The Gift of Giving... and the Most Extravagant Christmas

One day before the special needs sibling group of three children entered our home and doubled the size of our family, my husband was laid off from his job.  His boss had found out hubby's political views were different than his and that was the end of his employment there.  Hubby said in the exit interview, "You know I'm in the process of adopting three kids right?" 

His boss's reply... "Just tell them you can't take 'em!"

God carried us!

With double the family and far less than half the income, that first Christmas was lean... I wondered how we could "give" these kids anything more than a home and ourselves.

One day a few days before Christmas, our social worker showed up in a big station wagon filled to brimming with unwrapped brand new toys... she explained because it was a "foster-to-adopt" situation, she was able to get our kids some gifts the community had donated for foster kids... even though, as far as we were concerned, ... these kids were never foster kids in our home... they were "our family."

I thought we must be first on the list of deliveries, because, like I said... the station wagon was BRIMMING with toys.

I thought, wow... now the adoptees will have a gift, but our bio child will have none...

Let me just tell those who don't already know how very much it sucks as a parent to feel like you're unable to provide all you'd like to for the kids God has blessed you with.  Simply put, Dear Hubby and I felt like failures.  Our social worker encouraged us that despite hubby's recent unemployment, we were able to provide our children a safe, nurturing, loving home, and unaddicted parents... which is far more than their unemployed bio family was able to provide.   

Choked up, I thanked the social worker as she handed me a couple of gifts out of the car and I turned back toward the house.

The social worker asked, "Where are you going????"  Everything in this station wagon is for your family!!!!

I couldn't believe how very generous people had been!!!!!

It is SOOOOOO HUMBLING to be the receiver of such generosity!!!!

There were some duplicates of items... some things we already owned... those gifts provided us the opportunity to GIVE to others. 

"Giving" is my absolute favorite Christmas gift!

This morning's TV news "feel good" holiday stories of generosity reaching out to underprivileged people in the community brought me back to the year we had the most extravagant Christmas ever...

I still just can't thank people enough for being so generous!!!!  

Our Daughter's First Sign of Attachment

The first time I ever saw our new daughter express genuine concern for our family, my heart was overwhelmed. 

Up until that day, most of the time our daughter walked around like a robot, and hugged like an ironing board, but as soon the social worker's car pulled up the driveway, our newest daughter would snuggle up to Daddy in a way that was far too "mature" and far to inappropriate for a little girl.  She'd giggle in in an saccharin sweet voice "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Daddy.... tee hee hee!  You're soooooo funny!" while running her little fingers along his hair neck and shoulders. 

She'd stay in that spot until the social worker's car left the driveway.   Then she'd blankly-robotically go back to her room... and resumed her "ignoring" us behavior. 

I read it as "PLEASE SOCIAL WORKER DON'T MOVE ME AGAIN!"  

And I immediately notified the social worker that we ONLY saw that behavior when her car was in our driveway... we let her know it disappeared as quickly as it came. 

I think I've written about this before here... not sure if I ever posted it. 

The memories of who our kids were when we first met them, who they became as part of our family, who they became at the "age appropriate season of detachment as young adults" haunt me. 

Some memories haunt me more than others. 

The "attachment sign" memory is one that I don't mind popping up from time to time.  It continues to give me much hope.

Before we had a cellphone... hubby was stuck on the side of the highway with minor car trouble he felt he could fix if he could get his tools.  A good Samaritan stopped and loaned a phone for him to call me to come with tools. 

I piled the kids in the mommymobile (read minivan) and off we went. 

We had to pass hubby on the highway, exit, turn around and reenter to get to him on the other side. 

We spotted him.  Stuck on the other side. 

Our newest daughter began SOBBING.  She hated that he was stranded... and that cars were driving by... and that we had to drive by too. 

My heart breaks each time I remember the depths of her grieving her new daddy's lot. 

Those feelings were raw.  And REAL.  And CARING. 

This child who for as long as we'd known her SEEMED so indifferent to us all... really cared for him... for us.

I miss my caring daughter.  I believe she is out there... but the triggers of becoming a young adult... surrounded by "friends" tickling her ears about her "rights" as a young adult and "friends" my age who delight in poisoning her mind against us... because then she "needs" them.

Our daughter is out there wandering the junkyard of life out there in robot land... Officer RAD... big and tough... and ready to "take on the world."

She's heavily armored... She's been injured most by the "friends" trying to help her.  She's using everything she's got to protect the little girl we love... and miss.

Foster Care in the News

Huffington Post has a nifty article on traumatized foster kids overcoming great odds as a adolescents...

Cool article, I hoped to make an annonymous comment... not possible.  so I'll link the article here and the comment I intended to leave (but wouldn't have been able to even if I did register... because as usual, my comment is longer than 250 characters.)

Finding Hope After Trauma by Gary Stangler 

As an adoptive parent of a "special needs sibling group" adopted out of our state's foster system in 1994, I'm very grateful our adoptive children's adoption social worker had the foresight to "guarantee" psychiatric care until age 18 for all three!!!  I can't express how desperately psychiatric intervention for the three was needed "after 18!"

I'm not normally a fan of putting a video game in the hands of a child and calling them a "child" until they are 30, however ...in the case of mentally ill individuals (especially in the case of our "special needs sibling adoption group")  I 100% see the benefits of extending psychiatric care past 18 for "attachment disordered" adoptees!!!!!

"Over-18" is where our adoptees have had THE MOST difficulty! 

They have accomplished much... they still have so very far to go!  I remain hopeful!

The age-appropriate season of "detachment" as young-adults to begin to embark on their "adult lives" reawakened the abandonment issues and RAD behaviors in our adopted children that were troubling to see in young children, and horrifying to see as they became young adults.   

Our "overcame-so-much" Honor-Rolled college student who completed most of her AA degree as a dually enrolled high school student went for one semester out-of-state to college... then dropped out and returned home a completely different person!!!

The Reactive Attachment Disorder we believed she was healed of, was back in ways we never imagined possible.

Her adoption benefit of unlimited psychiatric care had "run out."  Our daughter was eligible for care through our family insurance plan as long as she remained a full-time student... but she had quit school.  We offered to pay for her psychiatric care but she refused.  She continued to spiral downward under the unethical "counsel" of an overzealous student of psychology, who encouraged her to call her "mom."  That lady who bought our daughter's affections with expensive gifts she could not afford (like a car) became "mom" to our 21 year old daughter.  Three years later in the eyes of our adopted daughter that "RAD typically triangulated" woman is still "mom" and I am not. 

I have since learned this behavior of early-traumatized adoptees adopting gullible new families when they are young adults phenomenon is quite common behavior for Attachment Disordered individuals who were adopted out of orphanages or the foster system.

We learned, in our neck of the woods anyway,  parental rights regarding psychiatric issues expire before a child reaches 18. 

... Our simultaneously spiraling-downward (unofficially diagnosed "inhibited form" RAD) at 2-months-to-18-year-old son was supposedly getting the psychiatric "help" we so very strongly encouraged him to participate in, but we as parents had no right, according to his counselor, to information on his progress or lack-thereof... "It's not like medical records... the laws are different... I'm not allowed..."  

Like his "officially diagnosed RAD" older sister, our son chose his own set of "new parents" as is common for legally-adult adoptees with  attachment disorders to do.   

As painful as it is to experience this rejection from children we have poured the very best of everything we have into... their "coping mechanism" kind of makes sense.    It is familiar to them... their "roots" have been pulverized.  I don't fully understand their behavior because my life's experiences are so drastically different than theirs.  My family has always been my family.  They joined my family.  They have been grafted in... they have access to my roots, but my roots have not always been their roots.  Their roots have never been my roots. 

They have experienced traumas I would never wish on anyone.  They are coping as best as they know how.

Our adopted children had lived separately as foster children were only "placed together, 'as a sibling group' for adoption" when their bio-mom was required to terminate her parental rights for issues of abuse/neglect/abandonment. 

The oldest I was told lived 8 years with one foster family...

The middle I was told had an estimated 17 different families...

The youngest was removed from bio-mom's "care" shortly after birth and bounced between 5 or six homes that I'm aware of before coming home to ours. 

The three children (placed with us at ages 2.5, 6, and 13) had come to us at an "interim" foster placement after a "failed special-needs-sibling-group adoptive placement."  They EACH had experienced numerous psychological (and other) traumas before ever being placed in our family. 

According to our children's social worker, this beautiful, symptomatically RAD initially-charming child never lasted more than 90 days in any one foster or adoptive placement. 

The social worker wanted "this" adoptive placement to work out.  We did too! 

I'm grateful to see the overcoming the impacts of difficult beginnings related to foster adoption story in the news. 

I'm eager for the world-at-large to learn about Reactive Attachment Disorder and how to best support the mental health of individuals who have experienced trauma during the most important years of brain development.  

I too have tremendous hope for our children who had overcome so much before we ever knew who they were, who have accomplished so much as young adults, and who STILL have a lonnnnng way to go!!!! 

Finally!!!!

We have been asking certain family members for more than three years that IF they choose to have contact with our estranged adult adoptees...

PLEASE learn about Reactive Attachment Disorder!

PLEASE learn how to best be supportive of adoptive families as a whole!

PLEASE learn about triangulation that is symptomatic of RAD... and don't allow yourself to be triangulated! 

We never forbade family to see or talk to our children.  We have only asked for a consistent message of  "Your parents love you, YOU NEED TO TALK TO THEM NOT ME about what's going on between you."

Somewhere along the line the easily triangulated ones with the "rescuer" gene would fluctuate between,

"Let's all smile pretty and pretend nothing happened!"

and

 "Don't worry, just because your parents suck, IIIII still love you!  You'll ALWAYS have MY love!"

and

"I have to hear both sides of the situation before I can make a proper judgement about what's going on between you and your parents." 

It seems like last night FINALLY one couple of the most painful perpetuate-ers of strife in our family seemed to "get" how their "good intentioned" meddling has continued to hurt us and our family over the last three years. 

This is huge!!!!

We are grateful for progress. 

We are grateful for family and friends who support our adoptees' return to mental health by supporting our family as a whole. 

We continue to pray for the rest. 

Take Heart Adoptive Parents!

Take heart betrayed parents who have poured your lives and your love into the lives of these needy children. Your child's behaviors against you is not personal (even though it feels VERY personal!!!) it is mental illness. I'm not trying to be mean by saying that. Early Trauma affects how the brain develops!

Young adult adoptees "Leaving with a bang" usually by RADtypically triangulating their adoptive parents against whomever is gullible enough to believe their symptomatic Attachment Disordered "deceptive charm" is such a common thing for young adult adoptees to do during the season where it is biologically-age-appropriate for them and their peers to begin embarking into their "adult" lives! I've met so many adoptive families where their (18ish year old) adoptees have not moved out into their own place, have not moved in with peers... instead move in with their "friends" mommies and daddies and start calling them their "new parents" as they pretend for their easily manipulated "rescuers" to have lived lives of abuse in their loving attentive adoptive families. It's almost like these families are experiencing our parallel universe!

I want to encourage you to keep seeking the support of other adoptive parents (In real life... and on the internet!!!!) It is difficult to openly share all the trauma/drama parenting our attachment disordered children has brought into our lives. Some of the "private" or "closed" groups have more detailed support for every level of parenting kids of all ages with RAD diagnosis.

I don't at all mind private messages from parents who are experiencing a similar hell on earth! There really is genuine comfort in knowing we are not alone in loving our children who behave the way they do because they had been through brain altering traumas often starting with inutero exposure to illegal drugs and alcohol, as well as a flood of biomom's stress hormones throughout their prenatal development... combine that with whatever the traumas were that eventually separated them from their birth family... orphancare whether bouncing through the foster system, or rotating staff at actual orphanages... all this long before they ever entered our homes and joined our families.

I've noticed most people understand when there is an explosive teen/young-adult triangulating against a "step" parent... Yet I'm amazed how few people think the "issues" would not NATURALLY be exponentially multiplied when "neither parent" is the biological one.

I have also been amazed to see how much strife comes from members of "pro-life" affiliations who have not themselves adopted. I'm talking churches. I've learned that not everyone who stands under a banner... attends services... serves, "ministers" etc etc etc... not everyone in those positions has enough light of the Lord within them to shine light and love and wholeness and healing toward adoptive families. Instead it appears it is their delight to sow strife... foster rebellion... and create a hostile environment between us and our children. They are the ones whose "prayer circles" are gossip central. They chew up our kids stability as they satisfy their unholy appetites entertained by the drama surrounding our children's mental illness. These people, believe they are "serving God" as they walk out their desire to play savior instead of praying to the Savior.  They get a sick thrill out of attacking our families and patting themselves on the back for the "good work" they're doing. These who believe they are standing under the Cross have been the unkindest of all. If only they would put their efforts to making a positive difference in the lives of orphaned children instead of meddling in our families.  Have they adopted children born addicted... yeah no... didn't think so. 

My hubby and I are grateful there is MUCH encouragement for us in the Bible... and we are grateful for the remnant of those who REALLY know the Lord... and are CAPABLE and successful in shining His light and love. We are grateful for those who hear of our "situation" and speak of it to God asking for healing for our adoptees for healing of the hurts that started long before we ever met them... and for healing of our family of all the pain parenting children adopted out of trauma continues to bring to our lives.

Flashback to the beginning

I  was reading how many parents to RAD find their RAD afflicted children don't handle "owning" many things well.  Many adoptive parents of RADkids find their new child is most at peace with little-to-no belongings, at least until they settle in. 

I flashed back to the very beginning of our adoption experience.  We WANTED to give these kids the world.  We tried to give our new kids everything they had lacked... They just couldn't handle it!   Frequent tantruming and destruction is what ensued when owning items (fun items that normally delight young children) would overwhelm our RAD diagnosed daughter. 

Each of our three "new" kids came to us with one brown paper grocery bag partially filled with all their worldly possessions.  (Including all their clothes!)

It turns out the foster family "our new kids" also sent along several bags of "kid-stuff" that our "new kids" said wasn't theirs.  Our new kids' social worker explained the prior foster family wouldn't need the items any more.  Three months with our kids caused that foster family to retire. 

We were told after having "our kids" for three months... the elderly couple decided they'd give up foster care for good... they had only been doing it for a couple of decades. 

Our new "special needs sibling group" of three children, 13, 6, and 2 1/2 had just disrupted from an adoption placement three months prior to joining that foster family... and after three months of our "new kids" in that veteran foster family's home was enough to shut them down... for good.  They were no longer interested in fostering.  They were done. 

Does every adopted child have Reactive Attachment Disorder... I really don't believe so. 

I do think it is highly likely for individuals separated from one or both bio-parents to have "attachment issues" but I believe attachment issues are not full-blown RAD.

Attachment issues are quite different from Reactive Attachment Disorder.