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Thanksgiving

By: Jane Samuel

‘Tis the season – for thanks giving that is. I see friends posting things they are thankful for each day on Facebook. There are probably similar lists on Twitter, Tumbler and Google+. I suspect my teens are being flooded with them on Instagram and my own email and snail mail is filling up with Thanksgiving letters from various non-profits, all worthy of a little monetary love AND thanks for their work making this a better world.

But here I sit with my busy life, wondering how I am going to get all my cleaning, cooking and decorating done while also tending to a child who can be a bit emotional depending on the day, the situation and even the food she has eaten. Thanks’s giving – that act of being grateful – is the last thing on my mind. Besides I am a born worrier, so I would rather worry about this or that, than sit down and list the things I am grateful for.

That is, until I consecutively opened two emails that made me pause. The first was an email from the school principal – aptly called “weekly words”. This week’s was about report cards. Just a few short paragraphs long, her gentle instructions on the best words to use when a report card is stellar - OR not - were so wise. I needed her words of instruction, because report card time in our house can be challenging with a child with learning differences who lags way behind where her siblings were at the same age.

I sat there thinking of the times I have said, “Wow!  You are so smart” to my older two children and the times I have fretted over the younger one who has spent her whole life tested by her past and the developmental delays it left her with.

But it wasn’t until I opened the second email – a Thanksgiving newsletter from Orphan Voice (a non-profit we support) that the entire picture came together in my mind with regard to our “challenging child.”

That of her learning and our being thankful.

The past 11 years have not always been rosy for her – or us. Adopted after 12 months in a poor orphanage there was a lot of developmental and emotional trauma that needed to be healed. Even now, there are still bumps in the road, and the uphill battle to learn despite severe memory and language processing deficits is, well, always uphill.  Unlike our other two children who have mostly sailed through learning, the younger one has caused us on numerous occasions to adjust our definitions of “normal”, “smart”, or “intelligence.”

But it is at times like this, when the focus is not on the dark clouds but the silver linings in life that I realize how thankful I am for this sweet being in our lives AND the lessons of life she has taught us.

Yes, she may be old enough for sixth grade but be in fifth and read at a third-grade level.

Yes, she may not get “letter” grades like her siblings who are in normal curriculum schools.

Yes, she may need to be reminded on an hourly basis how many inches are in a foot, how many days in the week, and what season comes after this one.

Yes, she may be a bit over the top at times emotionally and need redirection.

BUT, she has the work ethic and the love of learning that I wish all children had.

And, she has the compassion and care for her fellow human being that I only wish I had one-half of.

And that is a mighty good list of things to be thankful for!

Because It Is Hard

By:  Gari Lister

“We choose to go to the moon . . .  not because it is easy, but because it is hard . . . because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.. . . " John F. Kennedy, Jr. (Sept. 12, 1962 at Rice University)

Today is the 50th anniversary of the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, and this famous quotation is one of many played on television over the last few weeks here in Dallas.  It resonated with me – and you can probably guess why.

Orphan Sunday vs. Orphan Reality

By: Julie Beem

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. – James 1:27

The church my family attends doesn’t have an orphan/adoption ministry.  In previous years I’ve mourned that because as our church family has watched closely for the past 15 years all the challenges our daughter (and family) have faced with her complex trauma and attachment struggles, I have felt we’ve not been the best “poster family” for promoting adoption.

The "L" Word

By:  Jane Samuel

Driving to school this morning my youngest (chronological age 11, emotional age – always open for debate) and I were discussing her father’s upcoming business trip Asia. Pulling up to a stop light, I glanced sideways and did a quick check of her demeanor. While she has gotten much better in the past few years about family members coming and going in her life, I still try to be on the lookout for signs that an upcoming loss - albeit a temporary one – might flip her internal emotional balance on its end. “Trigger her” as we say in the therapeutic parenting business.

I'm So Strong . . .

by:  Julie Beem

“I’m so strong that I could destroy this whole house.”  His declaration was matter-of-fact, not launched as a threat but to gauge my response.  “Really?” I responded, “why would you want to destroy my house?”  “Because I’m powerful enough.”

Knowing that I was conversing with a child who has experienced trauma cued me to say what I thought he was fishing for (a safe, in-charge response).  “Well, I’m strong enough not to let anyone destroy my house, because we have a safe home here.” I watched that message sink into his brain and saw his whole body relax. It was then that he was able to follow through on the request I had made of him “Sit down and eat your lunch.”

Hugging A Stranger on the Plane

by:  Julie Beem

No, this isn’t a blog about indiscriminate affection.  And no, this is not a mom you will read about in a sensationalized report on “underground adoptive/foster families”.  But it happens much more often than most people know.

Coming home from the ATTACh conference days ago, I plopped my exhausted self in the aisle seat next to a married couple and pulled out one of the adoption books I had acquired at the conference.  The cover had the words “adoptive and foster parents” on it.

Letting Go

by:  Jane Samuel

She calls me from the spa-sleep-over-birthday-party and I am not surprised.  There is a catch in her voice and she is asking me to bring money. I don’t question. I just get in the car and drive to her.

When I had pulled up in front of her classmate’s house two hours ago to drop her off, she looked unsure. There were girls on the front lawn that were not her close friends. But she turned to me and with her words and conviction climbed aboard that fine line she is now trying to straddle between the small world of a child with learning disabilities and emotions too hard to predict at times and the world of cool tweens. “Mom, I have to go. This is the first girls’ sleep-over party I have been invited to by the kids from my school.”

Abandoned

By:  Jane Samuel

I knew the minute my husband pulled out of the lot and darted across the street to drop me at the pharmacy that it was a bad idea. Our youngest had run back into the retirement home where my father lived to retrieve a forgotten item and my husband thought it would be quicker to pull across, drop me, and run back and get her while I shopped. Problem is he didn’t tell her. He just figured he could get back before she noticed. Wrong.

Resilience – Inborn or Learned – Part 2

by:  Julie Beem

The listing of factors that make children resilient from Resilience Theory: A Literature Review by Adrian DePlessis VanBreda  made total sense to me.  But the paragraph of conclusion supposedly based on these factors did not:

Clearly, children are not defenceless against stressful life conditions. There are many factors which can assist to ‘buffer’ (Rutter, 1985) children against stress, and which assist them in growing up to be well-adjusted and happy adults, who work well, play well, love well and expect well (Werner in Dahlin et al., 1990, p.228).These resilience studies stand in contrast to “the overwhelming bulk of developmental research[which] has been devoted to exploring the pathogenic hypothesis, ie that risk factors in the perinatal period, infancy and early childhood are predictive of disturbances in later childhood and adulthood” (ibid.). Resilience Theory: A Literature Review at page 11.

Wait a minute!  Children are not defenseless against stress because they have resiliency factors.  But those factors are primarily good nurturing, healthy bonds with primary caregivers and others early in their lives that help give them that positive self-image and world view, the coping skills, the internal locus of control.  As the parent of a child who did NOT receive this in early childhood/infancy, I can attest to the fact that those are the stuff of which resiliency is made of.  So to say that the developmental research, and things like the ACE Study stand in contrast to resiliency theory is still confusing to me.  Children who do not have opportunity to build healthy attachments, who do not have adults in their lives to serve as stable caregivers, who are separated from their primary caregiver during that first year are at risk, just like developmental research shows time and again.

Resiliency is made/learned, not inborn.  It just is.  And the push toward building resiliency in traumatized children and adults is a noble one.  BUT, we really need to understand how much at risk each person who lacks these healthy beginnings is, and how challenging it is to build the capacity for being resilient is, when those early attachment underpinnings are not there.  It is not as simple as just decrying all the research that shows that children are at great risk when they have adverse early childhoods (ones with abuse, neglect, poverty, maltreatment, lack of food, lack of healthy attachment).  Apparently Resiliency Theory’s own research shows that healthy attachment, attention by caring adults, and positive treatment by caregivers and teachers are major factors in building a child’s capacity for resilience. So, shouldn’t the focus really be on what can be done to build healthy attachments?

If I were defining resilience it would be the ability to “bounce back” from or cope with major life stressors due to the capacity that was built in a person’s infancy and early childhood through healthy attachments and nurturing care that helped that person to view themselves as competent, the world as a basically good place and to hone their positive and flexible coping skills.

What do you think?

Resilience – Inborn or Learned – Part 1

by:  Julie Beem

There’s a lot of talk about resilience being the antidote to trauma.  Lots of workshops, books, and training programs talk about building resilience in kids as a way to counteract the impact of trauma in their lives.  On the surface all this seems to make sense, but it’s always puzzled me.  What did people mean by resilience, and why does it appear that my child has none, even after years of parenting her?

Dos & Don'ts: An Adoptive & Foster Parent's Letter to Family and Friends

ATN is delighted to include another post from Carol Lozier.  Carol, a member of ATN's Board of Directors, is a clinical social worker in private practice in Louisville, Kentucky.  Her website, www.forever-families.com, offers a blog, free downloadable tools for families, an excerpt of her book, and a supportive community of adoptive and foster parents.

by:  Carol Lozier

Have you ever noticed that adopted and foster kids are especially cute? Their beautiful eyes, cute noses, and charming smiles often call attention to them and to their family. In the midst of this attention, adoptive and foster parents often hear remarks of how their parenting could be more effective, or possibly that they are expecting too much or too little from their child. Understandably, parents are caught off guard as they are hit with a critical comment, and sometimes are not sure how to address them.
 

Real Illusion

By:  Marc Deprey

Perhaps our suffering is a wake up call that our investment in what we call reality—feelings, forms—is misplaced. We are more than just individual life, but life itself. I’m always struck with the limitations of language and the assumptions inherent within. Words relate to the experience of physical reality. Yet much of what words mean is metaphorical. You see a tree and call it such, but what is the reality of a plant that is connected to the ground and the air and sun for food?  At an atomic level there is no “place” where the “tree” starts and the “not-tree” begins. Atoms are 99.9% space. What we see are merely vibrations that seem like dense forms.

Go Big: Self Care to the Tenth Degree

By:  Gari Lister

What is a good mom?  Here’s how I would answer a questionnaire on how I was a good mom today:  I drove my ten year old an hour and twenty minutes each way to skating camp; I tried really really hard to talk to my twelve year old about sensitive pre-teen things I cannot share here; I fed my kids mostly healthy gluten free meals; my house is reasonably clean; I taught my middle daughter how to complete a job successfully; I gave the girls all kinds of brain-strengthening vitamins; and I went to yoga.  Ok, maybe I wouldn’t include the last item.  But maybe I should. 

What's in a Name? Part 4 - Is Keeping a Wrong Label OK?

By:  Julie Beem

Many of the parents who contact ATN have children with multiple diagnoses and we're frequently puzzled about which ones are the "right" ones.  I'm included in that group.  My child has an alphabet soup of diagnoses, including autism spectrum and ADHD/OCD/Tourettes (aggravated by her trauma.)  Fortunately for us, we had professionals who also recognized the RAD, PTSD, DTD components and pointed us in the right directions for treatment of those.  Yet, her developmental and processing struggles continue.

Getting a completely accurate diagnosis in today's climate (where trauma-based disorders are underdiagnosed) is very difficult.  So when I put on my "Mom" hat I will tell you that advocacy toward the most accurate diagnosis only takes you so far.   Advocating for and pushing professionals to diagnose our children accurately with RAD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma (or the new diagnosis in the DSM: Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder) can be exhausting, and maybe not that beneficial.   If all my child had ever been diagnosed with was Developmental Trauma Disorder (the diagnosis I believe to be the most accurate), I would have been up a treatment creek without a proverbial paddle.  Who in my city would have known how to treat her?  What therapies and parenting strategies would have been recommended to us?  And would the school have even bothered giving her an IEP for something they've never heard of?

So, Mom to Mom, I will say that I have come to embrace other diagnoses that can help get my daughter the help she needs.  Autism spectrum has been a huge one for us.  My daughter has developmental and processing issues that are usually associated with Autism.  Yet, every evaluation she's ever been given yields the results of "borderline" on the autism scales.  But those evaluations have led to an Autism eligibility on her IEP and to speech, social skills, and OT (sensory-based) services through our school district.  Could I have pushed for these services without that Autism label?  Yes.  Would it have been harder?  Infinitely!

My point is this:  diagnoses are important for getting services and making decisions on treatment.  If you recognize that your child's school district, doctors or other service providers will provide what your child needs with a diagnosis that may not be 100% accurate, then maybe it's not such a bad thing to let that one stand.

When I put on my Executive Director hat, what I said above makes me cringe.  I long for the day that RAD, PTSD and Developmental Trauma will be widely recognized disorders, and those diagnoses will bring with them the needed services and interventions to put our children quickly on the path to healing.  And that day will come...as our movement builds and our collective voice gets stronger.  But in the meantime, innovative Moms will do what it takes to get their precious children what they need!

What’s in a Name? Part 3 – Misdiagnoses/Misunderstandings

By:  Julie Beem

My child has __________________ (pick one or several: Bipolar, ADHD, autism, ODD, anxiety, executive functioning problems).  When parents of traumatized children turn to professionals for diagnoses and treatment, coming away with at RAD or Developmental Trauma Disorder diagnosis isn’t a sure thing.  If I had a dollar for every time a parent told me, “but my child has only been diagnosed with ADHD,” I could fund ATN’s activities well into the next decade.  Nearly every child I’ve met with attachment or trauma problems carries an ADD or ADHD diagnosis.  Don’t misunderstand me, children can have both attachment & trauma problems and ADHD.  But do they always co-exist?  No.

What’s in a Name? Part 2 – To Label or Not to Label

By: Julie Beem

“You don’t want her labeled for life.”  This sentence is usually spoken by your child’s grandparent (out of sheer concern for you and your family) or by a school official (who may be trying to block access to special education services).  Either way, crossing the threshold into “labeling” your child is a difficult thing for many.