Series: Wait. What? Huh?!
Topic: Got Therapeutic Parenting?
If you missed the first part of this series I talked about the fact that I believe that
potential adoptive parents need to expect their child to come home with an attachment disorder because I'm full of sunshine like that. I also mentioned that attachment is a spectrum and I believe most adopted children generally display an insecure attachment.
Something that I want to clarify a little bit came up in the comments, and there were some great comments so go ahead and read those too. When I say that attachment is a spectrum I mean that I think our kids move up and down that scale to the beat of their own drum.
My dear sweet friend Gayla brought home a child who is what I called an "X", she is a girl that for whatever reason handled her trauma with ease. (Adoption is always a result of and a cause of trauma so I'm not about to belittle her experience and say that she fared so well because she didn't have trauma.) I haven't met Gayla personally, but I don't believe that she is a parent in denial either. Besides, she knows that if I thought she was in denial I'd be the first one to whack her upside the head and make her deal with it. :) I love that for her and her family that their post adoption life has been so sweet. I hope it stays that way for them, but the fact that it has been easy so far doesn't mean it will stay this easy. Maybe ten years from now her sweet girl will take several large steps to the right on the spectrum, or maybe not.
My Boohoo is very much a "Y", a wild vine, doing what she can to make the world work for her. I think at this point I'd put her in the middle of that spectrum on a whole. I absolutely have hope for her future, our future, but I also don't think that it's a straight shot to healing. Mary, from Owlhaven, commented on this post about attachment being a dance, and she's so wise. It very much is three steps forwards, two steps back, one step forward, one step back, four step forwards, five steps back. It will take time to learn and the steps will change over time and we'll have to learn again. I also believe that if we decided that we could not parent Boohoo even out of an attempt to be rational, responsible, and protective of our boys (and we are not at this point, I'm just sayin'), but if we decided that Boohoo needed to join another family...I believe that we'd be pushing our girl perilously close to becoming a 'Z'.
I also am blessed to know women who have and are parenting their little 'Z' RADishes and are helping them heal. They are loving them, working with them, sacrificing for them, and they are teaching those hurt little souls how to trust and love again/for the first time. They are turning them into Y's or maybe Z's with Y tendencies, you could see their Z and you'd mistake them for an X. If you have a RADling,
you are not alone. Corey and Christine both have good blogrolls of Trauma Mamas and if you don't read their blogs yet, then you
email me and I'll point you in the right direction. I'm not about to sound like an expert, but
you can help your child.
I'm also going to do another shout out here to the mamas who
were parenting a RADish or even a very very insecurely attached child and decided they couldn't do it anymore. There was no more healing in their house for that child or the rest of the family.
You are not alone either. There's no hating here. If you need to just write someone a letter and talk about how you couldn't do it anymore then you write to me and I will listen without judgment. I'll also be happy to play go-between and hook you up with another one of these mamas. I know that many of them are very protective of their privacy because judgment is rampant, but I will find you someone who understands and is walking that road of self-doubt and recrimination with you.
Another thing that Chrissy pointed out in one of the comments is that parenting does matter. Pretty much mothers get no credit in our world, we're overlooked and under-respected all the time. Now, some parenting decisions are bigger than others. I used to have the luxury to worry about BPA in plastic. Now? I'd give my kids a bottle of it to take to bed with them at night if I could have one uninterrupted night of sleep and not wake up until my body was actually well-rested. Drink up, honey, mommy loves you.
You have
GOT to learn "therapeutic parenting". And when I say "you" I mean
ME!!! This stuff is hard!!!! Some of it is just completely counter-intuitive, "Ohhh, I have to learn to embrace the spit" and some of it
is intuitive, but it's completely counter-cultural, "Ohhhh, I need to hold my child while they cry instead of telling them to knock it off because Mommy is tweeting". Your friends will think you are insane, your mother in law will remind her son that she knew you were crazy six years ago, your favorite aunt will tell you that you are spoiling your child, your therapist will tell you to ignore the tantrums, your kid's guidance counselor will tell you that
you are lying, your best friend will quit talking to you, your church preschool director will call CPS on you, and you will go to bed completely exhausted and crying into your pillow because you've spent all day soaking up your child's rage and holding it for them while giving them back love. Welcome to Therapeutic Parenting 101.
And you've got to learn this
BEFORE your child comes home. You know that 30 minutes you spent talking with your social worker about how you discipline? THAT ISN'T GOING TO CUT IT! Read the books, not the happy ones, not even just the scary
Toddler Adoption
book, but read the ones that have actual examples, at least the ones by Heather Forbes, Deborah Gray, and Daniel Hughes. Read through the examples that are given s....l....o.....w.....l....y..... Read them them with your spouse and seriously digest them. Quiz each other. Quick! Think fast honey! Our "happy and developmentally appropriate" two year old just spit in your face and bit you and threw a block that hit you when you suggested it was bedtime. What do you do? Our eight year old "who really wants to be adopted" peed in the corner of his room when he was supposed to be making the bed, threw a glass at the preschooler and is shouting obscenities on the front porch! (Please hum the Jeopardy music while you're popping these questions too.) Read the ugly blogs like mine. Watch Christine's videos. Ask your agency to give you a list of people that have had "hard transitions" and contact them and see if you can talk to them and find out how they made it through. Find seminars, attend classes, talk to select foster parents and adoptive parents.
I'm assuming at this point that I've scared everyone away and no one is still reading this so I'm just talking to myself now. No worries.
What I'm trying to say and maybe I'm exaggerating some of the behaviors, sort of, but then again, those are behaviors that are NORMAL for a kid with trauma issues. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that our kids are going to come to us
HURTING, SCARED, and oh so ALONE INSIDE.
We need to be prepared to welcome them into our homes, ready for them and their unique needs. I'm not being flippant or rude, but rather scientific (!) when I say that kids who have experienced trauma are coming to us with damaged brains. Trauma damages brains. And I've yet to see an adoption agency with that as the slogan:
"Giving Kids with Traumatized Brains an Unsuspecting Family Since 1842!"
This is something that's really hitting with me lately as I see Boohoo and her behaviors not as choices that she's making to torque me off, but behaviors that she's forced into because of the way her brain is wired right now. You don't blame a child for having a seizure when they have a seizure disorder. I can't blame my three year old for spitting in my face when she has an attachment disorder. I may really really want to, but the behavior is coming from a biological imperative to protect herself. It's up to me to help rewire her brain and see that I am not a threat, but in order for her to see me as not a threat then I have to not act like a threat and in order to not act like a threat I need to know how to therapeutically parent her from the moment we say hello.
Woooo, okay. I think that's probably way more than enough for one post. I hope I didn't scare you all away. I think that this may have come off sounding darker than I was planning. I didn't even talk about emotional ages yet. Maybe I'll make that part 3 of 2.... Anyway, let me know what you thought about this post and I'll let yo know how many readers I lost!
