top of the water. He's in level 4 in the Cdn red cr*ss swimming system (for the fourth time now!), and has noticed this time around that he is older than the other kids in his class by at least two years, and more like three years. He loves the water, and we have accomplished our swimming lesson goal, which was to never have to worry about him being able to keep himself alive around water. We don't worry about him at all in the water now. It just doesn't look like he'll ever have a beautiful stroke. And I am not sure how much longer we'll be able to convince him to go to lessons where he feels he is significantly behind his age group. For two seasons, P took rhythmic gymastics, being the only boy in 7-9 age group in the whole city. Then he turned 10, and the club started to hint that they'd sort of prefer if he found another activity. It was too bad, because he loved the movement to music and the equipment, and we loved that the sport was helping his core strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination. Taekwondo will offer these benefits as well, plus I think it entails quite a bit more conditioning compared to what the rhythmic gymnastics had been requiring of P.

The thing about putting P in activities -- even ones we think/know he will enjoy -- is that we are always wondering how he's going to handle the activity and the group dynamics. Will he interact and participate in socially appropriate ways? It always feels nerve wracking to me the first few class sessions of a new activity. I can still remember vividly the first round of swim lessons when I DIDN'T talk to P's instructor in advance to explain his "issues." There had been such a succession of activities for which I DID do that that it was a huge deal when I finally felt we could start an activity without doing that and see how it went. Over time P has improved dramatically at all kinds of things, including going into new group settings/activities and making appropriate choices in them, even when I can recognize that he is anxious and into his hypervigilance. But even so, there is often that on-edge feeling when we're headed to an activity -- M or I can just sense that P might be a little "off" for the activity on that particular day, and it's nerve wracking having to wonder how off he will be.

With taekwondo, the dojang is now a familiar setting for P, because B has been going there twice a week for nearly six months. Also, we have seen first-hand how great the instructors are with the kids, even "difficult" kids. Also, I have seen P take a trial class, and he handled it quite well (I do realize he could honeymoon in this activity, but that is getting to be a lot less of a trend in our lives than it once was). Most importantly, what I have seen of taekwondo at our dojang is a huge stress on self-respect, respect for others, respect for things and property. And positive sense of self and confidence in oneself. And the development of pride in doing things the right way. And focus and concentration. Our kids really are pretty respectful (most of the time), but even so, we have seen dramatic developments in B during his time in taekwondo. And B has also developed this proud, confident way of carrying himself. I would love to see that in P.

To address Annie's question directly, it hadn't even occurred to me to worry about giving P the tools to become physical with us. First, he's really not a kid who lashes out physically so much. The major exception to this is when his RAD rages escalated at the onset of our therapeutic parenting, which I really believe was a reaction to the threat of attaching. Otherwise, he has not been a puncher, hitter, biter, kicker, etc. But he lashes out verbally in an increasingly advanced way -- he has recently developed an aptitude for sarcasm (hate to admit that I am probably one of his biggest teachers in this area). I think taekwondo is going to give him two things that help with this. First, he will get to yell a LOT twice a week. Second, he is going to receive both overt and covert instruction in self-control, along with the instruction and emphasis on respect.

P will start taekwondo in April. I will report back periodically to share how it's going. My expectation is that it's going to go great, except for possibly some behavioural bumps in class along the way. But the instructors have already proven themselves adept at handling such things!

Regarding our volunteering, J, it's at Wpg Harvest. Their current home is near the corner of Notre Dame and McPhillips. Do you know of them? They may not have existed when you lived here. They provide food for 40,000 families (I think) a month. A sorry statement on poverty in our city. P, B, and I volunteered there for the first time right before Christmas. We sorted food. Huge pallets of donated food come in at the warehouse (which is enormous), and they tend to be all jumbles of all sorts of things, right down to individual packets of soy sauce or single cups of store-bought pudding and such. Unloaders check the items for expiry, safety, etc., and then place them on a big table. Sorters pick items up from the table and take them to their appropriate box. The sorting is really specific, so there were about 100 different boxes around the room. It was helpful that P could read so well -- I had to walk everywhere with B to help him find boxes. We sorted for three hours and didn't make a dent in the amount of food to be sorted. It was fun, and both boys commented on the way home that they felt good about helping. Since then, P and I have been going to family volunteer nights once a month. In January, we sorted. In February just last week, we bagged split peas. Bagging the peas was more tedious and less fun than sorting the food, but we still felt like we were contributing where we were needed, and P commented that that is what really mattered.

I grew up with a mom who was an active volunteer in all sorts of capacities. She is definitely the source of my siblings' and my desire to try to volunteer. I hope that P and B will grow up to have the same desire to try to pitch in where they can. They came to us with first-hand experience with poverty and hunger, and they both have a strong (and appropriate) sense of outrage at the way poverty persists in our society. They have all sorts of ideas for what should be done about it (while they lack sufficient understanding of some the complexities and realities that would render a lot of their proposed solutions unworkable). So it seemed like food/poverty-related volunteering might be a good place for us to start. From there, I'm not sure. P is quite the budding environmentalist. He puts me to shame, and my work in is in the area of environment! So I am thinking of finding some environmental organizations that we could do mother-son volunteering with. And B loves animals, so I'm waiting for the day when the Humane Society thinks he's old enough to go volunteer there together. I guess my point is that I am finding this a really satisfying thing to do with my children, and I hope that we can keep expanding our activities as they get older. They show signs that they will continue to want to do such things, and hopefully that will keep up.

Slipping (?), tiger stripes, and GI

2010-02-25T10:21:00.003-06:00

Just a quick post to note some things.

First, P has been on that edge this week. Just where you can feel that things could go really out of control, or maybe they won't. We've got that steady low-grade annoying stuff. It's been fairly relentless, but with short spurts of betterness and spells of disproportionate anger with verbal lashing out tossed in here and there to keep things more interesting. It started on Sunday. M returned late Saturday from his week away. I'm wondering whether P's regression is related to M's going and coming, to the general time of year we're in (February and March anniversaries of total life upheavals), or both. Probably both. Or maybe something else we don't know about. Ugh.

Trying hard to keep patient, compassionate, and non-shaming. Case in point: P and I were scheduled to volunteer at a food bank yesterday evening. But after P's general poor treatment of the household for much of the day, I was worn out and felt really tempted to have him give us a rest by being off somewhere quiet. But I started thinking that separating him would not promote the same bonding that going and doing our community work would. So off we went. P is still adjusting to this volunteer work. New things and places never fail to send him into an agitated state. So I had to deal with all his anxiety over the big space we go to, and all the behaviours that stem from that anxiety, and I almost kneejerk reacted and took him home. I was just worn out. But we stuck it out, and by a half-hour into our two-hour shift of bagging split peas (two scoops to a bag, a whole bunch of times, with the Canada-Russia men's hockey game playing on the radio for us all to listen to), the working together was really making a difference, and we were both in good moods and interacting nicely. So glad we went and that I stuck it out.

Second, B is poised to earn his eighth/final tiger stripe this coming Tuesday at taekwondo. This will represent that he knows the full body of information and skills to be eligible to test for his yellow stripe belt. He is beside himself with excitement and pride. It is so fun to see.

Third, I have been meaning to get down here for ages that we started guided imagery on January 15. About a month later than our target, but at least it's underway. We are currently using stage 1 GI's -- two of them -- and we play them overnight in the boys' bedroom a few nights a week. M and I can't see how the boys can stand to have that playing in their room all night long, but P and B say they love it.

Week's round-up

2010-02-19T18:47:00.002-06:00

M's been gone this week, serving on his first national jury in the writing world. A big step for him to have been invited to serve, and he's rightly been on cloud 9 about it. He left this past Monday, and that is the day P started flipping out somewhat. Coincidence? I think not. General poor choices across the board at school, so much so that his teacher put him back on his old behaviour reporting system. Then on Wednesday he was caught in the school's computer lab playing on-line video games, having snuck in there when he was supposed to be at lunch and with no teacher (or any other) soul present. Everything about that scenario was prohibited. The school took the drastic and unprecedented (in our experience) step of assigning P a big consequence: he is banned from computer privileges until after spring break -- that is all the way into April. I explained to him that such a huge consequence signals how bad a choice he made. He seemed utterly without regret (which always scares me). Crazy silly lying re-entered my life this week. We haven't been dealing with this on such a scale in awhile, and I forgot how crazy it makes me. P has been agitated, talkative, needing more reminders than usual to stay on task, and so on and so forth. BUT: He has generally been pleasant at home. Not disrespectful or venomous toward me. No dead RAD eyes zoning out in my direction (i.e., no shutting down) and no blazing RAD eyes boring into me. So much so that he, B, and I were able to work as a solid team in assembling a new piece of furniture on Wednesday evening. We had FUN! And today on the phone M reported that P has left him some really touching phone messages at his hotel room (unbeknownst to me, but not prohibited!). Weird mix, this agitation and misbehaviour at school, heightented agitation at home, and generally pleasant mood otherwise. Oh, and the crazy lying

I am proud proud PROUD to report that I have kept my cool totally consistently all week long. I have used a ton of the parenting strategies in Christine's videos. They were such good reminders. I had proper tone of voice, body position, kept my mouth shut a lot of the time when I was sooooo tempted to rant and rave or lecture, never once raised my voice (my new year's resolution not to yell has had one violation (earlier in Feb) so far this year -- better than I have ever done on this resolution), said 'I'm right here" about 50 times this week, and I don't know what else. And P responded to thse things: his forays into regression were comparatively mild and he would work to pull himself out of them. He re-regulated relatively quickly. I could see him wanting to spout off with disrespectful/immature physical or verbal reactions to stuff I was calling him on and then see him take -- of his own volition, without prompting -- a couple deep breaths. One situation like this happened yesterday at school pick-up. The day before, he'd had to make THREE trips back into the building to get things he should have brought out with him (hat, communication book, permission slip). This kind of thing drives me and M batty, and we have had tons of family talks about the courtesy or respecting each other's time as well as te importance of trying to be organized. P's teacher also harps on this. P does not like when we send him back to get the things he's supposed to bring home, so the repeat trips into the building got him pretty worked up. But we managed. So then yesterday, he came out without something and I started to send him back and he started to go down RAD road of malcontent, and then -- miracle of miracles -- he faced me, took three really seriously deep breaths, and then speechlessly and snappily went into the building and retrieved the item. I wonder about the extent to which my staying so even-keeled through the RAD displays helps him regulate more speedily and solidly. There's got to be a connection.

The real shocker came this evening: After P finished his supper, he said "Mom? I've been sad at school this week because Charlotte (his only real friend) wasn't there." Boom. No prompting from me. No trying to recite a script of feelings on his behalf and seeing what reaction I get from him. No series of questions from me. I honestly wasn't really sure what to do with this, because I am not sure it's ever happened in quite this way before. I was surprised. So we just matter-of-factly discussed how -- the first day Charlotte was missing -- he could have called her to find out what was up and then maybe he wouldn't have been so worked up about her absence, or at least he wouldn't have had to wonder about it so much. He's always a bit adrift socially when she's not there, so I don't know if just having an explanation of the reason for her absence would have helped him entirely, but I know the mystery of things definitely fills him with anxiety. RAD thrives on lack of predictability in P's world.

In other news, I have had wonderful support from two girlfriends this week. They have shuttled B to taekwondo because I have had to take P to swim lessons at the exact same time. They are women who really understand our family dynamics and love all of us so much and really accept P and B just the way they are, and their help this week has really reminded me how grateful I am for their friendship.

M comes home tomorrow!

I am not proofreading this in my rush to start the bedtime routine.

P's note: follow-up to yesterday's post

2010-02-11T10:51:00.002-06:00

After work yesterday, I went straight to a restaurant to meet a friend for dinner. I got home right at lights out for B. P has -- through super-sustained excellent behaviour surrounding all aspects of bedtime and getting/keeping himself rested (we have dealt with years of bed/sleep issues with him) -- earned the privilege of having his own little reading light and being allowed to read in his bed after the lights in the room are out for B. (P and B share a bedroom.) So B was falling asleep in the darkness, and P was engrossed in his book in his little cone of reading light.

Both boys were so sweet. They are usually really easy to like at that time of day! P told me to be sure not to miss the note he'd left me on our dining room table. So after visiting with the boys for a few minutes, I went in search of my note, and this is what I found:

Hi Mom, How do you do? I am awake between 7:00 to 8:30 but if you come home at 8:31 I would like to say good-night! What would help me is: (Please go to page 2) give me a photocopyed note in Ukrainian [he means one of the letters from a caregiver that we stay somewhat in touch with], have more rocking time (I do not care if I have a candy or not), and more kisses (it doesn't mean I want the kiss in inapropryet times).

I am so encouraged by his having identified some things that he feels will help him and having the courage to ask for them. For a long time, he couldn't do these things. And then after that I think he really couldn't muster the courage; it always seemed like he didn't actually believe he was worthy of this type of effort, or maybe he was still deeply afraid of his requests being denied. I take this as a real sign of a sense of increasing self-worth in him and/or a core belief that M and I want to and will meet his needs.

As of this morning, we have amped up the rocking time and the kisses, and I have a Ukrainian letter with me at work that I am going to photocopy for him. P doesn't read a bit of Ukrainian (or speak it anymore either), so I don't really get this, but over the past year he's started to show gradually increasing interest in Ukraine and has sporadically expressed a sort of longing to know more about what it's like there. (This is following a few years of strident resistance to hearing anything about Ukraine, refusal to acknowledge the language, etc.) At this point, if having one of the letters to see and hold feels to him like something that will help him, I am okay with it. I do wonder whether it is going to trigger any kind of reaction though. Time will tell, I'm sure. The letter, at least, is from the one and only caregiver we saw with P's groupa who seemed to care about P as an individual.

Oh my P

2010-02-10T14:47:00.003-06:00

2:35 pm today. I'm at my office. Phone rings. Caller id screen shows it's the school. My mind and body immediately brace for whatever I'm going to hear about P. When I answer, it's P himself. His little scared/troubled voice says "Hi Mom. I don't know why I'm having such a bad day. Did dad call you? I had such a bad morning." When I ask what he means, he says that he was stubborn with M this morning about putting his backpack on. And that he did something similar to M yesterday morning. M had not told me anything about this, since last night we dwelled on the highly inappropriate antics P had pulled in the locker room when I took him to last evening's swimming lesson.

We have had a general feeling that P's been slightly on edge about something for about a week. No major regression, just increased agitation and all its manifestations. (See my previous post about his increased nonsense chatteriness of Sunday.) He's been holding things together at school, but increasingly moody (for him) and oppositional (for him at this stage of healing, which is mild compared to what I know others are dealing with right now) with us.

OK, back to the phone call. I said tell me about what you're thinking. And P -- I could hear his voice being on the verge of crying, which I knew he didn't want to do because he was in the school office (it was recess) -- "I've been trying to figure out why I'm doing these things. This isn't like me now. But I don't know, there's only one thing I can think of." Then he stopped talking. I prompted him by reminding him not to be afraid to say what he was thinking. He said "maybe something in Ukraine, maybe this was when I was separated from my brother?"

This weekend was the five-year anniversary of when we met him. He was newly 5. Just a few months earlier, he had been transported, apparently without warning, from the baby house (where he'd gotten to see B a few times a year) 150 km away to a residential orphanage school for ages 4/5 and up (while B remained behind at the baby house). (P has since told us how confused and terrified he was during that transfer.) On Feb 7, we appeared on the scene and all the adults in the picture told him we were going to be his parents forever. Then we disappeared on him for about 5 days. Over the month of February, we only got to go visit him 3 times. (Long story that I'll provide another time.) The caretakers told us that between visits, he would become physically ill. Then we disappeared on him for the entire month of March. (Another long story for another time: Ukraine's adoption rules at the time combined with my work policies.) He must have felt abandoned and abandoned and abandoned. Especially when, at our first meeting, he had to be wakened from a nap to meet us, and we got to see him sit up in bed and be told about us and the first words out of his mouth were "I was dreaming that I was in a forest and there were wolves and bears and lions and tigers, and down the path to save me came my mama and daddy."

Just now, we cried a little together over the phone, and he then said he just didn't know what he could do. I told him to ask permission to phone our house and leave M an I-love-you message, and he immediately sounded more perked up. Then he had to get off the phone. But he sounded completely different by the end of the call. An excited "I love you, Mom."

I am just bursting with pride. He is struggling, but he is using his tools and doing his best to cope. He turned to me for help!!!!! He was trying to identify his feelings rather than just saying he was angry/mad. He could admit to those feelings. He was willing to work together and accept help. He wanted to make things right with M without being reminded. My eyes are filling with tears just typing this.

I have to remember that scared little boy who woke up telling about the parents he'd dreamed to come and save him.

Champion eaters

2010-02-07T21:05:00.003-06:00

This afternoon, P, B, and I went to the last bit of our neighbourhood community centre's winter carnival. We had been grocery shopping for the early part of the afternoon (M was doing a poetry program on a radio station in town), and I'd had a rough time of it with P chattering non-stop. I was at my wit's end, trying every strategy under the sun for nonsense chatter. B had had his heart set on getting over to some contests that were going on as part of the carnival, so we rushed with the grocery unloading and just made it to the carnival in time. And it was so worth the rush, and gave our afternoon a needed change-up. There was a pie eating contest (one piece, fastest finishers won). P and B had a ball but did not place. Then came the perogy eating contest. Three perogies, fastest finishers won. You should have seen P and B go. They were in different age groups, which enabled them both to get first place! They demolished the competition! I had no idea they could eat that fast -- B is glacially slow at eating sometimes (having very few teeth left in his mouth from all the dental issues we've had doesn't help). Somehow both boys figured out to slather sour cream on their perogies to make them slipperier. Accomplishing that was a major feat, as hands had to be behind their backs. Their prize was a voucher for $3 worth of stuff at the canteen. They both bought gum and are in heaven. Then B cleaned up by taking second place in the third contest which was bubble gum blowing. Another $2 voucher which he shared with P.

It was hilarious watching all the kids in the contests, and put me in a much better mood.

When we got home B found he had another snow shovelling job. P volunteered to assist, and off they went.

Tonight we had very tired boys. B was asleep within seconds of the start of his backrub.

Week's round-up

2010-02-05T10:52:00.002-06:00

Friday. My favourite day of the week! It's my morning with the boys, and then work is usually fairly low-key, and we almost always have a leisurely evening, so my Fridays tend to be fairly relaxed.

P has been begging to join taekwondo ever since B started it. P has been in swimming lessons, plus we weren't sure he could handle the taekwondo. We thought it could be wonderful for him both for the fitness and the emphasis on respect and self-control, IF he could handle the class sessions. We just weren't sure he could handle it.

A few months ago, a new kid joined B's taekwondo age group. He is called new Dylan, and he has behavioural issues. They are much like P's originally were back when he was 5, 6, 7, and 8. He doesn't go along with the group activity, he acts out, he doesn't keep his hands and feet to himself, and when the instructors call him on his behaviours, he will often react disrespectfully. M and I have been in awe of how the instructors at our dojang have handled new Dylan. They are patient and gentle-mannered (excellent modelling of taekwondo tenets), but they are also firm and insistent that new Dylan adhere to their standards for "the mat," where respect and courtesy are key. What they are requiring of new Dylan sometimes leads him to melt down. In the beginning, he'd have his meltdown early in the class, but it has gradually moved to later and later in each class. And it is growing milder and milder. He still has a ways to go, but it's clear he's going to get to a point where he can keep himself together and enjoy the entire class session. (His enjoyment in many of the activities is evident.)

These observations, along with the positive developments we've seen in P of late, gave M and me the confidence to let P try taekwondo. We talked with the instructors, and they were very unconcerned about anything P might throw at them. I stressed that new situations frequently trigger pretty extreme anxiety in P, which can manifest as anger and/or huge distraction/disruption. They responded by saying that one of the kids in P's age group was a ball of rage when he first started a couple years ago, and that if they revealed which kid it was I wouldn't believe it. (All of the kids in P's age group appear to have it totally together!)

So earlier this week, we asked P whether he'd like to attend a trial class. He was thrilled. Last night was the class. He loved it. And he did really well during the class itself. Only issue was that during the pre-class period when everyone was goofing around, there were two older boys, obviously buddies with each other, who were clowning around doing guy hugs. P saw them and went right up to them and put his arms around both of them. (Sigh. We hadn't seen this behaviour out of P in a good year or so.) Parents are asked not to intervene with activities on the mat, but I did intervene on that. P and I went in the hall and talked about it being scary not to have any friends in the class and how it's okay to really long to be liked and to fit in. After that, he was able to conduct himself appropriately. As he came off the mat at the end of class, the first words out of his mouth were that he wished he could officially sign up right away. (We are going to wait until April when his swim lessons have ended so that he doesn't get overprogrammed.) On the walk home, all he could talk about was how his body -- especially his legs -- was all quivery from the exercise. The conditioning part of the class really was something, and then they had him doing a lot of kicks.

B's reading leapt way forward again this week. We are sort of surprised, and of course very pleased. Not sure what's going on, but something is clicking for him big-time. He came home yesterday and announced that he'd "tested" for a new level, and that he only has a few more levels before he gets to bring home chapter books. He started the year reading books with only about 1 sentence per page, and is now reading 500-word books and figuring out words he's never seen before. It is very fun to watch him have this success.

B started this term's school-based speech therapy this week as well. He is in a group of three boys who are all working on their R's. They will work as a group for 10 weeks, and then be re-assessed. We are lucky because B can make/form all the r sounds for r's in all positions in a word. He just needs to start making those sounds in his speech and reading.

Feb 2-11 our city has a Dine About event in which a bunch of really amazing restaurants serve a specific 3-course meal that is representative of their food. It is a great way to sample some very good restaurants. Tonight we are going to a fondue restaurant. P, B, and I went to this same restaurant last year for this event (M was out of town), and we had a ball. One of my girlfriends went with us. It was a blissful meal, and P and B were perfect gentlemen. The appetizer was a cheese fondue, the main course was a hot broth (oil?) fondue with a variety of shellfish and meats and some divine dipping sauces, and the dessert was a chocolate fondue with cake and fruit. We loved it, and P was especially thrilled because he had been asking what exactly fondue was for a few months prior. This year, the menu is the same, so my mouth has been watering all week. P doesn't know we've scheduled this, so he is in for a super surprise later today. M is able to join us this year, and by coincidence that same girlfriend of mine will be in the same restaurant at the same time celebrating one of her friend's birthdays!

Too True Tuesday #14

2010-02-03T13:14:00.002-06:00

Yes, I know it's Wednesday. I never can seem to get in on Essie's group activity on the proper day.

This time we are asked to reveal the most embarrassing songs on our ipods. So I guess my first embarrassing confession is that I don't have an ipod. Or an mp3 player. What I have is a transistor radio. I carry it with me on my morning walk-runs. Through the prairie winter. Clutched in my bulky mittened hand. Blaring (public radio), to be audible over the loudly crunching snow and my frozen-stiff rustling michelin-man-style clothing. The other early-morning freaks look at me like I am the queen of the weirdos.

Anyway. Because of my technological backwardness, I will have to confess to some songs that get me belting em out in the car or jumping off the couch to lurch around the room if they come on the radio. I was going to say anything by Neil Diamond, but Essie already stole that one which saves me having to confess to owning his collected works on CD. So I'll go with Barry Manilow. How can you not sing along with "Mandy?" And then there's "Copacabana." Oh, and Anne Murray's "Snowbird." And all the songs from the original movie soundtrack to "Grease." And "Pop music." (No idea who sings that one.) The best part is that P and B are still impressionable/sheltered enough for me to convince them that these are all ultra-hip songs.

At a loss for a title

2010-01-29T11:58:00.008-06:00

I have been reading with relish and gratitude all the great and generous posts that a bunch of you have been doing on attachment parenting and therapeutic parenting. (Lisa has you hooked up if you're not sure what I'm talking about. Christine's videos of late are absolutely amazing.)

These posts have done a great deal to send me back to basics and given me fresh reminders of what works -- really really works -- with our P. I am so grateful for the reminders and new ideas and inspiration. I have been reading all this and reflecting a lot on our earlier years with P (and B). Next week marks our 5-year anniversary of meeting each other. The early years after they joined our family were so difficult that sometimes it is painful for me to let (make) myself think back to there. We were so clueless. P honeymooned for so long, but knowing what we know now his RAD was with us from the beginning (duh; he was 5). We had received no training or even tip-offs about attachment disorder. We had been told in our mandatory adoption education that there might be bonding issues and bonding was very important. And we thought we were doing it.

Ha ha ha ha. We just thought we had kids who didn't know better on our hands. Turned out that was only true for B. Grocery outings, or any outings, were difficult. There were horrible rages and tantrums over just about anything. There was regression in table manners. There was nonsense chatter, property destruction, lying, and stealing. But all this was mixed in with learning english, learning what it was like to live in a world that was more than two rooms big (literally, that was their life in the orphanage), learning what it was like to have choices about all sorts of things, learning that you can wear fresh clothes each day, learning that there will always be enough to eat, learning what ice cubes were, what a bike is, what a remote control is, and on and on and on.

At about the 1.5-year mark, P's RAD behaviours started to escalate in a huge way. Nothing we did parentally worked (duh again; we did all the traditional "normal-kid" approaches). It all had worked for B, but things were going so downhill with P. It was scary, frustrating, exhausting, time consuming in a way I don't think I can describe, probably career altering, isolating, embarrassing, hard on our marriage, hard on B (and no doubt on P).

We finally called the top adoption psychologist in the city. She was backed up til August 2007 -- our 2.25-year mark. When we finally went to see her as a family that August, she talked to us and observed us as a family for awhile, then sent P and B to a nearby playroom and talked with M and me for awhile. That is when we got P's RAD diagnosis. (Since then, PTSD has been added.) I will forever remember the moment that came out of the psychologist's mouth. I think I should have been terrified by it, but it was still such a foreign concept that I was blissfully uninformed about it. So instead I was hugely relieved. It felt good to know the name of something that we could go and research and figure out. (Figure out. ha ha ha ha.) She handed us Daniel Hughes and we were on our way. That began our research, reading, lurking on blogs, trying new things, learning, learning, learning, experimenting with parenting strategies and techniques on P (and B).

Daniel Hughes didn't really float my boat all that much, but he was an okay introduction for us. It was when we came across Beyond Consequences that life changed. That was the source that gave us the all-important insight that everything about the way P sees and experiences and interacts with the world is based on fear and shame, and that our parenting of him had to take this into account. If we parented in a way that didn't recognize this, then we would be feeding the RAD. Since I am a very competitive person, I couldn't stand the thought of contributing to a RAD victory. So it was that insight that gave me probably my single most important knowledge, while my competitive attitude toward RAD continues to give me my primary motivation.

About that same time, we came across Love and Logic, but I quickly dismissed it. My thinking was that its approach (of natural consequences or really logical imposed consequences) could only work on kids who were already at least partly attached -- on kids who have really solid cause-and-effect thinking. For two years, we put Love and Logic on the back burner and basically forgot about it.

Based on that insight we got from Beyond Consequences, we started parenting in a whole new way. It was maybe the hardest thing I've done, and I still feel that we are far from being as consistent with it as we must be. But we have gotten better at it over time, and after about a year of striving it did come a lot more naturally/habitually. Still, for both M and me, there is still an almost instinctive reaction to P's RADness that has us wanting to punish punish punish and berate berate berate. Hence my gratitude to all you out there who are currently blogging me such tremendous reminders and tools.

As we were able to make the transition in our parenting, we thought great things would come. Instead, P became even more of a rage-filled venomous being. It was extremely discouraging, exhausting, scary, ... It seemed as we wanted to hug more and rock more and treat him gently and therapeutically, he became so threatened and scared that he escalated in every way imaginable. He did not like hearing anything along the lines of "you must feel very scared inside right now" or "that must be remind you of when you didn't have enough to eat" or anything even remotely empathetic. He would shout "you're lying" "no" "you are wrong." And his eyes would blaze. I had times where I was holding him (appropriately) so he wouldn't hurt himself and he was kicking, punching, biting, spitting. In the aftermath of one of those episodes, I was still holding him and he began licking me all over -- everywhere -- while also speaking to B across the room "she loves this, you should lick mom sometimes."

I kept that one insight in my mind through these times. He is a scared little child who's never had his needs met and doesn't believe that anyone but him can ever be relied on to meet his needs, and he is so full of shame that he doesn't even think he deserves to have his own self let alone anyone else meet his needs (much less anything surpassing needs). In his own eyes, he is unworthy. I would just remember that and remember that and remember that. While it was hard to sleep because of his raging. While it was hard to do anything because of his attention-mongering. While it was hard to like him much at all. While he was not reciprocating any love or genuine friendliness. While he was messy at the table. While he faked and faked and faked that he couldn't read the word "the" throughout grade 2 (he is a way above average reader).

We started adding in stuff such as cross-crawl and other bilateral exercises, strong sitting, nightly backrubs, and a whole morning routine that I have elaborated on before. All these little pieces added one by one over a somewhat drawn out period.

Gradually, we started to have little realizations of a day or two going by that didn't feel so exhausting. I started noticing that we were getting opportunities to laugh with P. I started noticing that I didn't have to correct 500 times a day (maybe only 300). Little things like that. They started adding up to big things. We still had to watch P like a hawk for stealing, sneakiness, lying, and there was ongoing subtle (passive-aggressive) defiance. But we had achieved noticable improvements.

Several months after P turned 8 (in Jan 2008), he started asking really hard questions about his background. Over time we divulged more and more information (limited as it is). I still don't know whether that was the right thing to do or not, but it was either that or lie -- his questions were just too direct and too detailed -- and we really didn't want to lie to him about anything big. I in particular worried about him growing into the questioning stage of adolescence and discovering that we'd lied. It just felt to me (and still does) that that would shatter his whole self-concept more than the shattering I think telling him these truths at age 8 did. We entered a phase where he was grief-stricken for a long time. A lot of his behaviours started to seem like they were stemming from grief. Throughout later grade 2 and about half of grade 3 (into age 9), he would often talk about not having been able to focus at school that day because of being so sad thinking about Ukraine and his birth mother, or having misbehaved because he had hard feelings about Ukraine and didn't find an appropriate outlet for them.

In the fall of 2008, we explained to P the attachment cycle, RAD, and the nurturing we believe he missed out on from birth. I started talking with him (somewhat) about the blogs I was finding online and the idea that there were other kids like him and that I was learning from their moms, and that M and I were starting to celebrate often the signs of healing we were seeing in him. P was so receptive to all these ideas, all except the idea that he was healing. For that, he needed concrete evidence. We pulled out one of the several available lists of symptoms and went down it with him item by item. By this time, it was getting easier for P to see a particular symptom and say "but I don't do that." We said "but you did!" and then we were able to describe particular situations of it. By this time P's table manners were so good that he did not believe he ever didn't have good manners at the table.

December 2008 became the month of running away. It was very scary. It took over our every interaction. It took over M's and my lives. It was not good for B. I don't have time to go into it right now. But any time P believed that things weren't going to go his way, or any time P figured he was caught having made an undesirable choice, he bolted on us. Decembers had always been hard months. We had chalked it up to it just being the Christmas craze, accentuated in older adopted kids. It wasn't until we were in the midst of the month of running away that we learned about trauma anniversaries and put two and two together. (Our latest December, 2009, we went into the month with a well-devised plan that took P back to ultra therapeutic basics, and the month went swimmingly.)

I don't actually remember what snapped us out of the hypervigilance we developed from that December of running away. But sometime sort of early in 2009 we started seeing more and more signs of healing in P. More compliance; more consistently good choices; relatively long stretches of time where our household boat didn't seem to be rocked so much; less nonsense chatter; less time when we could feel that anxious energy rippling off him to fill whatever room he was in; significantly improved ability to find words for his feelings and inner life; more observations of him at least attempting to express anger appropriately; lots of observations of him considering lying and then making a decision not to. Other stuff. The good days started to outnumber the difficult ones. Fun started to seem easier to have. Life started to feel less exhausting.

One of the best developments of all, I think, is that sometime during 2009, P became our partner in his healing. He has become fully invested in it, and that has helped tremendously. He has also become increasingly able to identify when he feels he's about to have a RAD reaction to something, and usually knows how not to do so. Whether he chooses that way is the current struggle, I think. Yes, there is still a struggle. P is not cured or fully healed. M and I aren't sure he ever will be. But 2009 was a year of incredibly positive developments for him, and the magic has just continued in 2010 so far (I am running out of steam on this post, so am not elaborating on what 2010 has brought so far, but it's been so good).

There have been many regressions and set-backs throughout this positive time period as well. The healing process, as we all know, is not a straight smooth path. Lately, I am trying to convince myself to view the regressions as a good sign. ha ha ha ha, you may be thinking. But if I'm detecting the pattern correctly, the regressions precede a new breakthrough in P's attachment and/or social development. This is a relatively new observation on my part, and I only recently started to try to keep more formal track of it to see how strongly the pattern holds. But it's my current suspicion that I might should celebrate the regressions, hard as that will be to do in the midst of them.

Some updates of note:

B fell onto his head onto an ice rink from way up high (sled he was standing on atop huge snow pile overlooking rink pushed out from under him by his partner in mischief) on Wednesday. We appear to have dodged a huge bullet on this one, as he is all right. I was so scared when we got the call from the school, and it felt like so long to get across town to him. We are now trying to scare the pants off him about ever doing anything like that again. He was waaaaayyyyy beyond where he was allowed during morning recess at school. Let me just say that the two nights of night-time wake-ups to check brain function seem to be serving as an excellent natural consequence. He hates them and gets very pissed off at us when we ask him what happened to his head. (He has to be able to demonstrate "incident recall.")
B has been saving up for 2 years for a gameb*y. About three weeks ago, we put a flyer in everyone's mailbox on our block advertising his snowshovelling services. Then no snow fell at all. Last weekend, it snowed like crazy. Heavy wet slushy snow. He got five jobs spanning Saturday and Sunday. He was one tired, happy boy. The money he made put him over the top of what he needed to get a used gameb*y and one used game for it. He has been in heaven this week (aside from the head injury incident and the night-time wake-ups).
P has joined knitting club at school as well as chess club, and is handling them both just fine (unless we are not privy to some antics...!).
B earned his 6th (out of 8) tiger stripe at taekwondo, so he now knows 3/4 of the material for his belt promotion test. M and I continue to be amazed at how great B's dojang is.

Over and out for now. I need to learn to write a shorter post, I think.

Haiti

2010-01-15T10:25:00.002-06:00

Haiti's situation is too much for me to process. I am finding myself paralyzed -- so much grief and need there. So unfair. My thoughts are also with all of you out there who personally know people in Haiti and are wondering about their well-being. And with all of those in the middle of adoptions from Haiti. As I said, it all feels like just too much to process.

In case this is of use to anyone: Canada's public radio, CBC, has set up an on-line photo gallery. The idea is that anyone worried about someone in Haiti can post that person's photo, and anyone who knows anyone about the pictured person's status can add a comment. Here's the site address:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourvoice/photogalleries/haiti/

Additionally, this morning on local CBC radio I heard a live interview with a woman from our province who was volunteering in a Haitian orphanage. The earthquake occurred on her first day there. The orphanage is God's Littlest Angels, and it is just outside Port au Prince. She said that they had gotten all the children/babies out to safety. If anyone needs to know more about this particular orphanage, I may be able to contact our local CBC producer and find out how to get back in touch with this woman. The interview was conducted live over the phone. Contact me if this would be of use to anyone you know.

Tue True Tues #12

2010-01-12T15:00:00.004-06:00

It's time once again for Essie's TTT. This time around we are supposed to tell all the ways we are cheap. For detailed instructions, go visit Essie's blog. She actually has a lot to say about this. I just want her to know that I prefer to call myself frugal. Anyway. I'm extremely, over-the-top frugal, so here are just a few of the ways this stellar personality trait manifests at our house:

We wash and re-use ziplock bags until they have holes.
P and B get home haircuts done by me. M used to as well, but now he's completely bald.
We completely outfit our kids from second-hand stores, except for underwear and socks. We are lucky to live in a city that has a lot of really good second-hand stores.
I haven't bought a card or gift wrap in over 20 years. We always use newspaper or re-use gift bags/tissue paper/wrapping paper. I find this is especially interesting when presenting wedding or shower gifts! But it just kills me to buy paper whose whole purpose is to be torn and thrown out. I have to fight my compulsion to tell everyone in our family to open every gift carefully. I want them to so I can have the wrapping paper, but I don't want to wreck their fun of just tearing open a gift.
We turn our heat waaaaay down at night -- 55 degrees.
We try to make it all the way through October before we turn on our heat for the winter. This may not sound like a big deal to some of you, but anyone familiar with the Canadian prairies will understand. We bundle up. And M and I sometimes argue about this. And sometimes I have to give in.
We make most of our own cleaning supplies, especially laundry detergent.
We don't use any papertowels or paper napkins. Sponges and cloths replace paper towels, and cloth napkins replace paper. (However, I can't bring myself to adopt handkerchiefs in place of tissues, and we will never go without TP.)
We try to eat vegetarian several times a week.
We almost never go to full-price movie theatres. I don't even think P and B know they exist. When we go to the movies, it's to the el cheapo theatre, which costs $2 and often has 2-for-1 coupons. !!!
I am actively teaching P and B how to smuggle food into movies. I know this is completely wrong. I just can't stand the prices of the movie food.
Most of the time, we watch movies from home. We borrow them from our public library. (We have a fantastic public library system in our city.) They are either free (if they are juvenile) or $1, and we can keep them up to 3 weeks.
I try hard not to buy books and use the library instead. Of course, I buy books for my work, and I live with a writer who is a book-buying obsessive, so my efforts in this regard don't make a huge impact in our household expenses.
We have no subscriptions.
I cut open the bottles of lotion and other hygiene products to scrape out the last dregs. Two weeks before Christmas, I cut open five "empty" bottles of my face lotion that I'd let pile up. The dregs lasted me until yesterday, so that's several weeks of being able to put off starting my new bottle! M, P, and B looked at me like I was crazy when I told them about this as if it were something to celebrate, but to me it's big!
We buy a lot in bulk and re-package it at home into smaller portions for use in lunches and such.
We almost always buy only refurbished appliances. (As just one example, our dryer cost us $150 8 years ago and is still going strong.)

That is all I can think of for right now.

Happy early birthday to P

2010-01-05T13:50:00.002-06:00

P's 10th birthday is coming up on January 10. But, as mentioned in my previous post, we surprised him by celebrating it this past Saturday, January 2. He was thrilled, and the day went off without a hitch! Best of all, there hasn't been any fallout so far. He loved -- LOVED -- the upgrades we got him for his electricity set. Between that and reading, he's got his free time planned out for the next year! He knows we will do another cake and dinner this Sunday on his real day, but so far there appears to be no anxiety or building pressure about it.

This week the boys are back to school. Yesterday was an unhappy shock to all our systems! We all got used to some pretty intense time together. In past years, M and I have worked quite a few days over the holidays while P and B were in daycare, but this year without daycare meant us all being together as a family a whole lot more. I wouldn't trade it for anything (despite the pressure I've got on my at work now).

I'm eager to get home today and see how P and B did in school. I was on pick-up duty yesterday, so got to go in and talk with P's teacher about his unbelievable track record of quite decent behaviour reports for the past two months. He pulled off another one yesterday. I wanted to explore the idea of easing off this system and seeing how he responds. M and I are always looking to see P's motivation transition from external to internal. P's teacher doesn't think it's a good idea right now. She thinks the system is very much what's motivating him right now. We agreed to keep the system in place and revisit the possbility of suspending it in another two months.

In an interesting development, P's teacher described disrupting class as no longer being P's major behavioural issue. (!!!) Rather, his major issue is failing to always switch from what he's working on to what she instructs the class to turn to next. If he's writing, he tends to want to finish and so doesn't put it away and start his math or whatever. We see this at home too. Last night, for instance. Despite his being visibly worn out, we allowed P to play with his electricity set after toothbrushing, on the condition that he would stop right away when the 15 minutes we'd agreed to were up. 23-year old brother J was over, which only happens once a week, and P really wanted to show J one of his projects. P did take apart his project right away when we asked him too, and boxed up all the parts. But then instead of putting the box away and going up to bed, he took out the manual and started browsing through it. He was so absorbed in it that he didn't hear me coming downstairs to check on him. This type of thing happens all the time and has gotten quite old (got old a long time ago). I want to figure out a way to get a handle on this without discouraging P's single-mindedness. I think that absorption could be a real gift in the right situations, but P's definitely got to direct it appropriately.

B has started reading up a storm and has been plowing through his sight word cards. He's been a sort of late bloomer in this area and still has a ways to go, but I am no longer all that worried that he'll never be an excellent reader. Best of all, he loves it as much as the rest of us do.

Tonight B's taekwondo resumes and P starts his twice-a-week swim lessons. Piano lessons resume this Thursday. So by the weekend we should all be fried.

What to call this? Award, TTT (on Thursday), and considering the year

2009-12-31T10:51:00.013-06:00

Phew. I've intended to get to this blog each day, but there's just been a lot going on. We have had a really great time this holiday season -- just being together and together and together. And everyone, miraculously, has been handling it better than okay. I don't want it to end. Our boys are such fun, and I love being with them. They are two really fun and interesting people. Today is my second day dragging myself away and coming in to the office. Have to get my course for next semester ready to go. (University in Canada resumes in early January -- it's horrible, but we're out in early April.) Also have an administrative position that has one major task a year, and that task has to get done within the first two weeks back. So my course really has to be ready to run itself so I can focus on the admin task. Hoping to have the course ready before I go home today so I can return to my family cocoon for the remainder of the break.

Due to time constraints, I'm not feeling very organized about this post, so am going to just jump in. I didn't want to let 2009 come to a close without taking at least a minimal look back, and there is Essie's Too True Tuesday to participate in, and I received an award (!). Oh, and I want to at least mention some of the details of our Christmas. Going in backwards order:

Our Christmas, along with the lead-up and aftermath, has been smooth and enjoyable. Christmas Day was mostly calm. Our big Christmas present was Leg* Mindst*rms, and it is really really cool! We got a dump of snow starting on Christmas Eve, so were able to spend Christmas afternoon sledding like maniacs. B is proving to be quite the daredevil -- we are going to have to keep a serious eye on him for his safety. P made a sledding friend on the hill and played with him appropriately. Younger kid, as is usually the case, but it is always heartening to see him interact appropriately and not have to intervene. I still watch and listen like a hawk though. P and B both helped a ton with all the cooking of the Christmas meals -- brunch and dinner. P can follow a recipe pretty effectively but still needs a lot of supervision with the execution of the various kitchen skills (or else I will have a crazy mess to contend with), whereas B can't yet read the recipes independently but possesses really excellent skills with all the hands-on stuff. Between the two of them it is starting to feel like a lot less work and more like actual help to have them with me in the kitchen. P, B, and I did our first volunteering at our city's major food bank just before Christmas. Both boys loved it and felt good about doing it. I loved that we volunteered alongside people of much different social strata. This means that P and B saw and experienced firsthand a bunch of things that just talking about (without seeing) wouldn't give the same insight of. Things like someone who is visibly poor can be an expert at something and it's worth listening to them. P and I will continue to volunteer there once a month in 2010. (It's too late a night for B to weather midweek, but I'll start taking him when he's older.) Last night we had a bunch of M's extended family over for dinner. We could tell P was getting wound up. But he responded well to 15 minutes of lying on his bed with soft lighting in the room followed by a few prompts from us to leave the group and go do deep breathing. He'd baked cookies -- salted caramel bars -- earlier in the day and was very pleased to serve them at dessert time. I was proud as proud can be.

On to the award. Thanks so much to the amazing Lisa for presenting me with the Happy 101 award. Lisa teaches me so much and inspires me more than she can know.

Here are the Happy 101 rules: List 10 things that make you happy and try to do one of them today. Tag 10 bloggers that brighten your day. For those 10 bloggers who get the award, link back to my blog and create a list of things that make you happy.

Ten things that make me happy? I could go on and on, but I think I mentioned that I'm short on time so I'm just going to spout off the first 10 things that come to my mind, knowing that I'll probably look back on this and think how crazy I was to have left out such-and-such.

Hearing P and B's laughter ringing through our house.
Watching P's healing process -- it really is clearly observable now, and we get moments of true thrill and fun when we see him handle a given situation or choice in a healed way.
Tickling B.
Waking up ahead of everyone else and enjoying the solitude.
Working out.
Cooking, baking, and teaching P and B to love these activities too.
Drinking wine.
Playing with our cats.
Being at the ocean.
Reading.

I have done several of these already today!

I'm going to be a complete slacker and not pass this award along. Sorry sorry sorry. I just don't have time right now to try to figure out who's gotten this award already, who might want it, and try to to make anyone feel excluded.

Essie had another Too True Tuesday earlier in the week, and I always like to try to participate in those. The topic this time is how we discovered the Santa lie, or how our kids did. I have no recollection of my own revelation (or burst bubble), so I will give an account of P and B's respective discoveries. P was skeptical of the whole Santa thing from the start. His first Christmas with us, at age 5 (and having crossed cultures to one with our version of Santa and all its trappings), he was already struggling with the logic of it all. So I immediately had to come clean about the Santas we saw in stores and all being merely "helper Santas." But P wasn't satisfied with that. He had all sorts of questions about "how does Santa keep his suit from catching on fire" and so on. We attributed everything to flame retardant fabrics and what we dubbed "Santa magic." At age newly 8, P proclaimed that he knew we were Santa. When I asked him how he knew, he said that was the only way it could ever work out that he and B always got some of the exact gifts they had been wanting. We explained that, for people in the know, "Santa magic" is still very real and it takes the form of having fun watching the joy and wonder of those who still believe. These last two years, P wholeheartedly participated in many discussions with B about Santa and how all the magic of Christmas could possibly work. All the while, P and I would wink at each other. I now think these were great bonding moments -- those little genuine snatches that we are so lucky when we get them with our RADicals. So about a month ago, at age newly 8, B started to voice inklings. But he wanted to remain in the wondrous dark for awhile longer. Then one day he asked for the real truth, and when I asked what he thought and he said it was that M and I are Santa, and I asked him was he sure he really wanted to know, he finally said he did. And I think this was our best Christmas, with them both knowing. Logistically, it was way easier being able to be out in the open about gift buying and wrapping and what parts of the house were being used to harbor Christmas secrets. And I think psychologically for P and B it was way healthier for Santa to be relegated to pure basic fantasy.

OK, on to a little tour of our RAD changes during 2009 as I shake my head in disbelief that we are already to 2010. P has come a long way this year. There is still far to go, but I am feeling so much better about his future prospects for happiness and contentment now than I was a year ago. I posted a bit about this in my previous post, so I won't rehash that material here. But some very specific signs of progress (in the order I think of them) include:

far far fewer rages and really not much threat of a rage that we have to try to head off
less of the incessant/nonsense chatter -- we still have a ways to go on this front but at least these days I can often mention to P that his chatteriness leads me to believe that something is troubling or worrying him and I can watch him take a deep breath or two and get it somewhat under control
skills at participating as what we call "a good member of a group" have improved markedly; this makes it less cringe-inducing to witness him in action in a group swim lesson, at a school event, or other such situation
less defiance of all forms across the board -- again, a ways to go in this area, and there is always concern that he slips back into the really irritating "slight/subtle" defiance too readily
waaaaaaayyyyyy less stealing; so much less!; we still struggle to trust him entirely in this area, but I think we have to let go of some of our past hypervigilance in this area -- this is an area where transition is hard
waaaayyyy less lying, and way less clinging to a pointless lie and looking completely inane; this is an area where we can see him actively working, so I know it is still a very difficult area for him where he's still got major impulses to lie but more and more he is fighting those impulses; I will be glad to see those impulses gone (if they ever are), but for this year I gladly settle for his improved impulse control in this area
eye contact with "normal" size pupils -- continues to improve and improve
improved/improving capacity to negotiate his point of view when he disagrees with us or doesn't like something we've decided, rather than slipping into "RAD mode"
improved ability to pull himself out of what we call "moving backwards in RAD" -- feeling himself going down a RAD-type path, or having us point out that it feels like he is, and being increasingly willing and able to change things up;
taking responsiblity for his choices and actions/being more accountable -- we have seen tremendous strides in the area of admitting fault when he's made a mistake or screwed up in some way, so we are having a lot fewer of those roundabout derailing talks that make you feel like you're losing your mind because the RADish keeps avoiding accountability by twisting the conversation
improvement at being able to really relax into a situation and let down his guard; this is mostly at home so far -- we increasingly see him appearing to be truly at ease and settled and not displaying any hypervigilance; it is so awesome to see him emerging in this way -- it's the times his true self can really shine; need to see more of this in other arenas, but home is a good start
significantly improved attention span
reduced need to make himself the centre of attention innapropriately

I'm losing steam here so I'll stop. Bottom line is that M and I are at a stage where we have to remind ourselves and each other that P is working hard on his healing, that much of the time he is doing that cooperatively with us in a very active and meaningful way, and that we should thank our lucky stars that we are now in the luxurious position of facing the struggle of figuring out how to effectively parent a trasitioning RADical.

Last notes:

B is blossoming too in his own ways. He is a more confident kid than he was a year ago. His verbal skills have improved exponentially this year, along with his attention span and willingness to self-regulate. He makes so many good choices, empathetic choices, generous choices, but also is showing a developing ability to assert himself in ways that protect his self-interest (appropriately).

P's birthday is Jan. 10, and I think since Christmas he's starting to show little signs of being on edge about it. So we are borrowing a page out of some y'all's books and surprising him with his birthday celebration this Saturday. All preparations are made, and now we're just waiting for the big day to arrive. He has no idea! His gift from M and me is a big upgrade kit to his electricity set. It is going to be a big jump in what he can do with his set. I can't wait to give it to him.

Finally, wonderful 2010 wishes to all of you moms who help me so much in so many ways. I wish I could know you all in person, as I'm sure you're even more amazing in real life than you come across in your blogs. Keep up the good and inspiring work.

What a change

2009-12-18T11:09:00.010-06:00

I think I mentioned in a recent post that the December through March/April period contains the anniversaries of many traumatic events for P. I would guess that December is probably the peak, as that is when his birth mother abandoned him. As a family, we have always struggled through December -- this is our fifth one since adopting P and B.

A year ago, M and I felt as though we were being terrorized by P and his running away or threats to run away. December 2008 was when he was running away from us nearly every day when we picked him and B up from daycare. M and I had to switch our schedules completely around to run back-up for each other everyday so that one of us could cover B if the other of us had to run after a bolting P. It was cold and dark outside, and we were constantly worried and on edge, and it felt like poor B spent the month feeling terrified. And when we weren't dealing with the running away, life at home was terribly terribly difficult, with rages and chronic defiance and P's complete inability to regulate his energy or exercise any form of self-control.

So far, this December is going so much better. Not perfect; I don't know that we'd ever expect perfect anyway. But way better than tolerable. P has mostly been a delight to be around. He has mostly been cooperative, loving (and the right kind of genuine loving), polite, respectful, helpful, and calm. He has kept his act together with his classroom behaviour. (And I have confirmed with the teacher that he is not forging the behaviour reports (which he has done often in previous years); her words, when I asked, were "he's been doing a great job." Music to my ears.)

We have delayed the doing of any real Christmas preparations. Our tree and decorations won't go up until this Sunday. The delay has been announced on the grounds that the two new cats may need a lot of supervision around the Christmas tree. (In addition to little kitten Lucy three weeks ago, Oso February, a 20-pound 1-year old very active cat, joined our household in September (because we are crazy) and has wrought havoc on all our plants. He is gradually succumbing to water gun behaviour-modification...) But M and I are happy to delay the preparations in hopes that it helps P stay settled down. Of course, there are a lot of Christmas goings-on at school and all around us in the world. But our house is not showing the excitement too much yet. We did do advent calendars (el cheapo cardboard with a chocolate everyday), and both boys have handled them fine. And I did do a lot of Christmas baking this week.

We also seriously upped some of the elements that we think have helped P since we started them. Some of them we started nearly two years ago now, and some of them were met with varying degrees of resistance when they were introduced, while others were enthusiastically embraced from the start.

We have stuck religiously to our morning routine which is an attempt to get everyone regulated right from the start. Our routine is:

6:30 - P/B up, get dressed, make beds
6:45/50 - P/B do their respective cat jobs (litter box, food, water)
7:00 - 7:15 - each boy 5 mins of hard jumping/antics on minitramp; tapping; karate chops; pack backpacks
7:15/20 - strong sitting (P/B go simultaneously and parent does it too); we are up to 10 minutes as of this week from a start of 30 seconds in Feb '09
7:30 - rocking time, with swaddling if desired (P always wants swaddling; B increasingly turns it down) and a candy from our fingers straight to their mouth; practicing eye contact and quiet comfortable conversation or silence
7:50 - breakfast
8:15 - brush teeth, quiet play activities
8:40 - leave for school
We try to get at least 10 hugs in with each boy throughout this routine

B increasingly asks for a day off from the routine. His request is seldom granted, mostly because we want him to continue to practice the strong sitting and get his morning energy burst out, but he has shown that he can go without the routine and be just fine in terms of moderating his own behaviour and energy. P mostly appreciates the routine, and rarely complains explicitly about having to do it. He does occasionally engage in mild passive-aggressive resistance to doing elements of it. He has improved tremendously at his strong sitting and rarely does even minor, water-torture-type defiance during it any more. On the walk to school, we try to have fun while also playing little math and spelling/word games, and often trying to get a little more energy out with some brisk walking. We have tried to remain really regular with bedtime routine and sticking to consistent bedtime.

We had gotten to the point where P could be unsupervised in the house during the morning routine whenever he wasn't needed for a task. He often usually choose to be on the couch reading or in the toy area playing. Smack dab on December 1st, however, I came upon him in the kitchen during a maybe 3-minute unsupervised stretch to find him crouched in front of the refrigerator shelves using his hand to scoop tuna salad from the storage container to his mouth. So during December, we have chosen to keep him near us between his tasks. So he is pretty much constantly within 3-5 feet of one of us throughout the entire morning before school. This has seemed to really achieve a calmness in him. He has not complained about this a single time. We are trying to keep him physically closer to us in the afternoons/evenings as well.

Additionally, P himself requested the return of what we call bottle time. Maybe every other day, we feed him a bottle just like he's a baby. We put milk with some chocolate syrup or a little sugar and vanilla in the bottle. He lies cuddled across our lap with his head propped on the arm of the couch. Usually he opts to be tightly swaddled. We practice eye contact. He frequently pauses in his drinking to just smile peacefully. I have to say these are not my favourite times. I find it awkward-feeling to be bottle feeding such a big/old kid. But I fake it pretty well. It seems to be what P needs. I try to remember that he must not have gotten anywhere near enough of this at the appropriate stage. And it only lasts about 10 minutes and then he's ready to get up and go do something else, so my awkwardness is only short-lived.

I took Monday through Thursday off work this week and was able to be home doing my baking. I LOVED my days home. Among other things, I loved being able to do the mornings and afternoons with P and B all this week, except today when I'm enjoying being back for a quiet day at my office. Normally, Mondays and Fridays are my days, and I go work out on Tuesday through Thursday mornings (I'm lucky to have M), so I see P and B but am not actively in charge and doing the routine with them those mornings and then I am stuck at work through a lot of the afternoons those days. This week I felt like I got so much more weekday time with P and B than usual, and it all went really well.

So then yesterday P's teacher reported that during lunch P had been caught sticking an unfolded paperclip into an electrical socket. (His classroom conduct was good -- he got all 16 check marks.) It turned out he was trying to get a lightbulb he had "taken" from the custodian's office to light up, and when the bulb didn't light from being stuck directly in the socket he tried using the link of the paperclip. As with so many of P's choices, this one was colossally wrong in many respects. So we had a lot to talk about! And he was not the most cooperative about talking about it at first. But eventually we got there. However, the thing about this that I want to describe here is: When we asked why he'd done this (after initially saying he was bored, which just didn't ring true), he said that he wanted to get back at me. Why? Because he was angry at me. When we asked why and why he hadn't used any of his strategies for coping with his anger appropriately, he said he wanted to get at me because our relationship this week -- even this month -- had been terrible. When I stated that that was factually incorrect, he interrupted and spoke disrespectfully to tell me how wrong I was, that Monday had been fine but ever since things between us had just been awful. I started rattling off all the fun and togetherness and enjoyable times we have enjoyed during this week and month. M chimed in with moments that had struck him. P's chin began to quiver and his eyes filled with tears. He did not argue any further. I asked him did he know what had happened. He said "RAD is lying to me again." He had been refusing to sit next to me throughout this, instead standing as far from me as he could get within the same room. Once we got the idea of RAD lying to him out in the open, he practically jumped over to where I was when I asked him if he wanted to come sit next to me. I thought this whole episode was interestingly timed in light of the heightened togetherness we'd gotten this week.

Last night, P's last words were "tomorrow's a new day," which is what we always say to him. This morning he was cheerful and cooperative. I came in to my office on an early bus, and he called me after he'd had his breakfast and played one of his piano pieces over the phone. He knows how much I love to hear him play (he has gotten quite good; his practices are now like our own private concerts!). I was flooded with the question of how this one boy could generate such a wide range of very extreme emotions in me. Before adopting him, I never imagined how angry, frustrated, resentful, tired, overwhelmed, sad, sympathetic, mystified, amazed, euphoric, energized, joyful, loving, and loved this one kid could make me feel. (And then pile B on top, and how did I get so incredibly lucky?)

Speaking of B, he's got a serious buzz of holiday excitement going. But, because he handles it so normally, it feels completely manageable. Also, B figured out the whole Santa hoax recently. For about a week, he would ask whether we were Santa, and I would say "do you really want to know the truth?" And he would say "no, it's more fun wondering!" Then about a week ago, he said he wanted the truth, and I said "are you sure?" and he said he was, so now he knows. And he victoriously said "I knew it!"And he is fine and I am relieved.

One final thing I wanted to mention: Sunday night, our family watched Christine's video of Mar. (After I described it to him, P indicated that he didn't mind us all watching it as a family.) We were riveted. So much of it is so familiar at our house -- to M, B, and me, at least. I think P was surprised. When we asked him about it, he said Mar looked silly. We left it at that. Then on Monday morning, I asked P to tap "even though I'm nervous [about his upcoming school choir concert], I know I'm safe and loved." It is not unusual for P to "forget" his tapping phrase or otherwise exercise mild defiance during tapping when he is feeling something difficult inside and we give him a tapping phrase like this one. He routinely struggles with phrases like "I have beauty on my inside" and "I deserve fun and love and happiness." Jiggles start, brow furrows as he tries and tries unsuccessfully to "remember" the phrase, or how to pronounce a certain word such as "love." Well, this time I was armed with having watched Mar the night before. I stopped the tapping process and told P to think back to the video of Mar. More brow furrowing and starting to do that dazed RAD dead-eyes look past my ear. I said that he had a choice right at that moment, to do the tapping as he knows how, or to continue with his pretend forgetting. He took a very slow breath, came back to genuine eye contact, and said he was ready to tap. It went perfect from there.

Lastly, in reading news, I recently finished Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and am now rationing my way through The Year of the Flood. They are both so good that I don't want them to have to end. If you haven't read them, start with Oryx and Crake because the books are related and will be most enjoyable read in order.

Tue Troo Tuesday

2009-12-08T13:07:00.002-06:00

This time around Essie has assigned us the topic of revealing what holiday gift we have bought for ourself.

Since we are not supposed to say that our buying is all about the kids, I will say this instead: I am a bit of a scrooge who (a) hates all shopping (cannot stand being in stores!), (b) is starting to get antsy about all the stuff that has invaded our house since we adopted P and B in 2005 (okay, also M's and my stuff) so I am starting to be all about minimizing the number of new objects that take up residence, and (c) is galled by spending money before Xmas and then seeing the prices plummet after. Oh yeah, and (d) I generally buy myself whatever I want (within our budget) all year round. And (e), at this point there is very little that I can justify for myself based on need.

In light of all that, M and I have a standing agreement that we just don't get any presents for ourselves or each other. This year, I think I have done 100% of the family's Christmas shopping (important exception here which I'll tell you about in a minute), and what I've bought for myself are: several new lip balms, a couple dark chocolate bars, and several new rolls of scotch tape (certain people are always "borrowing" my scotch tape even though they get one in their stocking every year!).

And maybe this counts: yesterday I bought two new industrial-strength cookie sheets that will be getting heavy workouts in the next couple weeks.

About the shopping that P and B have done for Christmas, how's this for amazing? The church around the corner from our house has an annual kids' holiday shopping event. It is always for two hours on a Saturday. We go every year. P and B make their lists, and we go over there and they buy junk for everyone on their list. Because the event is like a giant garage sale. Everything costs 25 cents, and many of the items for sale are either slightly used (e.g., slightly burned candles, an old sewing basket, even a broken pepper mill) or are things that wouldn't normally be given as gifts (e.g., hotel shampoos). Parents are absolutely not allowed to enter the room of gifts for sale, and instead "have" to remain out in the hall partaking of the complimentary hot beverages and homemade baking. Kids go in with their lists and come out the other end an hour or so later with all their gifts all wrapped by the volunteers inside. It is so amazing. Did I say that already? It is so fun to see how excited and proud the kids always are as they come out all set up for Christmas. And periodically they come out to show off a purchase before it's wrapped, and it is always fun and funny to see their exciting purchases. All of the parenthetical items above are among the items B bought this year. The sewing basket is lined in black velvet and has a tiger painted on top (under a lot of shiny shelac), and B thinks it is a picnic basket (even though it is very small), and he bought it for J who is 23 and very bachelorish. It is going to be my favourite gift to watch get unwrapped this year!

Hodge podge

2009-12-02T10:45:00.006-06:00

Thank you all for your sympathies about Gracie.
Gracie being missing, and then returning but being so badly injured, and then dying made for a really rough 8-day span. P/B burst out crying when we told them that Gracie was dead. All four of us sat on the couch and cried together for about an hour Friday evening. One good thing was that P initially angled his body away from me in his grief but then almost immediately turned in to burrow against me and cry.
Earlier in the week, when Gracie was still missing, I had started trying to get B to move to the conclusion that Gracie was gone from us forever. We talked about having a ceremony to remember her and to say good bye to her. B really liked this idea and had a lot of ideas for how the ceremony could go. We also talked at that time about him getting a new kitten whenever he felt ready. Saturday morning, after Gracie's death on Friday, B woke up saying he wanted to get a new kitten right away, and that he would like to have Gracie's ceremony that day.
The new kitten looks shockingly similar to Gracie. Her name is Lucy Flames. She is 10 weeks old and needs to grow into her ears. She is a pistol. I am already developing nicknames for her. At the same time that I am missing all my little "traditions" with Gracie, I am falling for Lucy. B rushes out of bed in the mornings to go hang out with Lucy before starting our morning routine (we've got a pretty involved routine that P/B go through each morning). (Lucy has to be in her own room right now so as not to share any germs she might have with our other two cats, and also so the other two cats can get used to the idea of her.)
B led us in a beautiful ceremony on Saturday afternoon right before supper. We darkened the room and lit candles, and each of us held a candle up as we said something about Gracie. M and I were both amazed at the feeling that both boys put into their statements. We were also amazed at the poise they showed in being open to expressing their emotions without any embarrassment. At the end, B spoke again, and said "thank you all for coming. Gracie was an amazing cat." I do not know where B got his sense of ceremony, but I was really impressed. All of it was his idea. We may have a reprise this weekend, if B wants.
P has been keeping it together pretty well, especially considering that we are heading into a season of not-so-fun anniversaries for him. Some of them are just in his paperwork, and we don't think he's consciously aware of them in the sense that he can't attach dates or even months to the events. I am also not positive he knows his own exact sequence of events. So far we've chosen not to enlighten him too much on this, but if you think we should I would love to hear it -- this is one of those areas where I'm really unsure what's best. What we know is P and B entered the orphanage on January 20, and that they were in a rural hospital/clinic for about a month prior to that, and that about two weeks prior to that their birth mother left them with her boyfriend at the time and didn't return. So we are guessing the abandonment happened sometime in the first half of December, and the entry to the clinic happened sometime around December 20. Mixed in there, we've got the excitement of Christmas (undeserved fun and happiness, anyone?) and P's birthday on January 10 (more undeserved happiness! oh what fun). Tacked on, we have February 7 when we appeared in P's life, the mere four visits we had with him throughout the month of February (after each visit, he must have thought we were never coming back), our disappearance for 30 days on February 28, our reappearance to take custody of him on March 30, and his ultimate uprooting from his native country and subsequent arrival in a strange foreign land in mid-April. As of right now, this year is the best shape we've seen him in entering this "season." I am trying to be on top of all that could go wrong and have strategies in place for amped up attachment parenting, as well as M and I have planned for parenting P as though he's more like 7 or even a toddler/preschooler than nearly 10 as much as necessary (not punitively but just because he seems to need it). So far, so good, knock wood and all that.
P has been working for about a month on a book report called a cereal box book report. It is mostly to be done at home, and we have had P do all of it at home. He has been completely willing, cooperative, and focussed. He works on it for 15 minutes each day. We have had some real issues in the past with large projects that required a systematic organized approach. P's approach was more one of avoid avoid avoid and don't tell your parents. This time around, he showed us the assignment sheet right off the bat. And when we reminded him of all the unpleasantness that unfolded previously when large projects were left until the last minute, he willingly agreed to us all attempting to handle ourselves maturely and lovingly through this project. Again, so far, so good. He is nearing completion, and we've still got two weeks til the darn thing is due. Hoorah (so far, and hope I didn't jinx it).
P's classroom conduct is stabilized as far as we can tell. He's got a pretty exacting teacher this year. As soon as she realized I wasn't kidding about P's ongoing need for external motivators to control his behaviour (he honeymooned for her for only 1.5 weeks -- maybe the shortest ever for one of his teachers), she instituted a behaviour reporting system. She divided the day into fourths, and she divided her expectations into four categories (e.g., backpack and shoes put away; not disrupting; completing work; being respectful -- I may have one of the categories wrong). Each day, P comes home with a little table of checkmarks, with the boxes being for each of the behaviour categories in each quarter of the day. He can receive up to 16 check marks. His average is probably 15. Some days he only gets 14, and many days he's pulled off all 16. One day last week he came home with only a note saying "This wasn't one of P's better days." (That was the week of grief over Gracie, though, so we didn't sweat that one too much.)
Also last week, the two weekdays that Gracie was still missing, P stuffed food into his pants pockets and was eating it during class time first thing in the mornings. His teacher caught him redhanded, and he lied to her face about it (which she called him on). Also, he told his teacher that we weren't feeding him enough breakfast. This is so patently false, as I'm sure you all know. We've dealt with food issues so much over the years, that we always make sure P has access to plenty to eat so that he never has to worry about there not being enough ever again. (Some time back, we took a similar approach to feeding him as what Dia over at Rancho Chico has been doing with her son Tortuga.) I found out all this later in the week during parent-teacher conferences. At least it was his own food that P was taking from his own lunch kit. In the past, we would all have been positive that it was stolen from someone else. Also, he readily admitted the whole thing to me when I mentioned it to him. Anyway, for the time being he is on lunch items that would not be all that pleasant to have stuffed in your pockets. Yogurt, for example. Not sure how much longer we'll keep this up (today was the fourth day). I think just long enough to make a point. And then I am thinking of sending him with a huge amount of lunch and telling him that he can eat components of it while he's on the school grounds waiting for the morning bell to ring. I know he knows he's not supposed to eat it in the classroom, except when it's appropriate. (The school has a strictly enforced policy that classroom snacks have to be fresh fruit or veg, and that they be consumed at the appointed time.) I have tried not to get too worked up about this whole thing. I think we're largely done with the food stealing (at least, man, I really hope so), and I think P mostly doesn't stress about food any more. But I thought it was interesting that this little food-related blip occurred in the midst of Gracie's absence.
Related to that, while B was very able to talk freely about how much he was hurting over Gracie's absence, P would only say things like "January is so sad." January is P's cat, Gracie's litter mate. It took a couple days of P talking compulsively about how sad January was about Gracie being gone, how out of sorts January was, how January seemed confused, for M and me to get it through our thick skulls that P just couldn't bring himself to say how sad and uncertain he felt the way the rest of us could.
And now some big happy news: B earned his fourth tiger stripe on his taekwondo belt last night. He is so proud of himself. This is the stripe he missed earning at the previous test three weeks ago. His four stripes represent that he is halfway to knowing all the material to test for promotion to the next belt up (which is called yellow stripe; right now he has white belt). But more importantly to him for now is the fact that we are going out for ice cream tonight to celebrate his achievement. Can't wait! And we'll see whether P decides to self-sabotage on this. I'm going to be optimistic, and I'll let you all know in my next post.

Gracie: sad news

2009-11-27T11:52:00.003-06:00

B's cat Gracie didn't make it. I am at work. P and B have a day off school today and are having a home day with M -- most likely just finishing up grocery shopping or getting their H1N1 shots right now. I am going to be the bearer of sad news at some point, but I think it's best if P and B hear this news once I get home to be there for them in person.

I am sitting here in my office trying to find some good in this. Gracie came home to us. That's something. She was terribly hurt, and it took her nearly a week, but she got back to us. B (and the rest of us) got the closure of having her return and knowing what had happened to her. We got to say a good-bye of sorts. We all gathered around Gracie this morning before M took her to the vet for her surgery. We all told her how much we loved her and that we hoped she wouldn't feel scared or alone. As usual, Gracie purred at us and was so happy.

I think she's the most happy-go-lucky, purely joyful cat I've ever had (and I've had a lot of cats). I will always remember her frolicking in the sunshine in our front yard, leaping at an insect that I couldn't see but she could. I was watching through the front window, and with the sun shining at her from behind, and her leaping, she just looked like joy embodied.

We will miss you, Gracie Flames.

Gracie’s Song

I am a pretty pretty.
I am a pretty kitty.
I’m pretty, and I’m a kitty.
I am a pretty pretty.

My name is Gracie Flames.
My name is Gracie Flames.
I’m Gracie, and I have flames.
My name is Gracie Flames.

These are my people people.
These are my people people.
They’re my people, and they love me.
These are my people people.

My owner’s name is B*****.
My owner’s name is B*****.
He’s B*****, and I love him.
My owner’s name is B*****.

I am a pretty pretty.
I am a pretty kitty.
I’m pretty, and I’m a kitty.
I am a pretty pretty.

The return of Gracie Flames

2009-11-25T12:56:00.007-06:00

I didn't manage to post about it, but about a week ago B's beloved cat Gracie Flames didn't come home at her usual time around supper. M and P had seen her in our yard around midday, and all seemed fine. So we didn't worry too much. But with her still not back by the next morning, we started to become concerned. I phoned around to place lost cat reports at all the shelters, and we spent Saturday morning postering our neighbourhood, and we embarked on a series of grueling alternating day trips to the Humane Society to see whether she was among the cats that had been turned in. She never was.

B started through the grief cycle, and it was heartbreaking to watch and hear his heart breaking. Especially since my own heart was breaking at the same time. We love this little cat. She is cute and sweet and has lots of "traditions" that she created. For example, every time I folded laundry in M's and my bedroom, she would come running and jump up on the bed and stretch out on the piles of folded clothes. We have a little song about her that starts off "I am a pretty pretty; I am a pretty kitty; I'm pretty, and I'm a kitty; I am a pretty kitty." The song has four verses, and we sing it a fair bit around our house. B really loves it. I'm not sure Gracie ever really notices it. Anyway, it had gotten to be a lot of days that she was missing, and M and I were starting to have conversations about how to help B manage his grief and find some sort of closure (the uncertainty about what had happened to Gracie, where she had gone, etc. was really doing all of us in), and wondering about the merits of getting another kitten right away.

And then last evening she reappeared! B and M went out the door to walk to B's taekwondo class and there she came limping around the house. B came running in the door shouting "Gracie's back!" None of us could believe it. We are so ecstatic and thankful. Gracie seems to be happy as well. She was limping, as I said, and something is seriously up with her mouth/lower jaw. But she had a quiet night, and purred every time any of us so much as looked in her direction.

We took her to the vet first thing this morning, and it's clear that we're looking at some pretty intensive treatments to get her back into fine form. But she is not suffering and she's got the potential to be fine. And we are soooo thankful that we are able to juggle our budget to pay for her care. Today she's spending the day at the vet's getting x-rays that will tell us the full extent of her injuries. It seems to be just those two skeletal injuries, but it's probable that fixing them will require surgeries. (Ca ching.)

Here is a picture of Gracie with her brother January and their two boys, taken about a year ago when Gracie and January were still kittens.

TTT a day late: holidays I love and hate

2009-11-25T12:45:00.003-06:00

Hey! That title rhymes!

The topic Essie's assigned for this round of Too True Tuesday is favourite and least favourite holiday, and why for each.

Sadly, I have no humour for this. Just really strong feelings.

It is not hard for me to come up with holidays I hate. I'm a full-blown scrooge of most of the holidays that people seem to love. Topping my hated holidays list are Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Why? I just think they've become so excessively overblown in ways that I despise.

Favourite holiday? My birthday, or anyone else's. Does that count as a holiday? I just love birthdays. I love making a big deal about them. I don't even need a present on my birthday. I just love that it's my birthday. Thanksgiving's pretty cool too.

Reply to Annie's comment

2009-11-10T10:01:00.008-06:00

P continues to be his normal pleasant respectful pleasure-to-be/have-around self. If this keeps up, I am going to go back to posting more about P and B's past and the process of our becoming a family.

For today, I wanted to respond to Annie's comment to my last post, in order to clarify a few things and provide more detail. Annie's comments always give me a lot to think about. (Thank you, Annie!) Here's what Annie said:

Do YOU bring up the children's mother a lot?

My children are so very different and they actually respond in a way that I think typifies most people.

Both Ilya and Nastya, Ilya in particular - have very clear memories of being left in cold, empty places, burned out houses, and of having to eat from the garbage. Seems like one of Nastya's main memories of her mother is of her yelling at her for no reason. Yet....they seem to accept this without thinking much about it at all. They accept it as they would accept having lived in the arctic where it was cold, or having been born with a limb missing, or without a sense of smell.... It just IS. Neither of them "worry" it. O

Occasionally, when their past seems to me to be the source of behavioral glitches (such as my recent post regarding Nastya and birthdays) I talk about how missing this or that might make her feel jealous now...etc. just to increase self-awareness, and alert her to the "baddies" so she can fight the impulse to do something unloving herself. But, on their own neither of them have ever seemed to cry over their parents' choices - or even think about them. Can you figure out why your son thinks of it all so much? It really doesn't seem "childlike"."

I do bring up P/B's birth mom, but I do so somewhat selectively. I do not want P/B to think that she is a taboo subject, or that they may hurt M and me if they bring her up, or that they are the only ones who think about her. I see their (really all our) relationship with her as extremely complex, and I want them to develop an understanding that our hearts can respond to the same person with a variety of feelings, and that even though those feelings may seem conflicting, they can live side by side.

The key moments that I bring up P/B's birth mom tend to be: (1) when I think there is a significant event for which P/B would want a say in whether/how we honour her (e.g., mother's day, adoption day, etc.); (2) when I think there's a birth mom angle to P's behaviour, I will maybe say something such as "I can imagine you're feeling scared in this situation; maybe something about this situation is making you feel feelings similar to situations you faced before we were a family" so the birth mom is potentially implied but the context is actually left open-ended so that he can draw from either birth family or orphanage experiences.

On category #1, over time, P and B have increasingly started to raise these kinds of recognitions on their own. Most recently, B asked that we do something for their birth mom at his birthday celebration in late October. He requested this in the days leading up to his birthday, and with no real fanfare or craziness. Just said he'd like to do it. After batting around ideas here and there over a couple days, we ended up with a candle in the corner of his cake (something we've done before). Since there were various non-family members at B's birthday celebration, it was a nice way to symbolize B/P's birth mom without B having to broadcast anything among his friends if he didn't want to. Since we'd talked about it in advance, our family all knew who that candle in a particular corner of the cake was for.

On category #2, P has various reactions when I do this. Early on, he would react angrily, shouting "you're lying" or "you're wrong" or "you don't know anything" or just shouting over my talking voice to drown me out. That has shifted over the months/years to now vacillating between silent (genuine, non-manipulative) tears of recognition followed by de-briefing talks about his feelings, and instant verbal confirmation that I am on the right track and an acknowledgement of what situation set him to thinking about something painful. (It is often something at school, and often something that sounds completely unrelated to adoption, trauma, or whatever, meaning that I/we can never anticipate all the possible triggers!)

I did not mean, in my last post, to make it sound as though P obsesses about his birth mother or his past. Most of the time these days (and for a good 1.5 years now), he's been relatively age-appropriate in several areas, including his interests and obsessions. These days it's garfield, a deep desire for b*kugans (which the boys at school trade and such, and which M and I hate!), the books he's reading, his construction and electricity sets, setting various Dr. Seuss books to original piano compositions (seriously funny to watch/hear), and the long list of creations he intends to invent in his future career as an inventor. He is generally full of thoughtfulness, offering to help with household chores multiple times a week. He has come a long way indeed from our darkest days back in 2007. [Note that's not to say that he is completely free of RAD "symptoms" across the board. We still have huge hurdles to cross on impulse-control, distractability, interrupting/periods of incessant chatter, attempts to control things around him.]

BUT, we think we've detected a pattern of regressions. At about six-month intervals, we experience set-backs. RAD-boy is unleashed on us once again. Each time the RAD outbreak takes a somewhat milder form (though this last bout was a bit of a doozy), and the outbreaks tend to be becoming shorter-lived (again, this last one was more of a doozy). From multiple talks with P, considering the types of "interventions" that seem to make a difference in bringing the regressions to a close for the time being, and watching P grow over time, I have come to believe that these regressions inevitably link in one way or another to P's experiences of his birth mom's choices and/or the series of events (i.e., orphanages and what went on there) that her choices promulgated in his life. I have no formal (or informal, for that matter) training in any of this, so I apply a ton of guesswork. But there are patterns that start to be hard to miss. When these patterns are playing out, it is hard to miss P's sadness, especially since he has become fairly adept (for a 9-year old boy) at expressing it -- when he finally becomes willing to. We can go for weeks with the litany of behaviours and RAD craziness, feeling like we've moved to the planet of insanity, with P denying that anything at all is wrong, and then something will get through to him and he'll open up, and it's always about sadness and grief.

What brings these losses to the surface for P, I have no idea. I have several theories: his surreal level of perceptiveness and sensitivity; his developing logic; triggers that make him examine his own past; his developing attachment undercut by latent fear that the rug will again be pulled out from under him. But who knows? The last huge regression before this one was in late May, when his school celebrated "Family Day" in lieu of either father's or mother's day. Stupidly, after I saw it announced a couple months in advance, I completely forgot about it, and then puzzled for days over what was going on with our boy. It turned out there were lots of Family Day crafts along the same lines as father's and mother's day, and one of them included bringing in pictures of your family. P thinks -- with M's and my blessing -- of his birth family as part of his family or as him having two distinct families, and so this seemingly innocuous assignment really threw him for a loop: a) he has nothing from his birth family that can be incorporated into a craft; b) even trying to do so means revealing at school a lot of personal info that he's getting to an age that he hesitates to share indiscriminately.

A big aspect for P -- on top of what I think is a reaction to the sense of the rejection of having been abandoneed -- is that he seems to feel a huge loss due to not knowing what birth mom and dad look like, and thus not knowing whom he looks like. Also not knowing what he himself looked like at any ages younger than the 5.25 yo at which we met him. (I agree totally with him that these are huge losses. I frankly don't know how I would handle such a lack of a sense of my own roots if I were in P's position.) Things go on at school that provide constant reminders of these losses, too. And even in casual conversation that P hears where someone says something such as "yeah, my mother's fingernail always split in the exact same spot as mine." I think it's important to point out that P does not seem to view himself as a poor little victim. He has a very strong sense of gratitude and awareness of what he has in life, and he is very attuned to the needs/interests of those in the world who are less fortunate than us. So it's not like he wallows in his grief.

B is different. He too feels some sadness, but he has allowed himself a lot of anger as well. I can't remember whether I've posted about the mother's day letters to birth mom that P and B wrote last May. (We put them into helium balloons and released them as the first part of our mother's day celebration.) Their letters were so different. P's said something like "Dearest mom, I miss you so much. I hope I will get to meet you someday. Do I look like you? I think about you a lot and hope you are okay." B's said "Dear Mama, I am angry at you for not taking care of me and my brother, and I am angry at you for leaving us, and I am angry at you because we had to be in an orphanage, and I am angry at you for not visiting me, and I am angry at you for not brushing my teeth [we have tons of ongoing dental issues], and I am angry at you for.... Love love love love love love love love Bohdan." I can't remember all the phrases of what he was angry at her for, but he was quite explicit and went on and on. But most of the time, B seems to take a matter-of-fact approach to his past, similar to what Annie described in her comment. (We actually hope B isn't repressing a whole bunch that we don't know about.) I don't know why P and B are so different in this regard, though my leading theory is their age difference. Plus, M and I think they had fundamentally different orphanage experiences.

I would welcome insights on any of this, as well as advice or criticism regarding our ongoing handling of P's sadness.

Real P's back

2009-11-09T14:13:00.004-06:00

It seems P is back to his normal self. Thank goodness.

Last Wednesday evening he spent several hours crying and sobbing. He just kept saying "it just doesn't make sense" about his birth mother's choices. It sounds like no matter how much he analyzes it, his logic can't fit around a mother leaving her child. M and I felt we could offer P so little. Only comfort. We can't help with the logic, except by explaining that when alcoholism is involved adult choices may defy logic. Of course, we tiptoe around this topic like crazy. One of those areas where we do not know how much information to provide, how much P can handle. Psychologist says to provide information only on an as-requested basis. P keeps asking for more and more, at about 6-month intervals. He is intelligent, so I know his brain "gets" the details. But his 9.5-year old heart and psyche. I just don't know.

He has been considerably calmer and more regulated since that evening session. He's back to his mostly compliant, pleasant, helpful, thoughtful, non-irritating self. And table manners are back! But I know there are still questions and insecurities and overwhelm swirling around in his mind/heart.

Today is our first official day without daycare. I work from home on Mondays as often as I can, so today I'm the parent on duty for the morning routine and the afternoon pick-up. We had a nice morning, and it was very unrushed. Great for us as a family. P and B are thrilled that M or I will be meeting them at school at the end of every day. I figure it will be a good bonding time. I am trying to get more efficient with my work so that the reduced work time doesn't throw me for too much of a loop. M's adjustment seems to be much easier. He says he has so much momentum built up in his writing that he's not at all concerned about not having daycare any more. We have always had concerns about "institutionalizing" P and B in daycare because of their institutional backgrounds, so my overall feeling about this new phase in our family life is that it is great. I just hope I can handle my job decently too.

We are gearing up to start guided imagery to address P's (and B's) traumas. I have devoured the book Lisa raved about in one of her posts awhile back, have got a plan in place, have picked the "scripts" we'll start with and then move on to, and have figured out all the technology steps. I am just waiting for a couple more music options to come in at the library in order to make the final selection of background music that will play during and after my reading of the "script." Goal is to start the GI on Nov. 15.

Rough patch

2009-10-30T11:03:00.004-05:00

P is in a significant regression right now. Over time, he has of course had numerous regressions. The thing about them has been that, over time, as his healing has progressed, we have seen the regressions become less frequent, less intense, and shorter-lived. This current one defies those trends. It is feeling super significant (irritating, frustrating, worrying, all-consuming...) and it has been going strong for several weeks now.

I don't have time or energy right now to go into all the details, but in a nutshell we have been dealing with renewed threats of running away (didn't feel all that serious, to be honest, but they still scare the pants off me every time); dead RAD eyes alternating with blazing angry RAD eyes; tons of RADilicious glory (dropping pencils on floor when completing very minimal schoolwork so said schoolwork takes the max time, "forgetting" how to read, lots of anxious chatter); general string of bad to very bad choices; general RAD domination of family dynamics and household activities.

I am, at this point, stringing together more less-than-stellar moments than good RAD mom moments. Have to get back on track. Everything just feels like it's snowballing right now. I've got to get my perspective and serious genuine compassion back. I have to truly see P as the hurt, scared little boy that he is. Lately I have been taking the RAD personally, and faking the compassion -- whiteknuckling on my parenting skills, if you will. And that just doesn't work.

This week we got the added blow of a call from the school principal informing us that another parent had -- for the past 1.5 weeks -- been observing P and B doing various shenanigans on their walk to school in the mornings: getting glass bottles (from where???) and smashing them in the little park near the school; fighting with each other to the point that they didn't even realize they were in the street; flipping up the windshield wipers on cars. When we talked to B last night, he also told us that P had recently been running up to the entries of a couple of apartment buildings, pushing the intercom buttons, and shouting "f*ck" and "stupid" into them. Needless to say, M and I are disappointed, frustrated, embarrassed, angry, scared, and so forth.

We immediately called and tried to get our daycare spots back. We had thought our month of simulating no daycare had been going so swimmingly with just a few bumps that we'd thought we'd ironed out. So we'd just given our two weeks' notice the day before! Ha ha ha ha. The daycare had already contacted another family about one of the spots, but thought they might possibly be able to get that spot back for us so we'd still have two. Were we serious? M assured them we were. They told him we'd hear the next morning -- that was Tuesday. Tuesday night after the boys were asleep when M and I were debriefing, regrouping, and strategizing, M said that he had very strong feelings that we shouldn't be going back to daycare. More institutionalization isn't what our kids need. I strongly agree, but I just cannot make myself available to share much in the work of walking them to/from school on a daily basis right now -- the school day doesn't start until 9 am and it lets out at 3:30 pm, and my office is 30-minute busride away. And I am not really getting enough hours at my job as it is. (Yes, I'd like some cheese to go with my whine.) M said he was willing to do all of that if necessary. I couldn't believe my ears. I kept saying "you have to be sure" because I knew we were about to jerk the daycare around again. Within a half-hour we'd finalized our decision, and M was on the phone calling the daycare to catch the director who -- as serendipity would have it -- was at the centre that evening for the annual general meeting. She had not undone the other family yet, and we could still cancel both our spots. How cool is it that M is willing to shift his schedule around and lose even more of his writing time so that we can get closer to what we think P and B need?

A week ago, P seemed to be starting to come up against some really hard realities of his past and birth mother. He started talking and asking about some moments in particular. I won't go into details in order to preserve his privacy, but these moments surround the whole issue of abandonment. It is as though his advancing logic skills are peeling away layers in the "prettier" version of the story that he has been clinging to and this results in him being confronted with "uglier" truths. It seems he's filled in gaps in the story of his past with nicer images than would be realistic and has now begun to realize that those nice images don't/can't make sense to the overall context of his life and the situations he experienced. These truths shake him. I mean that literally -- one night last weekend I actually saw him shudder while talking about something especially difficult. I imagine that he feels like his foundation is shifting beneath him, or maybe dropping away altogether. Really, I am not sure I can imagine what he feels like. I grew up with the luxury of a perfectly secure foundation and perfect rootedness.

It makes me so sad to think about what must be happening on P's inside. I am also filled with anger -- almost to the point of rage -- lately. And uncertainty as to how to help P with his emotions. And how much to tell him. M and I don't know everything, but we do still know slightly more than P does. But what he's been able to get out of us lately is not pretty, and what remains to be heard is even less so. I fear he's too young and emotionally immature to know how to process all this.

Some positives that I need to not lose sight of: This regression has not included a return to rages, and we have even seen P check/stop what were clearly initial instinctive reactions of displaced or inappropriately expressed anger -- we've seen him start to strike out disrespectfully and then find a way to express whatever it was more appropriately. That is progress. This regression has not completely staunched his ability to express his feelings. He has not been as expressive as he is now able to be, but for the extent of regression we find ourselves in, he has not regressed in this area altogether. He is still articulating some feelings, and doing so fairly willingly. This represents progress. His classroom behaviour at school has not plummeted as it usually does during regressions. He even had an all-day field trip this week (he's been known to do some pretty out-there stuff on field trips) and kept it together beautifully. This is huge progress. He is not turning entirely away from us. He is saying things like "I don't want your help" but then turning to us quickly and saying "I didn't mean that, it just slipped out." He is cuddling in and sometimes burrowing into us crying (not fake). This too is progress.

Tapping is part of our morning routine, and this morning I had P tap "Even though I feel scared and ashamed, it's going to be okay." His face crumpled over and over as he said those words. He's also been struggling to tap "I deserve fun and love and happiness" lately -- lots of itching, fidgeting, "forgetting" the phrase. But he continues to pull off 9 minutes of strong sitting just beautifully.

Related topic to let everyone know about:

I've now plowed twice through the guided imagery book that Lisa recommended. It is so on target it's not funny. M and I have a strategy all devised for starting to use GI as soon as possible and keep it up for several months. I just have to get my hands on some music that would be good as background to the "script." We'll start with stage 1 -- two GI scripts. I think played nightly (repeatedly all night long) -- only one of the scripts on any give night. We're thinking of doing that for at least a month. I know with total confidence that P and B are both going to LOVE it. Then we'll progress P to the second stage, which is going to be the most intense. Thinking of introducing this over the long December/January holidays while we've got the boys continuously with us and I do not have immediate pressures of work each day. I want to do stage 2 work with P during the days. Likely only a couple times a week. Have to see details on that when we get there. Stage 1 GIs will likely continue through the nights during Stage 2. Lisa, if you're reading, I would love your thoughts on this approach. I couldn't believe how bang on the book was for us!

Tue True Tues #7

2009-10-27T10:20:00.002-05:00

This is laughably easy this time around. Essie has asked what's the first thing I'd buy if I won the lottery. My first purchase would be an oceanfront house on an island off the coast of North Carolina. And for the record, my second "purchase" would be immediate retirement. I am not one of those people who needs my job in order to keep from being bored or aimless!

Happy Birthday to B!

2009-10-23T09:43:00.003-05:00

Today is B's 8th birthday. We are so happy he was born and came to us.

B has been so excited for his birthday to get here. We've been counting down for about 45 days. I think he sometimes thought it would never get here. He is the non-RAD kid, so this anticipation didn't lead to any difficult feelings for him other than the need for patience which he's pretty good with considering his age.

Today schools are closed all around our city for some big teacher event. So B has the luxury of a day off from school. I make the boys' beds for them on school holidays, so he got that luxury too. He started his day with our traditional bottom-of-the-bed present. He has various fun things lined up for all day long: go pick out the ice cream for tonight's celebration, spend a big box gift card a relative sent him in the mail, his friend Dominic-with-a-c (there's also a Dominik-with-a-k in their class!) arriving to join our family celebration, dinner out at the place with the arches (a seriously special treat in our family, since the rest of us have strenuous objections to it, but today we will all enjoy B's thrill!), then cake and presents back at home. B was already in heaven when I left for work this morning. (It was really hard to head off to work...)

______________________

I'll be more on the ball with pictures in the near future. Our camera was stolen from our hotel room in Minneapolis this summer. Don't go to the Comfort Inn and Suites on S 7th Street!! They have been lousy about helping us with this incident. Also, when we were checking out, another guest was at the front desk complaining that his young daughter had just found a used c*ndom in their room. Anyway, we have been without a camera for awhile, and have just gotten a new one in time for B's bday. I will get some photos tonight, and then B has big tooth news for Monday which I've got to document.

P's letter

2009-10-19T11:41:00.006-05:00

Things are still crazy with P. We're in some sort of regression. I'm hoping it's going to be mild but we can't be sure yet.

We have implemented Lisa's prescribed fits, with some success, to try to tackle the little disrespectful barbs P's been tossing out whenever he doesn't like how things are going. Our version of prescribed fits is to lie or sit on the couch and either shout disrespectful things or engage in angry grunting/yelling while waving arms and legs or feet and fists. He does not like doing these but does them now after resisting the first few. We re-set the timer if he stops or starts sounding too un-disrespectful during a prescribed fit. He has gone from having to have the timer re-set numerous times on the first few fits to getting through them pretty snappily. It is very interesting for me to see his reactions to them -- he honestly seems not to want to shout out disrespectful vitriolic stuff. It does not seem like resistence based in defiance, but more like resistance because of not wanting to be disrespectful. After reading Lisa's post on this, I think we may try helping P by scripting some of the fits, or at least helping him identify who to focus his emotions at for any given fit. Another interesting thing is that he is so calm after he completes one of these prescribed fits. We always do a big hug after each prescribed fit.

Sometime during the past few weeks, the key to the lock we keep on our lawnmower disappeared off the ledge by the back door (and a lot of P's possessions showed up in the exact spot where the key belongs), and yesterday a box of cookies on our basement stock shelves was mysteriously opened and so far no one's owning up. At the same time, P was the picture of charm and congeniality at a dinner we hosted Saturday night (all guests were deeply familiar to him) and did a fantastic job with his behaviour for the babysitter later that evening. (We did have him rest on his bed with a deep breathing exercise for about 20 minutes just before the guests arrived Saturday evening, and it seemed to make a huge difference. We used to do such breathing exercises a LOT with him, and I think we may go back to them for awhile based on Saturday's success afterwards.)

So we are intermittent. One moment he's lying in the exact same position I used to as a kid immersed in a book -- back on the seat of the couch, head lolling off the couch, and legs stretched straight up the back of the couch! The next moment he's pissed off at us for something or winding up into crazy energy. Somewhere in there, there's sneaking going on.

Nevertheless, he completed his writing assignment regarding the effects of his wood-in-the-street choices without much resistance. He did complain about having to do the steps (see previous post) rather than just jumping into the writing. The first two steps were surprisingly difficult for him. He just is not very far along with being able to identify how his choices and actions affect others. We kept telling him that he needed more on those areas, and he got frustrated for awhile, especially with figuring out the effects on others. He kept listing the effects as being things that were actually effects on himself. It was very interesting. Then, during rocking time Friday morning, he had a real eureka moment. He burst out with "I know how Madame (his teacher) was affected: She had to take time to deal with my choices." Woooohoooo! And off he went to finish his list. He had his paragraph written in time to start the prized privilege of movie time after dinner Friday evening. We were pretty pleased with the result. Here's his paragraph. I'm not correcting his errors -- this is his revision, and we did not go for perfection in the writing or even in having the most complete list of effects on this -- it was more about the process of identifying whom he'd affected and some of the ways they were affected.

Peter's paragraph:

The choices that I made afected many people. The first person it afected is Madame [his classroom teacher]. She lost trust in me and might keep an eye on me. She had a hard day. She also had to take time to tell what she saw me doing on the way home. The next people it afected is the school people. It afected them by having to return to the school to tell the school what they saw. It also made them late to come home to their family on time. Third is my parents. I got in trouble of course. They also got angry at me and worrided for me too. Very very disapointed that I did it and had a hard time having a good day ending with me. Next is my brother. He was scared for me and sad that I stole the wood. After {brother} is me. I got in trouble with my parents. I was also sad that I stole the wood and ended on a bad note. Road users come last of all. They could have crashed because of what I did. That's what happened because of my choices and how they afected those people.

Down and back up (?)

2009-10-15T12:31:00.013-05:00

Where to begin? Over the weekend, P transitioned from his positive holding pattern to a state of constant low-grade RAD behaviours. It just felt like complete slippage back to an earlier era in our RAD journey. Pokiness, constant seeking of negative attention, nervous chatter, extreme distractability and failure to stay on-task with anything, atrocious table manners, clumsiness, socializing soooo inappropriately at the family Thanksgiving gathering. We didn't see any sneakiness or dishonesty, however, so that was good. It was just that relentless-feeling stuff. It came on very fast. All was fine and dandy Friday at bedtime, and he was firmly dysregulated from the time he awoke Saturday morning. And persisted all the way through the three-day weekend.

Why? Why why why why WHY? Possible triggers:

We'd let him get another cat a week earlier. For no reason other than that he fell in love with it in the Humane S*ciety cages stationed at the pet supply store and presented us with convincing arguments for why he should be allowed to add a third cat to our household. It was fun for us letting him get this cat, and fun for the family coming up with the name that P eventually settled on. Maybe too much fun for P? [This idea contributed by me.]
We were scheduled to go to another family's house for supper Saturday evening. This family is a single mother who adopted her daughter K 2.5 years ago as a 6-month old from a country near P's native Ukraine. We have long been aware of K's triggering effect on P. As P describes it, it is really hard for him to see a baby get adopted and cared for, mostly (but not only) because it is painful for him to see babies and young children being mothered the right way, the way he wasn't mothered at that stage. His ability to handle his feelings about seeing K has improved over time, and our sensitivity to the whole thing has also improved. P didn't really think this was what was going on with him this time around. [This idea contributed then rejected by P.]
We went to a nature centre to see the Cda goose migration Saturday night. P's first time going. He loves the beauty of nature. Again, maybe too much fun. [This idea contributed by me.]
We were scheduled to go and did go on Monday to M's extended family's CdnThanksgiving celebration. This is always hosted by M's aunt Lil who was born in Ukraine and orphaned as a young girl during WWII. In one of our numerous discussions trying to identify the trigger this time around, P talked about how special Lil is to him as one of "my only two people" in our city who share his tie to Ukraine. When I asked who the other person was, it was the librarian at the public library in our neighbourhood, whose father was born almost exactly where P and B were born. Her name is Evelyn, and she has known P and B from their first time to story hour with her back in April 2005, where she was able to speak a bit of Ukrainian with them and tell them about her dad. She recently retired, so P said that "he lost Evelyn." This was all news to us, this feeling he has of wanting/needing people who directly link in his mind to his birthplace. We had known that he loved M's Aunt Lil (she is so warm and grandma-like with our boys), but we had not known that P felt so strongly about her because of the Ukraine connection. [This idea contributed by P.]
Maybe all of the above combined? [This idea contributed by P.]
The growing household excitement over B's bday which is coming up on the 23rd. (I am so sorry that is also a trauma anniversary over at Life in the Grateful House.) But P has never struggled to feel genuinely happy for someone else. He is so giving in this way, and B's bday has never thrown him for a loop before. [This idea contributed by me.]
The approach of Halloween? Again, this has never been a trigger that we've detected in the past. [me again]

Whatever the cause, this regression was a tiring one. It just felt so continual. Maybe it wasn't any worse than any of his other regressions -- and was possibly better than some, now that I think of it. Maybe it's that we have started to get so spoiled. So much of the time now P is pretty thoroughly enjoyable to be around. He mostly engages appropriately but sometimes for a child about two years younger than his chronological age (factoring in that his family age is only 4.5, we don't really have too much of a problem with this), he is affectionate and thoughtful, he complies with our household expectations and most of the school's, he exercises pretty good self-control most of the time, he independently recruits strategies for what we call "controlling/regulating his energy," he expresses his difficult feelings fairly readily, I could probably keep going. The areas where he is still working to modify his ongoing behaviour are now tending to be things that he is now capable of self-correcting once we prompt him or clue him in. Indeed, we have gotten spoiled by the increasingly long stretches he seems to go between regressions now. So maybe it's just that the regressions seem so tiring compared to what day-to-day life has mostly become for us. Makes me wonder how we ever endured those hard times before this healing started. I think I have blocked out how tired, oppressed, and terrified I felt so constantly.

Anyway. This week P has seemed back to his pre-regression self again. Knock wood. And maybe the following contradicts my claim that P is back to normal?

To update you on the whole walking-to-school / daycare thing, we have continued to allow P and B to walk home from school everyday rather than go to daycare. We got so pleased with how this felt and was going, that we added having them walk to school in the mornings rather than getting dropped off at daycare. All of this has been going so well from all four of our perspectives that we have actually started to entertain the notion of dropping out of the daycare altogether. I couldn't believe it when M was willing to consider this! I have been lobbying for it for ages but am dependent on M being willing to adjust his morning schedule more often than I adjust mine to keep the boys home til school starts at 9 am. So now we've got P and B hooked in with the lunch program at the school -- they used to go over to the daycare centre across the schoolyard for lunch -- and are spending this month of October pretending we don't have daycare at all. If we feel good about how we all make it through October, then we will pull all the way out of the daycare. My guess is that is the direction we're going, but it may still be too early to know.

For now, we have told P and B that we have already discontinued daycare. I don't like lying, but with P's tendency to self-sabotage, we didn't want to present this as "daycare will be returned to if you don't do well with walking to and from school." With P, that would have just been us issuing an invitation to blow it. We wanted, instead, for everyone in our family to approach this as something we are all determined to make work because we all really like it. (I do realize that even this may be a bit too much for my dear P, but hopefully he'll handle it.) If we decide to return to daycare, we will tell P and B that we were lucky to be able to get our spaces back.

So yesterday I got the fun of a midday call from P's teacher. P and B had been spotted and reported putting boards into the street on their walk to school. Several people observed this over several mornings. P's teacher bumped into B walking alone to school yesterday morning (P had gone earlier for the one week of soccer intramurals he'd signed up for), and she got B to fess up. She also talked with P and informed them both that she'd be informing M and me. I should say for the record that, about 3 days into the school year, I completely reversed my opinion on P's teacher from the impression I formed at Meet the Teacher back in early September. She has been amazing. Interesting combination of laid back but with high expectations. It turned out that P was going onto someone's property and taking what he surmised to be scrap wood and then he and B were sticking it out into the street. This is wrong from so many standpoints in our family that it is too much for me to go into. You RAD parents should be able to guess about 95% of the standpoints anyway, so I won't list them here. P and B's consequence was to have their less-than-favourite-but-still-nutritious meal for dinner.

Of course, my -- and M's who I immediately called -- kneejerk reaction to this whole thing was "they have to go back to daycare." But we fended off those kneejerk temptations, and tried to come up with an approach that will serve our family goal. So our new strategy for the walk to school is to delay P and B's start by 10 minutes so that they will no longer have any time to "waste." This morning is the first time. I've got both their teachers on board to let us know if they are late to reach their classrooms even one time. Hopefully this will stop this behaviour. It's afternoon now, and so far no call.

Additionally, P is doing a multi-step exercise for us. The steps are: (1) make a list of all the people whom your actions affected or could have affected; (2) for each of the people on your list, list all of the effects they experienced or could have experienced; (3) write all of this up in a nicely written paragraph. Our hope, which we've told him, is that this will help him learn to think about the effects that his choices have on people. This is an area where there is still room for a lot of growth with him. P will spend his free time on this exercise until he completes it.

When we went over all of this with P last night, P became very angry. He showed his anger by interrupting us in a louder voice than we consider respectful. He responded very well to our request that he stop. When we finished talking and asked for his reaction, he said he was too angry to discuss it and would maybe discuss it with us in the morning (it was right before bedtime last night). We consider this a positive development in that he is recognizing when he is not able to discuss something rationally or respectfully. It is a big development too, because -- believe me -- we have been through times when he would have been having an all-out physical tantrum complete with foaming at the mouth over these consequences. He cried silently during bedtime backrubs but didn't want to talk about why. That always makes me so sad, and I am always torn about whether to push it, whether to delay sleeping time in order to push it, etc. Decided to let it go last night. This morning when I returned from the gym, M said P had had a very good morning (we have a family routine that goes on first thing in the morning and is geared to helping the boys get regulated for the day), and P was sitting at the desk doing the first of his exercises. He was cheerful and chipper and did not appear to be engaging in any RAD defiance/delay tactics. (We have been through the wringer with some of those in the not-too-distant past as well, so we were both very aware of how he might choose to respond to being at the desk.) He was, however, struggling with identifying the wide range of people who could be affected by his and B's actions. It was very interesting, and tipped me off to the fact that we need to work with him a lot more in this area.

Tue True Tues

2009-10-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

We had a really rough three-day weekend with P which I am still figuring out. While I delay posting on that, I thought I'd join Essie's Too True Tuesday #6.

The topic this time is the worst gift you've ever received. I guess I am really lucky because I am hard-pressed to think of bad gifts I've received. The only one I can think of came from my mother when I was, I think, 19. I feel bad writing about it. But not too bad. My mom has been responsible for some of the greatest presents I've ever gotten, and many times they were for no reason which is maybe the best kind of present to get. Also my mom had to be one of the top five best intentioned people the planet has ever known. Her instincts were just so off in this one case.

I had just joined a sorority, which we can call DDD. (I am slighly embarrassed to admit the whole sorority thing, but I think these sorts of truths are in the spirit of Too True Tuesday.) DDD's colours were silver, gold, and blue, which mom did not know. After joining the sorority, I had mentioned to my mom how much I wanted a sorority sweatshirt with DDD on it. I was up north in college, and my mom was down in Virginia, and the next time I travelled home, my mom was so proud of the gift she had waiting for me. She was bursting with excitement about it. When I opened the box, there was my new DDD sweatshirt. It was the weirdest mix of "country kitchen" style and 1980s gaudy style. It was powder blue with a giant, very colourful teddy bear appliqued on the front. The bear's arms were spread out to span the shiniest silver and gold appliqued D D D you can imagine. And my mom was so proud of her accomplishment. She told me all about how she'd had to call the local DDD house and learn all about the colours and the letters, and then she'd had to go to a specific store that dealt in fraternity/sorority stuff and convince them to put together this particular combination. And she was so eager to see the sweatshirt on me. Maybe the weirdest part of all of this is that the style(s) she chose for that sweatshirt were far from her own style as well as my own.

She never knew how much I loathed that sweatshirt, and as a result I was never able to find out what moved her to put together that particular combination of styles.

Family Needed

2009-10-08T09:40:00.003-05:00

Please go here and read this mother's post and spread the word. She is an adoptive mother who has done everything under the sun to do what's best for all her children. They have reached the agonizing conclusion that they have to disrupt one of their adoptions. Please spread the word so that their dear boy will have a place where he can heal into the person he was created to be.

In my previous post (about my award), I indicated that the last time I cried was yesterday. The detail to that is that I cried over this family's post about their decision to disrupt. I cried for them, but I also cried for my family. We have been at that point where we have wondered whether our family was the best place for P. We tried and tried and tried to help him to deal with and heal from his traumas, and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere. We were worried sick about the effects of it all on our B, on our marriage and finances, and -- really -- on P. We didn't know if we were making P better or worse. And if we were possibly damaging all these other things while not making P better, then where were we going to end up? And what was P's adulthood going to look like? It just was a very difficult time. I cannot say what turned our situation around. It is a bit of a mystery to me, and I cannot take credit for it. I doubt we tried as much or as hard as this family did. So yesterday I cried for the memories of the fears of where we've been in our family and for the unfairness of it all and for the terrible dilemma and sense of isolation and guilt this family must have felt for so long.

Again, please go read her post and spread the word.

How 'bout this?

2009-10-08T08:21:00.006-05:00

Over the top of what, I am not sure, but I'm thrilled to receive my first award. Thank you to Essie, whose blog I love and often laugh out loud at.

The rules:
Answer the survey below…you can only use one word answers!

Pass this along to 6 of your favorite bloggers!

Alert them that you have given them this award!

Have Fun!

_______________________________________________________

Where is your cell phone?- Someone needs to call it. None

Your hair? Awkward

Your mother? Spirited

Your father? Observant

Your favorite food? Shellfish

Your dream last night? Unknown

Your favorite drink? Wine

Your dream/goal? Beachhouse

What room are you in? Office

Your hobby? Knitting

Your Fear? Snakes

Where do you want to be in 6 years? Ocean

Where were you last night? Booklaunch

Something that you aren’t? Graceful

Muffins? Blueberry

Wish list item? Beachhouse

Where did you grow up? Virginia

Last thing you did? Email

What are you wearing? Casual

Your TV? Minimalist

Your pets? Cats

Friends? Essential

Your life? Busy

Your mood? Overwhelmed

Missing someone? Mom

Vehicle? Matrix

Something you’re not wearing? Make-up

Your favorite store? None!!!

Your favorite color? Green

When was the last time you laughed? Now

Last time you cried? Yesterday

One place that I go to over and over? Work

One person who emails me regularly? Son

Favorite place to eat? Many

---------------------------------------------

Now for the six people I'd love to know more about. Forgive me if I duplicate you when you've already gotten this from someone else. I'm being lazy and not checking who all's been awarded. Here are my six:

Brenda at Living With RAD

Lisa at Life in the Grateful House

Dia at Rancho Chico

Ginny at Small Things

Tricia at Life in Go Land

My Sweet Chaos

Yay B!

2009-09-30T12:37:00.004-05:00

B got his second tiger stripe at taekwondo last night. He is thrilled.

It was my first time seeing a stripe test. M got to see B test for his white belt and see him test for his first tiger stripe. So this time it was my turn. What fun!

The stripe tests are a pretty neat thing. Because there is a ton of both physical and mental material for the kids to know when they test for the next-colour belt, B's dojang breaks that material down into chunks of new material that are a manageable size for the kids. Each successive chunk of material also contains all the chunks before it so the students gradually build toward actively knowing all the material for their eventual full-blown belt promotion test. For each chunk of the material they master, the kids earn "tiger stripes" on their current belts. The stripes are just electricians tape added to one end of their belt. The stripes alternate orange and black, so as the child gets more stripes the end of their belt starts to look like a tiger tail. B's age level at our dojang is called the Tiger Cubs, so the tiger stripes and tiger tail on the belt all fit into the theme. When a child has his/her eight tiger stripes, then he/she is ready to test for the next level of belt. I have no idea whether other dojangs follow this practice. I don't even know whether ours does for the next age-group up. (I'll have to look at the belts in the next age level more closely this Saturday because their class is always finishing up when we arrive for B's Saturday class.)

During the stripe tests, all the kids sit taekwondo-style (i.e., cross-legged) on the mat facing the instructors who are kneeling on one knee at the front. One by one, each instructor calls a student up, so two kids are testing at the same time. Usually they are testing at different levels so there is no chance that they can get information from each other. All the kids who aren't testing at that moment are expected to continue to sit quietly and watch, and they do! The instructor drills the testing kid in a really calm supportive manner, so the whole thing goes on in as non-intimidating a way as possible. When a kid gets a stripe added to her/his belt, everyone in the dojang applauds -- any parents who are watching, plus all the kids and instructors. It is really nice.

B was nervous and fidgety with his uniform throughout his test. It made me ache for him a little. I knew he knew his stuff so well. But his nervousness when he has to "perform" really decreases how well he does. We've seen this in piano recitals too. And the poor guy has to have P as his brother. We call P the ice man because he maintains his cool so incredibly well in performance-type situations. P will have RAD-type "forgetfulness" and inability to concentrate in practices leading up to any type of performance and then be calm and collected for the actual performance, which he will do excellently. B will be calm as can be in the lead-up time, and then jittery with nerves at the event. I hope that as B's sense of safety in this taekwondo arena continues to increase, he will start to have more confidence in the tests because he really does have command of the material.

Despite his nerves, B did well enough last evening to earn his second tiger stripe, and is he ever proud of his accomplishment.

The backstory - Part 1

2009-09-29T09:59:00.012-05:00

We seem to be in a bit of a positive holding pattern right now at our house. Weird. Very very weird. But I'll take it. With a white-knuckle grip, I'll take it. It affords me a little time to go back and remember meeting our boys.

To gloss over a bunch of stuff, here are the events that went on before we met P and B: unexplained infertility, miscarriage, lllllloooooonnnnnngggggg series of logistics associated with government approval to adopt internationally, followed by even longer wait to get invited to Ukraine to receive a child(ren) referral.

The way the Ukraine adoption process works is prospective adoptive parents travel to Ukraine and meet with an official in the national adoption agency to "select" which child(ren) to go and meet. In the adoption world, this is known as travelling blind. Back in 2002 when we decided to adopt from Ukraine, it seemed highly desirable to us. By early 2005 when we finally received our "invitation" to our meeting with the government of Ukraine, it had started to seem almost unbearably risky. But by then we were so locked in in so many ways, that we just had to adopt (ha ha) an attitude of "this will all work out." I have since heard so many horror stories of Ukrainian adoptions and failed adoptions that I can't believe we were this naive.

Our meeting at the national adoption office -- back then it was called the NAC, now it's called the SDA -- was on Feb 2, 2005. We arrived in Kiev a couple days early and had a really wonderful time getting to know the city a bit, as well as some of the people. The afternoon before our big meeting, our facilitator Sasha was driving us around when he mentioned that his "guy at the NAC has found two brilliant boys" for us. Boys? But all our paperwork said two kids, at least one of which was a girl. I had always believed I was meant to raise a daughter. M asked Sasha about this, but all Sasha said was "guys, these boys, they are brilliant; and there aren't many healthy sibling groups in your age range." M pressed on, and we left it that Sasha would see if "his guy" could come up with any girls for us.

If you are getting an impression of the international adoption scene as somewhat "industrialized," that would match my conclusions about it. I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, which I am not going into in detail here. I don't think Ukraine is any better or worse than any other "source countries" in the international adoption network (at least that I'm aware of, and we did a lot of research). It is a fact of life that the majority of places on the planet where there are kids who need homes are relatively less privileged, while the majority of places that the prospective adoptive parents come from are relatively more privileged (or at least those individuals are relatively privileged), and these facts create a certain dynamic and colour the whole system in a certain way. It will forever trouble me that my kids were (are?) social orphans. Right now we just don't know whether their birth mother is still alive. My guess is yes. And we do know that there is a pretty large family on their birth mother's side. And yet, P and B were in Ukraine's orphanage system and registered as available for international adoption. Moreover, I have extreme qualms about having uprooted children from their native culture and all that goes with that. The fact that we chose to adopt from Ukraine partly because our home city has a huge Ukrainian population so they could continue to have exposure to their native culture does not mitigate my qualms. I could go on and on on this set of themes. But this is enough for now. I am sorry if I have offended anyone. That is not my intent.

M and I spent the evening wondering and worrying and discussing. Could we adopt two boys? Would there be a girl or girls for us to consider at our meeting the next day? What if there were no healthy kids in our approved age range (1 yo to 6 yo)? Between the jet lag and the worrying, we slept pretty fitfully. But at one point I had a very vivid dream of being back at home with two boys clamoring up and down bunkbeds. And it was such a happy dream. I awoke the following morning -- the morning of our big meeting -- feeling very reassured and eager to know more about these boys. M, in contrast, was one big ball of stress.

As anyone who's adopted from Ukraine knows, you show up at your NAC/SDA appointment at the appointed time, and then you wait and wait. The facilitators disappear into the bowels of the NAC and emerge with estimates of how long you'll be waiting. In our case, we arrived for a morning appointment slot, but ended up having time to go to lunch and come back and wait some more. Finally, it was our turn to go in. We met with an elderly official in a powder blue suit who was very nice, and seemed to have very piercing perceptive eyes. He had found a girl. The girl, Ina, was six and in Odessa. The boys, P and B, were 5 and 3 and in the west. P and B's one-page info sheets were paperclipped together signifying that they had to be adopted together, as Ukraine does not break up sibling groups. All three children's sheets had little pass-port size photos stapled to their upper right corners. M looked at Ina's picture and saw his aunt's and sister's eyes. (M's extended Mennonite family emigrated to Canada during the WWII era, following many generations in Ukraine.) I looked at the boys' pictures and fell head over heels in love. The photos were their orphanage entry photos, so were two years out of date. P was 3 in his picture, and was grinning at the camera, but with a look that showed he had no idea where in the world he was. Nevertheless, his eyes contained a spark of mischief and antics and curiosity and intelligence. B's picture was heartbreaking in ways. He was 1 in it, and his little mouth was turned down in a pronounced frown -- an expression we would come to know as signalling fear and uncertainty. He just seemed so alone.

I wanted to go meet the boys. M thought we should go meet Ina. We asked if there was any way we could meet one of them, and if it didn't work out we could then go meet the other? We were told no, that these children were all so healthy that whichever one(s) we didn't choose to meet would be offered to another set of parents virtually immediately. What to do? Our dream of two kids versus one. My dream of a daughter versus getting two kids. (The financial drain of this adoption made it most likely that we weren't going to be doing another international adoption.) Sasha and the official were starting to lose patience with us. We chose to go meet P and B. I felt completely at peace with our decision.

We were immediately ushered back out into a hallway where we sat on a bench and waited while Sasha performed various logistical procedures to prepare our path to go visit these boys. M was extremely agitated, so I asked him what was troubling him. He said he was very afraid that I would regret it if I ended up not having a daughter. We talked about that for awhile, and I tried to reassure him that I didn't have any concerns about that. That those photos of P and B had already captured my heart. But he continued to be nervous. Finally, we agreed to flip a coin and that if the cointoss landed on Ina then we'd ask Sasha if we could change our minds. The coin landed on tails for P and B! But we asked Sasha anyway, and he said that Ina's referral had already been passed along to another set of parents. All of this calmed M down, and further solidified my confidence that we were on the right track.

Leaving the NAC, we rode with Sasha and one of his facilitator friends. She congratulated us on reaching the stage of going to meet "our boys." And she commented that Chernobyl would be a long journey. Chernobyl? Oh my gosh. They're near the leak? No no. TERNOPIL. Oh ha ha. Sasha and his friend got a good laugh out of our confusion and panic.

By the time he dropped us back at our flat, Sasha had it worked out for us to be on the train to the western Ukraine oblast of Ternopil that night with one of his underlings, Denis, who would shepherd us through the Ternopil end of things. We were going to meet these boys, and so much was riding on what we would see and feel when we did.

My response to Essie on BC on stealing

2009-09-23T13:32:00.010-05:00

How's that for a convoluted post title?

To clarify, Essie over at the accidental mommy recently had the good fortune to attend a Beyond Consequences conference. While there, she asked what to do when we discover that our child has acquired an item dishonestly, particularly when we aren't sure how long since the item was "acquired." In today's post, she describes the answer she received, and asks for our feedback. I started commenting to her post and realized how long my comment was getting (my usual long-winded approach), so decided to post about it instead.

When we were at the peak of P's stealing (from classmates' lunchkits, from stores, and also that permanent type of "borrowing," for example, if he'd been over at someone else's house), we tried everything, which is a euphemism for we escalated to more and more severe punishments, threats, whatever you want to call them. P's stealing, for us, was always the sort that Essie mentions: rather than catching him in the act, we would discover something -- or evidence of something -- that there would have been no way he could have come by honestly. It was almost always candies, junkfood type treats, or their wrappers.

This was before the RAD diagnosis, and we had no idea how his mind really worked. Of course, none of our lectures, diatribes, threats, punishments, or other methods worked to get to the bottom of this, or to help P understand his impulse to take things. Rather, they gave us a nice tour of a bunch of other RAD behaviours, including lying, raging, sabotaging (not admitting, so getting the consequence for "if you don't tell me by the time I count to 10...," blazing his eyes at us, shutting down and going to that other/dead place that RADishes go to, and on and on and on). As I said, we were trying these approaches before we knew that P has RAD, so we did not recognize any of his follow-up behaviours as RAD. We would get into these awful struggles for control, which can be quite infuriating to engage in with a 7-year old (to put it mildly). I, in particular, did not do a good job of controlling my own emotional response to the stealing or any of the dynamics that followed our discovery of it.

Following our diagnosis, I started researching RAD and attachment like crazy and found Beyond Consequences, and we used a bunch of stuff from it for a long time (along with stuff I borrowed from elsewhere as well). Incidentally, I also discovered Love and Logic at that time -- this is two years ago now, and the stage that I would now describe as "heading for P's RAD peak" -- but dismissed L&L because it struck me as requiring the child to already be at least somewhat attached in order to work. I realize not everyone will agree with me on that, but I just didn't see how L&L could even begin to apply to P back then.

Anyway, we used what amounts to the BC technique that Essie describes in her post on P's stealing -- both stealing we caught quickly and that which we didn't. The results were pretty consistently positive in several ways.

First, it really did avoid that RAD power/control struggle, so for me it had the benefit of immediately defusing what was/is a really flammable topic. BC taught me to see P and all his RAD behaviours as basically a big aura of fear. I had to actually practice this, because my tendency -- maybe from some aspects of my upbringing -- was to go a bit nuts (which is a euphemism for severely reprimand, shame, punish). So I credit BC with teaching me to approach P's stealing calmly and compassionately rather than letting all my own fear-based emotions about the stealing come spewing out in ways that ultimately just feed the RAD. I could (euphemism for "had to") just breathe my way through the technique.

Secondly, my/our calmness in turn helped defuse the cascade of RAD behaviours from P that we had always unleashed with our previous "strategies."

Thirdly, and most remarkable, was that we started to see genuine, sincere emotional responses from P to our statements of "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you" or "I'm so sorry you had to feel that alone" or "You must have felt so sad" or whatever version of that that we used. We started to see real tears flow silently and slowly down his cheeks. He began to physically come toward us when we said those words, to the point that he would come for a hug/comfort.

We are not through with the stealing issue in our family. P still gets the urges. His most recent stealing, as far as we know, was this past late May or early June -- two incidents at that time, both times candy from the little corner store across the street from his school. The changes that have happened over time, though, have to do with -- at least as far as we know -- the stealing becoming less frequent, P becoming more quick to admit and take responsibility (we do what Essie was advised which is to return (or pay for) the item, and to help and support your child in doing so), and P seeming to show remorse for his actions.

Also -- and this, to us, is big -- P is increasingly verbally expressing that he stole (or sometimes it's just that he felt like stealing but passed up the opportunity) in conjunction with the fact that at that moment he was feeling something bad. For him, the feelings range from sad to "thinking about my birth mother, wondering where she is" to feeling upset about something that someone had done to him at school to feeling really lonely. Our psychologist told us that it is important for P to be able to start to identify what he is feeling -- even right down to what it feels like physically when he experiences various emotions -- when he has that impulse to engage in any of the behaviours like stealing, wanting to roam the school halls, distracting himself instead of doing his classwork, etc. So it is happy news to us that he is starting to make these links, and without it being prompted by any sort of lecturing on our parts (which, obviously, just shuts him down...why is it so hard for me to learn and remember this???).

I wish I could say that I have consistently applied a calm response to P's stealing and other RAD behaviours. I hope that I never sound like I have been so perfect. This has been such an ongoing struggle for me. I am astounded by the patience that shines so clearly from many of you all's blogs. It is so inspiring. My journey is more of 3 steps forward, one step back as a way of describing my own success at mastering the art of RAD parenting. I absolutely hate it when I regress in this area. I see that as my just inviting RAD to grow stronger by feeding it exacty what it needs to flourish. Since I see our healing journey as a competition between me and RAD, I get very angry at myself whenever I do something that advantages my competition.

[On another topic of feeling things physically, I had an interesting conversation with P on the weekend. I forget the exact context, but I was talking about how angry I was at something, and I said something to the effect of I was so angry I just wanted to spit. P said that he thought that was an appropriate way for me to express my anger as long as I didn't spit at/on someone, or do it disrespectfully. I then asked him what his strategies are to express his anger appropriately. In my mind, I was assuming that he would rattle off all the many strategies we have tried to provide him with (breathe, go somewhere and yell, journal, punch your pillow, go run hard outside, jump on minitramp, tell the person respectfully that you are really angry at them and why, you know all the things we tell our kids). But his answer was that he doesn't get that angry any more. He said he used to get so angry that it felt like it was a long explosion going on all throughout his body and he used to feel that way a lot, and now it's become less, and when he does feel angry it just feels more faint and he feels he can handle it.]

Enough for today!

Book

2009-09-21T11:51:00.002-05:00

This is my first two-post day. There probably won't be too many of these.

A recently discovered book that I am finding to be a very useful read: Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child: From Your First Hours Together Through the Teen Years. By Patty Cogen. 2008.

It is not a book about RAD, or even really about attachment. And it doesn't use an explicitly attachment-oriented conceptual framework. Nonetheless, it is one of my best reads so far in my "research" to find ways to parent our boys in ways that help them heal from the experiences in early life. Additionally, I don't think you have to have adopted internationally to find this book useful, although there is some content on subjects like children changing languages that are somewhat specific to international adoption.

Among the many things I like about this book (and this will be nowhere near exhaustive, as I'm running out of time):

1. Its operative angle has to do with the child's development being based on the child's sense of identity, her/his connection with parent(s), and his/her resiliency. These three prongs address a lot of what we see making up P's RAD, but also give us a hugely appropriate framework to apply to non-RADish B as well.

2. I am getting tons of ideas for things to try out to keep fostering identity, connection, and resiliency. As just one example: something the author calls "the three-photo story." This is something the adoptive parent makes. It ideally will be a single sheet of paper containing equal-sized photos depicting three things: (a) the child's life before adoption, (b) the "handover", (c) the child with his/her present family. I can imagine that for some adoptive situations, this may have to be expanded or made more complicated. In P's case (and possibly also B's), we have multiple living situations prior to P's life immediately before we met him. So I am planning to try to make a sort of collage that captures/represents many of his living situations prior to meeting us. This will include a birth parent, a maternal aunt, an unknown male adult, a baby house (orphanage), and the orphanage school he was in when we finally met him.

Anyway, you create this three-photo story, and the author suggests making numerous copies of it and even laminating some of them. She describes that kids will react to their three-photo stories in a variety of ways, at different times. Some will shred them or chew them or otherwise destroy them. Some will cherish them. Some will carry them everywhere. Some will want to talk about them constantly. And apparently kids will bring them out at all different times to introduce the topic of their identity. The author says that at all different ages and developmental stages, the three-photo story sheet will have different roles to play in helping the child's growth in understanding and integrating his/her identity. I have set early December as a goal for myself to have P and B's three-photo stories for them, thinking that the stretch of winter break may give us a chance to start talking about them in the ways the book advises and deal with any fall-out that results.

3. I also like that the author is clearly drawing from all kinds of the attachment schools that I have borrowed from. So there are echoes of pretty much everyone you can name (Hughes, Thomas, Purvis, Leslie, L & L, etc etc) throughout the book.

4. I like that the author starts out by introducing five recently internationally adopted kids who all fit different "profiles" and then revisits those kids throughout the book so that you can see how her ideas and techniques apply to different kinds of kids. One kid is a whirling derish, another is someone who shuts down, and so forth. I have been able to see P and B when we met them in these profiles. And I have been able to see aspects of P in all five of the profiles.

5. This is one of the few books that I have also been able to get M to read and get on board with.

6. I liked and appreciated what the author says about language and the internationally adopted child. According to her, a child's brain is wired for his/her native language as soon as they are in that language to the age of 6 months. 6 months! The author says that the child may take years to become truly proficient in her/his adoptive language, and that little things can pop up way in the future that are sometimes are mistakenly viewed as learning deficiencies but are just a new aspect of language acquisition. This was the first place I ever saw this really written about.

7. Another first: This is the first book that explicitly acknowledges anniversary-related triggers, ALONG WITH the idea that (internationally) adopted kids have not only explicit memories of pre-adoption but also implicity ones. Often it can be the implicit ones that are hardest for us adoptive parents to figure out and address. I just liked how all of this is handled in this book, found it very helpful.

Over and out without proofreading.

Weekend highlights

2009-09-21T11:16:00.004-05:00

We are in a continued period of smooth-sailing. Like many of you, I realize the pattern between saying that and having it come to an end. So knock wood for now, and I'll only have myself to blame if things fall completely apart in the next 24 hours! But, darnit!, we had an interesting and fun weekend, and I feel like celebrating it. Here are some highlights:

B had taekwondo on Saturday, and he just continues to love it and be so into it. He is really starting to seem more confident in the class sessions. The dojang we selected, in addition to having the huge perk of being a 2-minute walk from home, is just so great with the kids. Maybe all dojang's are? Maybe that's part of the taekwondo code? I don't know much about martial arts. This dojang is somehow managing to get B to do things like volunteer to go first in showing the instructor he can do something. He almost always gets whatever it is partly wrong, but he doesn't even seem to worry about it. It is as though they have made him feel incredibly safe. What a huge gift. But how can they have done this in less than four weeks, when M and I have been at it for more than four years and still haven't succeeded?
Later on Saturday, we dropped B at the boys' godparents for the monthly sleepover. P and B alternate months having a sleepover at the godparents'. M, P, and I then went to dinner at a fantastic new burrito place in town (can't believe I lived in this city for 15 years without any Mexican food), and P handled himself well. We did not tell him we were going out to eat there until right before we went. Once he knew, he was a little nervous chattery for awhile, but then got himself under control. In particular, he did himself proud ordering his food and just generally using phenomenally good manners throughout the time we were there. After the restaurant, we stopped by a video store, and P was able to keep himself perfectly regulated amid all that stimulation. So much so that we felt able to let him talk briefly with the guy outside the door with two pythons winding around his neck when we emerged. Snakes give me the creeps more than anything else, but P was in heaven.
At 9 pm Saturday night, M and I discovered that P's one-year old kitten January had a very swollen crusty paw. It was clearly painful. Had to break this news to P Sunday morning. He got very scared. He really loves that cat. (We have gone from early years of not being able to let him near any animals without serious supervision, to being able to get him a kitten last November.) I was worried we may be dealing with both vet and RAD P all day. As it turned out, P held it together pretty well. January had to spend the day at the vet's, getting x-rayed and having claws pulled back into position, and getting stitches, and becoming a conehead. (Somehow, he got three of his claws jammed deep into their nailbeds. I can't even write that without cringing.) So P had to deal with a full day of uncertainty about January and how he was doing and what he was going to be like when we picked him up. All day long, he said things like "I need to tap."
We finished our weekend by riding the dinner train. You can see a general picture here. That is not us, and not even this year's dinner train, but it gives you an idea of how incredibly cool this is. It is an event put on by this local hobby-scale train club. M and I have gone every year since we discovered it way back before we ever met P and B. This was the first year we've taken P and B. They have ridden the train (without dining tables) many times on the club's "open run" weekends throughout the summers. There are strict rules about keeping your weight balanced and still, keeping arms inside the train, and so on. And P and B have mastered these rules over time. When we told them they were getting to ride the dinner train with us this year, they couldn't believe it. (We told B on Saturday morning, and P at the very last minute.) Their godparents came along too, so it was the six of us, and we had such fun. There was the added bonus of the slighly older boys in the train car next to P's breaking all the rules and eventually getting yelled at by a club member. Specifically, what he did was get right in the kid's face and yell "Do you want to get off the train? Either follow the rules or get off the train NOW." It was very fun seeing P and B's reactions to that -- they both called it a natural consequence for that kid. Quite funny. And it gave us such a great opportunity to apply our Love and Logic script about how sad it is for those kids that they haven't learned how to be respectful in such situations, and how we feel so good inside when we go somewhere and have fun respecting other people and their property.
When we met up with godparents and B at the dinner train, the godparents' reaction to the sleepover was that B had been extremely calm and respectful and helpful. He sometimes has trouble with this at their house -- godfather sometimes recruits B into major roughhousing that blurs the lines between friend and authority figure, and B doesn't always succeed in getting back under control. This happens at our house when godparents come over too. But it seems this time the sleepover went much differently. The godparents (who are in their 50s) weren't so worn out this time! When we asked B what had changed, he said "taekwondo has taken over my brain."

Friday ramblings

2009-09-18T10:32:00.003-05:00

No organized thoughts to start the day, but a hodge podge of things from this week:

I'm reading Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) right now. It's not my favourite book ever, but I'm enjoying it enough to stick with it. This week, this passage was part of what I read, and it is part of my wish for P and all our kids. The author is writing about her experience of finding it difficult to focus on a particular meditation prayer while staying at an ashram in India. She ends up dedicating her prayer to her nephew Nick. Here's what she writes about this: "I filled the song with everything I wished I could teach him about life. I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it's all OK because he is so loved. He is surrounded by souls who would do anything to help him. And not only that--he has wisom and patience of his own, buried deep inside his being, which will only reveal themselves over time and will always carry him through any trial. He is a gift from God to all of us."
Wednesday night was meet-the-teacher at P and B's school. I always find this event discouraging, and this year was no exception. B's grade 2 teacher is so new that she has the potential to be a total pushover. She reported that B is somewhat disruptive in class, fidgeting (which was a bit of an understatement, I'm sure) during carpet time and talking to his neighbours during work time. B starts off each year like this, and it escalates until the teacher agrees to put some sort of behaviour reporting system in place. As soon as that's in place, B makes behavioural choices that conform with everyone's expectations of him. (He's the non-RAD kid, so these types of systems tend to work with him!) The reason I find this discouraging is that it's been three straight years now, starting with kindergarten. When will he begin to be more intrinsically motivated about this? I hate having to do the reporting system -- hate hate hate it. I also hate being so rules-bound all the time. But I also hate the thought that he's keeping the teacher from being able to do her job. For now, we decided to let him know that the teacher was concerned and was considering putting a reporting system in place, and see whether he'll get motivated just from that. Time will tell. P's teacher described him as a "pleasure, a really sweet boy." My questions quickly revealed that she had no idea of the problems he's had in previous years, so she has not read his file or been briefed by last year's teacher or the administration. I will describe the problems we've dealt with in school in a future post, but suffice it to say the boy needs to be watched a bit more than the average 9.75-year old. Once I started asking, P's teacher did acknowledge that he's showing "poor impulse control." My guess is that would be putting it mildly. In the past, when we've asked P's teachers to chart his interruptions or wanderings around the classroom, it has become clear that these incidents occur something like 11 times per half-hour increment of the day, all day long. I know he's nervous and scared. I know he doesn't understand why or maybe even THAT he feels that way. I get it. Maybe because I get it, I get so scared about his future. He is so bright and has such potential (and some pretty serious ambitions about what he wants to do in life), but he isn't going to be able to do anything with that potential if we don't find a way for him to manage the feelings or at least employ strategies to control the behaviours that the feelings propel. I also get scared about what he might turn to in the future to numb himself from these hard feelings. So meet-the-teacher night just brought all these fears to the surface in me again, and I walked home feeling discouraged.
On a more upbeat note, P and B have walked home after school almost every day since school started on September 9. One of the days P came home and didn't manage himself well (e.g., yelled into the phone while M was on it on another extension) so we had him go to daycare the next day where he would have the supervision he'd shown us he needed. When I picked him up that day, he was peacefully reading and full of excitement about this new reading series he'd discovered. (Very fun to start to talk books with our kids, by the way!) The point being that he had not refused to go to daycare or any of the various types of defiance or otherwise troublesome choices he may have made to our decision in the past. And he has managed himself very well when coming home the other days. On Fridays, we have been giving P and B each $1 to spend at the little corner store across from their school, in an attempt to head off any desires to sneak in there and steal that P may be struggling with. So far, so good. It has been very fun to be able to let them come straight home, and to see them pulling it off so smoothly, and especially to see how happy they are about it. When I get discouraged about things in the school, I really have to remind myself to step back and ask whether we could have given either of them this walking home privilege a year ago without going sick with worry on a daily basis.
If this period of relatively smooth sailing continues so I don't need to vent about arising crises, then I am planning the upcoming posts: meeting P and B; our first year home; P's RAD behaviours, past and present; an adoption book I've discovered that I really like; a question I have about whether we are healing feelings or only behaviours.
Once again thank you to so many of you who do more than you can imagine to help keep me sane and inspired to keep finding my way back to doing my best. I am so lucky to be in such amazing company.

Too True Tuesday

2009-09-15T13:45:00.002-05:00

This is my first time participating in Essie's Too True Tuesdays. The topic this time is bad parenting advice.

Here is the worst parenting advice I have received so far:

"I had to laugh when I read your e-mail about P. Everything you describe just sounds so normal. All kids do those things. So don't worry about it: He'll grow out of it."

I received this advice from my sister, whom I love dearly, but who obviously had not sufficiently digested the whole essence of my extremely detailed email message describing P's RAD diagnosis and the behaviours we'd been dealing with.

Walking home

2009-09-10T13:37:00.003-05:00

School started yesterday. We let P walk home after school. We gave him a deadline by which to be in the door greeting M. P did fine. He loved it. He was extremely well regulated when I got home about 20 minutes later. Much less nervous-chattery than when we pick him up from daycare most days. He just seemed calm and content and cheerful.

We were all so pleased with the outcome, that we're trying it again today. This time, both P and B are allowed to walk home. Stipulations are that they must meet at the spot that M and I selected, that they have to stick together on the walk home, that they have to walk a certain route (in case we ever need to find them en route because we forgot they had a dentist appt or something), and that they be in the door greeting M by our designated deadline. Our goal with the deadline is that it gives them enough time to get home in a comfortably leisurely fashion (chat with friends after school a little, etc.), but doesn't allow them sufficient time to find trouble to get into.

How 'bout that?!

Essie: We have tried both boys in quite a range of activities -- physical and artistic -- for about 3 years now. It is only recently that two things are happening: (1) I am not having to explain their older-child-international-adoption status up front to the organizers/instructors as an explanation for their behaviour and my desire that it not be too tolerated; (2) we are discovering the activities that each of them seem drawn to enough to want to stick with for awhile. Genea is six? If I'm right, she's probaby about 1.5 years younger than our younger son B. At 6, we were still early in the process of finding something that got them fired up.

Holding steady

2009-09-08T11:20:00.003-05:00

We had a great long weekend, complete with lots of fun, and all of us -- most notably P -- held it together.

The boys' daycare is closed today, but their school building is open (school starts tomorrow). So M is taking P and B over to the school this morning to walk around in the calm halls, visit their classrooms, say hello to their teachers, and -- hopefully and most importantly -- find out who their classmates will be. I had to be at work today, and I am waiting for the time I know they'll be back home so I can call and find out how this outing went. We all have our fingers crossed that none of the three kids who've bullied P for about two solid years now are in his class this year. UPDATE: They aren't!!!!!

Over the weekend, I talked about the bullying with my friend who's a teacher. She said that there are clear grounds at this point to approach the parents of these kids directly if their kids give P any problems this year. (I don't know why I didn't already do that last year -- I should have.) She also gave me a couple other ideas for what exactly to say to the teachers and school administration.

Thoughts on P walking home from school instead of going to daycare. First, I agree with Essie and Annie. Essie said that if we thought he was ready for this before the running away incident, then he's probably still ready. I have a strong inclination in that direction too. Except for the corner of my gut that worries that maybe the running away is a tip-off that he wasn't ready before. It's a nagging tug-of-war in me. I want so much to give him what I see as a gift of peace and quiet, but at the same time I don't want to put him into a situation that he psychologically/emotionally cannot handle due to feeling that he doesn't deserve it or that he can use it to sneak and do other things (e.g., steal from the little neighborhood corner store across the street from the school -- which he did last year in grade 3 twice during recesses at different points in the year, most recently May; since the major drawn-out stealing spree of the summer of 2007, our knowledge is that he only stolen twice, and both times were when he was feeling particularly unhappy/sad/lonely/hurt, but once you've lived through RAD stealing on the level of the spree, you don't fully recover your trust all that quickly -- at least I don't). So, in response to Essie, my leaning is toward letting him walk home tomorrow rather than go to daycare. But M's is to let school settle into a routine first, and then consider letting him start to come on home whenever either of our work schedules permits. We agreed to play it by ear through tonight or tomorrow morning and make a last-minute decision.

In response to Annie, I wholeheartedly agree that school is stressful for P (and other kids; it is stressful for B too, but less so, as is daycare, for a variety of reasons). For P, I just feel so strongly that coming home and unwinding in his own way and on his own schedule would be so incredibly good. For ages, he has been saying three or four times a week that "coming home is the best part of my day." I really really want us to be able to move in this direction with/for him this year. He's in grade 4, and he will turn 10 yo this January. He now has quite good judgement except for when he's in a RAD mood, which these days always seems to require a trigger -- it's not where he regularly resides at all anymore, not even close. The problem is that it's often impossible to anticipate or foresee the triggers. I had a strictly hypothetical conversation with P on Saturday about coming home from school rather than going to daycare, and his physical reaction to the idea was visible -- I could see his body relax! So, yes, I completely agree with Annie. I also agree with Annie's comment that it would make sense to let P walk home every day once we start letting him do so once a week (and ascertain that it will go as fine as we hope). If it were possible, I think we would let him walk home after school whenever he chose. My work schedule doesn't permit me to get home in time to be there right after school. I take Mondays and "work from home" most of the time (unless a u meeting requires me to come in), so Mondays ought to be an option for him most weeks. The financial realities of M's writing life cause his working hours to be somewhat scattered among several places -- editing job at a publishing house, writer-in-residence in our library system for this year (yay!), home, plus various other little diddly editing jobs for literary magazines and such. Many afternoons he can be home for P's return. The writer-in-res post doesn't start until October, so M's right now charting out his schedule and trying to figure out afternoons that he can be home. Like me, he has the potential for meetings to arise that would keep him from making it home for P's arrival right after school. I should add that in our province it is illegal to leave kids under 12 at home alone, so P walking home and letting himself in when we're not there is not a legal option, not to mention the fact that we do not think he's ready for that anyway. Sooooo, if we start letting P walk home, and we find out that he handles it just fine, I expect that we will permit him to come on home after school any days that our schedules permit. I envision getting into some kind of system where we can tell him each day whether it's a home day or a daycare day, and I futher envision that something like 3 out of 5 weekdays would materialize as home days.

So that's the scoop on that.

And now, just so this blog doesn't become only about P, let me briefly celebrate B's work in taekwondo. He loves it -- that is the main thing. And he is so serious about it. He is 6 classes in (twice a week), and he seems to groove on every aspect of it. The dojang he joined is amazing with the kids. The atmosphere is one of total respect, total self-control, and super calm -- even when everyone's doing their taekwondo yells on every move! It is really hard to capture this in words, and maybe it's just true of taekwondo or martial arts in general. I have coached kids' basketball for years and years, and I have never seen instructors/coaches have such a totally quiet way with kids in sport, let alone achieved anything like this in my own coaching. We know most of the 8 kids in B's age group at the dojang, and they can be pretty rowdy kids, but at the dojang it is like they are in another world. And it is clear they are all having fun. The conditioning is challenging -- stuff like bunny hops over -- followed by logrolls under -- a thigh-high rope. And all the kids can do it! Even B! He gets a major determined look on his face and just does it. He does not get frustrated when he is struggling with a move, either, which we are so pleased to see. Walking home from class several times now, he has commented that he just needs to keep trying at things. We are so incredibly proud of him, and happy that he likes it so much. He has been in P's shadow in many ways over the years, so it is nice that we seem to have found an activity that is all his (at least for now; P is now saying he wants taekwondo too) and that he is getting all sorts of positive attention for.

Aftermath

2009-09-04T11:23:00.004-05:00

So the running away incident (see last post) happened on Monday, and now it's already Friday.

That's how my life goes. It's Monday, and then it's Monday again, with an occasional Friday thrown in.

Anyway. Life has been extraordinarily stable and fine (fun, even) since the incident. P has been fine. He has mentioned of his own volition how sorry he is numerous times. Enough so that yesterday evening I actually uttered the words "consider it forgotten." (Was I serious?!) He offered to do a lot of grunt work around the house to try to "make things right," so he's been doing an extra chore a day -- scrubbing kitchen cabinet doors, dusting baseboards, tonight it will be cleaning the basement bathroom -- and without any RAD delay, sabotage it, try to get us to hover over you nonsense. Also, last evening I was attempting to fix my bike, and he came over and assisted and even admitted that he was surprised at how much damage his collision had done. There is no imminent-RAD-onslaught energy surging through the air in our family life right now. P is not even chattery. Moreover, we really don't feel as traumatized at this post-incident interval as we did at this same stage back in December.

But there is still an edge to my feelings. As I write this post, I feel an undercurrent in myself that thinks we should not let down our guard.

What to do? If we allow P some freedom and he is not ready for it, we will feel so foolish. But I always hate restricting him if he's ready to handle things. Maybe we'll try to figure out some baby steps for over the weekend.

We hadn't told P, but we had been planning to try letting him walk home from school once a week this year instead of having to go to the daycare centre. M writes at home much of the time, and it is only 7 gentle pleasant residential blocks between our house and school, and we are positive that coming home and unwinding on his own terms would be so much more relaxing to P than going to the hubbub and structure of daycare. I just know that if we told him he could do this once a week, he would jump at the chance. Before the running incident we had been planning to give this a try on the first day of school -- Wednesday next week. He's had an incredible summer of progressing in his self-control and management of his difficult feelings and has been showing us all sorts of more mature choices, with just little things popping up like still attempting to exert control sometimes. We haven't had a single behaviour report from the daycare, and he's been a pleasure to be around all summer. Until the ups and downs of Sunday and the running away of Monday. Before this latest round of regression, I had been feeling pretty confident about the walking-home plan. But now I want to feel confident about it because I have this strong gut feeling that it would mean so much to him, but instead I feel uneasy. Maybe it's too big a pleasure for him to allow himself to partake. Maybe he'd pull some stunt. If we hadn't had the Sunday and Monday we had, I wouldn't have these doubts.

I think my gut is actually telling me that P should go to daycare after school as usual next week. See how he handles the transition back to school and think about walking home on his own for the next week. ? What do you guys think? Am I crazy for even considering giving him a new, unexplored, and probably highly prized privilege right now? It's just that the thought of keeping sending him to daycare after school, when I know it taxes him energy-wise more than being at home would, kills me. I had so loved our plan to let him try coming home -- and our confidence about it.

The package popped in a big way (see previous post)

2009-09-01T09:23:00.004-05:00

P ran away yesterday late in the day. (He's now home safe.) The whole thing feels totally like my fault. I really mishandled the situation right before he went. I am angry at myself and ashamed. And really scared.

P, B, and I cycled to the daycare yesterday morning, and then I cycled to work. After work, I cycled back and picked P and B up from daycare. We were cycling home, B then me then P, single file along a not-very-busy residential street. Approaching a stop sign, I called out just like I always do "stop sign, everybody stop." And then BANG! P slammed into the back of my bike, producing a horrible sound as I heard little parts of my bike breaking. As soon as I registered that neither of us was hurt, I started reeming him out: What on earth were you doing? Weren't you looking? The least you could do is answer me! I need you to just get yourself home right now. (We were about 5 safe blocks from our house.)

I was just so out of patience for the bike bumping after Sunday's ride with him: two solid hours of being repeatedly run into every time we stopped somewhere. He must have nudged me at least 50 times during that ride, and I managed to not engage the behaviour at all then.

But that is no excuse. My reaction was totally off my attachment parenting scripts. Totally off my Love and Logic scripts. Totally off my goals for myself. And totally not the way to handle this particular kid. I know better. Plus, what an example to have set when I talk and talk and talk at him about impulse control and appropriate expression of anger. I could kick myself. His face went from crumpled to that scary empty look in the eyes, and as he biked off, he shouted "fine, if that's what you want, I'll just run away," and I shouted after him "That is not what I want."

By the time B and I got home about 5 minutes later, P was nowhere to be found. He'd dropped his bike and lunchkit off, and dashed off after telling M that he needed "to take care of something." That was at 4:30. M spent the next several hours out on foot looking all over for P, while I stayed with B and tried for some semblance of everything's-going-to-be-all-right, when in truth we were all scared, and -- at least for M and me -- this reminded us of the month of December 2008, the last time P bolted, in -30 temps and winter darkness. But more on that in a minute. B was a nervous wreck, so scared for his brother. I tried to carry on through our normal afternoon and evening routines, while also trying to have reassuring discussions with him.

At 7:30 we got a phone call from some sort of business watch guy in another part of our city. He had P and was wondering if we could come get him. P got on the phone and declared that he would not get in the car when we got there, that he "would rather live with [his] alcoholic mother," and that he had found tons of little caves and hiding places (probably along the river paths that wind through our city -- scary) that he would also rather live in. I told him that he might want to take a few deep breaths to help him stop saying things he didn't mean and would later regret. (But what credibility do I have with him, when I did not stop and take deep breaths instead of yelling at him that afternoon?) I told him to put the watch guy back on the phone so that I could tell him to release P either to us or to the police but not by himself. P said that the guy had already told him that he couldn't let him go off by himself. So I repeated that that meant his choices were to come with us or to go with the police, and that if he chose the police then either I or the watch guy could arrange for that -- whichever he preferred. That gave him pause, and he chose to come with us. He was sobbing into the phone as he stated his choice. M went and picked him up. P did get into the car without a struggle (big change from the December incident when M had to carry him home, kicking and screaming, from the pawn shop he found him in), and he came home silent and sullen but without incident. B was still awake, so was able to go to sleep knowing P was safely home.

We stayed up reprimanding and talking with P, trying to get him to understand what a misuse of power this behaviour is in a family -- how hurtful and scary it is for the other members of our family. I don't know whether it's easier for me to think that he doesn't fully get that, or that he gets it and chooses to do it anyway. He was adamant that what I'd done had hurt him really badly. I tried to be empathetic about that, and I apologized repeatedly and told him that I was really embarrassed by the poor example I'd set. I said that I regretted how I handled the whole thing and that I wished I had it to do over. An hour later when we were tucking him into bed, he whispered those same things to me in the darkness.

I got P up early this morning to discuss my feelings some more. I explained to him that M and I had felt traumatized by his running away in December (P understands the concept of trauma), and how the fear he'd caused us to feel would not go away quickly now just as it didn't go away quickly in December. After he ran from us in December, he kept threatening it for another couple of weeks -- he would try to bolt from us right outside the daycare door and things like that. I explained to him that M and I were going to be fearful for quite awhile now. I explained to him that M and I had completely reorganized our schedules throughout December in order to always be on call and available to help each other get both P and B home safely in the event that P ran again or was refusing to leave the daycare building. P's eyes widened at this new information; he had not realized how much our lives had been affected by his choices then. After awhile, he said that he was really really sorry, and that he had not thought at that moment about how he was affecting anyone else. I said that my yelling had been selfish also, that in that moment I had not remembered to think about how my actions would affect him.

We will go back to keeping him really close to us, rein in his privileges, try to make him feel safe, and try not to feel too constantly scared. In the coming days, I will be thinking about the cycle of ups and downs that constitute the weird unpredictable dance (dance? herky jerky stumble? or is it an alternately bumpy and smooth flight?) of healing from RAD, because I KNOW he is healing. It is clear as day. I will try to remember that he is hurting inside where we can't see it. And when I feel scared, I will try to think to myself that my fears are a good reminder of how he must feel so much of the time.

--------------------------

Notes to Essie: First, I had been hoping to participate in your TTT this round; hopefully I'll join in on the next round. Second, I've seen your knitting and it's beautiful. If I am able to knit this stole, you totally can. That second row instruction turned out to be not tough at all once I knew what it was talking about, and I ended up with the right number of stitches when I finished it.

Simmering below the surface?

2009-08-31T11:00:00.004-05:00

P had a rough day yesterday. Nothing big, just a lot of low-grade irritating RADilicious nonsense mixed in with fairly normal stretches. I love when he keeps us on our toes by being completely unpredictable. For example, he and I rode our bikes on errands, with me in the lead. P kept lagging too far behind me to be safe. Since I was riding slow enough for him to keep up easily and we have worked for about 3 straight summers on "keeping our group together," I knew it wasn't that he was unable to stay with me or didn't understand that he should. Then, when I would nag him to stick closer, he'd ride so much on my heels that whenever I stopped, his bike would nudge into the back of mine. Lovely. Nothing malicious, just irritating. And it ended up being enough to make us feel that it'd be unsafe to take him along on the subsequent bike ride with M and B to an ice cream place to celebrate B's getting his taekwondo white belt. (Yay! First belt earned! He was so proud!) This is the first self-sabotaging behaviour that we've seen from P in months. So discouraging. It's been so long since we've had one of these moves that we almost decided to let it go, except for the pesky safety issue. Darn safety issues. So poor B didn't get the full-family celebration of his white belt because M and P stayed home. That makes me wonder whether we handled it properly. Is it fair for B to miss out on some of his fun (he was looking forward to the full family celebrating) because of P's RAD? But back to P. He alternated this kind of stuff with managing perfect focus on his workbook as well as his time reading out loud to us. These are two areas where -- if we're going to have a RAD-based battle of wills -- it will happen here. He'll read "the" as "them," "that," "then," "boat," "frog," "chocolate," you name it, and it will get more and more out there from the actual word. Very fun. But he didn't do any of that yesterday. (Was missing the fun the (sick) release he needed? How I hate RAD and how it makes unhappy consequences feel good to my kid.)

To his credit, P was crushed about the ice cream outing, and showed it completely appropriately once he'd taken some time to regroup. With genuine tears, he told us that he was angry and frustrated with himself that he'd self-sabotaged. He said that earlier in the day, while playing, he'd been saying to himself "I deserve fun and love and happiness" (this is one of the more common things we have him tap in the mornings but not yesterday morning), and that he'd been reminding himself not to self-sabotage. And he was mad that he had not sent his RAD away. This is almost all his own words. We are heartened by this news, because -- hopefully -- it shows that he's got an emerging awareness of when he's feeling on edge about something. Our psychologist (more on her in a future post, but for now she is someone that only M and I see, and only periodically to check in) has told us that a big step for him is to develop an awareness of how he feels prior to starting any RAD-based behaviours (such as stealing from classmates' lunchkits back in the not-too-distant past, in fact so not-too-distant that M and I live in fear that it will happen again whenever P is sad, scared, or lonely enough to trigger it -- ugh; have I mentioned that I hate RAD?)

But the biking/ice cream incident alternating with the perfect reading period was just one example. Our day yesterday when through a bunch of similar ups and downs all day long. Again, low-grade stuff as RAD goes, but there just the same. You could just feel in the air of our family that P had (has?) energy he didn't know how to process. It was just there bubbling beneath the surface. I liked Essie's analogy today to those pop-open bread tubes from the grocery store. I feel like we've got that potential going on right now. Is our pressure building to the opening pop of the package, or will P manage his anxiety so that we can put the package back in the fridge and save it for another meal?

Late in the day, P, M, and I sat down to debrief on the day. P was easily able to identify what's troubling him. This is also something new -- very often he is either unwilling to engage in this kind of brainstorming, or unable/unwilling to get to the real heart of the matter. So this was progress. And, sure enough, something big is bugging him. School starts on September 9, and we have been giving him gradual reminders of this, such as buying new backpacks and sneakers. P said he is really nervous to find out which bullies are in his classroom. He has been the brunt of some real culprits the last couple of years (yes, we've attempted to deal with this in a variety of ways, but it is a hard issue from a bunch of angles), and he is worried one or more of them will be in his classroom this year. It's actually a legitimate concern.

This morning he seemed back to his normal self, which was nice. Except I feel left on-edge. In the past, a day like yesterday signalled that something worse was definitely ahead. Only time will tell right now. You can bet that we'll be doing everything we can both to help P use his strategies to manage the anxiety so it doesn't lead to bad choices, and to help him achieve feelings of safety and peacefulness. Of course we've made these efforts in the past as well, and they have not always headed off P's version of full-on RAD.

In knitting news, on Saturday I splurged and bought moss-green mohair to knit this stole. (I haven't been letting myself buy new wool for about a year, because my stash was getting out of control.) Isn't it beautiful? It will be for my SIL's birthday in late October. It is a four-row repeating pattern. But I only got the first row done last night before I ran into problems! For the life of me, I couldn't figure out row 2 (which is also row 4). Brought it into work this morning and used my phone a friend lifeline, and after several hours fiddling with her own knitting at work across town (I think she also did some work mixed in with the experimental knitting), she phoned back with an explanation. I have now done row 2 sitting here at my desk, but am too chicken to count the stitches to make sure they're right.

The boys' background

2009-08-27T11:57:00.002-05:00

In my inaugural post, I sort of promised some background on our boys P and B. Now as I start to type this, I am keenly aware of the number of times I've seen others blog something to the effect of their kids' backgrounds being their own stories to share. Those statements suddenly carry way bigger weight in my mind. I do think our sons' stories are theirs to share, or not, depending on what they decide as they grow older. At the same time, I want to provide some context for the kinds of needs and issues we see in P and, to a way lesser extent, B. So I will try to provide some details that aren't too terribly private but which give a sufficient degree of detail to understand future posts about our parenting decisions and what we recognize as attachment, progress, and healing.

P & B are biological brothers, 21 months apart in age. We adopted them from western Ukraine (Ternopil Oblast) in February/March 2005. [Note: Please, if you encounter any other families who adopted similarly aged children from Ternopil between 2003 and 2005, connect me with them for a possible photo exchange!!] By the time we met them in early February, they had been in the orphanage system for just over 2 years. They entered the same baby house in January 2003, right after P turned 3 yo, and B turned 15 months old. At entry, they were separated, being placed with their respective-aged "groupa's," so B went with the 1-year olds, and P went with the 3-year olds. Our understanding is that, from then on, they only saw each other -- at most -- 2 or 3 times a year when the orphanage gathered as a whole for major celebrations such as Easter. When P was 4, he aged out of the baby house, and at age 4.5 yo was transferred to a residential school for older kids about 150 km away. For the 8 months from then until we re-united them, there was no potential for P and B to see each other at all. We were told that throughout P and B's time in the orphanage system, no one ever came to visit either of them.
Despite having done a birth family search in 2007/08, we know very little about their life prior to entering the orphanage system. The search linked us with part of their maternal birth family, but not with either of their birth parents. Birth family accounts that P&B share the same birth father but that he was never in the picture match the "official system's" version of the same information. However, he was not present at either of their births, so there is no actual substantiation that they are full biological siblings. (It's not at all important to M and me, but we see it as something P and B would want to know.) Otherwise, there are inconsistencies between the official story of our boys and the birth family's version. The official story was that P and B's birth mother left them with a boyfriend (not their birth father, who is thought by all concerned to be deceased), and that after a month the boyfriend concluded she wasn't going to return so he took them to social services. The family's story is that they were in the care of their maternal aunt for some length of time, and she found herself unable to care adequately for them and her own young children so she took them to social services. Our follow-up questions concerning specific timelines related to things such as how many times their primary caregiver changed prior to their orphanage entry have so far gone unanswered. The area the birth family lives in is very rural, poor, and limited in its access to education and technology. Another inconsistency between the official govt story and the birth family's account is that the govt system told us that P and B have an older half-brother (different birth father), whereas the birth family provided us with the names of three older half-siblings. So at this point, we are somewhat uncertain about many of the exact details of P and B's life before joining our family.

What we do know is that they experienced multiple changes in their caregiving situation. This is particularly true for P, who may have been transferred between primary caregivers many times prior to even arriving in the baby house, at which point he experienced a separation from his brother that he remembers vividly and then a transfer to a different orphanage altogether (which he also remembers vividly). They both experienced numerous caregivers within their orphanage groups throughout the time they spent institutionalized.

Something we suspect is that the birth family's socioeconomic status declined from poor to very poor somewhere between the time when P was born and the time when B was born. We suspect this for two reasons. First, at the time they entered the baby house, P's physical development was quite close to that appropriate to his age. In contrast, B was 15 months old yet couldn't sit up on his own. Second, P's adult teeth are coming in large and healthy -- normal. B's, on the other hand, are coming in discoloured, tiny, and jaggedy/misshapen. Even his 6-yo molars, which are baby teeth, came in with such extremely thin enamel that they started rotting nearly immediately. The numerous dentists we have consulted all suspect prenatal malnutrition.

Something else we suspect is that P at some point experienced physical abuse. This is simply a suspicion we have based on how he has reacted over time to various motions we and others have made in his presence. I don't really know how to describe my gut instincts on this, but just watching his reactions to certain things sets off alarm bells in me about possible physical abuse in his past. When asked, though, he only remembers that kids in the residential school were rough with him.

So that is what we know about our sons' backgrounds. Most of the time it feels like more unknowns than knowns. And this is something that P has really struggled with. Starting shortly after he turned 8, he really started to ask a lot of hard questions about why he was in the orphanage and what his birth parents look like. And even what he looked like at ages younger than the 5-year old we met him as. It pains me terribly to be so unable to provide him with answers, and -- basically -- to see him experience such grief about the unknowns. He is to a stage in his healing now where he experiences this as profound grief rather than anger, and my heart just aches for him. It is almost worse to watch him express the sadness than it was to have to deal with it manifesting as rages, even though I know that his ability to express the underlying sadness is a hugely healthy development. It's just that his sadness seems so huge. I do not feel the least bit threatened by his desire to know about his roots, and I do not feel his grief as any type of rejection of us -- he just seems so sad sometimes, and I do not know what to do about this sadness. So far, B has not expressed any desire to know more about his birth family or the details of his early life, but he does tune right in when the subject comes up. But sometimes it seems like he hears the information as a story of some other kid rather than himself, and I wonder whether he's got some form of dissociation going on. (But he seems so solidly and typically attached to us, has never raged, does not experience any sleep disruptions or exhibit a single symptom of attachment disorder...)

I'll try to remember to post next about the RAD behaviours that we've struggled most with in our family.

Oh my gosh!

2009-08-24T11:41:00.005-05:00

Okay, this will be a completely arbitrary post because my heart is pounding a mile a minute so I can't keep my thoughts straight. Hopefully these will all sound like "oh my gosh"es.

First things first: I got my first comments. !!!!!!!!!!! That is why my heart is pounding. Now I understand why the bloggers I have been following for this past year+ always express excitement when they get comments or followers. Quite the rush to feel that someone out there is listening and "gets it." Thank you to Brie and A; I'll always remember you as my first commenters!
P had a swim lesson this morning, and here's what happened. It was pouring something awful as we ran from the parking lot to the building. Another mom and her two little munchkins were also just arriving. Both munchkins were coated head-to-toe in their rain pants, slickers, ponchos, and rain boots (P and I were even laughing to each other that they were going to swim lessons but trying so hard to keep dry), and had the cutest little matching umbrellas that blew right out of their hands and across the parking lot. The mom stood there in her soaking wet jeans and watched those beautiful umbrellas zipping away. The munchkins were too little for her to leave them and run after the umbrellas. P sprinted after the umbrellas. He did everything right. He did not go without asking me first. He did not do it as a gratuitous gesture gratuitously seeking gratuitous attention from random strangers. He did not run aimlessly across the parking lot failing to remember that it was a parking lot and he could get killed/maimed/whatever. He did not laugh maniacally and attract all kinds of inappropriate attention to himself. He did not fiddle with the mechanism on the umbrellas and break them while bringing them back once he'd gotten them. He did not engage in conversation with the other mother as if they were long lost friends once he returned to us. Once we reached the locker room area, he did say quietly to me "I am a kind and thoughtful person." And he did NOT then go and self-sabotage his swim lesson, but rather participated with his best effort and perfectly satisfactory listening skills. Is this really my kid?
B started taekwondo this past Saturday. He's been begging for a year, but a year ago he was transitioning from half-day kindergarten to full-day grade 1, and the thought of adding in a twice-a-week organized activity on top of his piano lessons just seemed like too much. Now he's in heaven. It seemed at first to be all about the uniform, but I must say that he really did work hard in the class and he seems to be genuinely hooked. Anyway. The uniform is white, and also gigantic. The instructor told us we might want to shrink it down by washing and drying it as hot as possible. When we got home, after he modelled the uniform for M and P, I asked him to go put the uniform on the pile of whites in front of the washing machine. About half an hour later, I went down to the basement. From around the corner I could already hear the washer going. My mind was immediately straining to think how long it must have been running. It has a recent history of staying on a given cycle indefinitely. We thought we'd gotten it fixed, but it's apparently persnickety. So I'm shouting to M about how I think the washer's been running for 2 days, when B pipes up that he'd just started it. What? "You asked me to do the load that was on the floor." "Did you put soap in?" "Yup, just like you taught me." Well then. We have been walking both kids through the steps of doing laundry with the idea that they'd take over their own laundry at age 10. Apparently we've been under-ambitious in this department.

Now, to depart from my title theme, just to show that my kids are not all fun-and-games, here are some reality checks.

B did not get to go to his swim lesson this morning because of the little performance he put on for us for pretty much the entire second half of yesterday. Surly, defiant, disrespectful, you name it. He was one not-fun kid. We are taking this fall to implement Love and Logic with him as completely as possible, with the hopes of being fully transitioned to it by the start of 2010. So this morning, he woke up and found the outfit he'd brought downstairs to put on after his swim lesson back upstairs in his room. He came down with the most puzzled look on his face. "I brought this downstairs for you yesterday." "Yes, and you may now put it on." "But I have swim lessons." "Oh dear, your choices yesterday have us worried that you may not be ready to behave for your swim teacher this morning, so you can go to daycare where the staff are trained to handle all sorts of choices." The shocked look on his face was enough to make me practice the Love and Logic skill of saying very little where I usually would go on a nice little lecture tirade to drive the point home again and again.
After only choosing weak sitting (the alternative to strong sitting) about one time since February, B chose weak sitting on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Ugh. To his credit, he launched into strong sitting this morning by saying he was going to change things up. And he did, although I returned him to his original body position facing the wall, when for weeks he's been allowed to face us parents and make steady eye contact. He now wants that facing-us position back.
P is showing increasing sleeplessness in the nights lately. He's obviously got some sort of anxiety that's escalating. So far I can't get him to articulate it, although he is willing to say out loud that he's sleeping poorly and that he knows something is troubling him. Do you suppose it could be that school starts in two weeks, and he's scared of the changes and separations that may bring?
P managed to forget to pack underpants for after his swim lesson. M and I got a good Love and Logic chuckle about that last night when doing the final pack-up for this morning. P's look when he realized it after showering was pretty priceless. Lucky for him, I had forgotten to pack his after-swim snack, so we swung by the house to get it, and he thought of the idea of running in for some underpants (which I allowed). Unluckily for him, he did not remember his lunchkit this morning as we were leaving or as he was collecting his underpants, so he will be eating an "emergency lunch" at daycare today. He was fairly disgruntled when we reached daycare and he realized this. I could see that without even telling him, he realized that the daycare would bill us for the lunch and we will bill him. I hate leaving him with that kind of mood hanging in the air, and now I am going through my day trying not to be sidetracked about whether he's going to have a RAD day.

(Contrary to what you may be thinking, I am not under contract with Love and Logic.)

Some parting photos of earlier this summer. I will try to focus on these and all my oh my goshes rather than on whether my boy is self-sabotaging this very moment.

Inaugural post

2009-08-18T11:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this will be my blog. I can't believe I just wrote that, but I've been freeloading in the adoption and RAD blogging communities for over a year now and figure I owe something back. I'm excited to find out whether anyone will make their way over here. If you do, please leave me a comment so I know you were here. (Or is there a way I can tell even if you don't leave a comment?)

I have deliberately kept my life pretty technologically simple all this time, so I may be pretty inept at this blogging thing. I'm also busy between the full-time work thing and the lots-of-time domestic front, so I don't know yet how often I'll blog. I also don't know whether/when I'll take this thing private. I am not sure how comfortable I would be having people who know me IRL read this.

Some basic background on me and my family: I was born in 1965 in the States, moved to my life in Canada in 1994 for my job, and met and married my husband M here. We met playing our favourite sport, basketball, though I no longer play due to my knees being about 25 years older than the rest of me. M has a son J from a previous relationship. I have been part-time stepparenting J since he was 12. It has been an up-and-down thing. He is now 22, plays the drums in several local bands, and attends university somewhat sporadically. After a stint with unexplained infertility, M and I decided to pursue international adoption. We adopted our two sons P and B (yes, M's three boys are PB&J!) from Ukraine in early 2005, when they were 5.25 and 3.5 years old. They are biological brothers, 21 months apart in age. I'll try to make more details about them and our adoption the topic of a subsequent post. For now, a key feature is that P is a healing RADish, having been diagnosed in August 2007 after a longstanding cocktail of behaviours that should have tipped us off.

While RAD has been the bane of my existence in many ways, it has also been something that -- at my good moments -- has made me into a much better person. It has required a lot of me. I do not rise to that higher level as often as I would like, and our marriage has faced challenges, and I often worry that we're shortchanging B in the process of dealing with RAD. But always in the background I think maybe I needed to have a RADish to help me become more patient, more compassionate, more emotionally forthright. (Not that any of my needs make it okay that P had to endure all his hurts in order for me to take on traits I should have been able to develop on my own, but hopefully you get my drift that I have gradually come to see RAD as a blessing in disguise.) Just wish I could live up to those ideals consistently instead of succumbing to the annoyance so often.

Here's a picture if I can figure out how to put one in:

(That was easier than I thought it would be.) This picture was taken at Christmas 2008, with me, M, and J across the back, and P and B in the front.

This is it for now. Again, let me know if you stop by. And, as I said, I'll try to post something once in awhile to make visiting worth your while. Maybe I'll start jotting out a list of topic ideas that will keep me supplied with blog content. Feel free to ask questions too, as that will save my lazy brain the work of coming up with ideas on my own!

To close, I'll thank all of you who have been so influential over my navigation of my own adoption and parenting journeys thus far. You are a fantastic set of women, and I wish I could meet you all in person!