First Grade Help Desk

I assisted in K's computer class today. I help 16 first-graders use 20 iMac computers.

There wasn't much I needed to do. Each kid was instructed to login using their first and last name, Google on the name of a specific website, and then play any word games they liked on the site. I helped a few kids find keys on the keyboard, and one boy needed to be told to use his nickname instead of his full name for the login, but otherwise all I did was stride around with my hands behind my back and wait for someone to look like they were stuck.

K behaved beautifully while I was there, which was a first. She hugged and kissed me when I arrived, then at my direction returned to her place and got on with her work. I made sure to stop by often and ask her about what she was doing. True to form, she was using context cues and trial-and-error--not reading--to figure out what to do with each game. I let her teachers torture her over the words, but I watched to see whether I could learn anything.

At the end of 30 minutes, it was time for the kids to logout and go to art class. I paced one side of the room and asked the kids whether they needed any help. Imagine my surprise and amusement when I saw K doing the same on the other side of the room, leaning over and assisting those who needed her!

M's Fears

...came out all at once last night. I don't know why. He and K had both been behaving like circus animals all day. M has lately been exhibiting signs of anger, mostly by wrecking things other kids are building and taking K's stuff. Not major problems, I know, but he usually will desist once spoken to, and he's not desisting.

Anyway, when I put him to bed last night, he started to cry when I left the room. When i asked why, he told me he was scared to be alone. Then he drew me a picture with the following narrative. He would stop and then remember something else and add to it.

"Here's me and here's a mean guy breaking the door down and putting me in a bag and stealing me. I'm in the bag so you can't hear me screaming. He takes me away and shoots me and the police can't shoot him because he's too fast and I die and here's you crying; here's your tears. The policemen make a statue of me and everybody cries because I'm dead. And you make me alive again and we live happily ever after and then a bad guy comes and steals all your money and we don't have enough food."

A little while earlier, K had informed me that she'd been behaving badly all day because she didn't like me and didn't want me to be her mom. I felt kicked in the chest already. But I kept accepting M's fears: "Uh-huh. I see. Can you draw even more scary stuff? " I wanted to cry.

M has recurring fears of being stolen. When his drawing slowed down, I asked him, "Are you afraid someone will steal you because we took you away from Mama A--?" When he stared at me and nodded yes, I explained that it's the law that Peter and I are his parents forever, which means no-one is allowed to take him. He seemed comforted somewhat by this statement, but of course there's no calming anyone's fear of chaotic bad guys.

Eventually, when he'd run out of fears, M turned the paper over and drew our whole family having dinner at his favorite restaurant, a Japanese hibachi-style place where he loves to imitate the table chefs playing with knives and fire. When I asked whether I ought to take the paper with me to get the scary thoughts out of his room, he said yes and instructed me, "When you're angry, show the angry side. When you're happy, show the happy side."

("Angry"? We never discussed "angry." Hunh. I'll have to ask him about that.)

I drew him a big heart to place over his bed like a talisman. He loved it. He usually sleeps with a soft fleece sweater of mine and sometimes with a toy of K's.

Unlike home-grown kids, institution-raised kids don't know about waking their parents for dead-of-night problems. Sad as it sounds, there is often not enough staff at the institution to help them at night, so they learn to put themselves back to sleep. M will call us if he wets his bed, but that's it. He will tell us in the morning about his nightmares of being stolen and how he lay in bed afraid, but it won't occur to him to call out.

Therefore, last night I told M, "We're your mom and dad even at night. So if you're scared and you want to check that we're here to protect you, call us and we'll come."

"But what if you're sleeping too hard?"

"Come get us."

He looked genuinely puzzled. "Then what do I do?"

i said, "Well, first you can look at us sleeping and see if you feel better knowing we're in the house with you. If that doesn't help, just say, 'Mom, Dad, I'm scared,' and we'll help you. Okay?"

He said okay.

We expected him to test this system last night, but he didn't. Maybe just knowing it was in place helped him.

Achieved the Impossible This Morning

I had enough sleep.
I had a shower.
I put on clothes that I like.
I groomed my eyebrows and nails.
I put on makeup and earrings.
Peter fed and is minding the kids.
I fixed the problem with our printer.
I am at my desk writing.
I even filed a bug report on software I'm trying out, since the company is interested in hearing from me.

It took only 2 years, 10 1/2 months for me to have a morning like this.

Of course, I am afraid of what I'll find when i leave my office....

Reading and Drama

I got a call from the school a couple of days ago: Would we authorize them to assign K a reading tutor? "She clearly knows her letters," said the teacher, "but she won't sit still to read." We had noticed the same thing. I said yes. I also asked who the tutor would be was delighted that she's the literary specialist both our kids worked with in a pre-literacy class two years ago at their preschool/daycare. I used to wake them up from "quiet time" to see her, and this is why.

When I informed K, she asked the only question I hadn't prepared for: "Why me?" I answered with what teacher had told me, which in retrospect wasn't the best answer: "To help you not wiggle so much. You and Miss L-- will go to a quiet place where you can read together, just the two of you, so you won't have so much trouble focusing."

K has told me that "the best thing a person can do" is learn to read. She's been recognizing certain sight words for well over a year and writing little love notes to Peter and me. She loves being read to, will (finally) sit for book after book after book, remembers stories, talks about things that happens in them. She likes looking at dictionaries and field guides, where words make visual patterns. Until recently, she claimed she could read.

But get her to sit and practice reading with us? Might as well ask a howler monkey. She wiggles all over the place and tries to tickle us and otherwise distract us with cuteness and charm. When she does read, she's mainly reciting a sentence she's memorized, without even looking at the page. If asked to look, even at a single word so she can get the first letter, she says, "I give up."

The issue came to a head the other night when I actually picked her up and carried her to her room, kicking and screaming, to do her reading homework. She tried hard to read, I have to give her that. And I was very supportive of every effort she made. But after a few pages she made a mistake and screamed, "I AM SO BAD AT THIS!" and launched into a full-on tantrum.

If I hadn't had a screaming child in my arms, I would have cried. I had the irrational thought, This teacher is hurting my kid! I wanted to tell K, "Let's quit. Reading doesn't matter." She feels that I'm torturing her by making her read. I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with her because of schoolwork.

K was squirming away from me on the rug, screaming without words. I asked whether she knew was was wrong. She nodded yes. I asked whether she would tell me what it was. She shook her head no. I asked whether she wanted me to stay. She nodded yes. So I did. I said, "You are not bad at this. You are learning. You're used to getting everything right on the first try, but you're not able to do this so easily. Even if you really were bad at this, I'd still love you and still be your mom."

She screamed, "I KNOW THAT!"

I thought, Glad she does. Glad the problem isn't embarrassment. I gathered her into my lap. Of course, this was the night I had only ten more minutes to be with her--Nancy was coming shortly so I could go downtown for a class. I wished I could have asked her to shut off the tears and we'd deal with it tomorrow.

Suddenly K said, "I want to read the rest with Nancy."

She hadn't ever succeeded at this before, but I agreed, making a mental note to coach Nancy before I left. She's helped 11 grandchildren learn to read (#12 is still a baby), but I wanted to review K's teacher's recommendations with her. I let K run off to be with M, watching their first TV all week.

M tackled her. Uncharacteristically, K screamed and hit him. I immediately ordered M to stand back. When he asked why, I said, "Because K is having a tantrum and might hurt you. I'm protecting you." K ran to her room, and I let her know, as I always tell a child who has retreated, that she could choose when to come out.

She did a few minutes later and sat down next to M to watch PBS's Word Girl. Now that she was calm, I gathered her into my arms and said the following: "You are probably having trouble reading because you spoke Russian until you were 4. You're only 6 now. You had to learn English REALLY fast. Now you're also learning Spanish in school and Hebrew in religious school AND you're learning to read. That's a lot for anybody, even a kid like you. And it's not your fault. You didn't ask to grow up speaking Russian! You didn't ask to be adopted when you were almost 4! You have done so much learning that your brain is just working extra hard, that's all. Your teacher knows this, so she's asked Miss L-- to help you, and Papa and I try to help, too, because we love you and we know you want to read."

She turned her red face to me.

I said, "I wish I could make it easier for you."

She reached up and touched my cheek and said, "You don't have to, Mom."

At that point, Nancy rang the doorbell. I reviewed the teacher's guidelines with her, did my usual Nancy-will-take-care-of-you-because-Papa-and-I-love-you-but-can't-be-here-so-be-nice-to-her pep taik, and left for class.

When I got home, where was a note on K's breakfast place mat: "Good job on your reading last night! I'm so proud of you. Love, Nancy."

K read calmly and beautifully with Peter last night.

I wish I know what brought about the change. Did K just need to be heard? Just need to be told it wasn't her fault? Just need someone to witness her frustration?

First Therapy Visit

Both in the same day: I brought the kids to visit a child therapist and I was offered reading tutoring for K. I'll write about the first in this entry.

So far, we have had no mental health issues that we haven't been able to deal with ourselves. You've read about all of them here. But one thing had been bothering us: K's recurrent phases of grief during which she seems to need more comfort than we can give her. She will weep at bedtime or wake up saying she's sad, and she will want to pretend she's a baby and have us carry her around. If she has any idea what's bothering her, she says she misses Mama A, her beloved Russian caregiver. I have written here about all this before. What brought us to seek therapy was my gut feeling that we have been throwing comfort into a black hole: she has a deep emptiness that is beyond our skill to teach her to cope with. Since we expect M to show signs of grief or anger sometime soon (again, as I have written here, it often happens once adopted kids are home long enough), we figured we might as well establish a relationship with a therapist skilled in handling adoption issues. If we don't need her now, we probably will.

If you are local to me and you need information on the person we found, please email me privately.

We visited this therapist, whom I'll call Carol, after school one day this week. I had met with her privately several weeks earlier to give her background on our family. When I told the kids we were going to see her, I spoke of her as a "feelings doctor." I had prepared them for months by telling them that I see a feelings doctor myself sometimes when I have feelings that I need help with. I had even given them the example that I was going to seek her help for all the yelling I had been doing. So when we talked about the visit the day before, they seemed quite calm about it and asked me simply, "What will we do there?" and "What does she look like?" I could answer both questions.

The visit was probably like any child therapy visit: we spent some time talking and some time playing games. K and M behaved the way they always do in a new environment, exploring it with their hands and bodies, testing to see whether our rules for behavior applied in this new space. I had a hard time deciding what behavior to require of the kids: was it okay to fool around with Slinkies while talking with Carol? Was it okay to wiggle and sit sideways in their chairs? I did insist that they keep the games on the shelves until playtime and that they quit touching the stuff on Carol's desk, but other behavior was rather a gray area for me. I kept asking Carol, "Is this okay with you?" and she kept giving me a noncommittal shrug. It made me think that she was evaluating how much I was willing to let them get away with.

The high spot of the afternoon was when K chased a Slinky down the stairs and let herself into the men's clothing store that is another tenant of the building. She was easy to extract. Thank Heaven she didn't let herself into the jewelry store!

We meet with her again this week, to continue establishing the relationship. The goal is to get the kids comfortable being with her while I wait elsewhere, and eventually to get them comfortable enough that they can meet with her separately. I feel we have a long way to go.

Still, the kids said afterwards that they liked her and were happy when I said we'd see her again. When she asked them how they felt during the session, they said, "Happy," and they looked it.

The Cast Came Off

...on Monday. The X-rays say that K's arm has healed well. Having learned to do everything with her left, nondominant hand, she now appears to be ambidextrous. Stay tuned.

Longing to Protect Them

I find myself sad about K and M these days at unexpected moments, sometimes even crying when I am alone. I'm aware that they're in elementary school now, which is the beginning of being up against a world that mostly doesn't understand adoption, in which teachers and friends sometimes behave as if they were enemies. A world in which schools assign family trees and babies always grow in "their mommy's" tummy and you can "adopt" a greyhound or a highway simply by spending money. We have to teach our innocent, open-hearted children to cope with a world that makes bad assumptions about adoptive families and asks rude questions about them when it acknowledges them at all.

I feel weary already, but I am rolling up my sleeves and putting on my armor--a lightweight armor of politeness: "Sorry, Teacher, but they have no baby pictures" and "Why do you ask 'How much did they cost'?" and "I'm her mother, sweetie. The word we use is 'birthmother." But behind the armor is a mother lion just waiting to be roused.

Ironic Good News

Both kids have recently told me for the first time that they hate me & I'm mean to them. M even told me he draws pictures about how much he doesn't like me.

What I felt: Good attachment! I'm relieved they're not afraid I'll give them away if they tell me this.

What I said: "I understand. I wish my job were to make you happy all the time, but it isn't. I'm your mom. My job is to keep you safe, and that doesn't always mean making you happy. It's okay that you don't like me sometimes."

What I did: I cried. I didn't intend to, but I was exhausted, caring for the kids 24/7 during Peter's most recent on-call weekend and short on sleep. I told the kids I would be okay, of course. Still, K stroked my cheek and M brought me tissues, and for a moment we were friends again.

Car Mail

A few weeks back, we accidentally received some of our rabbi's mail. (His family lives around the corner from us.) So I took the kids for a walk to return it. M had a toy car in his hand.

When we got to the mailbox, K put in the stack of mail. Then M put in the toy car. I asked him why. He explained, "Because the rabbi hasn't had a turn to play with it yet."

(When I explained this to the rabbi, we agreed it was "a loaner." He returned it last week via the same method.)

Rocks

K saw coarse sand on the street and exclaimed, "Look, Mom! Little baby dirts!"

Then she looked up and asked me, "Do mommy rocks adopt baby rocks?"

M and Pumpkin

This from two years ago. (Gosh, has it been that long?)

M saw me putting a halved pumpkin into the oven and asked: "When it come out, pumpkin have eyes?"

I said, "Er...no, but we can carve another one so it does, and give it a mouth, and--"

His face lit up, and he asked hopefully, "Pumpkin can talk?"