Good Deal

Back to a serious post… if anything that goes on here can be considered serious.   We go from OMGWTF? to HAHA-AWESOME! in less time than it takes to butter a piece of toast.

The kids are starting to get a lot of our sense of humor (finally) and we haven’t even started indoctrinating them with Monty Python and Mel Brooks movies.  They have seen Down Periscope multiple times, so that helps.  It’s pretty awesome to see them crack cynical, sarcastic filled jokes and it’s even better to see them understanding and using puns.  LJ is a LOT like me – he says “puns work because of a misused homophone.”  Absolutely child.  Absolutely.

Me and LJ – we have an odd sort of relationship.  It’s been hard for me from the beginning with him.  There was a time where we almost refused placement with him – it was that bad.  See, I’m an alpha female.  I have been since the moment I was born and everyone in my family will tell you that.  LJ, when he first came to us, was under the impression that a woman’s job was to cook and take care of the younger babies.  This woman who will never exist was supposed to see a 7 year old boy as having more status in the household than her.  (I know I’ve written before about how the household is like a dog pack.)  Well… as you can tell, this attitude didn’t work.

So, over the 2 years we’ve known him and he’s come to live with  us and become our son, we’ve been working on this.  At times I’m overbearing and at times, he is.  For the most part, he’s figured out that he doesn’t get to tell A&E what to do and I try and give him responsibility over himself.  (I do get to overrule stupid things like wearing shorts to school when it’s 50 degrees outside.)

We meet at loving books.  He loves to read and so do I.  We’d rather read in our bed than talk to anyone.  The problem is that he’s not real sure where the lines between fiction and reality are.  He told some teachers at the school earlier this week that a dragon had bitten him on the neck.  Of course, no one believed him, but the counselor called home to tell me what was going on.  He’s had some pretty big stuff come up in the past few weeks so she knew this may be something we need to discuss.

He and I sat in the car and talked while in the carpool lane to pick up his sister.  We talked and talked and talked.  He didn’t understand that the words he says to people cause reactions – no matter what you say, you’re going to get a reaction.  We talked about how if people knew he just made stuff up all the time that no one would listen to him if something was actually wrong.  We talked about believable stories – dragon bit you?  Obviously not true.  (though, it’s probably better to make up a story that can’t possibly be true than say something equally untrue but believable.)

We talked about appropriate things to share with people (conditional boundaries) and what would happen if those boundaries weren’t respected.  We talked about kids in the foster care system (when we were picking up our AA check at DFCS, he saw some classmates in the waiting room) and the different things that could cause a child to need care.

We spent a lot of time talking about severity and differences – not all kids go through the same thing he did.  For some kids, they had an easier time of it.  For some, they had a time that was much worse than his.  We talked about how everyone, everywhere has something in their past that hurts and how we deal with it determines the kind of person we are.

After all that – we made a deal.

Until November 15th, he is not allowed to either make up fantasy stories or read fiction novels.  He still has to read every night – but he gets true stories.   He’s involved in a biography of Cal Ripken Jr. right now.  I’ll probably go to Goodwill today or tomorrow to pick up more kiddo friendly non-fiction books.  If not that, then we’ll visit the local library.

Things have been moderately better since then.  He’s been meeting my eye and making jokes with me.  He’s been helpful and respectful to the little bits.  Last night, we even put everyone to bed with the sound of laughter even though it was an emotionally difficult day for everyone.  He woke up this morning and told me – amazed – “I didn’t have any nightmares last night, Mommy!”  Awesome.  Pure awesome.

This morning we talked about how to say “its not your business” to people who made them uncomfortable with questions.  We talked about whose business it is – the family’s and the doctors.

After going through foster care and adoption, this is something all of us need to rebuild.  We all need to work on appropriate levels of privacy for ourselves and each other.  We’ve all just gone through so many years of having to report every little thing by phone and in writing.  There were always people in and out of our house – I couldn’t let the laundry go or not load the dishwasher because at ANY moment, someone could pull up and get to judge our worthiness.  This is partly why I’m so open on the internet – it would be hard to rape our privacy and background any more than what it took to become a foster/adopt parent.

Now, we’re having to work on telling people it’s not their business.  Truth is, most people aren’t looking to help – they’re looking for gossip.  Shaun and I are also having to relearn to trust our own judgment.  We’re both grown but we’re too used to having every move picked apart.   That causes stress and anxiety for all of us – we can’t just relax and have normal everyday fights.  Everything is a possible catastrophe.  Everything is caused by this event or that event, and everyone has a different opinion of what caused what.

I mean, I just want my child to feel free enough to scream “I hate you – you’re the meanest mom EVER.”  Right now, we’re still all worried about what we’re saying and trying to use proper communication skills.  In foster care, if they said “I hate her – she’s so mean” to a case worker it wouldn’t be about whether I confiscated the Nintendo DS – it would be “are you feeding them properly?  Whats your discipline policy?  We need to have a face to face meeting about this placement.  I need to talk to my supervisor.”   Basically, if you get mad and immature, your whole life could be turned upside down  (and immature is probably 30% of my personality.)

I want to be able to say “I don’t even want to see you right now” without it meaning “she may not love me enough to keep me.”  No, I just need some time not seeing YOU.  I’ll get to where I want to see YOU again but first I need 5 minutes to look at something else.  Every word that I say has to be examined from how they’ll receive it and how it will sound if they repeat it or how it will sound when I tell the therapist about it (because I can’t lie worth a shit and they can tell when something is going on.)  Then the kids see that I’m uncertain and they start thinking that maybe I don’t know what I’m doing and maybe they don’t have to listen to me.   Or something.

For now, it’s just repeating “I’m your mom.  I was your mom yesterday and I’ll be your mom tomorrow.  I’ll be your mom next year and the year after that.  I’ll be your mom when you get old and have babies.  I’ll be your mom no matter what.”   If we say it enough, maybe we’ll all start to believe its not fiction or fantasy.

your hard work is about to pay off

I’m consolidating all the little “do this” lists that are on my workstation, and I just found a fortune from a fortune cookie:

your hard work is about to pay off

God, I hope so.  I’m so damn tired.  I’ve been trying to stay upbeat and focus on the blessings instead of the distance we still have to go, but it’s so fucking HARD.

We’ve had some major breakthroughs these past couple of weeks with regards to LJ’s therapy.  He’s finally starting to talk about what happened to him at the group home he was in.  He’s been doing therapy two or three times a week since there was a BIG ISSUE and he finally started to talk about it while we were dealing with the BIG ISSUE.

It’s really too much to know… I couldn’t imagine living with that secret inside me, thinking that terrible things would happen if I told.  Now that I know part of the “secret” its hard to see it in a non-emotional way.  I’ve counseled and mentored sexually abused children for what seems like forever and this is by no means the worst I’ve heard.  It’s a fairly common story.

It is really just hitting me hard.  This is MY kid.  MINE.  I could decimate every person or circumstance that enabled this to happen.  I could sit down and cry for a week.  Neither Shaun nor I are able to sleep without nightmares and we’re always listening through the baby monitor because he’s been having nightmares.

Thank God for our therapy group, though.  This center has been the absolute best place.  They deal with foster and adopted kids, and they know the system.  They also haven’t lost their ideals.  This isn’t the first time they’ve had to report to the state about something that’s come up in therapy and mostly it goes without ever being checked out, but this time they flipped shit.  The proprietors involved with running the home didn’t seem to care one way or another what was going on.  They actually said that LJ was “a damaged, retarded kid” and was probably lying. (This is from the home that had him classified as autistic and mentally retarded.  He’s not autistic and his IQ is in the 120s.)

When this asshole said that to the lady who runs our local center, she… well… the Bible says “vengeance be mine, saith the Lord” but God sometimes subcontracts.  I would not willingly set foot in her path while she’s pissed off – and I’m one of those people who would stare down a hurricane.  So, now the COO of the national treatment center is making a report to the group that runs the DHR – which is over DFCS.

(Yes, this is the same home that called DFCS on me because of a facebook status where one of my friends joked that I was a dominatrix.  Didn’t you know that I’m a harlot because I have short hair, wear makeup, and have tattoos?  Well, I am, and that means any sort of deviance from the straight and narrow means I’m a BLASPHEMER!!!! AND OMG, I HAVE KNEE HIGH BLACK BOOTS!!!  I’m obviously a tool for the Devil himself and my facebook updates should never go unnoticed.)

So, back to LJ.  He seems happy during the day – almost carefree.  He’s a very somber kid so this is really a shock.  He has gone back to soiling his drawers and hiding them, throwing tantrums, and forgetting personal space b0undaries.  It’s expected… it’s not acceptable behavior, but it’s expected.

We’ve been talking a lot about what to do when you have scary memories that seem real.  (PTSD flashbacks, for us grown folks.)  We talk about how to get to a safe place physically where you can’t hurt yourself or other people, and then find someone who you can tell about it.  I told him the important thing is to talk.  It doesn’t matter who – and we’re not going to spread it around like “oooh, guess what LJ remembers!”  He just needs to get it out before he does something stupid.

We also have been talking a lot about other people having scary memories that seem real.  A (chickpea) has flashbacks during October and last year scared the living hell out of LJ, so this year we’re talking about how its normal for people who remember scary things to have this happen and also what to do if a flashback does happen.

I’ve had to tamp down most of the talk about Halloween.  LJ is so excited about it, but because he was separated from chickpea for so long he doesn’t realize what Halloween means to her.  Her little brain learned the routine: dress up for Halloween, get candy, eat dinner with family, then get sent to live with a new mommy.  She LOVES pumpkins and getting dressed up and the pretty colored leaves, but she gets so amped up thinking that she’s about to have to leave again.  She’ll get in trouble and scream “I’m bad so I have to go to a new house!”  I told her that I’m much worse than she is and I’m not in a new house yet.  If she doubts it, she can ask Grandmommy and Grandpa exactly how bad I was.  So, we’ve been talking a lot about how adoption means she’s my kid forever and how hard we worked to get her and that no one was taking her without a fight.  A very messy, nasty fight.

It seems like we’ve talked about good touch/bad touch 500 million times and its still an issue.  We’ve talked about “games” that predators play to make a kid think its ok to touch each other, we’ve talked about safety plans, we’ve talked about the rules that we have to have while they’re having scary memories… we’ve talked about secrets and about personal space and being respectful.

We’ve talked our little throats hoarse and still, we have to keep going “omg, wtf” then keep on saying it.  One of these times it will sink in and hopefully be remembered.

And E… poor little guy.  He’s taking a lot of crap from LJ and chickpea during this and he’s getting so mad.  He’s 4, but the size of most 7 year olds.  He doesn’t know how to process all this drama right now, so he’s acting out and destroying things.  He’s yelling and kicking and throwing tantrums.  He’s stealing food and lying.  Gah… It’s hard to even work with a 60 lb preschooler, much less try and peel him off the ceiling.

Next on my list is to write a post on my post-op appt with my OBGYN.  I won’t put it here because it’s absolutely not male friendly.

IEPs, EKGs, pre-ops and pre-school

I finally figured out how to use RSS feeds and it’s great stuff!  My brain is so off right now. Thank God for Google making everything easier.

The pre-op appt with my primary care doctor went fine yesterday.  My pulse was high (105) which is normal for me.  My BP was so low the machine couldn’t read it, which is normal for me.  I weighed in at 129 lbs which is NOT NORMAL for me.  That’s about 10 lbs heavier than normal.  My EKG was fine and just showed the high pulse – which was normal for me.  So, the only thing that was worrisome is my weight and that’s probably from the endo and the fibroma that the ultrasound tech inflamed.  Dr. H said she’d send all her recommendations to the surgeon and said that I may need to spend some extra time on IV antibiotics just so we don’t have to worry about endocarditis.   My mom had endocarditis last year and that was SCARY.

This morning I walked out of the bedroom – in freaking huge amounts of pain – in search of coffee before the kids got up.  All the kids were up though – and both boys immediately said “Alyssa is stealing food and it’s all under the couch.”  She had eaten 3 peanut and granola bars, a box of raisins, and hidden several other granola bars and snacks under the couch.  She not only had the evidence all over her and caked in her teeth, but told me that she did not do it – that it was Ethan who did it all.  LJ said “that’s a lie.  She was trying to force Ethan to eat some raisins.”  I checked E out and he had minty fresh toothpaste breath and so did LJ.  Grrrrr….

None of us got much sleep last night due to the storms and power outages so everyone was cranky this morning.  E just got sent back to bed for throwing the mother of all tantrums, of all things, so I’m thinking I’m going to take a nap too.  It was so adorable last night.  I walked in with the flashlight to check on the babies and Alyssa had shot straight up out of bed.  She says in her little pumpkin voice “Mommy, I’m scared of lightning.”  She came out to the couch and laid down in between me and Shaun and went right to sleep.  She had her head on Daddy’s lap and her feet snuggled up to Mommy and apparently that’s all it takes to make lightning irrelevant.  I held the flashlight in between my knees and kept crocheting.  I finished another washcloth and have been working on some dish towels to match.  When the power came back on, we were able to get A back to bed and I was able to go to bed too.

So, this morning I had to go meet with the school because they were offering food as rewards in her classroom and had basically told me I couldn’t regulate what she ate there.  I was going to let it go yesterday, but she’s not acting with her brain right now.  This is pure instinct.  I spoke with the school vice principal and it went so well.  Not only can I regulate her diet, I can VERY specifically regulate it.  We have an IEP (individual education plan) set up for Monday so that the school psychologist, the counselor, the principal and vice principal and her teachers all agree – in writing – to meet certain goals.  I also let the vp know that I didn’t think the teachers and lunch room manager had taken me seriously when I talked to them last week.  She HAS to be watched at all times.  We are under a 24/7 safety plan with her because she self-harms.  If she can’t stuff her face, she pulls out hair and cuts herself.  She lies like she breathes and people fall all over themselves to give her things.

They see an adorable little 5 year old.  They don’t see how scared she is that she’s going to be rejected, hurt, beaten, sexually abused, and starved.  They don’t see that she’s had to build up these defenses just to survive and that we’re working every single day to build trust and reassurance that she’s safe.  So, the vice principal understood and I told her that I have all the documentation they need to keep the school covered to follow what I’m asking for.  That we need to make sure that she knows that school isn’t a different “life” than home – that school and home co-exist and the rules don’t change.  They need to make sure that every word and action she sees (she is hyper-vigilant about observing people) reinforces the therapy plan that’s in place.  Right now, they’re thinking we’re way too strict.  Most people do.    They don’t realize the safety the kids get from knowing the steadfast rules and routines.  I have letters from therapists and psychologists, letters from doctors from Emory, years of reports and information, safety plans… we’re trained to be strict because that’s what the kids need.

We weren’t able to get E into a public pre-K (that I approved of) this year so he’s on a waiting list at the same school Alyssa is going to.  Until then, I’m the pre-k teacher!  It’s a good thing I bought the curriculum last year when A was having so many troubles in pre-K that we had to take her out.  He’s so angry that he’s not going to school this year so it may be hit and miss with getting him to sit down for a structured “class time. “  I have yet to be successful at it but I’ll keep trying.  He already knows all the stuff anyways, he just plays dumb to see if people are paying attention.

Oh well, in 8 days, it will be Mom’s problem to play pre-K teacher and taxi driver.  She raised me and my siblings successfully so she’ll fit right in to the role.  She told me last time she watched the kids “they don’t listen very well.”  That’s crazily funny because they listen 100x better than normal kids – even better than my nephew who lives in her house.  It’s just they aren’t military brats like we were.  From the moment of birth, we knew you not only accepted the routine and chain of command, but thought it was the most natural thing on earth.

It will be interesting and fun to watch.  I’ll have to charge up the video camera and see how she handles it.  She still thinks I’m nuts for adopting three kids – but then again, if you mention her 3 kids, she gets this terrified look on her face and says “I never planned that.”   It’s great fun because she’s so incredibly good at being a mom – she just has no patience for being challenged as alpha female and she’s probably the most stubborn woman on the planet.  I was informed (yes, informed) yesterday that I was going to bring the kids to church after Amber’s birthday party because they were having a puppet show.  I asked if it was going to be one of those creepy “sin and you go to HELL” puppet shows and she said she didn’t know, she just wanted her grandbabies there.  She wants to show them off but she’s too stubborn to admit that she’s super-proud of them.  It’s so damn cute!

An idea and advice for special needs moms

If you read my blog often, you probably know that my daughter who is 5 has chronic PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder.)  The chronic part means that she’ll probably always have anxieties related to certain situations.

One of the most disconcerting parts of PTSD is the anniversary effect.  For foster parents – this means out of the blue, life goes flipping crazy!  It took us about a week to realize that all of Alyssa’s major changes in life had happened right around Halloween.   She had been sketchy and nervous for about a week before a caseworker visit so we mentioned to the cw that she had separation anxiety and that she needed to tread softly.  Historically, caseworker visits had not gone well with the children.  The kids would get so scared, they’d freeze like a deer in headlights and wet their pants where they stood.  It took days of hugging and rocking and reassuring before things went back to normal. Alyssa has a defense mechanism of telling people what they want to hear when she gets scared.  She wants them to go away – and telling them what they’re asking gets them to go.

So, the caseworker came and it went like normal for those visits.  My sister was in the hospital, so I was heading out the door and Shaun was going to put the kids in bed.  Alyssa did not sleep that night or the next three.  She regressed all the way back to infant stage and blocked out the entire world.  She would not leave my side, even to go to the bathroom and when I turned my back, she grabbed my razor and tried to cut herself.  She would only play with some baby toys I kept for my nephew when he visited.  This was not normal anxiety – this was scary.  (Later we realized this had happened with her last foster parent as well before she moved in with us – on exactly the same date.  She had pulled large patches of hair out and had sores all over her head when she came to us.)

We called everywhere we could think of but on a weekend with a 4 year old child, there aren’t too many resources available.  There’s a crazy long waiting list for any children’s hospital equipped to deal with mental health issues.  We were told just to provide 24/7 supervision and to do what we could.

I did what I do – I got online and signed into a foster parent support group I was a member of.  One of the ladies who I love totally to death suggested a blanket that was satiny on one side and fleece on the other.  She said it was what calmed her children when nothing else would.

Children are incredibly tactile.  They will sit there and rub something in between their fingers for hours.  They love sand, water, hair, everything they can get their little fingers and cheeks on.

I gave Shaun a kiss, and headed out to the mall.  I got this blanket, a white noise machine that played jungle animals across the ceiling along with a lullaby, some pacifiers, and some aromatherapy stuff.

It’s easy to find stuff to sooth babies.  It’s not so easy to find a blanket that is fleece on one side and satiny on the other.  I got it home, sprayed it with the aromatherapy stuff (chamomile and vanilla,) wrapped her up in it and sat in the rocking chair.

Thank God, the internet, and foster parent support group – she got two hours of sleep.  That blanket went with us EVERYWHERE for weeks.  She rubbed it, she sucked on it, she wrapped baby dolls in it, she wore it like a cape.  It still holds special honor in her bed by laying next to a fleece covered body pillow.

So, etsy family, I need you guys to make that more available!  Moms who need something to help with your child – try one of those blankets.  My friend said her children with PDD-NOS, autism, separation anxiety, drug addictions, and developmental delays all loved it.  It’s helped Alyssa so much that I’m going to be in the market for one for each boy come Christmas time.

The only thing that could make it better was if it were lightly weighted.  Weighted blankets help people with autism spectrum and anxiety disorders sleep better.  (Really, read the article linked.)  It’s like an all night hug.  I sleep better with tons of blankets – I have OCD which is an anxiety disorder – and it’s easier for me to sleep if I feel secure.  Speaking of that… etsy folks – anyone want to make a grown up blankie? 

Caution: busy day ahead

I can’t believe we’re less than 3 weeks away from school starting.  May and June were crazy months and thank goodness we’ve been able to have a quiet July.  My goal in July was to bore the crap out of the kids so that they’d be excited to go back to school.  I don’t think it’s worked yet… they seem happy to sleep in until 9 am, hang out in pj’s, and watch PBS.

I found out yesterday that the charter school Alyssa will be going to did get their pre-K charter.  I called up and they had lost Ethan’s paperwork (not surprising since his name dramatically changed with the adoption) but they did go ahead and put him on the waiting list.  It would be the best possible thing for him to be able to go to pre-K there.  Otherwise, I’m going to homeschool him during pre-K.  He’s one of those kids that does not do well in a normal school environment.  He’s not quite ADHD like LJ is but if there are other kids around who are not focused, then he won’t settle.  His brain works a lot like mine – he absorbs info, files it away as irrelevant at the moment, gets bored, then creates trouble.  So, I’ll file his paperwork with them today so that hopefully he’ll get in soon.

For Alyssa to get admission, I had to register her under her old name during the last school year.  There are only a certain number of spots available and it’s further broken down by the child’s primary language.  It’s a dual-immersion English/Spanish school and they also teach Mandarin Chinese.  Hopefully it will challenge her enough to keep her out of trouble.  Pre-K for her was like a lesson in futility.  She already knew EVERYTHING they were teaching the other kids (she’s on a 1st grade level) and decided that meant everyone else was stupid and she was therefore in charge.  With some kids, they do that and get this air of bravado and adults think “he’s going through that arrogant stage.”  With her, she really does believe that we’re all here to serve her and suggesting otherwise  does not compute.  Of course, she is smart and beautiful which means people DO line up to give her things.  She had talked her teachers into giving her 3 lunches a day, THREE!, letting her roll around in the dirt during recess, taunting other children, and basically acting like we will not let her act at home.  It’s all ok with them because she’s cute and smart and gives you those big green puppy dog eyes.  All this does is reinforce the thought that she’s a superior being stuck in a smaller body.  Or something.

There’s a reason my kids act like civilized human beings.  I don’t fall for the BS and I have no fear of saying no.  I don’t use fear or intimidation to keep them in line, they just know the expectations and they know I’m not going to back off of them.  This does mean we talk a lot about the meaning of words like upset, disappointed, unhappy, discussion, responsibility, and who is in charge.  We can actually eat a meal in a sit-down restaurant with the kids.

LJ will be going to the school across the street from us.  He didn’t get accepted into the charter school, and that’s probably for the best.  He didn’t walk or talk until he was 5 and he’s still behind in language and social skills.  Because he was non-verbal, his test scores showed that he was mentally retarded and he was held back a grade and stuck in special ed.  There’s nothing wrong with that because he did need to learn the basics but he has made so many strides since then that you’d never guess he wasn’t always “normal.”  He was in a regular class last year and recieved speech therapy and social skills therapy several times a week.  This year, he’ll still receive services, but they’ll be integrated into the class so he doesn’t get singled out or pulled away from class.

I really hope he gets a young, active teacher this year.  Last year we had all sorts of trouble with his teacher.  He needs someone interactive – not someone who hovers and scowls.  Doing that puts him on defense and he retreats into his fantasy world.  Then everyone who wants to play ball during recess is stealing his stuff and every time someone bumps into him in line means they’re deliberately trying to knock him down and get him into trouble.  This causes meltdowns and tantrums.  Then he’s scared to go back to class because he knows that’s not a “good reaction” so he does stuff to get sent out of class.  Things like picking his nose until it bled so he could go to the nurse’s.  Making himself throw up.  Stomping on another kid’s foot.

When we figured out what was happening, we started playing games at home during homework.  When learning was a happy thing and he felt safe doing it he immediately started getting better.  He was making 30’s and 40’s before we started and after he was getting 90’s and 100’s.  Still, we couldn’t convince the teacher that he’s not a bad kid – he’s a scared kid.  She didn’t see anything wrong with her methods and would tell me “I have 20 kids in that classroom!”  20?  Really?  That’s all… huh.  That’s a TINY class.

Anyways, I have to register all three for school today since their names, birth certificates, and social security numbers have all changed. So I need to get them all ready to go while I fill out the paperwork here.  Thank God that it’s all online and all I have to do is print it out.

I also need to run to the post office.  We made a sale on Etsy!  Yay!  I also had a book mooched on BookMooch, so I need to send it out.  After all that, we’ll be back home and do lunch, then they get naptime and I get to list some more lace on Etsy.  If I get a chance, I need to go out in the garage and get a coat of primer on the keys.  Shaun’s going to do the metallic paint for me since he’s got a steadier hand and has more experience with oil-based enamels than I do. I also need to clean the bird cage, our bathroom, and my workstation.

The kids are up and the boys are already in trouble, so it sounds like time for breakfast!  Have a happy Tuesday, everyone!

Damaged

Damaged

or

Things They Should Tell You Before You’re On Your Own

Today has been a perfect storm of the kids acting out.  This has happened before – it’s not abnormal that the kids have behaviors related to abuse and neglect that we try to work through as they come up.  Normally, we make sure the child is safe from harm, call the caseworker, write up an incident report and then address it at home and in therapy.  For two years, this is how it goes.

But after finalization, there are no caseworker calls, no incident reports, no one person who can say on the phone “this is not unexpected and here’s how we work through it with the other kids who do this.”  It’s a support system that one day just disappears.

Thank God that the kids are still in therapy.  My therapy seems to be this two  cigarette a day habit I’ve picked up.  Shaun called the kids’ treatment center and they gave him some pointers on what to do for today and we’re going to try and get a family therapy appt for tomorrow.

So, here’s what happened.  This morning I wake up to the smell of smoke and Ethan is hiding something in his bed.  As soon as I make sure nothing is on fire, I ask him what he’s doing.  “I’m about to get back in bed and go to sleep.”  Um, no you weren’t.  I’m not stupid, bucko.

The kids know my routine – nothing is going to happen until I’m halfway into my first cup of coffee.  So, I get it and sit down, and I hear the girlchild saying “let me lay on top of you and tell you a secret.”  The oldest boy is going “no, I only wanted to tickle your feet!”  She says “But I have to lay on top of you and give you kisses and tell you secrets!”  This alone makes me want to cry.

We discussed good touch/bad touch for the zillionth time and talked about the kinds of girls who laid on top of people to give kisses and if it was appropriate for a 5 year old girl to be that kind of girl.  Hoochie Mamas and Stupid Girls get talked about quite a bit in our house too.

Then I separate them into their rooms and then I start to smell smoke again.  Match smoke.  I walk out and the oldest is in the kitchen pretending to play with the magnets on the fridge.  My nose traces the matches to an end table in the sunroom.  I hold them up and ask who lit the matches.  The oldest tells me the youngest did it, but the youngest has been in bed since I caught him stealing and lying to me.  I play along: so where did E put the matches that burned?  In the trashcan.  I look, and sure as shit, there are about 15 burned matches in there.

So, I go ask E.  Did you light matches?  Yes… he mumbles and makes square face.  How many?  Just one, then one with the red tip wouldn’t work so I put them back.  Ok, this fits with the story I’ve alreayd figured out in my head.

Before I woke up this morning E and L snuck out to the sunroom with a box of kitchen matches and tried to light one up.  It quickly went out because with the AC and the ceiling fan in there, you couldn’t light a zippo if you were standing in a puddle of gasoline.  They tried another and it didn’t light at all, then they heard me so they disposed of the evidence and ran back to their stations.

Then, after A was in trouble and E was still in his room, L snuck back out in the sunroom and started try trying again.  My bloodhound nose perked up and I caught him disposing of the evidence.

Add all this to the encopresis that has been flaring up again, and mommy needs another cigarette.  L is back in diapers full time again because he keeps pooping his pants.  Night, day, busy times, not busy times.  Is it a physical problem or does it have to do with the Oppositional Defiant Disorder or the ADHD?

Looking on the internet, all of these problems are fairly common but what’s getting to me is that my support system (that actually knows what they’re talking about) is gone.  The moral support system sees the kids as “damaged goods.”   I hope the therapists have something to tell us that will help.

I’m not Catholic, but St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes – here’s a prayer coming your way.

5 things you need before fostering

Now that we’ve adopted from the foster system, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how things went.  I feel almost like I’m doing a post-mortem on a big project – sort of an analytical autopsy.  There are things I wish we had done differently and things we did right.  There are pieces of advice that were given to us that I treasured and held onto during the two years of chaos.  There are things I learned the hard way and things I’m still learning in a not so easy manner.

Starting with the most important:

1.  Be comfortable with your stance on God.

I’m not a religious person but I am a very spiritual person.  I’ve read the Bible in 7 different translations, written and published articles on faith and spirituality, and on the whole spent a lot of time learning about God.  Over the ‘infertile years’ I learned how to be angry at God and I learned that a lot of the psalms are about praising God when you’re so mad at Him you can spit.

When you foster children – your faith in not only humanity but in God gets shaken.  Badly.  I knew intellectually that these bad things happened.  When a child in my house went through the aftershocks of the trauma, it got personal.  There were nights I sat up all night reliving what I had been told.

Fostering WILL shake your faith.  It will.  If you don’t know what you believe before you get shaken, you’re gonna have a rough time.

2.  Come to terms with why you are fostering.

For us, it was infertility and the incredible need to have children.  I don’t think I’ve come to terms with it yet but learning to love this kids is harder than I imagined.  I thought it would be instant – like the attachment to God’s little angels would be overwhelming.  It’s not like that.  Even after two years I’m still learning to love them for WHO they are.  It made me wonder about my reasons for fostering – was I in it to give kids love that they’ve never had before or am I in this because of the pain I felt at not being able to reproduce?

I’m having to grieve that I don’t know what my children looked like as babies.  I don’t know what their first word was.  I don’t know what colors they were attracted to or what baby food they liked.  These children are such a big part of me, but they still aren’t from me.  You have to grieve that loss.  You have to grieve whatever happened in your life that makes you able to be a good foster parent.

3.  Love is not enough.

If you think an emotion will get you through this – it won’t.  It will always be there in some form but you’re gonna need logic, training, support, sheer cunning and a whole lot of willpower.  At times you will have to be coldly logical in order to reach these kids who don’t understand natural consequences or for the kids who are acting out just to provoke you into an emotional act.

There are times you have to be so creative it will shock you and everyone around you.  There are times I felt like one of those psychiatrists on TV – getting into the kids head to figure out what made them tick.  My daughter would pee her pants just so she could change clothes and the only thing that stopped her from doing it was to pack the ugliest pair of sweatpants I could find in her daycare bag.  She didn’t mind smelling like pee but she cares about having on ugly pants.

And fair warning – there will be times when you give a serious thought to sending them back into the system.  They will do things that you never even thought about and have no idea how to respond to.  There are moments you will no longer be a sane, rational adult.  There are times – lots of them – where you have to send yourself to time out just so you can cool down enough to think.  There are situations that if you hadn’t discussed them in IMPACT class, you would be totally lost on.  There are times you call the caseworker and ask “what do I do?  This is crazy and I have no idea what to do.”

4.  Learn to accept loss as a human condition.

Every relationship ends.  Every relationship that doesn’t end in death, ends in break-up.  Foster kids know this VERY well.  You need to learn this too as most people who have lived a stable life and live the stable life these children need do not know this yet.

You have to learn this, be willing to grieve and cry with the kids, and then live life in spite of it.  You can’t let loss cripple you and you can’t let the FEAR of loss affect your relationship with the kids.

If you were one of the infertiles who moved on to adoption, you are very well acquainted with the fear of loss.  I can’t tell you how many times I sat in the bathroom floor crying my eyes out because I was so afraid I was going to lose these kids too.  I hear people say all the time “I couldn’t foster children because it would hurt me too badly if they left.”  You know what?  It does hurt.  It hurts a lot.  Don’t let the fear of that pain stop you.  Humans are capable of living through a lot of torment but if you focus on making every moment you have with these kids happy and productive, you will make a difference in their lives.

5.  You’re going to have to fight for everything for the kids.

Whether it’s paperwork, a teacher being fair to the kids, services the kids need… you’re gonna be up for a fight.  Don’t fight fair – your opponents won’t.  You’re going to deal with lost paperwork, destroyed files, lazy beurocrats, and even sheer incompetence.

Don’t be afraid to work your way through the system and then if it doesn’t work, go outside it.  I found that emailing the governor was the most productive thing I ever did in getting the kids moved on the road to adoption.  In the school system, I called the county’s head of special education.  I’ve called hospital administrators looking for medical files.  I’ve scoured the internet, emailed hundreds of people, and pushed until I got what I wanted.  My kids are going to know their history, by God!

Don’t forget during all of this to document everything.  Buy a cheap copy machine and copy everything for a file for the kids to have when they reach maturity.  The system is supposed to have this for them when they reach 18, but we’ve already talked about lost files.  Also, documenting everything will cover your own ass when it comes to people making allegations against you.  Don’t just be proactive, be over-reactive.

For a different kind of fight – teachers in the schools will discriminate against your child because they are in the system.  I don’t know who started spreading the idea that foster kids equal bad kids, but it’s out there.  Teachers are not above gossip, either.  I’m not saying don’t tell the teacher anything, but expect to get up in some faces.  If you’re in the office once a week talking to the principal and counselor, the teachers will be much less likely to act out against your kids.

The rest of parenting foster kids really is just providing a stable and loving home.  You’ll be pushed but keep moving and keep thinking and keep working.  If you like an easy life, then don’t even bother signing up for classes.  If you’re looking for a challenge and regular life bores you, then there are plenty of kids out there waiting for you.

Cousins

The past few days have been both great and un-nerving.  I have entered the ranks of moms in my family – officially.  Yesterday was the adoption party and quite a bit of people turned out both from my family and Shaun’s family.  It got difficult explaining familial relations at several points – like my aunt isn’t far from my age and her kids are the ages of my kids.  So, technically they are second cousins (right?)  I told my aunt that normally we just go along with if it’s a grown person you address them as aunt or uncle and kids are cousins.

In the foster system, this is kind of how it goes inside the agency.  The only people who can watch the foster kids overnight are other foster parents and all the kids who have been in the system a while know each other.  It’s not a biological bond, but they are cousins in the patchwork family of foster homes.  The kids who don’t live here full-time normally either call me “Miss Cyndi” or “Aunt Cyndi.”

I don’t think we’ll ever transition from the “we spend a lot of time with you so you’re family” train of thought and into the “we’re biologically related so you’re my family” train.  Most people I know, they dread family gatherings because their blood ties connect them to people they neither like nor respect.   So, what is a family?

For me, my dad was very influential in defining our family.  It was Mom, Dad, and the three kids.  Dad called us “the wolf pack.”  We were lectured over the dinner table many times about how when times get hard, your family is your fail-safe.  He didn’t mean extended family though – he meant the five of us.  He taught us that we couldn’t depend on the rest of the folks to help us out.  My question was always why we called them family then if they had no stakes in keeping alive, healthy, and emotionally stable.  A family, to me, was always seen as a support structure and the rest of the “relations” were just ornamental. But then again, isn’t it cruel to disassociate yourself from your blood relations if there’s no bad blood at all?  Where there’s only mutual indifference?

So many thoughts keep rolling around in my brain about this.  Social contracts.  The need to define relationships.  Familial hierarchies.  Family trees and histories.  Knowing your roots.  Genetic memory.  Tribalism.  Structured society.

All I know is that my kids are probably going to fail their family tree assignment when they get into school because their mom would rather the term family be loosely defined with plenty of room to add more people.

One week until Adopted!

We have one week until we finalize the adoption on our children!  It’s going to take the strain off of us in so many ways.  Our kids will finally have a forever family, we finally won’t have to report every little incident, we don’t have to worry about random people deciding that we aren’t good enough to parent these kids and calling DFCS about us.  I’m looking forward to having friends again.  I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy a beer in the same town as my kids’ school without people being able to say something.  I’m looking forward to my kids not feeling strange because they have different names from us.

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts, as always, but this time more on the change of birth certificates.  A lot of people view it as identity theft.  Adopting at birth may be that way… but for my kids, it feels more like they’re going into Witness Protection.  Completely without our urging, they deliniate their lives before and their lives now.  Old mommy and new mommy.  Old life and new life.  It makes me think of baptism, really, and they did it all on their own.  No matter how much we or the therapists try and get them to understand that it’s all the same life, they still have that mental differentiation.

8 foster homes, 1 group home, and the longest court case in the history of mankind… and in 7 days we’ll be a normal family.  Well, as normal as we can be.

And if after 10 years of marriage, 8 years of TTC, 2 years of fostering, and now that we adopt – if I get mysteriously knocked up, I’m gonna cuss the hell out of God.  Only 3% of couples get pregnant after adopting and I’m damn tired of hearing “after you adopt, you’ll finally get pregnant.”  No, I don’t want to get pregnant any more!  I want a hysterectomy!  I don’t want stretch marks!  I do want a 4th kid, but I want to adopt him or her.

So, you hear that God?  No funny stuff with my ovaries, ok?

Be smart or GTFO

Parenting makes you reflect on your childhood quite a bit.  Being a foster parent of ready-made kids makes me realize how DIFFERENTLY I was raised.  We currently are the proud owners of an 8 yo boy, 4 yo girl, and 3 yo boy.  We’ve had the little kids almost a year and the oldest for a little over 2 months.  The oldest is who is making me realize quite a few things about my past.

One is that I never understood why teachers liked me.  In my own mind (and to my parents) I was an arogant, smart-mouthed, disrespectful, anti-social little geek of a girl.  My parents raised me to be smart-mouthed, geeky, and anti-social though… the rest I came up with on my own.  I always thought teachers hated me until the parent teacher conference – then it was “oh, she’s perfectly lovely and precocious. She’s so smart and does her work without complaining.  She gets more free time in the library than anyone and she’s always so quiet.”  Then my report card would come and I’d have a 100 average.

Now, I know.  If you are smart and not disruptive, it’s pretty hard for teachers to NOT like you.  It turns out that I was the easy child to teach but the hard child to raise. Teachers didn’t have to do jack shit with me and I still knew more about it than they did.  I could actually hold a conversation too, which is very rare in children.

My 8 yo… boy… his teacher hates him.  She writes him up for stuff like speaking up during someone else’s question and embarasses him in front of the classroom.  He’s smart – very smart – but he has significant language delays.  He didn’t speak until he was 5, so he’s got the verbal skills of a 3 yo.  He also has no concept of social normality – like take turns, don’t hit when you’re angry or frustrated, look at someone when they are speaking – and this causes problems in the classroom.  His teacher just cannot stand it.  She tells me that she can’t watch him all the time because – now get this – she has 20 students in her room.  Oh. My. God.  20?  No kidding? Are you serious, lady?

The school doesn’t want to change his classroom in the middle of a semester, so I’m trying to teach him to shut up and be smart.  When it comes down to it, this second grade teacher is going to matter less than what he had for lunch today in his life.  His job is to survive and learn as much as possible before he gets out into the real world.

I also realized how much martial arts changed my school-life.  I used to give a damn what people thought and what bullies said to me.  After I knew I could break a 3-inch piece of pine with a spinning side-kick, I didn’t care what they thought about my hair or my new boobies.  I went to my husband’s 10 year reunion last year with him (high school sweethearts) and all those bullies were lining up to lick my man-eater heels.  It was all “LOOK AT YOU, I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!” with me staring blankly like “you used to throw gum at me and trash my locker, bitch.  Fuck off.” (I never got over being anti-social.)

I do feel really sorry for my kids.  They have me as a mom.

At least I can teach them how to get teachers to like them.