History Repeats

Last night Squeaker came down to dinner chipper and chatty. I was still not feeling too friendly but I nodded and said "Mmmmhmmmm" a lot and we got through the meal. She told a story again about how she broke her arm on the playground while living in a group home. When her birth mother showed up for a visit she became incensed and screamed at the staff, upsetting Squeaker and was asked to leave. I remember this story from reading her case file and the staff noted that it was very traumatic for her.

Today has been a calmer much more cooperative day. When she realized the full magnitude of the consequences she had earned, I expected more outbursts but she handled it okay. I mentioned to her that when she had told the story about her mom it reminded me of her tantrum earlier that day saying, "That's what it looks like when an adult loses self-control." Sadly, that was a very typical response for her birth mom to resort to screaming, belittling, and abuse.

That is why we are working so hard on this, constantly pounding the concepts of self-control and responsibility, while she is still a kid. Losing even weeks' worth of privileges now is minor compared to what she will lose when she is an adult if she cannot learn to control her anger and take responsibility for her actions.

I asked her if she knew what her mom had lost as a result of letting her rage control her. The answer was obvious to us both: she eventually lost all of her children, her family, her job. That is not what I want for Squeaker and not what she wants for herself.

I know that the rest of her "house arrest" will not be so calm and introspective, but I can only hope she will learn enough from her history to take measures to give herself a better future.

Scapegoat

The kids are back in school today and I am relieved. It was a rough two weeks. Amazingly, the actual holidays were very nice but all the in-between days were pretty awful right up until the end.

Each of my kids had at least two ranting, angry tantrums. That's two tantrums times three kids in two weeks minus the holidays so twelve days which means on average it was a tantrum every other day.

And I, apparently, am the cause of all that is wrong with their worlds. Among the triggers for said tantrums were saying no to a movie at bedtime, asking someone to put something away, putting something away for someone, correcting rude behavior, and showing irritation when I was irritated.

And for such unconscionable acts I have been cussed at and about; have had to listen to, "I don't like you", "I want to run away", "I wish I was never adopted", "I'm out of here as soon as I turn 18", "I have to do everything myself". I've been accused of not doing enough, giving enough, buying enough, loving enough. According to my kids, I'm the reason why everyone is so angry and rude and the default cause of brattiness in three-year-olds.

Of course, they seem to recover relatively quickly and move on to other things until the next explosion and I'm the one still aggravated. Usually it's another day, another snark...I indulge my annoyance with an after bed-time gripe session with Ana and then I'm fine. But for some reason the barbs are sticking this time around. Maybe it's my annual wistful hope for a warm, fuzzy holiday season with my kids which will likely never happen.

So I'm grateful for the space and quiet this morning. And I'm sure they are glad for the chance to get back to school and away from me too.

Entropy

The breakdown begins. Lack of routine, too much sugar, too little sleep, and too much time together is starting to take its toll. Only a few cracks at present and we'll try to hold it together Macgyver-like with duct tape and Christmas ribbon until school starts next Monday.

Squeaker enjoyed her phone call with her sister then stayed up to late and broke down at bedtime because her sister is moving to Texas in the summer. Logic not being in great supply after midnight, she cried that her little sister is the only family member she stays in contact with and gets to see regularly. While she doesn't see any family members often, she has not seen or spoken to her sister since her mother's parental rights were terminated almost four years ago. Several of her family members including her sister's father are permitted to contact her, but sadly they never do. She is the one who maintains periodic contact with aunts, grandparents, sisters, and even her birthdad. This is the family that she would return to in a heartbeat if she could.

The Boss is having a post-shower meltdown this morning. He has discovered that if you repeat the same thing about a zillion times that it drives every grown-up within a ten-mile radius completely round the bend.

Lucky and Squeaker have been getting along reasonably well since Lucky has been gone for a good chunk of vacation. They have been doing each other's hair and nails and shrieking and giggling a lot. Lucky is a pesterer and that gets old pretty quick. She leaves tomorrow to visit the aunt and uncle that she lived with before she came here. They do a big New Year's shin-dig which we definitely don't, so I'm sure she'll be happy to go off to that while we play board games and eat cinnamon popcorn here. We'll enjoy the break from being asked every five minutes what we are doing today, what can she do now, can she take the dogs for a walk, can we go to the store, what are we having for dinner, do you have any more batteries.....?

The Boss is turning purple screaming "I want my puppy" so I guess it's time to go see if he needs any medical intervention.

Update: The Boss just switched to "I wanna get off the bed". Change is nice.

"Why Don't You Have Your OWN Kids?"

Drama Boy is at it again.

I eavesdropped for a few minutes then decided to step in on an argument between him and Squeaker during snack time.

Here's what I heard before that:
DB: "...{first name} F***ing {adoptive last name} or better yet {first name} {birth last name}".
Squeaker: "Stop calling me that!"
DB: "That's your name isn't it? I mean your birth name?"
Squeaker: "I don't have a birth name any more. That's not my name!"
DB: "Oh, what, like you were never born? You're just a big zero then?"

At that point I told them to cool it and I would talk to them after they were finished eating. DB lost it and started yelling at me so he had to interrupt his snack so we could talk right then.

He rambled all over the map saying he gets treated worse than the other kids, that nobody ever does anything for him, that everyone talks bad about his mom, that he doesn't get allowance, that every time he's on a visit we do fun things like going to Disneyland with the other kids. I had to keep redirecting the ridiculous and tell him to stop screaming at me.

What I wanted to get across to him was that it is not okay for him to keep minimizing relationships in this family because they were formed through adoption rather than by birth. I told him that they were very "real" relationship. His response was "How are they?"

From experience I know that if he's not willing to get the concept there is no point in arguing it with him and I certainly don't try to be an apologist for those who just won't get it. But since we all have to live together, I did tell him that, although they were not born to me, my three kids ARE my kids and my grandson IS my grandson and it is disrespectful and rude for him to continue to say that the relationships are not "real". His response was "They're not really real though."

He screamed that it's not fair that the whole world calls Ana his mom and "she's not, she won't ever be, I don't ever want her to be!" He's angry that the other kids' call him their brother and cousin because he "NEVER wants to be a part of this family!" Ironically a little later he was screeching something like, "You don't even treat me like part of the f-f-f....." and he had to stop himself before he said the F word (family). He is so self-centered that he wants all of the benefits of being part of the family without having to put any effort into relationships or even civility.

His other narcissistic gem was "It's not fair to me or to her birth mom that she's mad at us for no reason!" To which I had to respond that her relationship with her birth mom has nothing to do with him and does not reflect in any way on his relationship with his own mom. It's as if he believes that we all think that he should reject his birth mom and be adopted. I explained that everyone's situation is different and how does he know that her anger at her mom is without cause?

There is no working these things through with him right now. He sees himself as the prepetual victim and is encouraged in that delusion by his birth mom. I finally said I couldn't talk to him any more about it because no matter what I say he will filter through the lie that he is always being persecuted. I told him I would tell the kids to stop calling him their brother or cousin and that he needed to respect Squeaker's wishes and stop calling her by her birth name.

His parting shot was, "Why don't you just have your own kids? Then this wouldn't happen. Instead you have us as slaves."

Yep. Just not getting it. But I couldn't help it...I laughed out loud at that last bit. He actually thinks he's making our live so much easier because we've enslaved him by having him do a couple of chores a day?

I give up.

Grumble, Grumble, Grumble

Sometimes I have lots of words and nothing to say and so my fingers just babble across the keyboard amounting to nothing. Sometimes I put down whatever has been rolling around in my head just to get it out of there so I can start working on something else. Cheap therapy. And sometimes I have no idea what to think about or write about issues we're dealing with so I just do nothing until I get my head around it. I've emotionally flip-flopped so many times in the past week dealing with moderately impactful yet immensely annoying issues that I thought it best just to keep my fickle feelings to myself. But just so my pair of readers will know that I'm still bouncing around the planet, I thought it was about time to emerge and come up with some sort of spewage.

Sparky has some pretty serious behavior problems that Ana has been helping him work on. He and his brother have basically stalled emotionally in toddlerhood which is about the time they were removed from their mother's care. This means that they are concrete thinkers, they are very "me" centered, and they wail (Drama Boy) and tantrum (Sparky) when they don't get their way. Needless to say, it is substantially more difficult to deal with a screaming, tantruming nine year old than a two year old. For starters, you cannot physically relocate an older child to his bedroom yet they are not emotionally able to reason and think at age-level so calming them is difficult and a 9 year old's tantrum is far more destructive. With lots of structure and consistency he has shown some improvement. In the meantime, Ana also gets to deal with their birth mom who is blaming her for their misbehavior. What? Quite aggravating.

Meanwhile....our agency has decided to discontinue therapy and psychiatric services for Squeaker and gave us a few weeks notice to find someone in our area. We recently moved to a new county and the kid's MediCal is only accepted in the old county so we drive down there for health services. Because of her mood disorder, Squeaker is in special classes in public school and has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). She has also been approved for funding through the school system for out-patient therapy. Since I am not a big fan of either the public school system or state-run mental health services, I have opted not to utilize this funding so I have been waiting for the adoptions to be finalized so I can use her MediCal to find private counseling. We were not offered psychiatric services, but the agency insists that they are available, not understanding that we can't just demand whatever services we want from the state. The agency has totally put a wrench in the works by kicking us to the curb before we are ready. Again, aggravating....but par for the course I suppose.

In reading some of my favorite adoptive parent blogs, it seems that many parents who have adopted older children are going through situations where they must struggle with a pretty messed up system to get help for their kids. Even social workers that "get it" are often restricted by the policies of a system that can't seem to meet the needs of the kids it's supposed to serve so foster and adoptive parents have to fight and scramble and pester to get their kids the services they need. Pretty sad.