A Hot Mess – And I’m Not Talking Turkey!

I like the way my friend, Diana puts things sometimes.  Recently, she described us both as a “couple of hot messes.”  I can’t think of a better way to put it.  I’ve been a hot mess for quite some time; I just didn’t know how much of a mess I was in until about two weeks ago. 

The kids are still the kids.  Youngest Son is still doing well, but it is the holidays and well, you know, the holidays are hard on kids with complex traumatic pasts.  We got through the Thanksgiving weekend around here pretty well, though.  Most of the time, he stayed in his room and did not participate in family activities with my older sons and my daughter-in-law (and “almost daughter-in-law” – but I’ll tell you about that sometime later).  Anyway, he coped by withdrawing.  That’s what he does.  And I let him.  We’ve learned the best thing to do to help him get through it all is to let him get through it the way he always has.  Now, however, he knows what his behavior is all about and he can identify the feelings – even the hidden feelings stored in his amygdala that trigger his responses to stress.  He can’t always do it in the moment, but he gets there eventually.  DBT has helped him accomplish this.  And besides that, he’s produced some pretty amazing art while he withdraws.

Still, Youngest Son’s Thanksgiving weekend wasn’t perfect.  He gave me some lip (which I did not respond therapeutically to) and treated me as though my own personal hot mess was just a big, stupid inconvenience to him.  For a time, he had no consideration for what I am going through, but it was only for a time.  He backed off.  He’s not done anything to care for me, but backing off shows a lot of care.  I am still in awe of how far he has come.  We wouldn’t be doing this well if we were going through this hot mess last year. 

As for The Princess, being home with me this school year has helped her in ways words cannot fully explain.  After a rough start to the school year, we developed a relaxed rhythm for school work and for social/emotional development.  I’ve really enjoyed having her around, quite frankly.  She’s a lot nicer to everyone since she’s no longer around certain other girls, and she’s learned she has the choice in how to respond to someone who behaves in a way much different than what we are teaching her to “be” as a young, Christian girl.  She now knows that someone who cuts off her friendship, or treats her poorly, or is just plain MEAN, is missing a lot of “good stuff.”  She truly is an awesome kid who has come so much further than most anyone else I know – kid or adult.  Still she’s had her moments, too.  Dealing with this hot mess is frightening to a kid who has been through what she’s been through. 

I haven’t felt well physically for some time now.  There’s been one thing after the other, but I’ve attributed much of it to just getting a bit older and facing the “monster” all middle-aged women face at some point or another.  Most women are through the brunt of it by the time they reach my age, though.  I’ve been one of the “lucky ones” still going strong at age 53.  I am well on the high end of what is still considered average for pre-menopausal women.  So, I just figured my body is a-typical.  I’m going to experience some weird, a-typical things.  So I have.  It’s been going on for probably three years, and I’ve learned to live with it, but it’s getting worse as time goes on.  The kicker for me was when my right arm and hand started being so much colder than my left arm and hand.  Then, my family doctor’s nurse couldn’t get a blood pressure reading in that arm and my pulse was very, very faint.     

So, to shorten a really long story into one that’s bearable reading for a blogpost, it boils down to this:  I’m having cardio-vascular issues.  I have a blood clot in my right jugular vein, about 6” away from my brain.  There are other blood clots in my arm.  I’m going to have an angiogram with radio-active medicine sometime soon to see if there are other clots in other places in my body (as my cardiologist suspects there are), and then after that, I will have surgery.  It’s a hot mess.  Even the little things involved like getting blood drawn are traumatic for me.  I am a notoriously hard “stick.”  I have been this way all my life and my own amygdala has some pretty intense stuff stored in it that gets to me every stinkin’ time I have to have blood drawn.  It truly is terrifying to me.  Yes, terrifying.  So, for those of you reading who may think, “Sheesh.  She needs to get over that.  A blood test is nothing,” don’t think I haven’t tried.  PTSD is PTSD.  Period. 

My kids are scared.  I am scared.  My husband is scared.  No one knows for sure what happens after they put me under for the surgery.  At this point, we’re just trying to deal with a screw up at the doctor’s office last week that had me critically (their word) overdosed on blood thinners thanks to a staff person who didn’t know what she was talking about.  Little things like needing a blood test this morning to see where things are, but not being able to get one, add to that stress.  Yet, I look around and I try to see the women I know who are strong no matter what they face.  And I try.  But my trying is for naught.  I try to remember that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is moving forward despite the fear.  I am me.  It's okay to be me.  It’s okay to be scared.  I just need to choose how I am going to deal with all this stuff.

I hope my choices make my kids proud – proud like they’ve made me proud.  I just think I sure could use some “easy” up in here, ya’ know?

When Things Heat Up

While states around the Great Lakes are getting hammered with snow this week, it is unseasonably warm in the Plains.  We’ve warmed up to the 50’s and 60’s for several days in a row now.  Tomorrow, the temperature may even each 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  We have to make some adjustments when things heat up.  Some of the nice warm clothing we received as Christmas presents has not been worn yet.  I’ve only worn the new coat I got for Christmas once and even then, I ended up taking it off.  It was too warm.

Sometimes things “heat up” for my hurt kids.  I haven’t written for several days because we’ve been in the midst of that heat.  Still, the holidays were mostly okay around here.  My hurt son did better this year than ever before, but it was a different story for my daughter.  She has been triggered in many ways, and her reactions to those triggers have been stronger than ever.  Some of them have also been very public.  We made some adjustments over the holidays because things got so hot for her.  But quite honestly, we didn’t always get it right.  Sometimes, we were reactive and parented her with traditional methods which just do not work for traumatized kids.  Sometimes, we got caught up in the heat of the moment. It happens.  No therapeutic parent gets it right 100% of the time.  Besides, we’re often suddenly caught in new situations with our kids, even if we’ve been home with them for a few years.  It’s hard to think of all the tools you might use from your toolbox when that happens.  Sometimes, you just grab the hammer.  (Yeah, I know.  That doesn’t work when a pipe bursts, either.)

My princess had several things going on over the past two weeks that attributed to her melt downs.  The biggest – the one we expected, and the one we “girded our loins” for, was Christmas.  As I’ve written in past posts, the holidays and celebrations of any kind are HARD on traumatized kids.  They always react somehow, some way.  We were ready for that.  (Sort of.)  Another thing that contributed to my daughter’s stress was “losing” her bedroom to her married brother and sister-in-law for 10 days while they visited.  While we tried to prepare for their visit by setting up some rules, so she would still feel she had some control over her space, it didn't quite work the way we planned.  Our preparations went by the wayside when my daughter-in-law became ill the day after Christmas.  Consequently, my older kids were not out of her room by 10 a.m. (Rule #1), the room did not stay picked up (Rule #2) and in fact, became quite messy, and the older kids did not stay clear of her room for a few hours each afternoon so she could have some privacy (Rule #3).  She felt encroached upon and, while she was pleasant toward them, she was also very angry.  (Who wouldn’t be?)  Guess who she took that anger out on every stinkin’ day?

Even before all this, however, we discovered our princess was sneaking around behind our backs.  She was “borrowing” her brother’s cell phone to send inappropriate text messages (she is not allowed to have a cell phone because she cannot handle the responsibility).  She was contacting a girl she’s supposed to have very limited contact with and she was engaging in an inappropriate boy/girl relationship, for which she is nowhere near ready.  She is friends with a hurt girl from school/church.  That friendship has not been good for either girl.  Neither girl is “bad.”  It’s just that the two of them together are bad news.  I’ve spoken with this girl’s mom (she is not her biological mom), and she agrees that the two of them do not do well together.  They are over-the-top boy crazy together and they also behave much younger than their chronological ages when they are together.  They simply cannot behave appropriately.  The boy/girl relationship is another story, but closely tied to her friendship with the girl.  Because of our princess’ background, we are working hard to train her for appropriate relationships with boys – and to wait.  She wants to be pure and to follow our faith.  She wants to believe God’s best for us, but she also does not feel worthy.  Her behaviors with boys lately are getting scary.  Because of this, over the holidays, I also very seriously considered homeschooling her.  That is still an option if her behavior continues to escalate in this direction.  Afterall, making her world smaller has worked well in the past.  Yet, I hesitate as she gets older for fear that making her world smaller will blow up in my face.  I can’t hold the reigns tight forever, but she’s only 13 and I don’t have to let them go completely slack either.  Sometimes, I think none of the decisions we make are 100% “right.”  We just do the best we can.  We do what we see is best for her for (and for us) at that time.  For now, she’ll return to public school.  (My husband is afraid I’d wind up in the hospital if I tried to homeschool her right now.)

The hardest times to manage are when things heat up without warning.  My princess is usually predictable,  but there are times when something will trigger that middle part of her brain, where those big feelings and sense memories live without words or cognitive memory that helps her make sense of her past, and she will explode!  It doesn’t happen often with her, but when it does happen, it is always a very heated explosion.  This happened publicly a few days ago.  It’s why I have a sore arm now.  It’s also a time my husband and I grabbed a psychological hammer instead of some tools that would probably have worked a lot better.  I want to share that experience with you and tell you what I think we SHOULD have done – what we WILL do in the future should this particular reaction happen again with our princess.

Last Friday was a beautiful day.  Our family – all nine of us – decided to go to the zoo that morning and then go for burgers at a fun, 50’s themed restaurant.  It was warm for this time of year, as I wrote above.  Still, it wasn’t summer.  We still needed jackets or hoodies.  We took two cars.  My husband, oldest son and daughter-in-law, and the princess rode in one car.  The other boys rode in another.  When we got to the zoo, everyone jumped out of the cars and headed toward the entrance of the zoo.  Everyone except the princess, that is.  She lagged behind.  My husband turned around to hurry her up and saw that she’d taken her jacket off and locked it in the car.  All she had on was a t-shirt.  It was too windy and cold for just a t-shirt, so he told her to put her jacket back on.  She went into a rage.

Our usually pleasant and sweet princess looked as though her body was taken over by something frightening.  Her face was full of fear, defiance and hate.  She planted herself and would not move.  She said, “I don’t need it.”  She refused to put the jacket back on.

Okay, so here’s what my husband SHOULD have done:  He should have said, “Okay, if you say so.  I think you’ll change your mind very quickly.  But if that’s your choice, we’ll leave the jacket here.  Just know you won’t be able to come back to the parking lot later to get it.”  And we should have let her freeze her little arms off.  Natural consequences.

Instead, my husband used traditional parenting methods – the thing we would have done with our older bio boys – and said, “PUT the jacket ON!”  She was, of course, completely disrespectful from then on.  As any good wife would do, I backed up my husband.  Besides, I was MAD at her!  I got her to get the jacket on, but then she would not move away from the car.  The family was waiting.  The other kids were embarrassed by their sister’s very public behavior.  They just wanted to go.  We’d driven 30 miles to get there and we were looking forward to having some fun.  Now, the youngest, smallest member of the family had everyone’s negative attention and it was getting worse.

Again, what I SHOULD have done:  I should have walked away.  She’s not nine anymore.  I could have left a 13 year old standing in the parking lot at this zoo.  While it’s true that kids “disappear” even in “safe” towns, I believe she would have been safe to leave.  (Besides, I am also quite sure she would have followed – even if she followed from 10-15 feet behind). 

I did not walk away, however.  I grabbed her arm and said, “Let’s GO!”  She jerked away violently, hurting both of us.  She raged.  I stood there.  People looked – gawked actually.  Heck, my own kids gawked.  I told the rest of the family to go ahead.  I should have gone ahead, too.  Instead, I escalated and shamed her.  I said, “All this over having to wear a jacket?  What is wrong with you?!”  (Absolutely not a good thing to do/say.)  She cried.  Eventually, she followed along.  It was only then that I remembered what we SHOULD be doing – ignoring the attitude and recognizing the pain – whatever pain it was.  I told the older kids to ignore her nasty attitude and respond to whatever she said in a normal tone of voice, or not respond at all if they felt they could not do so without reacting to her.  They did great.  By lunch time, she was behaving appropriately, though still clearly angry with me (and I with her).  We should validate her feelings, even as we parent her and explain to her that we’re only trying to take care of her.  It doesn’t mean we have to accept her behavior.  However, it may mean we have to deal with the behavior much later when we both are calm.

We were able to do just that later.  She didn’t want to talk about specifics though.  She never does.  She wants to forget about the times things don’t go well. 

We know a lot.  But we have so much more to learn.

"The fight for survival can become ingrained in a child's thinking.  Even when the environment changes and relationships become safe, the fight continues.  It's like carrying an umbrella to shield from the rain, but never putting it away once the sun is shining."  -- Heather Forbes

Holiday Homework

Halloween is over.  Yay!  Oh, how I’ve come to hate that holiday (more on that later).  It’s November 3^rd and the Christmas crazies have begun.  I’m not talking about the “normal” Christmas crazies – the holiday themed commercials on TV even before Halloween is over, or the trees and the lights up in the stores, or even the Facebook messages from annoying people who post things like, “Careful planning.  Check.  Watch for bargains throughout the year.  Check.  Christmas shopping finished.  Check.”  I’m talking about the over-the-top hyper, the grumpy, sullen, nasty attitudes, and the looks that could kill.  I’m talking about post-traumatic stress in my adopted children.

Whether or not your adopted child’s past involved hard things that happened around holidays, this time of year is pretty much a sure-fire prescription for elevated trauma reactions in your kids.  If your children were adopted internationally, you can add the post-institutionalized, Lord-of-the-Flies orphanage behaviors to it, too.  The holidays bring out the crazies in kids who’ve suffered severe trauma.  Consequently, they can also bring out the crazies for mama and papa, especially after a few years into parenting a child with PTSD, because you get to a point where you’re always on high alert, waiting for something else unpleasant to happen.

Okay, so by now, if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning – way back to a few days ago -- you may be thinking, “Sheesh.  This Mama T lady sure is a Debbie Downer.”  Sorry.  ‘Just trying to be real, folks.  There is joy in the journey, don’t get me wrong.  But the journey isn’t a walk in the park.  It’s hard.  I wish someone would have told me how hard it could be five years ago.  I mean, REALLY told me.  I wish I’d been better prepared.  I wish I’d learned more before I adopted, so I at least had a head start.  You know -- a REAL head start.  Not just a little inkling.  Not the kind of inkling you have that tells you it’s not going to happen to your family, though you’re sorry to see it happen to anyone else.  I wish I had the kind of head start that gave me a chance to brace myself for when I got that first hard smack in the face of trauma.  That’s why I’m blogging about this.  I don’t want you to be smacked.  I want you to be ready with a quick block to that upper left that’s coming.

If you’re newly home with an older adopted child, like I was when the holidays came along that first year, you may not realize just how much this time of year can affect your child.  I wasn’t.  We’d been home just over two months when Halloween came that first year.  I never had a problem with having fun on trick-or-treat night.  I know there are some Christians that do.  I didn’t.  My older kids always went trick-or-treating and we always gave out candy.  We never did the ghosts, zombies, witches, blood and gore stuff, but we had fun with super heroes, hobos, pop-culture and even politics.  We carved pumpkins and we went to parades.  That first year home with our younger kids, we dressed them up and introduced them to American greed just like we had our older kids.  They seemed to love it.  I didn’t know them well enough at the time to know it scared the bejeepers out of them in ways they could never fully comprehend.  They didn’t have enough language ability to tell me about their nightmares, or that they were so distracted, they couldn’t remember how to do simple tasks.  They didn’t have the tools they needed to let me know they were overwhelmed. 

By the time Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled around, things were totally out of control.  I had no clue that it wasn’t just part of the normal adjustment of becoming part of a family.  I didn’t know I could have made it easier on them, and on us, by toning things WAY down, by not overloading them with sugar and “stuff,” and by shielding them from some of the rest of America’s crazy consumerism.  Instead, I helped feed their fears.  I aided and abetted the all-too-often older adopted child’s sense of entitlement.  I fed my wants, like giving my little girl a great big doll house and all the STUFF to go with it (because I never got one and always wanted one as a child).  It wasn’t that I didn’t know a little bit about how it’s important to keep a newly adopted child’s world small, especially that first year you’re working on initial attachment, it was that I didn’t want to believe any of the hard stuff would ever hit us.  I wanted to believe we’d make it through that first year of hard adjustments for everyone and then everything would be okay.  It would be our “new normal.”  I said that a lot.  “New normal.” 

The thing is, there is nothing “normal” about raising a child you did not give birth to.  I may be setting myself up here, but I do not believe it was “God’s plan” for our two youngest children to lose their biological family, including a sibling, and be adopted by us.  His perfect plan is for children to be raised in happy, healthy homes by their biological parents.  That’s what “normal” is.  We humans messed up normal and God’s perfect plan.  Free will and all that.  That leaves hurt people in the wake – including children who become orphans.  We humans are to blame for it, not God.  Thankfully, God gives us a second chance.  Adoption is a second chance.  BUT, it is NOT part of His original plan.  I think it’s really important for our kids that we acknowledge the loss in their lives.  It’s a huge loss.  It’s a trauma every adopted child has experienced, even those adopted domestically at birth by parents who agree to an “open” adoption.  It’s not “normal.”  So I’ve stopped calling our life a “new normal.”  It’s simply “our life” and we are presented with new joys and new challenges every day.  It’s a second chance.  God is indeed a god of second chances. 

While we made it through that first year home with our kids, and our lives changed, and we found what became our new routine (if there is a routine) of our new life, there was no new “normal.”  There will never be a “normal” for us.  We need to be aware in ways “normal” families never worry about.  We need to run interference for our younger kids in ways we never imagined while raising our older ones.  So, what are some ways to run interference and keep your adopted child’s world small during the holidays?  What are some things you can do to minimize the crazies?  Let’s start with Halloween, even though it’s past.  After all, some people will leave those pumpkins rotting on their front steps until December 24^th!

Halloween:  Stay home.  Hole up.  Snuggle up.  Watch a movie.  Celebrate being together.  If candy is a problem for your kids, don’t get it.  If it’s not, give them a bag of kiddie crack and remind them it’s a once-a-year indulgence.  If you have teens, talk about the gore.  They’re repelled by it and attracted to it at the same time.  They will watch the yucky movies every chance they get, even if you don’t allow it in your house.  And they will have nightmares like a four-year-old.  Expect your hyper one to be more hyper.  Expect your internal-processor to shut down and be even more surly.  Expect the looks that could kill.  Don’t take them personally.  You’re paying the dues on someone else’s investment of hurt in their lives.  But if you keep Halloween away as much as you can keep it away, the crazies will be less.  As the kids get older, you can talk about WHY Halloween is a trauma trigger for them.  You can talk about trauma triggers.  You can talk about the bad stuff.  Keep it age and development appropriate.  Your four year old won’t be able to process the same as he will when he’s 16.  But I guarantee you, he’ll still be processing trauma for years to come.

November 1^st:  Whenever possible, avoid taking your child to Wal-mart, Target or even the grocery store.  Do this through January 15^th, or whenever the Christmas left-over sales are done.  (Valentines stuff will be all over the place by then.  But I’ll save that for a later post.)  Plan to keep your child’s world small.  I’m sorry, American consumer, but there is no reason your 10 year old needs a smart phone.  And your 13 year old doesn’t need her own lap top.  Make the holidays about family and treasured memories together.  Develop traditions.  If your kids want to remember their birth country’s traditions, incorporate some of those.  (For some, these may also be trauma triggers.  They are for my kids so we avoid Eastern European traditions for the winter holidays.)  Make Christmas WAY less about the “stuff” and more about relationships (including a relationship with God).  Set a budget – a reasonable budget – and stick with it.  Let your kid make a wish list, but don’t get him everything on that list!  Don’t even get him five things on that list.  Three tops.  And remember what I said about smart phones and lap tops.

Many kids adopted from orphanages have a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of gratefulness, like people around us usually expect.  How many times has your kid heard, “Oh, you’re so lucky to be part of that family?  Aren’t you happy for all the things they’ve given you?”  (Yeah.  I know; it’s repulsive.  The thing is, it’s true.  They are lucky.  They are blessed.  At some point in time, they need to learn that.  And it’s okay for you to realize, mama and papa, that this kid is indeed lucky to have you – just as you are blessed to have them.)  My kids are not grateful.  They are competitive.  They keep score.  They notice when one sibling gets something and the other does not.  The youngest one has no idea why she shouldn’t have all the things her adult brothers have, including a car waiting for her in the driveway.  (Remember, she’s 13.)  They want.  Want.  WANT.  And when they get, they pay attention to that thing they wanted so badly for a day and a half, put it in the closet and forget about it – unless they’ve broken it before then.

“Things” did not need to be taken care of in their lives.  Things were disposable.  Nice things they got were stolen by "caregivers" and sold in the market place or given to the caregivers' own children.  Stuff broke all the time.  Missionaries and other nice people were always there to give them more stuff.  It came.  It went.  There was no gratefulness.  Momentary glee.  Sure.  But no lasting sense of being grateful.  Just a sense of more, more, more.  And that sense of more, more, more is fed to giant proportions when they make it home into a Western family, richer than 80% of the rest of the world – even those of us under the 6-figure income mark.

Another tip:  Don’t replace things they break.  Help them figure out how to fix it (if you want) or make them fix it themselves.  If it’s not fixable, they do without it.  My daughter has already DESTROYED a pair of boots this year because she wanted new ones.  The boots were in fine shape until I told her she wasn’t getting another pair.  So what now?  Now, she has a pair of boots that have been repaired with super glue.  If the glue fails and her feet get wet, so be it.  It’s not about the boots.  It’s about entitlement for her.  It’s about teaching her to be grateful for what she has for me.

Last tip (for now):  Keep the parties and the number of people in and out to a minimum.  Too much is too much for our kids.  Too many people coming and going is bound to set off trauma triggers.  Give them tools that work for them.  For my daughter, reminding her to “Stop.  Breathe.  Breathe again.  Think.  And then come back,” will often tone down the crazy hyper reaction to trauma triggers.  This is an adaptation of the old, "Stop. Think. Relax" cognitive therapy technique.

"Stop. Think. Relax." is a good tool for us trauma mamas, as well.  Sometimes we need to “Stop, breathe, breathe again, think and come back” to the crazies so we don’t get caught up in them ourselves.  Hang in there, friends!