Revealing Vacation

We're in our annual week-long family trip to northern New England. And, while it's been physically easier than in previous years because the kids need less hands-on care, it's been emotionally harder. K has been crying for home just about every night; M has been misbehaving when he's with anyone but me. Both kids love being with their grandparents and cousins, but apparently being somewhere that isn't home is quite disorienting for them.

M has gradually calmed down. I wish I knew why. But K....I'm looking at a drawing that she did the other night, when I left for the evening to attend a class near home. The drawing shows herself with tears streaming down her face and the words (translated from kindergarten spelling) "I feel scared and sad." When I asked her about in the morning, she told me she's been feeling sad all the time "since D--- F--- Camp," which means over two weeks. It might even be longer, seeing as she finished kindergarten just the week before and had been occasionally crying about the ending. I've mentioned that here. She's also been coming up with memories of Russia that we've never heard before.

Lately, we've been having to remind K several times a day to take care of herself and let Peter and me take care of everyone else. "You're only six," I've told her. "Your job is to take care of K--."
She always shakes her head. "I take care of you, too," she says.

She has resumed being worried that there won't be enough food--she piles her plate, packs food to save for later, asks several hours ahead about where and what we're going to eat. She is equally concerned about having enough clothes and toys.

I am going to interview therapists when we get back. It's time. We think we have a girl with depression compounded by her memories of pre-adopted life. We don't want her to grow up filling her black hole of grief with food and possessions, then alcohol and drugs and pregnancies.

One-Minute Parenting

In response to a radio ad we keep hearing about correcting your kid's behavior--no matter how bad--in a single minute.

My solution: Sledgehammer.
Peter's solution: Ether.

We are also willing to consider crossbow and chloroform, respectively.

End of the Day

I'm writing this in the back yard, sitting on a plastic lawn chair. M is out here too, in his black and blue rash-guard shirt & bathing suit and black Keen sandals. He is into black lately, saying it's a "cool boy color." He also loves pink, which gets him into conflict with his sister.

M is picking and throwing grass whenever I look at him. He grins. Sometimes he splashes in our sprinkler-fed wading pool that looks like a pirate ship. Sometimes he chases butterflies. Sometimes he shows me how high he can swing on the swing set. He also catches toads and caterpillars, hunts for ants, and brings me pieces of interesting stuff that show up in the dirt. He had a full day of camp, which included a nap, at a local farm, so he has the energy to do some of these favorite things.

K spent the day at the same camp but in an older group which doesn't get a nap. She's pooped. She is indoors watching an ancient Disney movie, The Fox and the Hound. I chose it one day last week while it was pouring out, to keep on hand for the kids to watch while sipping ginger tea after getting caught in a thunderstorm. I'd never seen this film. I have now seen only the beginning, a key conflict in the middle, and the ending. I picked it out because Peter and I are interested in exposing M and K to as many adoption-related narratives as possible. In this film, the fox cub's mom leaves him in a safe place because she knows she's going to be shot; then a kind owl fosters him briefly and finds him a permanent home with a human. We all cried. Anyway, K, who is rather sensitive to heat, is inside in the cool watching without me. I strongly prefer not to let the kids watch TV alone, but for safety reasons I am out here while M plays in the water. I am leaving K alone for exactly 20 minutes; then I will herd M inside and we'll do the make-lunch-and-take-baths routine so they can be ready for camp tomorrow.

For this two-week stint at the farm camp, Peter and I are coaching M and K to be responsible for more self-care than they used to be. Every evening, I set up what we call The Lunch Factory and help them put together their lunches from a variety of healthy choices. Every morning, each kid runs down a check-list of activities to get him- or herself ready for the day, including loading his or backpack with a list of necessary items. We leave the house at 8:05 AM, ready or not. So far, they've been ready.

K loves this control over her own care, especially making her own lunch. As befits someone afraid of food scarcity, she puts too much in her lunchbox and doesn't eat it all. We don't criticize. She dresses properly for the weather most of the time, doesn't blame others when vanity causes her to make a regrettable error (e.g. puts clips in her hair, then loses them). Her counselors tell me they like her "great attitude." I have seen her play with both boys and girls, cool and uncool.

M packs his lunch until he gets bored, so he sometimes goes a little hungry. Nonetheless, he struts around feeling very grown-up and proud of himself for being one of the more competent kids in his camp group. He is a favorite among the counselors.

The moral of the story: We know all kids like and need as much control as they can have. We believe it's even more important for adopted and foster kids to have control, since they have at times been bounced around like ping-pong balls. Our kids are thriving. When they misbehave, it is never because of a power struggle.

Time to go inside. While I've been writing, M has joined K indoors. I have to get dinner going, get both kids bathed, and set up The Lunch Factory.

It Helped

Follow-up: My "pep talk" about next school year helped the kids very much. They have been their usual sweet selves ever since. When asked, they say they feel good about next year. I won't be surprised if they cycle back to the fear or anger, but I am glad that there's something I can to do help them feel better.

Regressing

It had to happen: Each kid, in his or her own way, is responding to the end of the school year by regressing.

K has let her imagination take her back to when she was younger. She has for weeks been demanding to put her head under my shirt to make me look pregnant. She will then drop on the floor and go "Goo bah!" as my new baby. If we let her, she'd have us carry her everywhere and spoon-feed her. She freely admits that she wishes she were a baby so she wouldn't have to think about first grade. She has a constant stomachache and is constantly finding new ways to test old rules to make sure her home life isn't changing. Just now she told me she didn't want to go to school today; when questioned, she said she didn't want to say goodbye. (Her last day is a week from today.) FWIW, I responded that her teacher knows hows she feels because every kid feels that way. I explained that learning to say goodbye is part of kindergarten, and her teacher would teach her how.

M is back to wetting his bed and fearing abandonment. He feigns tears several times a day as a bid to get his way. Most heartbreaking, he cried last night when I put away his "loot bag" after he'd eaten his customary after-dinner piece of candy: he is regressing to remember privation, or maybe unjust punishment, or anyway something very sad. For 21 months we have rationed Hallowe'en and birthday candy by giving each kid his or her own bag to keep it in and permission to choose one piece per day. Last night, M wouldn't let me put his bag away in the usual spot until I raised my voice, and then he started to cry. Not sure what was going on, I asked him why. The answer: "You took my candy!" He wouldn't stop even when I reminded him that it's his, that I was putting it away for him like I always do, that nobody but him was going to eat it, that he would see it the next day. Even K couldn't console him.

Here's something that I hope helped. When I put M to bed a little while later, he wailed when I attempted to leave the room. So I invited K in and had conversation with them that I'd planned the night before while lying awake worrying.

The main points:
1. The end of the school year might be hard for them because it's a big change. Their move from Russia was a VERY big change, so they might be reminded of it even though the end of the school year is small in comparison. ("We're still your family, we're not moving, you don't have to learn a new language," etc.)
2. Because they made that huge change, they already know how to make changes. Even though they might feel scared or sad or angry sometimes, they are strong and brave. (K flexed her muscles here.) Everything they need is already inside them.
3. They will not feel this way very long. (K pointed this out. M denies it.)

After this conversation, they both slept like rocks.

I got maybe 3h, myself.

"Mad" and Other Feelings

M is mad. Angry, that is. Angry that preschool is over, that he may not see some of friends next year in school, that the adults in his life make the big decisions. He takes it out on all of us, but especially K. I asked him this morning, "If you go downstairs and get dressed, do you think you'll be able to keep your hands to yourself, or would you like me to come down and help you remember?"

(A pause) "I need you to help me."

One of the many ways Peter and I are blessed in raising these two particular children is that they are good at expressing their emotions. They talk to us honestly, telling us as much as they know about what they're feeling and why they think they're feeling it. Within days of getting custody back in 12/06, Peter and I began teaching them the English words for emotions; within weeks we began telling them that it's okay to feel more than one thing at a time.

So what do we do when they express emotions that are difficult to cope with?

First, we validate. For example: "Good job telling me. I know you don't feel good right now, but there's nothing wrong with feeling sad." Or, "I understand you're angry with me. I'm angry with you, too. But I'm still your mom and I still love you." Or, "Lots of kids make that mistake. What you're feeling is called 'embarrassed.' I used that potty word I was your age, and I was embarrassed, too."

Second, we witness. We might have to wait until the child is calm enough--and we usually give the child the choice of staying with us or leaving the room to get control--but then we do whatever it takes to live through the feeling with the child. We ask the child to draw what he or she is feeling, or we put on loud music and ask to watch a dance about it, or we supply pillows and soft toys for throwing, or we just offer to hold him or her.

Third, we respond to whatever we've been shown and ask for more. The idea is to help the child understand that we have the capacity to embrace as much as they can feel. "Wow, you must be pretty angry!" or "That picture shows me how sad you are. Can you draw me an even sadder one?"

Fourth, we let them lead us to whatever they need next. K usually wants to cuddle with or groom us. M usually wants to go back to playing or grubbing for bugs.

This morning, M got over his funk on his own. Maybe it helped him to know I was willing to back him, maybe not. I am about to pick him up from daycare/secondary preschool and we'll get about 45 minutes together before K comes home. I'll see how he is.

End of School Year #3

It's the end of the school year, which is hard on every kid. It can be especially hard on adopted kids. These kids may have memories of losing everything; If they don't have memories, then they may have feelings of being cast off.

Our kids are reacting more or less in the way we expected, maybe a little better.

K, being 6, is behaving--well, like a six-year-old. She is two ways about everything. She is the tender big sister to M, ready to forge ahead to first grade and talk him through his transition behind her to kindergarten, but she is also snappish with him as a mask for her sadness about leaving her own kindergarten. She is excited about her growing independence, but she also hides her head under my shirt several times a day so she can be "born" as a baby. She proudly tries out new, obnoxious behaviors but is remorseful and even embarrassed when we don't like them. She defies us and, the next moment, clings to us. She has so much difficulty deciding between any two options--say, whether to eat an apple now or later--that I am doing a lot of teaching about how to make decisions. (One of my depression symptoms is difficulty with decisions, so I have some heuristics.)

Other mothers tell me, "She'll be a handful when she's a teenager." Oddly, I don't feel as worried about her teen years as I used to be: She is proving to be a compassionate person, eagle-eyed to aid the young, the small, the weak, and the lonely. Although she can hold her own in verbal "girl fights," she never instigates them and prefers not to associate with those who do. She could probably whip any kid in a physical fight, but she won't. She likes the company of kids of either gender with a good imagination, a happy outlook, and a kind family. K has a hard head, yes, but I think we've managed to turn it toward us: she seeks to please and emulate us more than anything. She likes to lead and to know what's going on, so we're trying to evolve family tasks that will allow her to do so. She's a strong person, but so am I. I tell people, "We try to help her use her superpowers for good instead of evil."

M, at 5, is ending his career as Big Man On Campus at preschool. He feels genuinely sad. Last summer he was so sad at school year's end that he dictated a note to leave for his teacher. This year he seems less concerned about leaving the teachers but more sad about leaving his friends. We've been talking for some months about how he's made lots of friends since arriving from Russia, and how some of his friends will surely be in his class next year, and it seems to help. We can tell something else is bothering him, or he's forgotten, when he starts bedeviling K: she seems to represent SCARY THINGS ABOUT KINDERGARTEN to him. Interestingly, M admits to being afraid that everyone in his class will be bigger than he is. He's average sized and rather stronger and more agile than his classmates. We wonder whether his fears are usual "boy" fears or whether they come of his having been so powerless during the previous important changes in his life. When prompted, he says he's angry that grown-ups get to decide what's happening to him. Peter and I have always found that he responds well to being given choices; I expect we'll figure out how to help him cope.

I have never been worried about M's teen years because I think he's essentially a kind and reasonable guy. Even as a rowdy three-year-old, he blossomed as soon as we made it clear that we considered him a good person who could learn rules. From then until now, he has asked what the rules are and will articulate his confusion when they are not followed. He is unusually interested in and tender with younger children and animals; we take pains to compliment him on his empathy. He loves to tussle with his playmates, but they say he's not as "fighty" as some other kids, and girls find him gentle enough to play with. He is always coming up with creative ideas for play, so he is always at the center of whatever fun is going on.

That's it for now. I have to run and pick up M, then K.