A Tough Decision

Junior has had a lot of moves in his short life.  He had numerous foster families before we found each other.  He had three different schools between kindergarten and 1st grade. We've moved twice in the last year as a family.  We were looking forward to him finally having continuity for the first time.   We bought a house to be closer to his school.

The school year was not easy for Junior.  We had an IEP that worked in Colorado.  Seattle was unable to provide the same supports he had there.We saw a great deal of regression in his behavior at school and some pretty severe PTSD episodes.  At home and in karate he was a different person.  I dreaded answering the phone whenever I saw the school was calling.

 Unfortunately after a lot of soul searching we admitted we needed to find a new school. We made the difficult decision to enroll Junior in a Montessori based private school.  It has much smaller class sizes, allows kids to work at their pace on topics that interest them and incorporates frequent movement breaks.

I never thought I would send my kids to private school;  Dave & I both went to public schools, our parents were teachers, I was a teacher.  If Junior had been able to get the supports he needed we wouldn't be making this change.  There are no guarantees he will do better here, but we can't have another school year like last year and this gives us a chance for success. Fingers crossed we have made the right decision.

Milestones Met

As  I sat down to write this Dave politely pointed out that I haven't written a blog post in 4 months and 8 days.   Yes, I know and I apologize.   I'm not here to apologize though, I'm here to share some major developments that occurred this week.

Junior's school hosts an annual multi-cultural night where all the kids are encouraged to create posters to be displayed about their family's culture.   The student population is very diverse and this is a way for the the students to share information about their heritage.   When this assignment came home it caused a little bit of anxiety in me.   We don't know junior's genealogy and I was worried that this was going to be a trigger for him.   I talked to the teacher and she said he could talk about his neighborhood, family, whatever he wanted which was a relief.

When we sat down to work on  the poster I gave him a couple of options and he chose to create a poster on our family.   We went through a bunch of photos that have been taken over the past 18 months and he picked out a bunch.   I paused when he picked out a picture from his adoption day.

The following conversation ensued:

Me:  Do you know what is written on the chalkboard?
Jr:  Yes.  It says that I was adopted.
Me: Are you sure you want to include this in the poster that will be hanging at your school for everybody to see?
Jr: Yes
Me:  None of your friends at school know you are adopted.
Jr:  They will now.

He had obviously decided he was using this forum to start talking about it.   He picked some photos of him with his birth mom to include as well.

He was so proud of his poster.  And I was proud of him for deciding to talk about his adoption.   In counseling we talked about how he would answer questions people may have and he didn't have answers to that.   We decided  would go into his classroom and talk about adoption and be there with him to answer questions.

His teacher liked the idea and put a plan together to talk about families.  On Tuesday morning I went and read a story to his class about adoption.   At the end I asked the class a few questions the final one being " Does any of you know somebody that was adopted."  A few students raised their hands.   I then asked everybody to raise their hands and the kids all looked around and Jr announced "I was adopted."

We then answered some questions that his classmates had.  I was happy with how things went and I think junior was relieved to have shared this big secret.   I was looking forward to attending the multi-cultural night tonight but unfortunately that didn't happen. Junior came home from school yesterday with a fever that steadily climbed to over 104.   This meant our first trip to the Emergency Department at the local hospital with junior, it only took 18 months for this to milestone to be met.   He is doing much better now, but the fever meant we had to miss the multi-cultural  night at school, but hopefully he is better for his first visit to Wrigley field next week.

2015 Highlights

We are trying to teach junior no matter how bad a day it was to always find the positives in a day.   Each night at bedtime  I ask him what his favorite part of the day was.   Some days I even remembered to write it down and put it in a large mason jar.   I wasn't very good at this last part as there were only 70 items in the jar.   Maybe this year I will do better.    

Last night we emptied the jar and reviewed the items.   Here are some of the themes and some of my favorites. 

1. Family & friends.   Many of his favorite moments revolved around family.  Spending time with Dave and I, and our extended family and friends.  Meeting his cousins and aunts and uncles when we went home in January for my grandfather's funeral was a highlight for him.  While it was a sad time he saw the positive in that he got to meet some of his new family.    Being separated from Dave while we moved from Denver to Seattle was not easy.  One of junior's favorites was seeing Dad in Seattle after we had been apart for a couple of weeks.  And it's not just the humans in the family that are memorable the animals were mentioned a number of times.   One of my favorites was "Having Koda lick my face"  I mean who doesn't love kitty kisses.   
2. Food.  Junior's love of food is apparent.  Many favorite memories revolved around food - eating sushi, eating enchiladas, and having BBQs in the backyard.  Getting his own set of knives and being able to make his own food also made appearances.    Dave and I think he may naturally become a vegetarian later in life as he seems like fruits and vegetables more than meat, but the boy does love his food. 
3. Sports.  Whether it is watching games on tv, in person, or playing in them - junior loves sports.  Football, baseball and soccer are at the tops of his list.   Seeing the Sounders, Seahawks/Steelers and Cubbies made the list.   Scoring touchdowns and goals of his own are also tops.   Junior seems to have a natural talent for sports - he throws a much better spiral than either Dave or I  
4. Travel.   While he enjoys travel and going places like two different Legolands, he loves coming home after a trip.   
5. School.  We have had some challenges at school this last year but junior is doing much better.   Having a few memories be related to having a great day at school makes my heart happy.   Hopefully the school year continues to improve and we have more positive memories about this next year.   
6. Humor.   Junior has a wonderful sense of humor.   Other kids are constantly telling me how funny he is and that comes through in his favorites.  One of his favorite memories of the year and one that got a lot of laughs when we reviewed them yesterday was "Not getting hit by lightening."  I don't recall what this referred to but I love it.   

Sometimes it is hard to see the positive side of things and for children with a trauma background it can be even harder.  A day doesn't have to spectacular to be a good day sometimes the simple things like spending time with friends and family, eating sushi, or not being hit by lightening is all it takes to be happy.  

ABCs of Adoption: Summary

Setting out to do 27 blog posts in 30 days may seem easy, but I just barely squeezed them all in.   Some of these were easy to write, some were emotionally difficult to write, some letters it was hard to choose what to write about as there were so many options, other letters I had a difficult time coming up with a topic.  Dave asked me if I felt like a cheated by using Xmas for X - nope not at all! With all the posts I tried to give an honest representation and share the good along with the not so good.

 Here are links to all the posts with an added bonus of Dave's version at the end.

A is for Attachment
B is for Birthfamily 
C is for Counseling
D is for Doubt
E is for Emotions
F is for Finances
G is for Grief
H is for Happiness
I is for Independence
J is for Judge
K is for Karate
L is for Lucky
M is for Mistakes
N is for Nature Vs Nurture
O is for Open
P is for Patience
Q is for Questions
R is for Respite
S is for Superheroes
T is for Trauma
U is for Unexpected
V is for Victory
W is for Whining
X is for Xmas
Y is for Yes
Z is for ZZZZ

When I would sit down to write Dave would try and guess what the topic of the post was going to be.   I have to say, he was never once correct.   One evening after a beer or 3 we decided it would be entertaining for Dave to come up with his version of the ABCs of adoption.  Maybe it was just the beer talking but I transcribed his musings.   (I also stole one of his ideas for an actual post).

A is for asshole.  Sometimes it is you, sometimes it is somebody else, but somebody is always an asshole, more often than not it’s the cat.

B is for beer.  Before kids I had to sneak beers during the week now nobody cares if I drink during the day.

C is for Cheerios.   I expected many more Cheerios in the house with a child.   For my first 15 years of life there were always Cheerios around.

D is for dark.  That is when you sleep.

E is for elphabet.   That may not be how you spell it but that’s ok.

F is for Fat.  Well that is what the kid says I am.

F is for Fear.   I am feeling the fear.  

F is for F*#!  I already put an F down.  Note from Dawn see E Dave doesn’t even know how to spell alphabet, how can he be expected to get the alphabet correct.

G is for God.   There is none. 

H is for help.  You need lots of it.  

I is for Iowa State. I don’t know why. 

J is for Just in Time training.  That’s how your adoption training is you get taught just as it’s too late.

K is for kid.   The word I use when not wanting to refer to the child by name.  

L is for lost.   I was thinking of the TV show but I haven’t seen that in quite a while.   Lost for answers.

M is for mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.  Over and over again, then repeat. 

N is for nonsense.  There’s a lot of nonsense.

O is for Oh my God!  The only reasonable response to most things.

P is for please.  Constantly asking for things to be asked for with the word please, no matter how ridiculous.   Insist that please be tacked onto everything.

Q is for quiet.  Never happens.  When it does it's awesome or terrifying.

R is for repetitive.  Definitely repetitive.  Did I say repetitive yet?

S is for Super Mario Bros.  One thing we can agree on. 

T is for Time for Bed.  That’s a good time. Which isn’t far separated from my bedtime. 

U is for Uranus but that doesn’t help.  Other than Uranus what starts with U.

V is for violence.  Avoid if possible.

W is for wimpy.   Try to avoid wimpiness.

X is for XXX.   No more x rated action. 

Y is for yes.  Occasionally an answer but rarely.

Z is for zoo.   No reason, or because we live by one, or do we live in one.  Nobody ever knows. 

ABCs of Adoption: Z is for ZZZZ

People sometimes ask what we miss the most about our pre-kid days.  For me, it is the ability to sleep.    I am a person that needs 8 hours of sleep a night in order to feel refreshed.   The last time that happened was on a business trip a month ago.   Unfortunately once I wake up I have a hard time going back to sleep.  For the last month junior hasn't been sleeping well, which has definitely had a impact on us.   He would wake up around 4 AM and come tell us he had a nightmare and couldn't go back to sleep.

 Nightmares are to be expected but I quickly saw a difference and realized that some nights he had nightmares and other nights he just woke up to go to the bathroom and wanted me to put him back to bed.   Nights where he had a nightmare I would hear him jump out of bed and coming running into our room.   He stood by the edge of the bed shaking and found it hard to talk.   I could relatively easily get him back to bed and then I would lie awake.   Nights he was just awake, he would go to the bathroom first and then casually come into our room, going back to sleep was not in the cards for either of us on these nights.    Over the last week he has been sleeping through the night which is great. I still am having a hard time making it through the night without waking up.

With his sleeping trouble over the last month he has also started to nap.   For a year he has only napped if he was sick or after a long plane trip but now they seem to be a regular occurrence.   He naps in the car, on the couch, and today he managed to take a nap at Century Link Stadium.   This last one perplexes me.  Century Link is not a quiet stadium and I was a bit worried about how he would react to the noise.   We gave him ear plugs and he still was having a hard time with the noise, I was afraid I was going to have to leave.  He decided to cover up under a blanket (a strategy he uses at home when he is overwhelmed or upset).  A few minutes later I took a peek and he was sound asleep.  I guess his bodies need to escape the noise at the stadium took over and he was able to sleep.  After that he managed to stay until the end of the 3rd quarter.

I am hoping that sleeping patterns return to normal for all of us soon.   And then when he hits the teenage years I can once again lose sleep at night but for different reasons.

ABCs of Adoption: Y is for Yes

This is a word that I seem to use very infrequently.  I wish I could use it more often but that is just not possible.   There are days when it seems like the only word I say is no.  

• No, you can't wear shorts out, it is 40 degrees outside. 
• No, you can't put a hat on the dog. 
• No, you can't watch TV all day. 
• No, the doctor did not tell you I should let you use the tablet more often. 
• No, you can't drive the car.  
• No, you can't play with fire.   
• No, you can't have a sister or brother.
• No, a sugar glider would not make a good pet.
• No, you can't build a robot to do your chores for you.  

We don't want to be the parents that always say yes but boy it sure seems like sometimes we never do.  I'm sure some of the requests come from testing limits and boundaries, while others are due to him just being a 7 year old boy.  

I read an article recently from a mom about what would happen if you spent the day saying yes to whatever your child asked and the thought of this filled me with dread.  The idea of a "yes-day" while in concept makes sense, wouldn't work for us.   Junior needs predictability and structure, we are also constantly having to remind him that he is not in charge, giving him a day where anything goes would not end well.   Junior can't wait until he is a grown up and he can do whatever he wants and doesn't have to listen to anybody - good luck kid.   As time goes on, maybe we can give him a yes day but for now  we will stick with the choruses of nos.  

ABCs of Adodption: X is for Xmas

Throw out any concept you have of holidays, kids have their own ideas.    Last year I was looking forward to taking junior to visit Santa, he unfortunately had no interest in going.   I didn't push it, and I wasn't willing to force him to do something that might cause anxiety for him or result in an epic meltdown.   I remembered as a child being so excited to go see and Santa to tell him what I wanted, for junior he just wasn't interested. 

On Christmas morning I expected him to come running into our room at an early hour, excited to rip into his presents.  The reality was Christmas morning was just like every other morning, he woke up at his normal hour, came into our room and cuddled.   We had to ask him if he wanted to go see what Santa brought.   

My only guess is that he had previously been disappointed at Christmas so he wasn't getting his hopes up.   We had learned from his birthday a few months before that the number of presents was much more important than what he received so we made sure he had lots of little presents to open.   He was much more excited on Easter than he was on Christmas.  

This year is a little different.   He has already visited Santa and I got the picture I was hoping for.   His list of what he wants is much longer than last year and more keeps getting added to it every day. Christmas morning will be a little different though since we will be on a cruise.   Last year we started what will hopefully become a tradition of  going on a family vacation.  Last year we left the day after Christmas, this year we will actually be away on Christmas Day.  We are preparing him that Santa can't bring many presents to him on the boat, most of his presents will be at home waiting for him when we return.   We will see how this works out. 

We are trying to also teach him that Christmas is about giving to others.  We donate food and toys to the animal shelter, he loves this as he gets to visit with the cats and dogs there.  We also purge his closet and toys and donate those, in the past we took the items to Goodwill.  This year and going forward we will be bringing items to Treehouse for Kids an organization that helps kids in foster care.   Given that junior spent 3 years in foster care we want to be able to give back to other kids like him.