Passing the blame

My younger son Fudge is still working on the very hard journey of attachment, on a daily basis he pushes me away because he is afraid that I will leave him like all the other people that he has loved and lost. On an intellectual level I understand what is happening but it is harder to make my heart understand. It hurts to be rejected by a child who you pour all your energy into loving and helping to heal, a child who is wanted, a child who is loved. 

Some days I do not think that I can handle one more minute of being pushed away and that I am going to explode, I often do, at him, which gets us no where. He has the ability to fixate on an issue and drive me crazy by talking about the issue non stop. In my calm and patient moments though I am able to respond to him in a way that is helpful, a way that will help him learn to trust and occasionally a way that totally passes the blame to his father and gets me out of the loop altogether which was the case the at breakfast the other day. 

Fudge was nattering at me about his desire for a screen to play video games on, any screen would do, pick any video game platform and give it Fudge and he is happy. The problem is he is also an addict and given the choice he will only play video games and do nothing else. Our solution is no videao games in the house, at all, period. My partner and I both agree that this is the best choice for our kids right now and neither of us is really willing to bend on the subject even though he frequently tries to convinve us that he is a poor deprived child because he lacks a Wii or his own IPad. 

So at breakfast he awas going on about his need for games and I looked at him and said with a completley straight face and zero sympathy, "you do know that Dad is the one who says no video games and since he feels that way I support him because we are your parents and we work together."

Fudge stared at me open mouthed for a minute, while I enjoyed the fact that he was speechless and that for once something was not my fault, therefore we would not need to fight about it. Then he started to talk and I continued to place the blame for the video game ban squarely all on his fathers shoulders. 

As soon as P walked into the room Fudge started in on him about how he knew it was all Dad's fault and luckily for me P totally accepted all the blame. It was a bit of brilliance on my part, fight avoided, Mom is not the bad parent this time and Dad handled it all with grace. 

Perhaps I should pass the blame on to someone else a little more often...

J. blogs at Stellar Parenting 101 where she is occasionally aware that the 8th day and the 9th day of the month are not interchangeable although she sometimes wishes that they were. 

Mothering

It's Mother's Day today,  a fact that would be difficult to miss by anyone who lives in North America. It's the day when we celebrate the woman who gave us life, the women who care for us, the women who we trust to meet our needs. That being said, celebrating this day is really challenging for some people. Not all of us had mothers who met our needs or loved us or cherished our every moment, many of us mourn the losses of the women who took care of and some of us were not privileged enough to have mother's who noticed us or cared about our achievements. For others this day is hard because they are not the mother they thought they would be or they are not yet mothers even though they long to be. 

In our family we have our own sets of challenges today because my kids are adopted from foster care and I am their 5th mother.

I have been dreading this day for weeks because I know it will be hard. We keep things pretty low key and try hard to keep our routines as close to normal as we can. My husband took the children to buy a gift yesterday, nothing huge, nothing that states that I am the world's best mother, just a little gift to acknowledge the day and all that I do as their Mom. They make me cards and we celebrate my role in their lives but it's a fine balance between celebrating me and acknowledging that there were others before me and that they mourn the loss of those mothers too. 

Last night we were watching a movie together, Fudge was complaining that he was not feeling well and so I moved over to  the couch and sat with him. He rested his head in my lap and I stroked his hair, after awhile I began to cry. I cried because this wee boy of 9 has been hurt, hurt by the woman who was supposed to love him and cherish him and value him as a human being and yet she didn't. Instead he was left to fend for himself, to be unsure of who would meet his needs and who would take care of him. As a result his brain did not develop in the way that it should because he did not attach to another human being as a young child. His life has been forever altered by her choices and by her inability to put his needs before hers. 

It was the first time in 3 years of mothering Fudge that he actually relaxed enough to let me hold him for longer than a minute or two. It took being sick and miserable for him to relax enough to let it happen but it did and that was the best gift I could of received but it made me sad because no child should have to endure what he has endured. Children should be loved and appreciated for who they are.

Neglect, loss, poverty, lack of skills, pain and illness are some of the many things that make today so very hard for some people. If today is hard for you because of your relationship with your mother or with your children's first mother or because you long for things that can not be, know that you are not alone. Not everyone celebrates this day the way that our commercialist society would like you to believe, some us celebrate the smallest of achievements with our children and that is better than any card or gift that can be purchased to tell us that we are a good mothers. 

What do I know?

What do I know?

I know my son.

I know his needs and habits.

I know I love him.

I know that other people often misunderstand him.

I know that many of things he says as does are a direct result of the neglect he suffered as a young child.

I know more about my kid than other people give me credit for.

Late last month Calvin and I ended up spending a number of days at our local Children’s hospital. Calvin is having some ongoing issues with his bowel and no one is really sure what is wrong or how to fix it. To make a long story short, the surgeon and residents who were working with us were all convinced that the issues that Calvin is having are strictly behavioural. They refused to acknowledge that there could be any other cause and refused to run any further tests. They assured that the plan they had would solve his issues and then we would be good to go. I advocated as best I could without getting angry but I was pretty frustrated by the lack of options we were given.

Staying in the hospital for multiple nights is stressful for any kid. Add to the mix all the unknowns we were dealing with regarding our stay and needless to say everyone in our family was stressed. It was particularly hard on Fudge who has only really been separated from Calvin when they transitioned between foster homes. It was a challenging couple of days for everyone.

So after 3 days they sent us home with no answers and a promise that all of his issues would be gone. It turned out they were wrong and I was right. Their treatment plan did not solve the problem and within 24 hours of coming home it had begun again.  

The thing that made me the most frustrated about all of this was that the many of the staff at the hospital could not see past the fact that this was not a  behaviour issue and but  a physiological one.  I know my kid, I know that there was a time when some of his issues were definitely behaviour based but that has not been the case for the last 15 months or so and I could not get this point across. Many kids who have been foster kids control the only thing the can, their own bodies, it happens. The resulting damage can create lifelong issues and sometimes requires surgery to correct.  In Calvin’s case I believe that there was an underlying issue that was made worse by his behaviour when he came into care. He was 5, who can blame a traumatized 5 year old for withholding the only thing he has any control over.

 No one would listen to me because as the parent clearly my opinion did not matter. I was humoured at one point by a resident who heard me out but then that was all she did, just listened to me and then went back to her plan. I was ignored by one of the nurses who made comments about his wilful behaviour and then a doctor told my son there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah, we are stuck in the hospital and he has an IV and nasal-gastric tube but there is nothing wrong with him.

Needless to say I am frustrated. We spent 3 days in the hospital after countless months of trying everything we were told to do and we still have no answers. Perhaps after our next appointment where I will explain ( yet again) that nothing has changed someone will listen to me. I may only be his mother but I might also know a thing or two about who he is and how things work.

J. blogs at Stellar Parenting 101 where she works  at being a hopeful parent even though it can be really hard some days.

Things are not always as they appear

Calvin is sitting across the table from me as I write today. He is having a Mom imposed day off from school because I felt as though he would not be able to keep it together and have a successful day if he went to school. Staying home means doing work in workbooks, it is not a free day but it is a day when he does not have to deal with bullying, frustrations, disappointments  and having his buttons pushed because others think that watching him explode is so much fun.

I have been warning his school all year that this would happen, that one day he would blow up and hurt another child. He needs structure, he needs adults to step in a help him when he is overwhelmed, he needs adults to see that it is going to happen and do something before it does. The staff at his school heard me but they were not listening. They did not believe me, they did not think that this little boy was capable of such things and because they refused to listen to me a child got hit with a chair on Friday.

They are listening now.

Sadly it is too little to late. Now that Calvin has raged at school he has nothing to lose, he has no reason to try to keep it together.  All  the other kids in the school will have a great time watching that kid with the short fuse blow his top when they tease him on the yard.  Kids can be mean, few kids understand what it is like to be different and even fewer know what it is like to be  in the situation my children are in.

The staff believe that he is in control when he blows, that he choosing to lose his temper. They do not realise that he reacting from a place of fear, a place that is deep within his memory that he not thinking about it but instead just trying to protect himself from the perceived threat. We all know that the other child who is teasing him is just doing it to see the show but Calvin doesn’t know that. It triggers a fight or flight reaction in him that is so deeply ingrained within his being that it is automatic.

He has this deeply ingrained reaction because at a very young age he learned that the only person he could depend on was himself, no one else could be trusted. Sometimes the big people in his world took care of him and sometimes they did not, sometimes the fed him, sometimes they comforted him and other times they just left him to cry. Left him to wonder why no one was meeting his needs, why his cries were unheard or ignored when he clearly needed something. His brain was affected by this neglect, his brain did not develop in the same way of that a child who is cared for and has their needs met lovingly.

Then other adults came into his world and moved him away, separated him from his sister and placed him a foster home and told him that he would be safe and taken care of here. He visited with his Mom sometimes and sometimes he went to visit and she did not show up reinforcing his belief that adults could not be trusted. He started to misbehave at school and in his foster home, he was punished and made to feel as though he was a bad boy. None of the adults in his world realised that his behaviour was speaking volumes about what had happened to him, he was telling them but they could not hear him because they did not really understand his language

This went on for 3 years before Calvin was told that he was going to be adopted and that there would be no more moving around. Calvin did not believe us when we told him we would love him forever, that we would always be there for him. Why should he believe us, adults are not to be trusted

Everyone told us he was a handful, he had a lot of behaviour issues, had been suspended numerous times, refused to use the bathroom, was overly affectionate and could not be trusted to be alone. We were not suprised by his behaviour, no wonder he acted like that, his life had been one traumatic event after another. By 8 years old this child had more trauma than many people have in a life time.  

We have worked really hard to teach Calvin that we will take care of him and meet his needs, that we will never leave him no matter what he does, that he can be angry and tell us that he hates us and that we will still love him.  He is starting to realise that we mean it, that as his parents we can be trusted. He does not trust us all the time, he is still working on that but he has come far in the last 18 months.

Even though he is starting to be able to stay regulated and in control at home it is hard for him to maintain that control when he is not with me. He uses me as his anchor, he knows that I will see when he is becoming disregulated and help him gain control by talking to him about what is going on. That is why school is so hard for him, there is no one to help keep him regulated because all the staff wait until the behaviour occurs rather than watching for the signs that the behaviour is coming.  Once he is disregulated he goes to that fear place in his memory and reacts from there, he does not stop to think, he just reacts because he is scared that no one will keep him safe and so he must keep himself safe at all costs.

This is attachment disorder, this is what happens when children are neglected and experience trauma. Calvin is not alone, there are many children who are just like Calvin.

I wish that the world understood attachment disorder. I wish that the world understood the profound effect that neglect that has on a child’s developing brain. I wish people would listen to those of us who have taken the time to learn about attachment disorder and choose to parent children who are affected by this preventable damage when we try to explain our children to them.

J. blogs at Stellar Parenting 101 where she talks about raising two wonderful boys and all the challenges that go along with being their mom.

Truth is hard

P. meets Fudge in the upstairs hallway, “Morning Fudge, what’s for breakfast?”

Fudge replies, “In the downstairs restaurant we are having Eggo’s”

Around our house we would refer to that little exchange as a “Fudgism”. A Fudgism is something that would only occur to Fudge to say, they are usually quirky and often funny. We also refer to “Fudging” which is when Fudge does something that would seem insane to the rest of us but totally makes sense to him. Like when he decided that moving large rocks out of the rock wall ( where they  are cemented together) to look for bugs would be a good idea because you can often find bugs under rocks on the ground, so why not in a stone wall.

Fudge is a great kid, (he tries my patience on a daily basis lately) he is a little boy who loves books, lego and anything electronic. He is developing quiet an ear for music and is eager to help others. He is generally a pretty great kid to be around even though he is challenged on daily basis by his disabilities.

I have been challenged lately with what to say to him about his struggles, I want to make it easier for him, I want him to understand that it is not his fault that he has poor impulse control or trouble remembering things from one moment to the next.  I want him to know that even though things are hard for him it is not anything that he is doing wrong, it is just the way it is and we will help him learn to make things work for him.

 But what do I say?

Well Fudge, I am sorry that things are so hard for you, it’s because your birth mom didn’t care enough to take of you while you were growing in her body. When you were born she continued to neglect you and in affected the way your brain grew. You will struggle for your disabilities for the  rest of your life because she made a lot a bad choices.

Or how about this one

Well Fudge it really sucks to be you doesn’t it. See from the moment you were conceived your birth mom ignored all the people around her who told her not to drink was she was pregnant. When you were born you were sick a lot and she didn't take care of you so she left you alone or with neighbours. Your brain was hurt by the alcohol and by the lack of attention you received as a baby. Then you came into the foster care system and bounced around for 3 years before you ended up here and that added to your problems.

Or

Hey Fudge, I know you are having a really hard time at school and with friends. Just remember that none of this is your fault. Your birth mom drank and broke your brain and now everything will be hard for you, so next time you are frustrated just remember that and when you are big you can find her and tell her how mad you are at her for her bad choices.

See my dilemma, I can’t say any of those things to him and yet they are the truth, they are the reason he is having such a hard time.

How do I explain to 8 year old that someone else’s bad choices have made his life harder. That her inability to take care of him made him the way he is. I know all the age appropriate stuff to say but there comes a point when the truth is what is needed and as that day draws closer I wonder how I am going to handle it.

J. has recently started a new blog Stellar Parenting 101 where she rambles about the struggles of being a Mom to 2 fabulous boys.