Some days are better than others

Dillon caused us some major stress this week and got us involved with CPS.  

 

To understand what happened, you need to understand a little about his Reactive Attachment Disorder which I have mentioned in previous posts.  He does what is called "triangulation" -which means he will say anything to get adults to believe he is a victim of his parents or any other adult who makes him do something he doesn't like.  It's his way of attempting to get attention and receive unending coddling and sympathy.

 

So last week on his birthday, he was standing next to Neal while Neal was helping Halle get out of the truck.  The wind, which is super strong on the front of our house, swung the truck door closed and it caught Dillon in the face.  Since Neal's back was turned, he only saw that his lip was cut so he cleaned that up for him.  We didn't realize it had gotten the whole side of his head until bruising showed up 24 hours later because he didn't complain of any other pain.

 

Anyway, that night he decided to show off and see what he could get away with while my parents were there for his birthday.  He jumped up on the table and his legs came out from under him which landed him on his back.  Again, more bruises, so by Friday evening he was looking pretty bad and you can see where this is going.

 

He's seen CPS come to his birth home over 15 times, so he's been asked abuse questions more than once, and he also knows he gets special treatment if he answers them a certain way.  This time, he was with his brand new PSR worker who didn't take the time to read anything in his history.  She asked him on Monday morning how he got hurt, he instantly said, "my dad hit me," and then she reported it and he was taken from us.

 

After hours of phone calls notifying our therapist, his neurologist, our lawyer, his doctor, and our foster care licensing worker who knows us almost intimately, they didn't file anything with the court and we got him back.  But it took a lot of people coming to our defense, and even a past history with the prosecuting attorney that certainly helped.

 

At first, the caseworker who had custody of him treated us like complete criminals.  The police came to our house late that night -at our insistence.  We weren't going to pull Halle out of bed to go down to the police station for hours of grilling.  We took them through a short history of our last year with him and after showing them his shredded sheets, the destroyed closet door, and other effects of his behavior, they were totally on our side.  Then the caseworker showed up and wouldn't listen to much that we had to say.  She insisted it would be at least 30 days before we saw him again.  Neal told me later he thought I was going to lunge at her from the couch, but I restrained.

 

Here's where Heavenly Father was watching over this boy.  His neurologist had to cancel his appointment last week due to an emergency and she only had one appointment left this week.  It happened to be the next morning.  We asked if he could still make it to that appointment because it was so hard to get in to see her, and the caseworker said it was absolutely important that he kept that appointment and she would be there with him.  That's all we needed.

 

Dillon eventually realized that after all the attention he was getting, the part of his life that's predictable had also been taken away.  He wasn't going to be sleeping in his own bed that night and he had changed his story three times by the next morning when we met them.  The caseworker spent the first 20 minutes trying to get Dillon to tell the doctor what he had told her, but he wouldn't give her any sensible answer by then - welcome to our world where at least we have Halle to play interpreter for him.  She even tried to take him out of the room and see if he would answer without us around but still apparently didn't get anything.

 

After that, the neurologist literally spent the first hour of the appointment berating the caseworker about the actions that had been taken against us, and then the next hour summarizing his past and his behaviors that we deal with, and then the last hour evaluating his medicine over the past month with us.  It was good to have someone actually defending us.

 

By the time we made it back to the prosecuting attorney's office after the appointment, the petition had been dropped.  Dillon apologized to the caseworker on his way back home for lying to her and to "Chuck and another guy (the police)."  And the first thing he did when he got home was make his bed.  The caseworker was not exactly apologetic because from our experience, they would never admit an error, but she was defintely more understanding.

 

What have we gained from this life experience?

 

We have a lot more confidence in our service providers and certainly more patience with their quirks.  We learned that all that time going to therapists and doctors may or may not be helping him personally (and some days it definitely feels like it's not), but it's certainly giving them time to know our situation. 

 

Our hearts are a bit more sympathetic for his birth mom.  She may not have done everything right, but some of her stories were absolutely true from our experience.  We can also understand now with different eyes what parents are experiencing when they lose their kids to CPS, no matter what choices the parents have made.

 

I also know now that I need to educate every single person Dillon works with.  I can't assume they have knowledge even when their credentials dictate it.  His 2nd grade teacher will be first on the list.

 

 

As my title suggests, not all days are like this one ended.  He is actually making major strides now that we have taken him off of his ADHD medicine.  The seizure medicine has brought him down to normal activity levels and he is finally teachable.  He's getting dressed and making his bed after a full year of constant prompting and redirection.  He can also empty the dishwasher and sort and fold laundry without supervision now.  He can sleep at night now without tearing up the room and great things are coming from it. 

 

He's a pretty messed up kid and our Heavenly Father is the only one who knows his true story.  We can only be tools in the Master's hands to turn his life onto a different path than where it was headed, and I think we are at least going in the right direction.

What’s a guy to expect when she’s not expecting?

I've seen reviews for this book, "What's a guy to expect when she's not expecting," but haven't read it yet.  The "10 things not to say to your fertility-challenged wife" in the article caught my eye.  I am proud to report that my husband has never used these lines, but maybe he could have used this book back in the years when we were first struggling with infertility.  Maybe it would have helped him cope with the emotional mess he married into. 

 

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42096898/ns/today-books/t/whats-guy-expect-when-shes-not-expecting/

 

I believe that I was an avoider for about a year, but once we met a sister to friends of ours who had been through the adoption process twice, I suddenly became a doer.  I finally put all the unanswered questions behind me and abandoned medical possibilities for the hope of adoption which turned out to be the best answer for us.

 

 

The 10 things not to say to your fertility-challenged wife:
1. That's OK. I didn't want you to get fat anyway.
2. No more condoms? Cool!
3. Can't we just invest all that money in a flat screen instead?
4. Yes, but these doctors have yet to see my Super Sperm!
5. So if your sister carries it, does that mean I can finally sleep with her?
6. I don't even want kids.
7. Hey, did I tell you my ex-girlfriend's pregnant?
8. I discussed it with my mother, and she thinks ...
9. Don't worry. You're still relatively young.
10. But it's not my fault, right?

Valuable Internet Resources

1.  We are only scratching the surface with Dillon's reactive attachment disorder and we aren't super happy with our current therapist.  I just don't feel like he's addressing things but I'm not sure since he only communicates with us about every six months, so we are in the process of looking for a new one at the moment.  I want to make sure the new one understands how to properly address RAD, and this website has put the information in a very concise format with useful suggestions.  I also want to make sure I can be part of the therapy process and be able to get updates from the therapist weekly.

 

http://www.attachmentdisordermaryland.com/

 

2.  The 27 hours of "special needs" training we received from the state of Idaho to certify as foster parest was pretty useless in preparing us to deal with real-life behavior problems that kids in foster care will have.  It has taken me 8 months to finally come across this website for foster parents that offers online courses on a variety of subjects.  I haven't taken any of the classes yet, but I am hopeful that I will be able to use this as a valuable resource. 

 

http://www.fosterparents.com/

 

 

I'm Not Gonna Lie

I'm pretty sure we will be able to give Dillon a safe and happy home life and help him become a successful adult. However, the amount of grace and dignity we do it with still remains to be seen. I'm not going to lie to you. Adopting a six-year-old with special needs is not an easy task. Neal and I often debate with each other at the end of a hard day about who's first six months in our home were the most work – Dillon's or Halle's. Dillon isn't quite at six months yet, but we still can't decide.

Both times we have been in the school of firsts for learning new parenting skills. Halle as a new baby was a lot of work. She wasn't one of those kids that could sit contently somewhere and watch the world. In fact, we only tried once to take her through the grocery store still strapped in her car seat. She wouldn't have it because her social nature demanded human interaction at all times. The multiple nightly feedings, the diapers, the excessive laundry from a whole bottle of spit-up or major diaper blowouts, and everything else that goes with a newborn was certainly very exhausting.

However, Dillon challenges us intellectually as parents as we are constantly searching for the best way to parent him. Conversations about his types of needs don't often come up in play group conversations or basic parenting materials, so we have to gain our insights from specialists who have helped us tremendously. His high level of ADHD combined with what's called Reactive-Attachment Disorder (commonly found in children of abuse) as well as his high IQ make for a perfect storm of unique parenting situations on a daily basis.

For example, the things that don't work so far for discipline – time outs, sticker charts, losing toy privileges- you know, the usual stuff every parent uses. We have discovered, however, that running laps in front of the house does seem to work. I'm not sure what the neighbors think because there are days he gets about two miles of running done out front, but at least he's working off some extra energy. In fact, when we started attending the Love and Logic classes offered by our school district a couple of weeks ago, the teacher brought us special materials to read and listen to. Apparently love and logic is not quite enough for us, but I do think it's helping and the materials on RAD have been very insightful.

I don't believe there was any way for us to fully prepare for this experience of bringing Dillon into our family, but I do know that the Lord had a hand in giving us what we've needed to get this far. Had we been presented with Dillon even a year or two ago, I can confidently say we would not have been ready for him. However, through our major trials with Neal's unemployment two years ago and a lost adoption opportunity, we became so much stronger as a couple and discovered some valuable strengths we didn't even know we were going to need.

The Lord sees Dillon's potential as much as he also sees mine. I am grateful for this opportunity to be stretched a little (or a lot), and I am also deeply touched to have a spouse who has been willing to learn and grow right along with me.

It's only the third day of school and he's only in first grade . . .

I found myself chanting this over and over and over again by Friday afternoon last week.  Dillon started school on Wednesday and I was a nervous wreck.  I wanted some sort of reassurance from the heavens that Dillon wouldn't get overlooked or abandoned this year in terms of the extra help he's going to need - and I promise you he will need it.  Knowing nothing about his school resources or teachers, I just had to hope for the best.

 

Last week was a rocky start.  The first day was pretty good.  I dropped him off and then met him outside his class after school.  His teacher said he did fine in the classroom.  The second day wasn't so great for him in class.  And at the end of the day, I met him outside his classroom again so I could show him where to meet the shuttle that will take him to therapy every day- but the shuttle people forgot him.  I called, they apologized a million times, and then they finally sent someone to pick him up- but the point had apparently been completely lost on Dillon by then. 

 

Day three - Friday - I finally get a month's worth of medication to the school (an entirely different fiasco by the way) and while I was there, his teacher came into the office and said that Dillon didn't come in from recess.  She had to deal with another child so she only just noticed.  The bell had rung about 40 minutes ago and they panicked that he may have walked home.  I reassured them that it was more likely that he was still just playing outside.  Sure enough, I found him off playing by himself filling a plastic bottle with rocks. 

 

With that over, I was exhausted and needed a break.  My surgery had only been a week ago so I took a chance that the shuttle would find him today and headed down to my parents house to rest.  Apparently the shuttle did eventually find him because he was at therapy when Neal picked him up.  However, through Dillon's typical honest confessions, we learned that after school he had walked half of a block to Main street where the crosswalk lady was helping kids cross the street.  I don't know how they discovered him because the shuttle never called me and the therapy place didn't know anything about it.

 

And that's when I started chanting to myself.  "It's only the third day of school and he's only in first grade. . . " I drove Dillon back over to the school that evening and we walked from the first grade door to the front entrance where he's supposed to wait -back and forth, back and forth.  And then we went from the playground to the back door - back and forth, back and forth. 

 

Do I think he will remember today where he's supposed to go and when?  There's a 50/50 chance.  He knows the rules word for word when you ask him, but impulse often has greater pull in the moments he's supposed to remember them.  I know we will survive this first year.  It's just a matter of how graceful I can be about it when Dillon decides to challenge us.

Having a sister might make you a better person

I read this article today on MSN (below) and thought I would share it.  After raising Halle for four years as an only child, and then adding Dillon into our family, I can definitely say that siblings do make a difference.  It's such an important relationship, and I think I can also agree that sisters in a family really do make a difference too -although the claim that they make you a better person is a fairly generic statement.

 

 

Though siblings can sometimes be a pain, having a sister might be good for kids' emotional health, according to a new study.

The results show young adolescents who had sisters either younger or older were less likely to experience negative feelings, such as loneliness and guilt.

"Even after you account for parents' influence, siblings do matter in unique ways," said study researcher Laura Padilla-Walker, of Brigham Young University in Utah. "They give kids something that parents don't."

The study is part of BYU's Flourishing Families Project and included 395 families with more than one child, at least one of whom was an adolescent between the ages of 10 and 14. The researchers gathered a wealth of information about each family's dynamic at the study's start and then followed up one year later.

Sisters seemed to help siblings avoid negative emotions. Those adolescents with sisters were less likely than those without sisters to indicate feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful. It didn't matter whether the sister was younger or older, or how far apart the siblings were age-wise.

Brothers matter as well, though their positive influence manifests in different ways. Having a loving sibling of either gender promoted good deeds, such as helping a neighbor or watching out for other kids at school. In fact, loving siblings fostered charitable attitudes more than loving parents did. The relationship between sibling affection and good deeds was twice as strong as that between parenting and good deeds.

"For parents of younger kids, the message is to encourage sibling affection," Padilla-Walker said. "Once they get to adolescence, it's going to be a big protective factor."

Many parents worry about the seemingly endless fighting between siblings. Indeed, the study found hostility was associated with greater risk of delinquency. But Padilla-Walker also sees a silver lining in the data: The fights give children a chance to learn how to make up and to regain control of their emotions skills that come in handy later in life.

"An absence of affection seems to be a bigger problem than high levels of conflict," Padilla-Walker said.

The study is published in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

One Month and Counting

The transition for foster children coming into a new home has a pretty predictable pattern to it.  In fact, they even have a name for the first phase called the Honeymoon phase.  The first few days or weeks, they try to be extra good and appear somehow to be angel children because everything is new and different. 

 

Once the newness wears off and they realize they are staying for much longer than they expected, it becomes a "crash" time (for lack of a better word since they didn't actually name that period that I know of).  All their trouble behaviors seem to appear all at once.  It's only after this "crash" happens that you can really start working with them.

 

Dillon had about a week of honeymoon, then about two weeks of crashing - literally and figuratively- and now it appears that we are finally at a point where we are making some progress with him.  During his two weeks of crashing, we felt like all we were doing with him was putting him in time out.  I needed a system to help me reward even the smallest good behaviors, so using my accounting instincts, I came up with a dollar system.  They could earn fake dollars for even the simplest things like making their bed, getting dressed and brushing their teeth. 

 

The first few days were brutal for Dillon as I walked out the door to the car in the morning and he's still pulling his pants on and carrying his shoes.  Then he would hit someone at daycare again and lose one and then another.  But he's finally starting to see the rewards now and he's getting really excited.  They both had enough money to buy a happy meal at McDonalds last week at the high price of $20 per meal. 

 

I suppose we will probably have to get into a discussion about currency exchange rates when they figure out how much things really cost :-)

 

Anyway, the good thing is that he's responding to our discipline and structure, which will hopefully translate into more enjoyable family time.  It's just that his impulsiveness (often called Elly- his stuffed elephant) seems to get him into trouble more than he would like.