Exposure to Life
Exposure:
a laying open to the action or influence of something.
Can you imagine a life where the beautiful sound of a symphony orchestra playing Elgar can make your senses feel overloaded? Where the simple fun that we all enjoyed as kids of a seaside penny arcade can make you feel anxious? Joining in with new experiences is overwhelmingly scary? Holidays make you nervous and edgy? Where fear can come from the everyday things that most people enjoy? For many adopted children this is a reality of every day life.
This weekend I decided to cast aside my worries about Girl trying yet another new club. She wanted to join a martial arts club, something she has been asking about for a long time. We checked it out and decided to take her for the free thirty minute taster session that they were offering but it came with conditions. In moments of fright, flight, freeze Girl can have little control over impulses and I was worried that she would use her new skills against us. She is already very strong and in those (now rare) moments of sheer uncontrollable violence she can already inflict as much pain as any grown up. So I set my conditions that if her skills were ever used inappropriately lessons would end immediately. She didn’t look entirely happy that she would not be able to use her skills to enhance her play-fighting and it did leave a niggling doubt that she did not understand the nature of what she wanted to do but I need not have worried.
Less than thirty minutes after Girl and The Hubster left for the taster session they returned, Girl in floods of tears and tucked into herself. She couldn’t say why she was crying, there were no words available to her but I knew. It’s the same reason she can’t enjoy a party. The same reason that she can have a meltdown after visiting the penny arcades. The same reason she can gouge my wooden dining room table with a pencil when she is upset about her spelling. The reasons are different in nature and yet somehow the same. A new place, new people, a dark low-ceiling room where all the sounds echo around you, self-confidence, self-esteem, fear of the unknown, sensory overload. Did I miss anything? Probably. I did my best to reassure her that it didn’t matter but no words could take away the disappointment she felt and I cried inside for the little girl that was hurting beyond comfort.
That thirty minute incident set the tone for the whole weekend. Girl went from relatively happy to emotionally exhausted and regressed back to the baby talk, the noises and babbling and self-absorbed behaviours. I was tested beyond measure, dirty looks, pushing boundaries and buttons. It can take Girl a while to recover from disappointment and it was with gritted teeth and steely determination that we ploughed through the rest of the jam-packed weekend and we made it. Exhausted but relatively unscathed, as we always do.
So the question is, what do you do? I knew that taking Girl to the new club could be courting disaster but do we shy away from exposing Girl to life? Do we say no when she wants to try something new, something we know in our heart she probably won’t cope with? Do we not book tickets to see a concert at the Symphony Hall because she might not cope with the sounds, the crowds, the noise and the hustle and bustle of the city? Can you imagine a life where we don’t try and experience everything good the world has to offer? The sounds, the sights, the smells? We know it comes with an emotional pricetag but how will we determine what makes Girl tick if we don’t expose her to anything at all? How will she learn to enjoy the world if she has no experience of it? How will Girl cope as an adult if she has not learned how to visit a city and use public transport, join a club, make new friends?
So it’s with this in mind that I expose Girl to life, sometimes maybe it’s a step too far but I hope with it she learns that by pushing your boundaries a little beyond your comfort zone there is a whole world out there to be enjoyed and that she grows in confidence.
Every picture tells a story…but is the story fictional?
I like to take photos. Hundreds of them. It’s really my big passion in life. What I would really like is some time to set up my shots properly and a bundle of cash to invest in some seriously good camera equipment and to do it a little more professionally. (I am actually going somewhere with this.)
This week I have had a difficult time with both children. Boy is displaying some seriously out of character and worrying behaviour and Girl? Well Girl is just her usual self; up and down but well… manageable. We have had some really awful, demoralising moments but actually some really incredibly good moments too, moments where girl has properly relaxed into cuddles, where she has chilled out in the bath (Girl likes a bath but tends to be tense, unable to relax and enjoy the experience), where she has fallen asleep in my arms and those are the moments I hold on to.
We have been away for a few days, it’s been arranged for a while, before all the trauma of illness, hospitals and poorly puppies and in the run up I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea with life being chaotic but you know what? I am ever the optimist, I thought the break away might be good for all of us and selfishly after the crappy winter and the difficult few weeks I wanted a change of scenery, a chance to use my camera and do something I love.
I couldn’t really have been more wrong in my decision. The ‘relaxing seaside mini-break’ has been stressful for all of us, there have been few truly good moments, holidays are difficult for a lot of adopted children but if you were a member of my distant family or somebody on my facebook friends list you would never know this. My photos, because I take so many in those small moments of happiness show a regular family; a bit like one of those films based on a true story, it’s true but perhaps not the whole truth. I paint a story with my camera that doesn’t accurately mirror the reality of our life. In truth the photos have been taken in a rare moment of peace and to people who don’t know us very well the kids look happy and carefree but that happy, carefree twenty minutes was probably followed by a sulk or a major tantrum, certainly some tears from somebody (at times possibly me). My status updates rarely hint at what we go through as a family, and only a select few know the reality. People who know us well can recognise the small clues hiding in the photos, the hollow look in Girl’s eyes, or maybe puffy, tired eyes, a paleness, a chewed lip, a false smile.
The photos do record the moments to treasure and that is exactly what I do, I remember Boy giggling on a swing ‘Higher, higher!’, Girl kicking a football through the water on the beach and getting absolutely soaking wet and loving it (Girl does not like getting wet). I try not to dwell on the memory that behind my camera boy is having a meltdown because he doesn’t want to be on the beach, he doesn’t like Girl playing football in the water, he wants to go back to the caravan but he wants girl to go too and now, this very minute (we had only just arrived). As a mum I look at the photos and remember with a photographic memory the detail of the moment but I am hoping that in time to come the kids will look at the photos I have painted and come to appreciate that we tried our best, we tried to make life fun and interesting and hope that they don’t remember the minutes of anger or anguish that may have followed.
Insecurities
We have had a bit of a roller-coaster ride for the last few weeks, one thing after another after another. It’s no surprise that both of the kids are feeling insecure. Where we normally try to stay in control with good routines and planning events have left us going from one catastrophe to the next. Girl is teary and fragile and Boy, well he’s angry. Really, really angry We are battling from one tantrum to another and this is unusual for Boy. He wants control of everything and when he doesn’t get it? He really knows how to tell us how pissed off he is.
A few weeks ago Boy caught chickenpox and ended up in hospital after a high fever and turning blue around the hands, feet and mouth. When we got to the hospital we were rushed through A&E and within minutes had about eight doctors plus nurses all trying to do different things to him, boy was so poorly he barely reacted to any of it but what was scary for us as parents must have been terrifying for a toddler because once his fever had settled we could relax into ‘phew, he is going to be ok’ but Boy? Well besides age-appropriately not really understanding, here he was in a strange place again, strange bed, strange smells, feeling poorly, he had been jabbed multiple times because they couldn’t find a vein, a nurse was taking his temperature every hour and administering medicine; not bad in itself but imagine what Boy is thinking ‘hey that’s mommies job, last time somebody took over my mommie’s jobs I got taken away by them’ not actually thinking that but probably it had to be there in the subconscious, a little alarm bell warning him of danger (see where I am going with this?). All this time Girl is sent to her grandparents, knowing that her little brother is really poorly and that she was ‘second best’ because we her parents didn’t want to take her to the hospital.
Life settled down a little, we adopted a puppy the puppy nearly died (more trauma) and then Boy got sick again, high fever, a fall down the stairs, head pain, tummy ache, leg ache. We had NHS direct on the phone during the night and Girl was aware of all of this, another disturbed worrying night for both kids. A few days later we are still worried about Boy and his unwillingness to eat and complaining of tummy aches all the time, I had a feeling it wasn’t through being ill but made a doctors appointment anyway just to be sure. The Doctor (bearing in mind this was the third visit since the chickenpox because Boy has some lymph glands swell up) had a check over Boy and sent us straight to the hospital, his heart is galloping like a racehorse he could have a serious illness. Shit! What did I miss? Was Boy really ill and I had been putting it down to a control issue?
So if you read regularly you probably know that I don’t really swear on my blog but this is how bad things are. We got to the hospital and had to endure more blood tests, more searching for veins, a long, long wait to hear any results and an unavailability of any senior doctors to check the raised blood results so yet another night in hospital (by this time it’s after midnight and we are all exhausted). In our haste we had had to dump Girl at my parents house with no change of clothes and with the knowledge that there was something wrong with her brother’s heart as she had been to the GP appointment with us.
Well, this is the thing. There was nothing wrong with Boy’s heart. The GP had misdiagnosed a child’s faster heartbeat for a galloping heartbeat. It was quite, quite normal. In fact there wasn’t much wrong with Boy at all except for a viral infection from the chickenpox. We were told that we could leave once Boy had eaten his lunch. Boy refused to eat his lunch, we were back at square one, the reason we had visited the GP in the first place. Eventually we coaxed some lunch down and left the hospital with our tail’s between our legs. Traumatised, tired, battle weary after a number of meltdowns, a refusal to let mummy do anything for him and this is continuing. Boy is barely eating anything consistently except for breakfast. He does not want me to help him. He is having screaming fits over the slightest thing, he wants control over every aspect of what we do and if he doesn’t get his own way a full scale tantrum ensues, hitting, being spiteful to Girl, refusing to eat but making demands of sugary foods. Life is difficult and of course all of this is having a massive knock on affect on Girl.
So we are back to trying to make Boy feel safe, he won’t accept a cuddle from me but will let me press his nose or ruffle his hair so we are at the very least maintaining touch until he is back in a good place again. The timing could not have been worse really as Boy always feels more insecure when Girl is not at school and with us only the first weekend into the Easter holidays I am expecting a testing couple of weeks.
Self-preservation or spoiled brat?
Try as I might sometimes I let Girl’s behaviours get to me and all my efforts of therapeutic parenting and treading on eggshells fly out of the window. Maybe it’s because it seems futile, maybe it’s because I’m only human. The last couple of weeks have been highly stressful as well as the puppy drama Boy also ended up in hospital overnight when he got very ill with chickenpox (because my kids can’t just get chickenpox, of course they have to get some sort of secondary infection as well) and Girl has reacted badly to assessment week at school.
For Comic Relief we got invited to a Charity Bake Sale at the Hubster’s cousins house. She recently moved to a property she rents from the National Trust and I was keen to go and have a look but I had a niggling doubt in the back of my mind. Girl does not cope well with these sort of gatherings and recently her behaviours have been worrying me more and more but we can’t put our life on hold all the time, as the CP said, life is for enjoying not coping with.
So yesterday afternoon off we went but not before giving Girl a pep talk about appropriate behaviour; we have been here before and I felt that a reminder of our expectations was justified. Our expectations were simple; she was to listen to people’s questions and answer, not just totally ignore and blank people as she is wont to doing and she was not to keep mithering for cakes (well I can try eh?). That was it, pep talk over.
Now I have to add that the cousins house was a 45 minute drive away and Girl suffers from travel sickness, more frequently recently so really the odds were stacked against us of this being a good experience. By the time we arrived at cousin’s house Girl was scowling, she hadn’t been sick, maybe because we tried out some new accupressure bands but she did complain of tummy ache. I sort of believe that a lot of this travel sickness is stress induced, I think because she can’t stay focussed on the travel and is tense and worrying about the impending event she gets sick. I could be wrong of course, her elder sister suffers a lot of travel sickness so it could be ‘one of those things’.
So we arrive at the house with a grumpy Girl and a freshly awoken Boy (Boy does not wake well, see what I am getting at?), marvellous. Cousin invites us in and gives us a grand tour of her house that used to be a village post office and shows us all the interesting features and tries her best to engage Girl but Girl is having none of it, she moans that the house is cold and refuses to speak otherwise. We are off to a flying start. Girl warily eyes up the cakes but we have to wait a few minutes, we have arrived early and cousin hasn’t finished setting everything up, Girl’s scowl deepens. We sit by the log burner and make small talk, Girl sits making baby noises and scowling and refusing to answer questions. Boy, being her loyal subject copies her every mood; luckily he is easily diverted so we get him to help cousin’s teenage daughter (I’ll call her B) to assemble a cupcake stand.
Finally the cakes are ready the kettle is boiled, Girl and Boy choose cupcakes with lurid green icing and I start the sugar rush countdown, B takes the kids to her room, I am still counting down and trying to drink my coffee while I have the chance, takes about four to five minutes…right on cue the noise starts eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh, bang, bang, bang, stomp, stomp stomp yyyyyyyarrrrrrrrrrggghhhh…thirty seconds later and cousin appears, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being cheeky but my daughter needs a little help…’. The Hubster went to deal with it and B said they had just flipped out, yep that sounds about right. On his own Boy will play delightfully, put the two together, post sugar (more Girl than Boy it has to be said) and they are like wild animals, Boy following Girl’s lead.
We spent the next ninety minutes watching Girl flip between acting like a maniac, mithering for cakes (after the first sugar rush, are you kidding me? I tried to use this as a bargain tool, cake for nice behaviour…I have to have hope, Hubster gave in), sulking, behaving like a toddler (lots of baby noises and behaviour), trying to be the centre of attention, interrupting conversations and behaving well frankly to all appearances like a completely spoiled brat and sometimes (dare I say it) when I am at a really low point I even think it myself.
Now before you judge me I know she isn’t really a spoiled brat (well I hope she isn’t) but I don’t know how to help her behave appropriately, I have tried everything, so I find myself not wanting to accept invitations, I can’t predict any longer how she will behave. Girl snapping and being rude to the CP last week was a complete shock to me, this wasn’t just a display of shyness of the situation which is how it has looked in the past, this was something else entirely, an insolence and a bravado from a need to have some control instead of shyness, a new stage.
I found myself leaving the gathering feeling low and upset, on the verge of tears and very cross with Girl for her difficult behaviour, I gave her a telling off for being rude and difficult but even that was futile. You see Girl does not care if she upsets or behaves badly in front of people she does not know so well, her own needs are more important, it’s not selfishness just self-preservation.
Puppy Love
Last weekend we bought a puppy, it’s something we have been considering for a while and was in our ‘life plan’. We have another dog, Harry and we always wanted a companion for him but life just sort of got in the way. Harry was recently diagnosed with a heart murmur and arthritis in his back legs. He’s getting old and these thing are common in Cavaliers so we decided that getting a companion now might liven him up a little.
Buying the puppy has been a bit of a traumatic experience, the lively Border Collie puppy that came to us last Saturday rapidly deteriorated to the point where she was on the verge of liver and kidney failure, it was touch and go for a couple of days but after some TLC and daily vet visits she has bounced back to almost full health in a week.
Having the puppy even with the ill health has been properly amazing for Girl, Harry she has always been able to take or leave but then he has always been around, not helped by the fact her foster carer had a nasty vicious little dog (how she got away with it I have no idea) .
Every day for the last week Girl has told me repeatedly how much she loves Meg, if we go out she yearns for her, she cuddles with her but has also learned when to leave her alone, she bosses her around (no jumping, no biting, get down) and is thrilled to be helping teach Meg tricks.
Meg has already learned to sit on command in two five minute sessions. I controlled the first session to get Meg used to the command but then realising what a fast learner she was I let Girl take charge of the second session. I knew this would be good for Girl, it was fun but it was also good for her self-esteem and self-confidence because I was giving her an important task but also that the dog was doing as she was told so readily so Girl in turn felt it was a task she could do well; a lot of things she fails at simply because she feels that she can’t do them. It was very rewarding for Girl (and for me to watch them) and a good end to the day.
Friendship and Understanding Post Adoption
When you are a parent to a child with attachment issues or a child that has come through adoption you find that normal friendships and relationships become more complicated, that you almost shut off a part of your life for fear of being misunderstood. I do not talk about adoption or attachment issues with my non-adoption friends unless specifically asked, they just don’t understand that parenting an adopted child or a child with attachment disorder is different. There seems to be this belief that children are resilient, their past is made sort of irrelevant, ‘oh well kids adjust, they’re with you now and you’re a great mum’. So it doesn’t matter what traumas they experienced in the eyes of my friends anything that happens henceforth is down to you.
I never dare utter the word trauma to a non-adoptive friend. Moving to a new family was not traumatic it was ‘a difficult time for them’. That’s as far as I can take it with a non-adoptive friends. I have used the word traumatic before and been given The Look. They may as well have scoffed ‘traumatic? don’t be so dramatic’. Friends view adoption as a rosy, glowing moment not unlike the time they held their newborn baby for the first time. ‘How did you feel the first time she called you mummy?’ I am asked repeatedly. I never know how to answer because it wasn’t an easy moment. The children (that can talk) are ‘trained’ to call you mummy, it doesn’t come from an emotional place or a place of love it’s just they have no other name for you. I can’t tell that to my friends because it’s a bit of a conversation stopper, it’s a bit too downbeat when they are expecting the answer ‘oh it was such a special moment’. There are special moments but the first time I was called mummy was not one of them, my daughter was far too tense and distraught for there to be any pleasure in the moment.
Friends don’t seem to realise that there is more to adoption than the actual event of adoption, the process we go through or the first time we are called mummy.
I have a friend that takes a great interest in my life and well, come to think of it, everybody else’s life too. She is vivacious and bubbly and wants to know everything about everybody and she remembers the important stuff. She remembers if your child has been to the doctors and always asks how you got on, you know just the little things that make you feel that somebody else is thinking of you.
This friend has asked a lot of questions about adoption and the kids and about all the different aspects and emotions that come with it but when it comes to me telling her about the difficulties that can arise or a bad day or Girl’s latest tantrum and more importantly why we have these problems I am met with the blanket phrase’ well you know…all kids do that’. An uncomfortable silence follows and I can’t even try to explain that they are reacting in the present to their past because in friend’s eyes the past is ancient history whereas actually the trauma Girl experienced in her past formed who she is today, the quirky but troubled Girl that I love with all my heart.
To invalidate her past is to invalidate my Girl and I myself also feel invalidated and I know it’s not intentional but it’s one less person I can talk to openly, another person I have to close off to because just in that blanket statement I have been labelled a neurotic mother and it leaves me questioning myself and our life and now more than ever I need friends who don’t sweep our issues under the carpet.
So I have read a lot of books, attended some training, I know what my girl has been through, I know the daily struggle my girl has with herself and I know I am vindicated in worrying about my Girl. Luckily, I have an army of friends in the adoption circle who know exactly how I feel, how lonely it can sometimes feel because talking to non-adopters can be really tough when they can’t empathise with your life. Our life isn’t talking about C-sections or breast feeding, it’s about contact, about privacy and security and placing authorities. Talking about the issues you go through on a daily basis is not a conversation stopper.
Direct Contact & Bereavement
One of the things we never really gave much thought to when contemplating adoption contact arrangements was bereavement. It was one of those ‘oh that’s a long way off’ sort of thoughts and then life came and gave us a swift kick in the ass. It has left us in the strangest position.
Direct contact with a birth relative is a strange situation anyway. You meet, you may become ‘friends’ but there is always an elephant in the room, the relative feels a certain amount of shame of the situation and you feel yourself treading carefully so as not to offend or cause distress or look like you are poking your nose in where it does not belong.
I have to say I grew to like Girl’s grandad a lot. He had a very dry sense of humour, he was honest, trustworthy, kind and friendly and he absolutely adored his granddaughters. Parting was always sad for him because you could see it pained him to leave his grandaughters, knowing it could be another half a year before he would see them again although we were getting to the stage in our relationship where we were comfortable enough to share more of our life with him, he had proved himself trustworthy so many times and we were happy to share more time with him as long as Girl coped with it.
To learn of Grandad’s cancer last year was a shock and his death this weekend has saddened us. We are now in the position where we would like to say our goodbyes at the service but for Girl’s security reasons cannot. We would like to support his lady friend in her time of sorrow but again we cannot. We wanted to support in the final days but we could not. In time we will be able to say goodbye in our own way but it is the strangest feeling and something we just never gave thought to.
Goodbye Grandad, you will be missed.
Trauma and Loss
Trauma and Loss. Two words that go hand in hand with adoption and at the moment are a very real and current issue for us.
Girl’s grandad sadly passed away this weekend and we were faced with the question ‘how do we handle this?’ It’s a difficult enough subject for a child at any time but for one who can be volatile when anxious getting it wrong can really be traumatic for the whole family.
I have to add that this weekend Girl had already been feeling some anxieties about separation. I had been out for a long girly lunch for a birthday and also out with the hubster and some friends who we had not seen for a long time the night before. This rarely happens and Girl really did not deal with it very well and we ended up with a few bruises and scratches to show for it. Yesterday Girl was still not herself, like she was on the edge of flaring up again so to receive the phone call about grandad’s passing at this time left us in a bit of a quandary.
It was one of those times I really needed some advice so I called upon my army of friends who have also adopted and the advice was varied. My gut instinct was to wait until today to tell her, keep Girl from school for some nurturing and cotton wool treatment and send Boy to the grandparents so she could have some one to one attention. My best friend agreed this was a good idea. However, opinion between friends was divided. A child of six does not understand completely the implications of death, it can be confusing and some felt that breaking the routine for a child that thrives on routine might be even more confusing for her. That carrying on as normal as possible would be of far more benefit to her, to be there if and when I was needed.
In the end Boy went to bed early, exhausted from a few hours at soft play so we took the opportunity to tell Girl the sad news. I had hoped not to tell her so late in the evening so that she did not lie in bed worrying about it but it seemed a calm time and would not have too much impact on the day ahead, we could then judge her behaviour in the morning and decide what our next move would be.
This morning Girl was a little defiant but after a weekend of manic, silly and difficult behaviour perhaps not particularly much more than would be usual. We sent her to school and had a word with the teacher. Time will tell how she is feeling about things. She told me she was sad about her grandad, she also told me how much she missed Mary her old lady friend who passed away last year. She asked me for a photo of grandad for her wall pockets and expressed her concern for grandad’s lady friend, worried that she would be lonely. So really allt hings considered some good reactions, recognising her emotions and showing compassion for another. I told her I was sad about grandad too that he was a good man and that I liked him a lot, which I really did.
If you are dealing with beavement and there is a young child involved I took some good advice from this website:
Winston’s Wish
I Love You
Three little words, ‘I Love You’. From most people they probably mean a lot, I know when my husband says it it’s coming from a genuine feeling of love and funnily enough it usually follows me cooking his favourite dinner.
From Girl it’s a little bit more complex than simply expressing an emotion of love. Take for instance, on Friday night Girl had a sleepover at her grandparents house. She really enjoys a sleepover, a lot of adopted children don’t, it can put the fear of god into them but I think it gives Girl a bit of peace and quiet and some one-to-one time that she desperately needs and that we can’t always give her having a very needy two year old in the house.
Each end every time she has a sleepover the day she returns is filled with some very badly acted, over-dramatised, simpering ‘I Love You’s’. ‘I Love You Daddy’, ‘I Love You Mommy’; lots of kissing of arm, hands and faces and some very over the top, dramatic hugs but also interspersed with some very sulky, petulant behaviour. Now, I am very sure she does love us but for Girl this isn’t simply a need to tell us she loves us, it’s more complex than that (of course it is, what did you expect?). She needs to know that we love her too. It simply can’t be as straightforward as her saying ‘mummy do you love me?’ because that would be far too scary for her. Girl is never good with a direct question. What if we gave her an answer she did not want to hear (we never would)? I think by her telling us that she loves us over and over again she understands that she will get a reciprocation of affection. It’s not quite so effusive (I was never good at am-dramatics) but it is genuine. ‘We Love You too Girl’. Simply put and matter of fact.
We also get this same behaviour after contact, especially recently with much more contact with her poorly grandad. She often goes into the old game of playing ‘I love you to Asda and back’ when she is struggling. When she was a toddler and we read the book with Nutbrown Hare in it Asda was as far away as she could think, so in return I would love her to Sainsburys and ba
Yesterday was different. After us all being poorly over Christmas we decided to venture out and blow the cobwebs away. Girl loved it. We haven’t managed to get out for a good walk for at least a month as that’s how long we have been poorly. She was happy and needed to show it. ‘I Love You Mommy’ she ran shouting, ‘I Love You Daddy’, ‘I Love You Boy’, ‘I Love Nanny & Granddad , ‘I Love the dog’, ‘I Love my other nanny and grandad’…It was an overwhelming expression of happiness. I would probably have ran shouting ‘woohooo I am sooooo happy, fresh air yeehaaa!’ but with Girl there was still that need to include everybody she loves in her happiness which I am definitely not grumbling about but I did find eccentric!ck and we still play the game now but sadly the game now usually comes from a place of fear but also I think from a need to regress and be babied a bit.
So with Girl ‘I Love You’ is rarely a simple expression of pure love but that’s really OK because I don’t need to hear the words to know she loves us and we love her in return. The love is expressed in her concern when we are poorly, the moments shared with a blanket on the settee, the jokes and teasing and holding hands on a walk. It’s all there and that’s enough for me.
Happy New Year x
A Christmas Carol
I was sitting this morning thinking about Christmas presents, the fact that I have almost completed my Christmas shopping and as usual have gone completely over the top with the kids presents. I then started to reflect on last Christmas and previous Christmases Most adopters will tell you that Christmas is a difficult time. I believe that most kids will get a bit bratty in the run up to Christmas but when your child’s mental state is constantly set at high-alert and bracing for the unknown well that unknown can lead to some difficult behaviour. Everything is out of order, everything is exciting (and sadly over stimulating).
Christmas Past
Girl’s First Christmas
This happened three months after placement when Girl was two or to put it another way (that I think puts the time scale into perspective), twelve weeks. Only twelve weeks as a new family. We were very excited to be sharing our first Christmas together with our new daughter. We arranged a Christmas Breakfast and present opening with all the close family we could fit in our little house, my parents flew over from Spain to stay with us and I offered to cook Christmas dinner for all and sundry. (I bet you can see where this is going…). The day dawned, the stockings were discovered, the snow fell and it seemed so perfect. Thirty minutes into the most stupidly, humongous pile of Christmas presents you have ever seen and Girl has had enough. It was all too much. The screaming and tantrums started and they carried on right the way through dinner and all the way to bedtime. It was so bad my parents moved out the next day to stay at my grandparents. My sister’s new boyfriend (who was meeting our parents for the first time) was practically cowering under the table looking absolutely petrified. I was crying, my mum was crying and we finished Christmas feeling shell-shocked and upset. In hind-sight I’d say that we expected too much but we were new parents we had looked forward to this moment for so long.
Last Christmas
In terms of behaviour we did not think we could top the first Christmas and actually Christmas Day itself was fairly quiet. Having had three previous attempts with Girl and being Boy’s first Christmas with us we felt fairly experienced and decided to keep it as low key as possible. We had the whole day to ourselves which worked out brilliantly. Unfortunately, Boy had just had an operation a couple of days previous to Christmas and was poorly, needing a lot of attention and the whole run up to Christmas was probably one of our worst periods as adoptive parents, Girl’s behaviour was so off-the-scale last year that we did not put the tree up till the last minute, did not go to see Santa or partake in anything very festive and this is what prompted me to write this blog post. I had been remembering how this time last year I broke down. I drove to my parent’s house (they had moved back from Spain by this point) sobbing and not really understanding why.I broke down on their doorstep and my mum packed me off to bed. We learned a lot from the experience of last year, started to understand Girl a lot more. I understand now I was suffering from Post Adoption Depression and Girl was utterly traumatised by well, frankly everything in her life at that point, new school, new brother, adoption, hospital runs for her brother…
Christmas Present
This Christmas
Despite how terrible this last year has seemed at points I am happy to say that we are excited about Christmas. We are always excited about Christmas with the kids, I mean you have to have hope that they will be fine else what else is there? But it’s different this year. We are coping, we have learned a lot in this past year more than any year before and madly we are not having a very low key Christmas, in fact both the grandparents are coming to dinner. Yes it might be bedlam, yes I am expecting some humdinger tantrums from Boy (he’s two, it’s his right), yes I am expecting some sulks and stroppy behaviour from Girl (but happily not expecting the violent outburst we had last year), yes I am probably going to have a few meltdowns myself (I’m a mum, it’s my right to get stressy over the sprouts) but as a family we are in a good place. My therapist taught me that although its probably not healthy to be always expecting the worst if I do find myself anticipating a worst case scenario (because that can be our life at times) I can plan positively how to deal with it, mentally prepare myself and mostly I have to say it works.
Christmas Future
Well what can I say about our future Christmases other than I hope they will always be merry and bright? I’m hoping to learn from this Christmas (but no too much eh?). Something that stay’s with me now though is that some of the other day’s over Christmases past have meant more to me such as waking up Girl last year to watch the New Year Countdown and share some late night quality street, a Boxing Day steam train ride, a Frosty walk… so even if Christmas fail’s miserably there will be other days to get oh so right.
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