Foster Further

 Gonna make this short as it's been a long, emotionally exhausting couple of days. In summary: while I was flying high thinking life was great, Jane was using every moment I was out of the house to do a whole series of small, destructive things.  It all came out yesterday. I spanked her. Now we're in the long rebuilding phase that feels more demoralizing every single time we have to go back to square one in rebuilding trust with her.  Important take aways from the therapist: There are two core truths or beliefs we adults dealing with traumatized children have to keep in mind always. 1) She believes she is a bad person. She feels shame for being rejected by her parents. Something must be wrong with her at her core for her own mother to reject her. 2) Like everyone else, she wants to do good and be in a positive relationship with others.  That's the constant push-pull. That's the whiplash for why she does shitty things even in the midst of having a good week.  Res...

 Yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of my father's death. Every year I do the math, and then do the math again, because it does not seem possible that he's been gone so long. For several years now I've been a wife and mother for more years than I was his daughter.  And yet, of course, I have always, and will always be, his daughter. His identity as my father, and my identity as his daughter, didn't stop just because he died. A relationship may not be possible but there is always the fact of identity.  (You see where I'm going as regards adoption, right?) So what does a daughter of a dead father do when Father's Day falls on the 33rd anniversary of his death? Spend it being quite annoyed, actually. All last week as yesterday loomed I became more and more irritated.  Each year differs slightly but generally I move through a host of moods. Some years I truly forget it and am surprised when I realize it has passed by. Other years I spend days deeply anxious about my...

 I'm puzzled by what I've just observed and so I'm going to record my observations here to try to work out what happened.  1. Today is Tues. It's the 5th of a 5 day stretch at home for Kate (regular Fri off school, then 3 day weekend plus a snow day). Very cold weather and storms so we haven't left the house. 2. Last week was a turbulent school week--special dress up days, Valentine's Day parties/crafts/activities, half-day schedule, etc. 3. Last week there was a lot of talk of "love" due to Valentine's Day. 4. Last week both girls seemed pissy, irritable, hyper, jealous, cranky when playing with each other, etc. 5. Six days ago Kate began pooping in her underwear. Filling them with poop. Sometimes she'd finish pooping on the toilet, sometimes she told me she only pooped in her underwear and never went on the toilet--just kept on playing. She did this every day for 5 out of 6 days.  6. Six days ago I discovered what was happening when I did the...

 I knew Theo and I had a meeting with the school principal after school today that would require the kids to go to the school's after care program. I knew for 3 days and I didn't prep them for the change in routine. I kinda kept forgetting but I also just didn't want to face the fallout ahead of time.  90% of the time I tell them about hard stuff before it happens. I'm really good about that because I know it's so critical in establishing trust. I know future disruptions will be easier of I do the current one correctly. I embrace the up-front chaos as a painful, but short-term, necessary evil for long-term pay off.  But today I didn't. A tiny part of me was curious. After all these months of stability, how much fall-out would there be? Well, this afternoon I found out.  Kate was sad. She cried over miniscule injustices every 15 minutes like clockwork. Each event sent her into my arms, saying, "I want you, mama." Inbetween each of these events she follo...

These two disorders together look like a girl wearing pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a winter coat with the hood up, standing outside in the sun in 80 degree heat. This is what I saw yesterday while outside watering my garden. It's about 11am and I'm in shorts and a tank top and a huge sun hat, sweating away under the hot sun, wishing I could be in the shade. I look up and here comes Jane dressed for winter. This is at least the fifth time this summer she's come outside dressed like this. Why? Because she can't find her sun hat. I have an inviolate rule that the children must wear sandals and a sun hat when playing outside. No more splinters and sun burns since the rule went into effect!! Once Kate, age 3, couldn't find her sun hat so she scrounged around among the winter things and found a knit cap and was running around in that. I explained the purpose of the sun hat and Kate now wears the right hat every time. Jane is a year and a half older than Kate but she c...

It's been months since I looked at the FB profiles of the girls' birth family members. It just isn't a good thing for me to do. Takes me to a sad, dark place full of loathing and fear because these people all live in this area. They all get new FB profiles constantly, there are 3 or 4 per person. Which, if I can find them that easily, what is the point of starting a new one? If you friend all the same people and make that public then it's pretty darn easy for anyone you're hiding from to still find you. And no, spelling your name a new way isn't actually a cover. Anyway, I found a profile for their birth mother that I hadn't seen previously. Looks like she just created it recently. In it was a cute picture of baby Kate at about 3 months old. I wanted the picture so I copied the image and then saved it in a file. I'm sure that when the girls are grown they're going to wonder what they looked like as infants. This seemed like an innocuous and nice ...

It's Easter morning but it sure doesn't feel like it. Hard to feel the wonder or mystery without the hymns and words and signs of celebration that being in a full church brings. Hard to make homegrown celebrations when my husband is of another religious practice that is still deep in the darkest days of fasting and waiting and he won't celebrate the great resurrection for another week. I've decided to hold off on baskets and eggs until Pascha so we just do one celebration all together since family unity is more important than a date on a calendar...but still. It's hard. And a reminder that he left my religious practice knowing I could not follow and that decision he made is still the most difficult thing in our marriage and home. I make the choice not to fight it because I understood that I lost that battle the moment he made a decision that was about his needs, not ours, and that decision was made years before I even knew it and it was not going to ever be undone...

Today I began my grand plan to convert Jane from an ADHD-addled squirrel to a real human girl--when it comes to playing with toys, that is. I shared this description with Theo and he about busted a gut, by the way. Exclaiming: yes! That's it! I can totally see it! What finally pushed me into focusing on this area was thinking about how she plays by herself during Quiet Time. She's totally different during that hour of the day. Every kid is alone in a room with a special set of toys that only comes out during this time. Jane loves it! She takes her little doll house and its miniatures into her room and plays with great imagination. I hear her and she's so happy! Contrast that with play downstairs where she's like a squirrel/tornado scattering toys as wildly as she can, hiding bits and pieces all over the house in a perpetual attempt to hoard a stash all her own that no one else can touch. She looks unhappy and stressed and is prone to bickering and meltdowns during...

The facts: due to Thanksgiving chaos, in the past three weeks Jane has faced a slew of obstacles. 1) We revisited birth family in a home she used to go to often for the first time in a year--lots of memories triggered by being in that space again. 2) We traveled out of state and were gone from home for 4 nights--a major disruption to her sleep and sense of security. 3) Something like 30+ people we rarely see were a part of those visits--this highly social girl is exhausted. 4) Due to the travel we missed two dance classes and two O.T. sessions--big factors in her physical well-being. 5) She's 4 years old and only one year into a safe environment and really, only a few months into feeling calm and safe every day. So, looking at it like that, of course I should expect negative consequences, right? Honestly, looking at those factors it's been much smoother than it could've been. I see that she's more hyper, less able to focus on toys, more prone to pestering the ...

I took Kate to the doctor's office today for our fake, made-up, bureaucracy-sucks appt (see previous post). She adores outings 1:1 with me, even to the dr office. We walk in and she's chatty and smiley with the receptionist. In the waiting room a cute little A-A boy sat beside her and she joyfully crowed to me, "Mama, look, it's my friend!" (she'd never met him before). We get called back and she's so friendly and expressive to the nurse that the nurse keeps cracking up and at one point whispered to me, "She's adorable!" So Kate is having a good old time until a student doctor walks in. She FROZE. Like a baby bunny before the jaws of the fox. Absolutely could not move a muscle, eyes wide and locked on him, totally unresponsive. I think she almost stopped breathing. I looked at him and saw what she saw--he looked a lot like her biological father. Same hair; same long face; maybe even a similar voice though I'd only heard him speak once...

Yesterday was one of the worst days I've had since the girls came to us. For no apparent reason. Jane just decided to be really naughty all day long, about five minutes after she was released from each time out session. The past week we've been talking about anger, triggered by some incidents that occurred during her last therapy sessions. I had been telling her it's okay to show anger for a few days now. Well, she sure as hell took me up on the offer. Except not the way I meant it. I meant she should have a tantrum, yell, scream, even hit. Get it out! Express it! Be honest! Be real with me! Trust me enough to show a single authentic emotion already! Nope. She decided to do the most sneaky, underhanded, devious, manipulative, destructive things her little 4 year old brain could think of. I think she spent every minute of her time outs just planning what she'd do next. I was patient, calm, and creative in my consequences for the first two events. Then, she took Kat...

My closest childhood friend died last month at age 44. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. I delivered the eulogy at her funeral. A beautiful life only half-lived. The kind of friendship so deep we could imitate each other's mother's voices and had never kept a single secret from each other because there wasn't anything the other one didn't know already. I am feeling everything extra hard right now. I feel tender and raw. I feel like grief grabs me out of the blue and sends me on a roller coaster of emotion at the slightest provocation. And so I recognized the depths of grief that washed over Jane today. There's a certain stretch of road we often drive that has flowers planted by the sidewalk that trigger a memory for Jane. Often, as we pass them, she'll suddenly exclaim, "Mama Leah has flowers like that at her house!" Today, she saw them and then just utterly fell apart. It all came out in an incoherent rush. I miss her. I want her. I want to ...

Today was better. Kids felt calmer. I think being at the cottage with Grandma for 3 days really disturbed Jane's equilibrium...but I also think that she has resettled quicker than she once would've been able to. One small, but HUGE thing happened this morning. Jane rode all the way to church and back, 20 min drive each way, without any singing. I know I sound like a curmudgeon but I have to clarify that it isn't really singing. It's toneless, mindless, repetitious droning of the same few syllables for miles and miles and miles. Even the therapist said it'd drive her batty when I demonstrated it for her once. I'm guessing that Jane rode in cars where the radio was blasting all the time. I'm guessing that no one ever spoke with her as she rode. I'm guessing that, in her need to orally process every single thing, and witnessing that she talks to herself endlessly while playing, the lull of the moving car reduced her to one sing-song phrase as she tried ...

Jane needs rules. Over the course of the summer we gradually relaxed her wake-up time rule. It was one of those errosions that happen due to parental fatigue over time. Last night I decided no more. I explained that she'd lost the privilege of  getting up on her own due to X behaviors that I named with her. I told her she could not get out of her bed for any reason except to go potty. She was to remain in her bed, silently without waking Kate, until I came to get her. This morning at 8:00 it was already about an hour later than she'd been getting up on her own and I felt I had to hurry and get her so she wouldn't feel abandoned. I went in there--and she was still asleep. Lesson: this girl cannot manage her body's most basic physical needs. She cannot stay asleep when she's tired if there's an opportunity to get up and roam unsupervised. She cannot say no to food when she's full if she sees someone else eating because the jealousy overcomes her. S...

It's 2:15 and I've already run through the full gamut of daily experiences with Jane so I thought I'd use these, while they're fresh in my mind, to highlight what it's like to live with this particular child. Annoying Behavior She Knows Not To Do 7am she's at my bedside saying, "Mama, can I go downstairs?" I say yes. (This happens every morning and is a nut I cannot crack. We used to have her stay and play in her room when she awoke but now she wakes up Kate. Then I let her go downstairs without asking but then I discovered she was waking up super early for the delight of getting into mischief unsupervised downstairs. Now if she wakes me then at least I can either send her back to sleep if it's too early or roll out of bed soon after her.) This morning Theo was already downstairs so I told her to go and stayed in bed to try to sleep some more.  7:30am she's at my bedside saying, "Mama, can I feed the cats?" Now I'm pissed. I...

We're still in the process of having testing done to figure out what is going on, neurologically, with Jane. Meanwhile, there was another seizure-like incident that I got on video. I've shown it to a few friends and family members in the medical field and the suspicion is that she may actually be having catatonic episodes. When most people hear "catatonic" they think frozen or in a coma but those are just some of the manifestations. It can also include body contortions and facial grimacing that look like a seizure. The key difference is that speaking to or touching someone in a seizure will not bring them out of it whereas it's possible to bring someone out of these kinds of catatonic episodes. While catatonic episodes are associated with schizophrenia they can also be caused by past trauma. Given that the girls' mother has a history of mental health disorders and that we know they witnessed and experienced trauma, both causes are within the realm of pos...

Well, it happened. Social workers endlessly drilling the word 'foster' into their minds finally sunk in and Jane began using the word. It's not necessarily bad or a secret. I just don't like them learning a label for themselves if it makes them feel different or bad about themselves. I'd just as soon they transition from daughter in one family to daughter in another family. Not saying that'll be easier, per se...but I do think it's more accurate when describing their life journey. So, today the girls are playing and I realize Jane has decided one of her stuffed animals is "Foster Baby". The baby has to be quickly removed from one place (the couch) and put in a safe place (a box). Over and over again. She seems like she wants to act this out but is kinda stuck on what to do next so I decide to engage with her so I can help give language to whatever she's processing. Together she and I move the foster baby through a series of harrowing even...

Some moms in my circle have posted snippets about Body Autonomy recently. A mother will post a picture of a child behaving rudely when asked to pose for a special event and then applaud her own child for making his own decisions with his body. Cue obligatory "you're such a great mom!" comments from others in her tribe. These are all very young first time moms who are woke in all kinds of ways. I'm sure I was that mom, too, about a decade and a half ago. But nowadays I'm parenting more like my grandparents than this generation of TL;DR millenialls who think a really long FB post from an emphatically non-expert influencer is enough research for them. (And, as a friend pointed out, the message of I-do-what-I-want is what is causing a society that contributes to global warming, a rape culture, insufficient tax base to create a social safety net for the most needy, etc. etc. etc. It's about the least Christian message I can imagine.) The reality is that no...

Last weekend we did a family visit that was a return to how we'd first begun doing them. Theo and I drove the girls down and stayed and hung out with the family the whole time. The visit was just 1.5 hours long. Aunt made the lovely suggestion that good-byes would happen in the house and not at the car. She even coached grandma to do them quickly. So, we did a quick but sincere good-bye then left. No drama with grandma climbing over seats or Jane wailing from her car seat. And it all worked! Girls were cheerful and chatty on the way home! No nightmares for Jane that night! Kate was even okay--one day of extreme clinginess but then she returned to usual level of attachment-bonding cling! I'm so incredibly relieved! Because what would I have done if this hadn't worked?? I could not bear the thought of telling them we were stopping visits completely not least of all because I truly don't believe that would be the right path, long term. But now I don't have to f...

I taught the girls to say ouch. When they first came to me their hair was a mess. Snarls, mismatched lengths where sections had been hacked off, thin and coarse hair that tangled in every hair clip I tried, etc. Due to a healthy diet and daily vitamins, as well as good hair products and regular brushing, their hair is now sleek and glossy. Jane has a cute haircut. Kate's hair is growing longer every day and curling into ringlets that bounce. I was so afraid of hurting them when they first came! I have naturally curly hair and my mother's is stick straight. She never understood how much it hurt when she pulled the brush straight through. I haven't let her touch my head since I could do my first clumsy pony tail. (At first, I held their hair so loosely while trying to do it that every single pony tail fell out minutes after going in. Looking back I feel like those people who don't know how to put a diaper on and it falls off when they lift the baby up!)  But eve...