What Now?

Recovering

2012-02-26T10:11:00.005-08:00

I'm going through an adjustment in my thyroid medication. (My cancer appears to be in remission, or nearly so, and the risk of recurrence is managed with a deliberate, slight overdose in replacement hormone, which takes time to achieve.) My doctor is tinkering with my dose right now, which is making me feel weird, and a little sick.

So for this reason, I was poking around on the internet and I came across a useful bit of writing. I'm basically well, with just a handful of mostly acceptable symptoms, so as I read it, T's needs, rather than my own, leapt to mind. The advice, below, struck me as very apt advice for parenting traumatized kids. Written from the patient's point-of-view, it went like this:

>Sometimes I need time alone.

>Drive me to appointments until I can drive.

>Handle phone calls, faxes, emails from family, friends. Sometimes it’s just too much. (To this, I would add my own spin for kids coming from foster care: handle letters, appointments, and information from the courts and social workers for me, because it's just too much.)

>Don’t ask if you can help, just do it. I’m having trouble making decisions right now.

>Listen while I sound off. There’s a lot happening to me and I need to verbalize without hurting someone’s feelings.

>Act normal, and don’t try to cheer me up when I’m depressed. It’s normal to be depressed when things are going badly.

>Resist the temptation to lash out in anger. I’m not angry at you, just at fate, or God, or whomever I blame for bringing illness into our lives.

>Even if I’m withdrawn, talk to me frequently. Sit nearby, read the paper, or just ‘be there.’

>Include me in family activities and decisions. I’m only sick, not mentally incompetent.

Every single thing on that list is something that we have realized and internalized, through trial and error, in the last three years of parenting T. He is recovering from a prolonged shock to his system, and figuring out what post-trauma equilibrium feels like and how to maintain it. It's a process not unlike recovery from chronic illness.

Ordinary

2012-02-25T00:35:00.002-08:00

I haven't written much lately, because I haven't needed to. Unexpectedly, the finalization of T's adoption did result in some much-needed (I realize, in retrospect) breathing room. Overnight, the visits from social workers, calls to lawyers, and endless negotiations about services stopped. A great deal of paperwork fell away, as we became his legal parents, and nearly simultaneously, he turned 18. The world knows no bureaucracy like that of foster care, but suddenly, it was over, and it left me with more time and less need to vent.

T exited foster care quietly and gracefully. It all just slipped away. We still have problems. In fact, amongst us, not much changed at all, at least in terms of how we relate. I think that alone was a surprise to T. A life spent in foster care prepared him for the milestone of legal adulthood with an undue emphasis. After all, foster care more or less ends when a kid turns 18 or graduates high school, whichever comes last. There are transitional "independent living" programs and safety nets, but in the metropolis where we live, the money and the availability of services just isn't there to back up the claims. There are also scholarships and incentives for kids who've been in extended foster care. But, at least in my experience, kids like T are not in the same place, chronologically and developmentally, as your average college-bound 18 year-old. It seems almost unjust to me to taunt them with scholarships and suggest that they pack for college when they're still working through the aftermath of a disastrous childhood. So many kids who "age out" end up on the streets, or couch-surfing, or ricocheting amongst various unstable living situations. Anyway, knowing all this, I think T was somewhat surprised that 18 came and went, and we're all still living here together, and we're still bossing him, and he still has to take out the trash and recycling if he wants to use the car. Turning 18 was not what he had been led to expect.

All this is not to say that our house is without its daily dramas. We are still navigating his substance abuse issues. He's in out-patient treatment, and underwhelmed by the quality of the program, going pretty diligently and mostly abstaining, but not making as much progress as he or we had hoped. I've decided that hope is the pretty cousin to stress and pressure, so I'm trying to set mine aside, and let him find his own way. I'll write more soon about parenting and addiction, a topic I've thought a lot about this year. But right now, I'm just enjoying a sort of mundane everyday feeling. Here's to feeling ordinary!

Adopted

2012-02-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

T's adoption finalized earlier this week. It was both quiet and momentous. It took us three years and twelve court hearings to reach this point. Sometimes I wasn't sure it would ever happen, and sometimes I didn't really care - it seemed like, legal or no, we were actively his parents and perhaps the formalities didn't matter. But when the day finally came, I think we all found it more affecting than we imagined it would be.

We barely spoke about it beforehand - T has been pursuing adoption for more than six years, so there wasn't much need. The night before, just to make sure, I wrote him a letter and posted it on his bedroom door, reminding him what would happen the next day and telling him how, in my mind, it just formalized what we had already made true, and how much I love him and feel proud of him. He snatched it, read it, and went to bed without saying anything.

When we got to court the next day, it was clear that he was not ambivalent or moody, as I had expected. He was happy. Often, his happiness is what catches me most off guard, and it did that day. He had a beautiful shy smile all through the ceremony. This smile only appeared over the past year, and it is really a showstopper. When it came time for him to sign the adoption agreement, he fairly glowed, and signed his name with a special cursive signature including his middle name that he had been practicing. When the judge asked us if we'd like to pose for pictures with her, he didn't hesitate. He stood proudly in the center of the photo, holding his "Certificate of Family Membership" as they call it in our state. He even let me sneak in a hug and a fist bump. Afterwards, we went to IHOP to celebrate, and by midway through our meal, he was back to normal teenage behavior, absorbed in text messaging his friends and spitting wads of paper at me through his straw.

I found the process profoundly moving. The courtroom, where we have been so often to fight various battles with the bureaucracy, seemed transformed. The atmosphere was dignified and respectful. Usually, we sit off to the side, and the table at the front of the room is a mess of overstuffed files and piles of paper. This day, we sat front and center, and the table was clean and clear, with only our two-page adoption agreement at hand. At the end, after reminding us all of the legal rights and responsibilities that derive from adoption, the judge said "This case is now closed," and shut the folder on 17 years of paperwork documenting a tortuous childhood. Born into the foster care system, he was finally done with it, on the best of terms.

One of the things I have always loved about him is that he says what he's going to do, in terms of the big things in life, and he does it. He said he was going to be adopted, and he saw to it that he was. Certainly he has experienced ambivalence, doubt, frustration and feelings of estrangement along the way (as have we). But it is in his nature not to be deterred by such feelings, if he can help it, and to stubbornly stick to his goals. In his own time, and no matter how rough the road, he gets where he's going. So here he is.

Getting to Yes

2012-01-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

Last night, T came to ask permission to go to the movies with his girlfriend tomorrow. A perfectly mundane occurrence in some households, but kind of extraordinary in ours. A constant refrain in our house is "Come with a plan, and ask for what you want in a straightforward way." He started strong, great eye contact, a nice smile, a perfectly reasonable request ("I'd like to go to the movies tomorrow"). But he lost confidence half way through and started to interrogate me so as to try to trap me into saying yes. I stopped him and said, "It's been a good week - why don't you just ask for what you want and see what I say?" To this, he blurted out "I'm afraid because you might say no!"

I imagine that we all feel that way when we make ourselves vulnerable by exposing a desire and giving another person the power to grant it or not. But the fear is really exaggerated in T, as it must be in other kids who've been severely abused from a young age. At a time when he was meant to be voicing his needs without forethought, he was in a situation where even the most basic childish desire would likely be ignored, or lead to punishment, suffering, shame and humiliation. To ask to have his needs or wants met was an extremely risky proposition.

For three years, we have been working with him on asking for what he wants with confidence. In our early days together, he couldn't ask for anything at all - he found it quite difficult to allow himself to want anything in the first place, much less ask for it. We had to start with the basics - eye contact and putting things into words. We would often structure multiple options and ask him to choose, working on identifying simple preferences, as the first step to voicing requests.

As he emerged from his shell and started to have specific desires - a new pair of jeans, a night out with friends - he was like a man who awakens to his last night on earth. The wanting ran wild. He had no sense of "normal". He was so hungry for experiences, and so accustomed to loss, he would go nuts with the exhilaration of the moment. He still does that sometimes, exacerbated by substance abuse - containing himself for days on end, then wheedling/manipulating/threatening/sneaking what he wants. Then he's struck by guilt, remorse and consequences and sequesters himself again. Finding balance will be a lifelong project.

There have been many "no"s in our house lately, as he was in a relapse. We decided to restrict a great many things in order to communicate that we would not participate in or tacitly support his relapse behavior. It's a joy to all of us that he has pulled himself out of the relapse with a great deal of hard work (he voluntarily entered an outpatient substance abuse program where he goes for four hours, three times a week). So it was a joy to give him a "yes" last night.

Getting in trouble or being denied is what he expects and confirms his belief that he's a bad kid. And by the same token, making a reasonable request and hearing "yes" is so abnormal in his experience that he doesn't even know what such a conversation might sound like. He is unaccustomed to being treated like a reasonable and deserving person, and to thinking of himself that way.

He got his "yes". He deserved it, too.

Patient

2012-01-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

This year, I had (technically, still have) thyroid cancer, which is my first significant medical event, pretty much ever. Through that experience, I learned firsthand what it means to be a patient manifesting a disease that is still somewhat mysterious to the medical field. Navigating treatment means consulting with a team of doctors who have different components of knowledge, approaches to treatment, and theories of the disease. In the course of such treatment, I was surprised to learn, it is the patient's job to make the call - to decide to pursue this treatment or that one, to go with this doctor or that one, and to rest content with this test result, or press for another. It was more than I could assimilate on my own, and I needed my partner to help me evaluate information and exercise my judgment about treatment.

That is very much what it's like to seek help for a kid like T. Just as thyroid cancer is fairly rare, a childhood marked by the type of developmental adversity that he faced is unusual. Even within the world of older child foster/adoption, he is unusual - his adoption social worker told me that she found his case shocking. Treatment providers too have rarely seen such a combination of prenatal drug exposure, early infant adversity, long-term abuse, attachment disruptions, and physical/brain trauma - and all this combined with native intelligence, charisma, and sophisticated survival strategies. Of course, they also rarely see an adolescent who voluntarily sought adoption and is attaching to new parents in the midst of all this, a fact that introduces a host of adjustment issues of its own.

For all of these reasons, getting what he needs in terms of mental health care is a complex enterprise involving an evolving small team of providers (two to three at a time). They typically have different methodologies and perspectives, and arriving at a plan requires a fair amount of guess work and a lot of decision-making.

Being his parent therefore means being his medical advocate, among other things. I'm sure that's true of all adoptive parents of distressed, traumatized kids. As we seek to be effective in that role, it has come to me that the recipe for effective parenting looks something like this:

- a huge amount of patience
- acceptance that progress may be partial and temporary
- balance between holding him accountable and recognizing that he has limitations beyond his control
- a flexible and relative set of expectations, particularly around what constitutes a good life
- a willingness to defer to experts with superior knowledge, combined with reasonable skepticism about any one approach
- a thick skin while interacting with professionals who may question one's parenting or assert an approach that you know just isn't going to be effective at home
- love and a depth of understanding the full personality of the child so as to avoid ever reducing him or her to the sum of their disabilities and struggles
- a gut sense of when to "turn it off" and take him shopping for shoes or let him go to a friend's house to give him a break and let him just be a kid

Adolescence is tough for any kid, but it's pretty obvious that it's a whole other level of challenge for kids like mine. I used to tip toe around discussing these disorders with or in front of T, for fear of hurting him. I've learned that I needn't do that - he knows he's hurt and he wants help. He may put up a defensive attitude, but he shows up for every appointment, he lets me speak frankly about the patterns we see at home, he takes his medicine, and he is not reluctant to acknowledge that he's different.

In turn, I make a point of casting things in a positive light by letting him know that we speak frankly about his behavior not to shame him but to help him; we are looking for patterns so that he has information he can share with his doctors as he moves forward into adulthood, and so he can understand himself as much as possible.

At home, our growing awareness of his challenges have informed our approach to discipline for sure. He's nearly 18 now and we've been with him since he was 15. Over time, we've realized that he benefits from restrictions on his privileges and independence in ways that may seem unusual given his age and intelligence. We restrict things these days - driving, cell phones - because his compromised ability to control his impulses and exercise forethought and judgment mean that such things can be like giving adult scissors to a toddler.

Earlier in our parenting adventure, we tried using such privileges as incentives. Frankly, that doesn't work for us at all. Incentives don't work if the child is not capable yet of doing what you're asking him to. We can say to him "It's not safe or smart for us to give you a cell phone right now. Let's focus on the goals we've set, and we'll talk about the cell phone later." The other response that works is "Let's focus on your goal of finding and succeeding in a job, and then you'll be able to buy yourself a cell phone." What doesn't work is "When you do (x), then we'll give you a phone."

I am struck over and over in parenting him how much we (parents, teachers, administrators, employers) are all steeped in the expectation that behavior is the result of appropriate discipline made up of incentives and rewards. That presumes a fairly linear and deliberate mental path, and kids like T take weird unconscious detours all the time. There are unusual factors involving organic brain development, neurological pathways, biochemical mood regulators, and all sorts of other things that confound simple disciplinary techniques. He deserves to feel loved and encouraged to be successful within his realm of possibility, not just disciplined and corrected. And defining his realm of possibility is an ever evolving, expanding work in progress that benefits from feedback from his mental health providers, but also from the support of a parent advocate.

I'm not a perfect parent advocate, and some days I'm not even particularly good. But I do feel strongly that all kids like T need someone in that role, and that we should prepare such parents to exercise a different approach than conventional parenting.

Christmas Wishes

2011-12-23T14:12:00.001-08:00

I just read a story about a naked man who bolted from the back of an ambulance and was run over on the freeway today. The news presented it as a bizarre tidbit, but I understood immediately what must have happened. I've been thinking a lot this week about compassionate care for people suffering from mental illness.

This Christmas, T is in relapse, and just went through what his doctor describes as an extended hypomanic cycle. We have to withhold the new cell phone we intended for Santa to deliver, along with any other present he might sell or misuse. Meanwhile, his brother, who was to spend Christmas with us, is locked up in juvenile hall. He's only 14, and he'll wait in juvenile hall indefinitely while his social worker figures out where to put him next. It will be his fourth placement in three months.

Both boys suffer from different types of mental illness and disability. T is extremely bright, and apparently high achieving, handsome and capable of great compassion. His demons are more hidden, and his impairment manifests in extreme mood swings, grandiosity tempered with insecurity, periods of excessive self-discipline alternating with bursts of wild abandon. When he learned about his brother today, he drew his lips tight over his teeth as if to contain all the feeling - the shock, the guilt, the shame, the fear that have all been with him since he was about six. Eleven years is a long time for a child to carry such a painful bubble of mixed emotion.

I can write about him with compassion, but in the day to day as a parent, I'm exceedingly aware of my limitations. I get angry with T's behavior, and with him. I try to discipline, negotiate, incentivize, and wheedle him into changing. I work daily to manage my tendency to enable him. I recognize that sometimes a parent is the last person likely to help a kid in distress - a counselor, nurse, doctor, a coach, but some days, not me. My maternal love for him is a blessing and a blind spot. I truly struggle with the boundary between holding him accountable for his behavior and recognizing that self-governance is, at times, beyond his capacity.

The literature about enabling, codependence, and compassionate discipline is helpful, to a degree, but I find that it has the unintended side effect of making it seem that there are answers. When we are in a rough period, as we are now, I've learned there truly are no answers. It's more like meditation - the best I can do if I really try is to remain objectively aware of what is really going on, and to cease trying to control it.

Even when T is at his worst, the one thing he responds to is honesty. This week he said softly, "You must be worried." I said, "Yeah, it's really hard when you love your kid so much, and they're on a path that harms them, and you know you can't convince them to get off that path. And you see all the things that make it so hard for them. And you try to support them. But you also have to make sure you don't do anything or give them anything that might contribute to your kid making those bad choices. It's hard to say no to your child, but you know you have to, because you love them, even when it makes them feel unloved. It's just really confusing." He just nodded, like a wise little owl. Disappointed, because he's smart and he knows this means he's probably not getting the cell phone he wants. But appreciative of the honesty.

I realize sometimes that he's scared too. He truly gets beyond himself sometimes, and he's wracked by guilt. After engaging in outrageous acts, he comes close, hovering near us for days, as if seeking comfort from the uncertainty he's created for himself. He's quiet and pensive and small, taking naps next to us on the couch and sitting silently in the kitchen while we cook, tracking us with his giant eyes. I truly admire him - I admire his strength and his humility as he grapples with his demons, and tries to get up and continue forward.

For Christmas this year, I'm aware of what this season of heightened expectations and requisite merriment is like for people who struggle to make sense of their world. I'm very grateful for the presence of a really good psychiatric nurse practitioner who entered our world recently, and a gifted counselor who has stuck by him through a year of phenomenal ups and downs: through bottoming out, successfully seeking treatment, relapsing, and reconsidering. I'm grateful to an old friend who helped us when we were falling apart, and a new friend who gave him a place to sleep when no other sane person would have taken him in. I wish a blessing for mothers and other mothers whose selfless mind-expanding love for a child makes them vulnerable and confused in the face of that child's illness. I wish for him and his brother peace and compassion in the coming year. I wish for all of us a world capable of evolving to a fuller understanding of human complexity that allows for the fact that not everything is a matter of discipline, and that not every dilemma has a solution.

Honestly

2011-12-16T19:16:00.000-08:00

Ah, sigh. We're in a down cycle. It was bound to happen.

At times like this, I'm often aware that I'd like to be a therapeutic parent, capable of endless patience and commitment, but I'm too human to achieve that. I get tired of the cycles. I find it hard to strike the right balance between warmth and compassion, on the one hand, and reasonable limit-setting on the other. I find an average of extremes more often than I find true balance; parenting him is like sailing, leaning into the wind of love and connection one minute, and then suddenly shifting to the other side and using your weight to provide discipline and structure. Just when I think we've hit a patch of calm water, a gust comes up and we're off again.

An acquaintance recently said to me in passing when I was describing some new challenge with T, "Oh, he's just a typical teenager." But he isn't. It might look that way to outsiders. We deal with many of the usual teen issues - sex, driving privileges, parties, curfews. The difference is that a typical teenager (hopefully) went through a period of loving attachment and parental limit-setting ten or fifteen years ago, and despite the gale force of hormones and teen brain development mitigating against sanity, they formed basic habits of self-governance. That just isn't true with a kid like T. He might seem like a regular teenager (often he even seems hyper-disciplined) to someone who sees him for a few hours, but at home, things are quite different. There's a lot of chaos and confusion and cycle-rinse-repeat that goes on at our house. As my mom always says, it's like parenting a three year-old who is six-foot-three and can drive a car and is simultaneously experiencing all the physical and psychological changes of adolescence.

There's a reason we humans first attach to our mothers, then go through our toddler years, and only later, go through adolescence. It's very turbulent to go through all of those stages at once. When other kids were learning to accept limits from a loving, attached parent, T learned that nobody is looking out for you. He learned to keep his instincts on high alert because misfortune could (and often did) befall him on a regular basis. He learned that a hint of anger or frustration in someone's voice might signal life-threatening violence in the immediate offing. He learned that nobody could ever understand his needs, nor would they want to meet them if they could. He learned that mistakes might bring extreme punishment or even abandonment. He learned that other people will use you and take from you and that if you want to survive, you need to be prepared to do the same.

There are days when, frankly, nothing works. It might take him until he's 30 to learn a new pattern. He might struggle with the same patterns for his whole life. I still want him to be safe and achieve a basic level of well-being. He works harder than most, and results are much, much harder to come by. What often happens despite our best intentions is that he makes a poor decision, and I get exasperated, and he can sense that. Then he feels shame, and that makes him disconnect, and then I feel guilty, and then we both feel bad. Eventually, we manage to pull ourselves out of that cycle and reconnect, and then we try all over again.

He makes me very, very aware of my own limitations and personality flaws, which is only fair, because I probably serve to make him feel his more keenly too. It's something to work on--and an aspect of motherhood that, in my opinion, is not often acknowledged in honest terms.

Compassion

2011-11-30T18:09:00.001-08:00

Late one night earlier this week, T's friend confided in him that several years ago, she was sexually assaulted by a relative. His response to her was truly awesome, and so genuine. It gave him a chance to see how much he has to give, having spent some time addressing his own needs this past year. He was calm, humble and forthcoming about his own experience.

In counseling her, he borrowed things that we have said to him (including "I'm sorry that happened to you" and "That was not your fault - you were a child, and you deserved to be protected by adults"), offering them to her. It felt good to know that those simple words, which feel so inadequate when you're hurting so much for your injured child, must have helped him. He also offered her wisdom of his own, beyond compare, from the deep reserve that is a natural part of his character.

Perhaps the most difficult part of her story is that her father beat her when he found out she had been raped. Apparently she was just eight at the time. T just listened, and then offered that perhaps her father didn't want to think or know she had been hurt so badly, and so reacted in anger and confusion, but that didn't mean that what happened was her fault. He told her that she is beautiful and complete. And then he offered the loveliest thing: he told her that he will always respect her and listen to her, no matter what else happens in their friendship, and that she can talk to him about it anytime. He told her that as he had begun talking about his own experience, he felt better with time - and he said that as he recovered, he had been to see "how people really are" and "I stopped hating myself."

All of this was done in such a gentle way. He has an extraordinary natural ability to turn the extreme suffering and loss he's experienced into deep compassion and an ability to hear and nurture other people. He wanted to talk about it with me right away - I think he was a little surprised how much he had to offer. There is something I can't capture in words about his gift in this regard. He not only listens and offers soothing words - he has a supernatural ability to project and extend an atmosphere of calm that is like the antidote to trauma. I picture him like a superhero in this way, able to detect suffering in others and cast out an invisible net of safety that catches and transforms pain into wisdom. When he was a little superhero, I think that he was still so riled up by trauma himself that he couldn't understand his gift. Now, sober and awake to the world, he sees what he's able to do and he's in command of his abilities. It was clear watching him this week that her confiding in him gave him the chance to share his signature gift with someone he loves, and that in turn contributed to his well-being too.

I am often struck that kids who have suffered like they have need just one compassionate person to receive their story in the right way for a great deal of healing to happen. It is a beautiful thing that he can be that person and I sometimes feel like I am very privileged to be parenting someone who is incubating such an extraordinary gift.

Free

2011-11-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

A brief catchup on the juvenile court case we've been sorting through. Finally last week, with a whisper rather than a bang, the whole case against T was dropped altogether.

We went through three court hearings and more than a month of house arrest before we got to an ajudication hearing (the juvenile court equivalent of a trial) at which the DA stood up and said that the prosecution could not proceed, on the basis of a lack of evidence of his guilt and a preponderance of evidence of his complete and total innocence.

I have almost nothing to say about the experience now. It was brutal and racist the way he was presumed guilty of something that logic and common sense proved he could not possibly have done. I have always been someone more prone to carry on in righteous indignation than to change the subject. But I find that certain events, and this is one of them, just defy my ability to comment. The stark fact of it is enough: my teenage son was taken out of his own bed in his pajamas by seven police officers who invaded our home with guns one morning, handcuffed him in the courtyard in front of the neighbors, took him to juvenile hall, and held him for nearly a week. He returned home on house arrest for a month awaiting trial, only to be told in the end that it was all a big mistake. He had been falsely identified, and there was no case against him.

He stayed calm through the whole thing, and I was proud of his forbearance. The only thing I will add here is that T observed after the fact that "had I still been in the system" (by which he means in a foster group home, rather than with pre-adoptive parents), "I would have stayed in juvenile hall and probably nobody would have believed me that I didn't do it." I think he's right. His arrest was enough for child services to decide that he was no longer their problem - at the time of his arrest, his social worker assumed he was guilty and told us that he belonged on probation and they would not help us get him home. We had to implore the juvenile court judge directly to get him released to us. It was stunning to see how quickly a child in his position can get swallowed up in the juvenile justice bureaucracy - and how much difference parents (and, eventually, a good volunteer attorney provided for us by a friend) can make in slowing down a voracious system.

But Beautiful

2011-11-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we were in a requisite training class for parents of "severely emotionally disturbed children." It was a stormy, rainy day. The classroom was warm and bright and there were about ten other parents there, all of them parenting traumatized kids. When it came my turn to introduce myself, I cried. That's very rare. (As emotional self-expression goes, I specialize in righteous indignation.)

I said that we had been in T's life for two-and-a-half years, and that in that time, he had been arrested twice, expelled from two schools and a rehab facility, and that he had just hit his five-month sobriety mark. To my left sat a father of a 7 year-old girl who was in seven different foster homes before coming to him. Across the table sat a woman with two children who are receiving intensive in-home wrap-around services 6 days a week. To my right sat a couple who are parenting severely traumatized siblings with an emerging constellation of troubling and risky behavior.

In other words, I was in safe company. And I suppose that's why I cried. This year, I spend so much time explaining T to police, judges, therapists, social workers, teachers, administrators to try to stave off their anger and preconceived notions--but I didn't need to do that here. I didn't need to minimize his problems, insist on his personhood, or explain that I love him more than I even thought it was possible to love another person. Nobody thought I was an enabler, an apologist, or crazy. Every mom and dad in the room is living a variation on the same story. A lot of them cried as they introduced their circumstances, too.

The curriculum was relevant, a manual for navigating the aftermath of tragedy and trauma. After our time in the trenches, I find that some lessons hit me hard and others are familiar old friends (the section on appropriate discipline, for example, is old hat by now). I was particularly pained and enlightened by a section about prenatal drug exposure. The course material captured the straightforward observation that kids who have been drug-exposed in utero are at increased risk of abuse and neglect in later childhood. It explained that such children are usually born into already-fragile families or placed in infant foster care. Many struggle with impulse control, fine motor skills, executive function, anxiety, over-stimulation and self-soothing. The resultant behaviors then make them targets for adult frustration, impatience and anger, leading to a much higher incidence of abuse, neglect and abandonment. Alienated from peers and caregivers, they are also vulnerable to other forms of exploitation and manipulation, including sexual abuse, because they exist "on the fringe".

Reading that made me want to howl. T is one of those kids. Somehow I had never considered his story in quite that light. It was stark, and statistical. I felt shocked that such a narrative of misfortune could be so common as to have made it into a book in such plain terms.

Without minimizing that painful reality, I want to emphasize that the story has another part, one that is rarely understood: it is possible to make a difference, a huge and permanent difference. I want to add a paragraph to that section of the course material so the next parent or potential parent to read it will be reminded that you don't need a psych degree, a magic wand or a hazmat suit to be there for such a child. I want the course material to say: you'll never see the light of the human spirit burn so brightly as it does in a kid for whom everything conspired to extinguish that light, but who kept it alive in the hope that someone else would come along and recognize him. A child who infuriates one adult can delight another, and souls connect in a place beyond behavior. I know that's true, too.

When we got home from the class, we went out for dinner. I remember when T would only eat fast food, because he couldn't tolerate unfamiliar food, and he was too shy to order in a restaurant. But last night was relaxed and quiet. He ordered his food, choosing something from the menu that he had never tried before. He spoke directly to the waiter, and stated his preferences clearly and politely. He ate heartily. He appeared relaxed, and even chatted a bit in between sending text messages. It's a small change, probably invisible perhaps to anyone other than his parents. But beautiful.

Sometimes I Don't Feel Like Being a Therapeutic Parent

2011-11-07T18:54:00.000-08:00

Some days I fail to be a therapeutic parent. Some days I do not even try. I'd love to be a better person, but I have to be honest.

Today for example. I do not feel therapeutic today. In fact, truth be told, I feel like having an icy martini. That's not an option, since we're supporting T in his fledgling sobriety by keeping alcohol out of the house and out of his presence. But it's really on my mind.

Today I do not feel like gently ignoring his attempts to hook me. Take, for example, the expensive gym membership he recently convinced me to provide for him. Tonight we had plans to go to the gym together. Somehow, over dinner, that turned into "You're trying to force me to go to the gym." Sure, yes I am. Because the money I might have spent on some really good shoes got spent on your stupid gym membership. Now it's just sitting in your pocket while you laze around the house watching television and spreading your teen malaise. I don't feel too therapeutic about that.

I don't feel therapeutic about the food issues today. For years, I've mostly managed patience while nearly everything we cook is rejected. But tonight the chili was GOOD, and the disgusted and immediate "What, no rice?" really got on my last nerve. Just. Eat. It.

I don't feel therapeutic about Thanksgiving, either. It's been 8 months since I've been back to my hometown, and I want to see my friends and family. I don't want to argue about where we stay, or how long we stay for, or all the things you want me to promise in order to stave off boredom. I've done all my reading about adoption and trauma and holidays, and we've been through enough holiday seasons together now for me to develop a deep compassion about the complications and complexities. But this year I just want to go home. I don't care who's whining in the backseat as long as I get there.

It's not realistic to be therapeutic all the time. I love T more than anybody and I am willing to go to the extremes of my own capability for him. But I have my limits. Some nights I'm loose of tongue, short of temper, and devoid of patience. This night is one of them.

School Was a Problem

2011-11-05T19:12:00.001-07:00

Just another quick word on the wonders of home study.

I have never seen T so relaxed.

He is EXTREMELY hyper-vigilant, as a result of spending years in a violent home. He checks all the doors and windows every night and every morning. He notices the slightest movement. He frets when we go on vacation until he gets the lay of the land.

A classroom is a nightmare for a kid like that. And because he struggles to behave himself when he's anxious, he was often seated in the front of the class where the teacher could keep an eye on him. That meant all the other kids were sitting BEHIND him: the worst possible arrangement for a hyper-vigilant, anxious child.

Now that he studies at home, his teacher reports he's getting all Bs in school (and he's not working very hard at that). He sleeps late, naps in the afternoon, and works when he feels like it. I'm sure that sounds indulgent to other parents, but it's working for us. He has gained weight (a good thing, since he has been borderline anorexic in the past), smiles regularly, and recently got himself on a gym routine. He has time to go to therapy now, and he's not exhausted from a day at school when he gets there. He's on track to finish high school early. Of his own initiative, he got a job counselor and began spending part of each day looking for jobs. He's taking a college history class once a week, and managing to get by there too.

We don't sit at work waiting for yet another phone call from a teacher or administrator. We don't have to worry about the frightening friends he might be making at school - like a lot of traumatized kids, he gravitates to the bottom of the social ladder at school, because that's where he tends to feel safe. We are able to discipline him in the way that we know works well - with a gentle system of incentives and praise for desirable behavior, and a quick, logical consequence for misbehavior. I don't have to think so hard about parenting strategies, because there are fewer crises to manage.

Looking back, school was a problem. A minefield of inconsistent discipline, social pressure, physical and psychological strain. Teachers and administrators often misunderstood him, and over-punished him. He couldn't find the peace he needed to evolve. Fewer, more trustworthy adults and no crowded, noisy environments have done wonders for his stability. He does get lonely sometimes. But it's a temporary sort of loneliness, and he's learning to solve it with deliberate choices rather than the manic, panicked social behavior we saw last year. It's a good time.

Smiles

2011-10-31T23:06:00.001-07:00

Recently, T began to smile. A lot. It's not that he never smiled before. But his smile has changed of late, in a quite noticeable way.

He has a slow smile that gradually takes over his whole face. It's a cute little face, with a lot of muscle in the cheeks, and it can really wear a smile.

He smiled at our adoption worker on a recent visit. She gawked. We had some family friends over for a visit, and he smiled easily and laughed while he played Monopoly with them. The other day, I tickled him and he smiled, even giggled - a totally unexpected and brand new response. His smile spreads gradually and goes on much longer than seems likely. He puts his head down and looks a little embarrassed while his smile just grows and grows, as if he's caught offguard by his own unhindered sweetness. Often, he looks away, overcome for a moment, presumably by joy. He smiled in court today. His sweetness startled the judge, in a good way. He smiled when his attorney kidded him. Everywhere we go these days, people exclaim, "That smile!" Sometimes they actually gasp. It's quite a smile.

Something about this smile has captivated me and I realized what it is: it reminds me of a baby's smile. It's the smile you see on an infant's face when he begins to realize that you can see him. It seems to mean "I exist!"

I don't know why this smile started up just now. Partly, perhaps, it's shame falling away - kicking marijuana made him feel proud. And, for the first time in a long time, he's experiencing emotions without the weedy goggles he used to cut himself off from reality.

I think his smile also means "don't hurt me". Or maybe it's just the release of tension. I don't know. It's fascinating. He is particularly sensitive and perceptive. Facing the world without shame, and without addiction, he's pretty naked and new. He seems to be experiencing social connection in a new way. His smile suggests a new realization that he is connected to other people in a world we all share. It's a beautiful smile.

Finally

2011-10-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

We "finalized our adoptive placement" tonight, which means we signed a million pieces of paper, got T's history from the adoptive social worker, and have entered the final legal process, which will be expedited because of his age.

Looking through those files, my heart breaks. It's odd to parent a child for years without anything to go on other than what he's told you (his social worker gave us a one-page summary of his early history when he moved in with us and that was it), and then receive such a thorough history only now. The information contained in these reports would have been extremely helpful at several junctures last year when we were having a tough time. As it is, we figured out what we needed to know. There were few surprises in the papers, but a lot of confirmation of what we found out just by loving T and gaining his trust and listening to him and observing his behavior.

Of course I'm not going to share what we learned. But I will say this. There were an awful lot of people "evaluating" him over the course of his childhood, and not enough people loving him. It makes me very angry to read those reports. They are written in pseudo-medical language, while it's clear that T was howling in pain. Reading them, one wants to reach backwards across time and just make it stop.

It feels to me that there is so much that was missed in all the discussion and diagnoses - so many positive qualities that must have been apparent even then, that are bypassed in favor of shining a spotlight on his imperfections. To diagnose a child going through what he was going through feels to me like approaching a weary soldier in the midst of a losing battle to ask him how he's feeling. How objective a sense of who that person really is can one get at a time like that? What might he be like when he's calm, and safe, and understood? We know the answer to that question now - in fact, we've just come off a month of intense togetherness during which T, because we're now homeschooling him, is mostly calm and connected. The child we know doesn't appear in the reports, because that child was never allowed to emerge.

You can't order someone to love a child and stick with him. But looking back over his turbulent life in foster care, it's plain to see what's missing. On his second weekend visit with us, I recall asking him how he thought adoption might be different than living with a foster parent. "When you get adopted, they love you like their own and work with you on your problems and stick with you no matter what," he said. And he was right. That was exactly what was missing.

Like a Dream

2011-10-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

On the way to dependency court today, T was walking in super slow motion with his head down. I figured he was anxious and conflicted. We had been warned that his social worker might file a petition to have him removed from our home, having concluded from afar (without visiting for the last six months) that his recent troubles rendered our home "unsafe". We were running late though, so I asked him gently to pick up the pace. He looked at me with clear eyes and said "I can't! I'm wearing new shoes. If I walk slowly, they won't get scuffed!" Then he asked Tim to pull the car up so that he wouldn't have to walk across the lawn and risk the morning dew dampening the suede.

I've learned from him the fine art of not thinking too much about things that you can't do anything about and that will probably turn out okay in the end--at least I can say I'm trying to learn that from him. I'm not good at it. I try to use my willpower to solve everything and protect myself and the family. Sometimes willpower runs up against insanity and chaos, and you just have to ride it out. I have a long ways to go.

He did look nice. A new cardigan, a plaid shirt that his bestfriend picked out for him, fresh jeans and suede and patent leather shoes. Sober, he's found refuge in fashion. I think he's discovered that when you have to show up and claim your fate, the right outfit helps. I'm also impressed that he's learned at such a young age that damp grass ruins suede shoes.

Court was a clusterfuck, pardon my language. We sat for four hours. The social worker did not go so far as to file a petition, but she did something weirder: she showed up in person. Through more than a decade as his social worker, she has never come to court. She lives and works more than 90 minutes away. I suppose the recent threat of sanctions roused her from her usual ineptitude. She walked right past us and into the courtroom without saying hello. Stood in front of us conferring with the DCFS attorney for a long time. Left, and never so much as exchanged eye contact with T. She looked like a ghost.

She filed a report with the court, full of errors and negative statements about T. She introduced difficulties that he had a year or more ago as if they happened yesterday. She entirely missed the fact that he had successfully worked through getting off drugs--in fact, his four-month sobriety mark was just yesterday. She implied that she would have him removed from our home, just three months shy of his 18th birthday (and the end of her jurisdiction), because he is "at risk".

At the same time all this was going down, T's OTHER social worker (the one who handles his adoption, who actually visits him at home and talks to him) filed a report stating that his adoptive placement with us is final, that they're very pleased with the placement, that they would be delivering the final paperwork to us this week, and that they are happy to report that the three of us have come through recent hard times and remained committed to the adoption and to each other.

It was very strange. I assume a lot of chat happened before we were all called into the courtroom, because even the attorney representing T seemed baffled. By the time we got there, it was quick. The judge said she was happy to see his adoption being finalized, and that she understood that T's desire had been to finalize the adoption all along. He confirmed that. She smiled broadly at him and at us.

Then she dropped a comic bombshell, and things took the oddest turn yet. She said that she happens to be married to the judge overseeing T's case in juvenile court. "My husband and I talk about you and he's very impressed with you as well," she said to T. His jaw fell open. He giggled with incredulity. "You guys didn't know that?" she asked. We shook our heads. "Yeah, he's the mean one!" Then she laughed and wished us well.

Often times, it feels like we're having a very weird dream. Like a really good dream that turns into a bizarre bureaucratic nightmare, and then suddenly turns incredibly sweet again, and so on and so forth, until you just hope you'll wake up during the happy part.

We went out for McDonald's, and then we all went home and got back to our real jobs.

Bad

2011-10-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

We are preparing for an upcoming hearing in dependency court, followed by a hearing in juvenile court, and it's messy and it has me in a certain frame of mind. Lately I think a lot about morality. In my Catholic grammar school, the nuns were always trying to impress upon us that none of us is innocent and not one of us is better than any other. They were a little extreme, but the basic idea stuck with me: who are you to lord it over another person?

One of the things that sickens me about the mess (juvenile court, dependency court, warring social workers, etc) into which we have descended this year is that over and over, certain adults in authority make decisions that suggest they are only willing to help T and give him the benefit of the doubt if he is "good." As if people (children) are ever "good" or "bad". Not surprisingly, T picks up very quickly on people's assumptions and expectations of him. So as soon as they withhold approval and start waving the carrot and the stick, he starts to make unsound decisions. He doesn't like to dance like a puppet on strings. Like other abused kids, he knows on a cellular level that adults with power might misuse that power. The more they make overt demands of him, the more he recedes and throw up a smokescreen of misleading behavior. Given what he's seen in his life, that's just a clever defense strategy. Likewise, he was taught over and over again that misbehavior results in abandonment. So the more he senses that he's being monitored and judged, the more anxious and unruly he becomes. The more he is safe and allowed reasonable autonomy, the more his innate capacity for good judgement reveals itself.

Like all of us, T is neither good nor bad. He is human. So here's my bottom line right now: he does not need to be well-behaved in order to deserve treatment, or compassion, or a home, or a fair shake in court. Whatever new adult has just arrived on the scene - a new judge, a new attorney, a new teacher - is not going to suddenly "figure him out". We don't need more opinions, supervision or interference. He does not need to have a spotless record of good grades and good behavior in order for the judge to treat him with due process. He does not need to be unfailingly compliant in order to avoid being bounced around by his social worker. He does not need to get along with every adult who happens into his life and has an opinion.

We have what we need: a great therapist who has stuck by him and with whom he has built a relationship over time; an adoption worker whom we all trust, and a few family friends who have done big favors when we've really needed help. Notably, the reason all of those supports work well for this family has to do with meaningful personal connections that were allowed to develop slowly and naturally. Lately, we have a new cast of characters introduced by this extraordinary nexus of bureaucracies - juvenile court, dependency court, DCFS - who are frankly pointing in all different directions, arguing with each other, and driving us mad.

The combination of institutional racism and prejudices about kids who are in foster care combine to create harsh consequences that are out of proportion to the behavior in question. As parents, it is demeaning to be forced to work with so many adults who do not really know T but who have a great deal of power in his life, starting with his caseworker and extending to the court system. The fact that some of them are blatantly racist and seem utterly paranoid in the presence of a tall African American teenager is just sickening.

We talk to T a lot about making smart choices, about not putting yourself in the way of trouble, and about accountability for your mistakes. We also talk about what it means when there is a system ready and perhaps eager to lock you up, and the extra burden of that, and what steps one can take to navigate that peril. But as T's attorney said to me recently, sometimes you just want to say "Back off, we've got this covered." Things like speaking out of turn in class, arguing with other kids, failing to do his homework, having poor taste in friends, being irritable and obnoxious - those are his own business. He'll work that out in time. I don't need a dozen grown-ups lording it over him, threatening and cajoling and over-sharing their pseudo-clinical opinions. This is why it doesn't work for a bureaucracy to raise a child.

Let's give him the opportunity to grow up (and mess up, and figure it out) without a million adults interfering all the time.

A Poem

2011-09-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

T called my voicemail at work today while I was in a meeting to read me a poem he had just written. He gave me permission to share it, so it appears below, verbatim. I hope it will communicate to some potential foster/adoptive parent out there why--although I'm sure my story sounds horrifying of late--I would never think twice about doing it all over again.

It goes:

"I was truly blessed to have met you guys.
God placed me in a place I can be taken care of through his eyes.
You guys are my angels, I love you so much.
I found you or you found me.
Either way we became a family.
I am happy. I know you guys are too.
You stood by my side when some would have run.
I am happy that I can reach out and know there will be a hand.
You don't care of the obstacles, you will fight through it.
You understand me when some can't. We are similar in many ways.
We're intelligent too.
I love you guys. I'm glad to know you love me too.
We've been through so much, but the good thing is, we never gave up.
We are survivors through this difficult phase.
We are truly blessed."

Home

2011-09-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

He's back home after a dramatic and irresolute day at court.

In short: this was a detention hearing, simply to determine where T lives while we sort this all out, but we presented proof that he didn't commit any crime.

The prosecutor argued that they have a strong case against a different kid, someone known to T - T's attorney, of course, pointed out that a case against a co-defendant is absolutely no legal justification for holding T whatsoever. Much drama ensued that I shall not recount.

In the midst of this craziness, T's social worker, for reasons that can only be described as diabolical, filed a report with the judge asking him not to release T back to us, because we have been deemed "unsuitable foster parents" by DCFS (her) due to the fact that we did not report T's problems to them in sufficient detail. This is an outright lie, and stems from the fact that she is currently being sanctioned in the dependency court (the court that handles adoptions, not juvenile delinquency matters) for failing to complete his adoption. She, confused as usual, reacted by sending this report to the juvenile court judge. Her evidence of our unsuitability was the fact that THREE YEARS AGO, we declined wraparound services in favor of family counseling through a local university. Do you feel crazy yet just reading this? To whom did she propose that he be released? Nobody. She wasn't even there. Had the judge agreed with her, T would have remained in juvenile hall for wont of another option.

Thankfully the judge looked at the report from DCFS for less than five seconds, looked right at T and his attorney and said, "I am not paying any attention to this report. I have an EXCESS of confidence in these people, they have been present at every court hearing, they have given him a HOME. They have done nothing but consistently act in this child's best interest."

Finally we were allowed to take T home, but we have to return for a pre-trial hearing and perhaps a trial, despite the fact that the DA appears to have absolutely no case whatsoever.

T is quite a bit more resilient than I am at this point. Last night, he told me that I needed to "count backwards from ten and visualize pleasant imagery" because I seemed a little stressed. Out of the mouths of babes.

Unbelievable

2011-09-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, there was a knock on our front door. I answered in my bathrobe. A probation officer asked to enter the house. I assumed he was there for a random check as T. is on "house arrest" at the whim of the juvenile court judge who has him on informal supervision, although he's not charged with a serious crime, nor is he actually on probation. I let the officer in. He was followed by six police officers, some with their hands on their holsters. I sensed that this was not routine.

They asked where T's room was, made me go into another room, took T from his bed in his pajamas, took him into the courtyard of our apartment building, handcuffed him and surrounded him. He stood there for half an hour before they put him in the police car. The neighbors all came out and stared. The police wouldn't let me talk to him. They asked me who I was. I said I was his pre-adoptive parent and he had been living with me for two years. They asked me if I lived alone with him. I said no, I live here with my husband and we alternate days at home to supervise his schooling, as he does independent study at home. I begged them to give him his medicine before they took him away. I asked what was going on. They told me T was being arrested for armed robbery.

They took him to a police station, took a statement from him with no parent or attorney present, and then took him to juvenile hall for processing. That night I got a call from juvenile hall saying that T had verified that he was with his social worker at the treatment house in another county on the date in question. The probation officer had verified this alibi and called me to say he expected charges to be dropped and T released home the next day. He asked if I would pick him up and if I would be happy to have him home. Of course, I said.

The next day came and went and nothing happened. We called to inquire and were told we were to appear in juvenile court the following morning. We waited four hours at court until T's case was called. When we entered the courtroom, no public defender was present although we asked to speak with one. Without pausing to even read the case file or ask any questions, the judge told T he was "sickened" by the charges and ordered him detained - in other words, he remains in juvenile hall until his next hearing on this matter. I rose, began to cry, and explained T's whereabouts in another county on the date in question, and that we expected him released, and that we had an attorney at a local children's legal center ready to represent us. The judge looked stricken for a moment, then repeated that he would not be releasing T under any circumstances, due to the seriousness of the charge. Although he began by saying he was setting a trial date in a few week's time, after my outburst, he set what is known in our state as a Dennis H hearing for 72 business hours (excluding the weekend) later, a hearing at which the District Attorney must prove they have reasonable suspicion of guilt and that the defendant should remain in custody. I noted for the record that no public defender was present at the time and I was ignored.

The judge said something to T I will never forget. He said, "If it turns out you did not do this - and I hope you did not - then you can consider your time in juvenile hall this week karmic payback for whatever you've done in your life that you didn't get caught for."

Yes.

That is what he said.

My son went back to juvenile hall, where he is currently being held in an overflow unit where no nurse is available because juvenile hall is overcrowded right now. As a result, it was four days until he got the medication that I sent with the police and instructed them to administer twice a day. He has no books, no paper or pencils, and no recreational time outdoors. He sits in a cell all day long. For the first two nights, he did not sleep at all.

We have spent days pursing legal counsel for him. Through a very good friend, we have a kind lawyer willing to represent T next week to present the incontrovertible evidence that he was not within sixty miles of the crime scene at the time of the incident. We have statements from a social worker and the chief administrator of the treatment house where he was under close supervision at the very time of the crime. By contrast, the DA apparently has only the word of a teenage victim who thinks that someone with my son's name did the crime.

The charge is a felony. It will remain on his record for life if we aren't successful in exonerating him. The incident in question took place near our house on a day when T, by some miracle, was in the custody of his social worker IN ANOTHER COUNTY, being VOLUNTARILY admitted to residential treatment. Both the police and we have contacted the treatment house and obtained verification that he was in their custody at the time of the incident. In short: the crime happened to occur on a day when, by some stroke of fortune, T's every move was documented hour by hour. He has the perfect alibi. Nevertheless, due to a harried juvenile courtroom and a judge accustomed to playing God with children and parents who are intimidated by the system, our kid remains in custody while the system takes its sweet time catching up to the fact that he is innocent. There is a police report taken at juvenile hall where they called his social worker and the treatment house and confirmed his alibi, but nobody had time to read it on the day of his detention hearing.

To say I am sick with worry is an understatement. I saw T today and he is glassy eyed and overwhelmed. He is understandably angry. He is a smart kid and he knows what is wrong with this situation. He told me today that he hates the city we live in and wants to move. He is on the verge of falling apart. It is a real bitch raising a son and trying to teach him to respect the law and avoid cynicism when the system treats him this way.

I will concentrate right now on getting him home this week. And then I will focus all my resources on having the charges dropped, or having him declared innocent. Then I will not hold back in seeing that the system hears from a parent about what it means to bring a legal minor up on felony charges with no legal representation and no attention to the evidence.

Please keep us in your prayers in the meantime.

Coloring

2011-09-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

About a month into his stay in treatment, T asked for a coloring book and crayons, without explanation. Unsure of his intentions, we sent him a book of color-your-own-sneaker designs and some skinny colored pencils. At home, we wondered aloud whether perhaps he intended to send them to one of his young half siblings, whom he doesn't really know - perhaps he wanted to reach out, for a birthday or something.

A few weeks later, he asked for more coloring books and more crayons. Something about the way he asked made it clear that we shouldn't ask questions. Soon enough, we were hanging out at the treatment house during visiting hours when one of the kids came by to say hello. "Thanks for the coloring books," he said. "T is always telling us coloring reduces stress! He never shuts up about it!" Our mouths hung open with surprise; we'd had no idea.

The next week we brought what we considered a pretty cool coloring book of African mask designs, and one of Egyptian motifs. T looked at them and said, in all seriousness and with an air of great diplomatic dignity, "I guess you didn't know, I only color flowers and animals." Of course! His appetite for coloring books grew; we burned through all of the botanical coloring books at our local Barnes and Noble.

Gobsmacked, we just continued to bring coloring books. T told us that he had organized "coloring crew" - to gain admission, one needed to be "working the program", as they say, and willing to color under his watchful eye. He assembled a group of several teenagers in the program, who joined for the privilege of spending an hour or two each evening with crayons and colored pencils, in silence.

He's been home for a few weeks now. He left his coloring books behind. Last week, he announced, "I need to color." We headed back to Barnes and Noble. For the past several nights, he's spent at least an hour or two coloring intently. Sometimes he says, "You can color with me," and we do. Sometimes, if I'm being bossy or acting stressed, he says "You need to color," and I do. If I talk too much while I'm coloring, he says "Shhhh! Color." Tonight, I said, "Thanks for letting me color, that was very relaxing." He objected. "Coloring relieves stress, but that doesn't mean it's relaxing," he said. I'm unsure of the distinction. But whatever it is, this coloring thing is serious.

Our dining room table is covered with crayons, colored pencils, sharpeners, botanical coloring books, and torn out pages of colorful completed works. His coloring is delicate, thoughtful, neat, and nuanced, rather like his personality. He likes to listen to oldies while he colors. He takes a light hand, and uses the side of the crayon or pencil to get a feathery texture. It is hard to explain how a kid who just spent a week in juvenile hall because he so annoyed the staff at the rehab house can be the same kid who wants to spend most evenings quietly coloring pictures of flowers with his parents. I guess I can't. That's just how it is.

Homeschooling

2011-09-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

Home schooling (really we're doing supervised independent study if you want to get technical) is going well.

I like a few things about it. Number one, T gets to sleep more, and so do we. Teens need their sleep! If T can sleep til 9 and have an afternoon nap, he's a lot mellower. He benefits from a lot of "down time."

Also, schooling him from home is like having a lot of homework, in a good way. The homework is directly linked to his credits - it's not seen as "extra" on top of other expectations, like showing up and behaving in class. The learning is the thing. He has a nice retired teacher who meets with him once a week, reviews his assignments, and gives him new assignments. There are fewer distractions and clearer expectations.

Which brings me to my next point: homeschooling strikes me as a healing opportunity, because it gets him a lot more one-on-one time with adults. His teacher sits with him for an hour at a time and focuses only on him. We sit with him for part of the day and help him with his work. He likes to sit very close to us, and he organizes our schedule, letting us know who is helping with what each day. It's a chance for a lot of proximity, and eye contact, and engagement, and yet another way to show him that he's important.

Neglect is a bigger factor in his background than I realized, and only as we've settled in to a deep long-term attachment have I been able to see that. He has many of the hallmarks of a neglected kid to this day, which is especially evident to me now because his more distracting, dramatic trauma-related behavior has settled down. He behaves like a parent sometimes, he has trouble in school, he has bursts of temper that he can't control, and he's extremely controlling about his food. Anything that surrounds him with love and attention helps him relax and grow. In that context, it makes sense that sitting close to us and getting daily attention from us and from his teacher are beneficial. In place of traditional school, with its emphasis on discipline, it feels like we've arrived, for the moment, at a situation where his needs rather than his behavior are the focus.

Sometimes he's bored and lonely for his peers - he's taking a class at the local junior college one night a week, as much for the social stimulation as for the credits. But I'll take a little boredom over the chaos of trying to navigate him through the school system anyday. Plus, I think having him out of school forces him to try harder to make actual plans with his friends, rather than just hooking up after school. For a kid struggling with impulse control, that's a good thing.

Complex

2011-09-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

We've spent a lot of time lately thinking about why T seems to alienate some people completely, and totally endear others. I have never known anyone with quite this effect on people. Older people, babies and small animals flock to him like he's Saint Fancis of Assisi, and at the same time, police, school administrators and hallway bullies fixate on him like he's got a bull's eye on his back. In any setting, we could take a poll, and half the respondents will tell us he is smart/gentle/thoughtful/helpful/mature, and the other half will tell us he is a out-of-control/angry/controlling/difficult. The people who love him RAVE about him - from teachers to school nurses, administrators and friends of the family. The people who don't "get" him tend to come quite unglued describing his misbehavior - they almost seem fixated by how frustrated he has made them. We've been thinking about why he has this extreme effect on people, because all our lives took a bizarre turn this summer after he really alienated the director of the program where he was getting addiction treatment.

First of all, I think strangers struggle to make sense of him, because he is highly intelligent and mature on some levels, and almost infant-like on others. At home, he is often like a young child - he likes to be close to us and spend more time with us than most 17 year-olds spend with their parents. Abandonment and neglect as a young child left him with an unfulfilled need that we're quite happy to fulfill. But when he is separated from us, he often becomes anxious and unruly. What would be perceived as quite normal in a young child is hard for people to understand in an older kid of his size. So he gets misinterpreted a lot.

Also, there is an element of racism at play. As a young Black man, his tantrums and irritability are readily interpreted as aggression or hostility in some settings. What might be seen as brattiness in another child gets read as threatening behavior because of stereotyping to which he is vulnerable because of his physical size and the color of his skin. In a few settings, including the treatment house, he's been accused of being "threatening" despite having never once laid hands on another person or purposely caused anyone harm.This can be a real challenge when you have a kid with complex mental health needs that you're trying to address. Because people don't perceive him as vulnerable, it can be hard to get him the services he deserves -- and the help for which he is asking. He is tall (six-foot-three), and dark skinned with enormous Bambi eyes, a sweet baby face, and tremendous gentleness. But he is often held to a different standard in terms of how vulnerable he's allowed to be, because of the stereotype-infused lens through which he is sometimes perceived.

I also think his instincts are cranked up much higher than is probably healthy, because of his abuse history, and for this reason he is exquisitely sensitive and easily triggered. Someone's tone of voice, their smell, a facial expression, a gesture can all set him off. His perception is exaggerated or even distorted because he is an elevated state of vigilance pretty much all the time. This is improving, gradually, the longer he lives in safety. I have tried explaining this vigilance to officials involved in his schooling or his care before, with mixed success. About half the time, I get a variation on "Well, he's a big guy, nobody is going to hurt him." See paragraph three, above. It doesn't matter if he is actually in physical danger in the present moment - he was hurt, badly, as a young child, and some part of his brain still reacts to everyday situations from that position of pure instinctive self-preservation.

Finally, I think he is smart and independent, and some people love that and some people aren't comfortable with someone so self-assured. Particularly in combination with his sensitivity and vulnerability, his confidence and intelligence are confusing. He sends conflicting signals all at once. He's extremely funny. He talks back...and he's often right. He is articulate when he wants to be - sometimes unusually so. He can be profound, and he can also be painfully dismissive of that which he perceives to be beneath him. All that makes for a complex personality. I happen to like complex personalities. But not everyone responds in the same way.

We've decided to home school him. Despite his difficulties, he's managed to be ahead on his school credits, eligible for early graduation. One of us can work from home, and there's a home schooling option in our district that provides structure and weekly check-ins with a teacher at a local campus. He'll take an elective at a local junior college where he can get a taste of life post-high school. He can sleep a little later in the morning. He'll get a little more time with us. He can still build social relationships with peers but he can do so outside the classroom, on his own time in less provocative circumstances. Eventually, he needs to learn not to push buttons, to take direction and to keep himself in check. But it takes time to move beyond the chronically stressed limbic state where he got stuck. Meanwhile, I like the idea of keeping him out of traditional school, because of the extreme reactions he tends to provoke in other people, particularly officials.

Crazy Crap

2011-09-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

Well, that was crazy crap. We finally hit an experience associated with our adoption that I really just couldn't even talk about. I went a week in pure crisis management mode, with no commentary to share with anyone about what we were going through. The short version is this:

- T had a court date in front of the judge who has him on informal supervision for a prior petty theft charge.

- In the weeks leading up to that hearing, the place where he is in residential treatment got frustrated with his behavior and wrote a report to the judge about how he'd been causing problems - fighting with other kids and losing his temper.

- They repeatedly cited his size as a problem, stating that he "intimidates other kids" because he is so big. He's tall and skinny, and although he can be a real pain in the ass, he has no history of physical bullying or violence. It was hard not to feel that the repeated comments about his size reflected an element of racism.

- In any event, the judge, upon reading this inflammatory report, got mad and put T in juvenile hall for seven days, although he's not on probation and wasn't being charged with or convicted of a crime, just to teach him a lesson.

- While T was in juvenile hall and unbeknownst to us, the treatment house phoned in a "7 day notice" to T's social worker, and thus washed their hands of him.

- The judge's order only permitted T to be released to the treatment center, so when they phoned in the 7 day notice and refused to go get him, he was stuck in juvenile hall with no way out.

- Meanwhile, a child is not allowed to be under the jurisdiction of both the juvenile probation court and DCFS/dependency court, so by placing T in juvenile hall, the judge inadvertently triggered a legal administrative process about jurisdiction. That meant that DCFS felt they weren't responsible for picking him up or resolving his situation either.

- We tried appealing to DCFS for help, and instead found out that they had now decided that, based on T's behavior, he shouldn't remain in our home, at least not under their jurisdiction. As if we were expected to "fix" him, and having failed, they would just move him on to a group home - or, their true desire, hand him over to the probation department to take over where they left off.

- All this meant that we couldn't get T out of juvenile hall, even as his release date came and went. As pre-adoptive parents, we still have very little in the way of legal status, so although he's been with us for two-and-a-half years and we are the only "real parents" he's ever had, according to him, we were not able to get him released. He sat there on his release date with nobody to pick him up, unable to make a phone call, frantic that he didn't know what was going on.

Happily, after we spent two days banging on doors at the courthouse, calling attorneys, gathering letters and sitting around waiting on judges, we finally got a hearing in front of the juvenile court judge to get him to revise the order. It turns out that the judge is the foster parent of an older child himself. He walked into the courtroom this morning, smiled at me, said "I'm sorry about this mess", called T in, gave him a speech about getting his act together, put him on electronic surveillance/house arrest, and sent him home with us. He announced that "Over the objections of all present, I am placing this child back with these people, who are his de facto parents, and who have shown up at every court hearing to speak on his behalf and proven over and over their commitment to him." At that, T chimed in himself: "It's true they could have given up on adopting me but they never did and that's why I have to get myself together!"

What. A. Mess.

We're pissed at the treatment house for abandoning T without involving us - after all, we've been doing three hours of family therapy at their facility every week with him, and they have involved us as his parents in every step of his treatment right up until they decided to leave him stuck at juvenile hall without telling us. Even the judge was mad about that.

We're pissed at DCFS for trying to take advantage of the administrative mess regarding jurisdiction to wash their hands of T - and for being generally negligent, and for continuing to fail to move his adoption forward, so that we can have legal status and we won't be subject to this constant bureaucratic chaos.

We're unhappy with the judge for putting a kid who isn't even on probation or charged with a crime in juvenile hall for seven days just to frighten him and make a point about his behavior. For all sorts of reasons (including T's various diagnoses, his abuse history, and the realities of juvenile detention in a big, rough city), I don't feel comfortable with that sort of extreme discipline. However, I will say, of all the officials who stuck their hands in this pie and messed it up, he is the one I have the most respect for. I don't agree with his techniques, but I do admire him for admitting the error when it became clear that something had gone wrong, cleaning it up, and recognizing that, with or without legal status, we're T's parents. He was gracious to us, and tough but very clear with T. I wish more people involved in deciding the lives of kids in foster care had firsthand experience as foster parents themselves. It makes a huge difference.

And of course, we are also frustrated with T for misbehaving at the treatment center, failing to complete the agreement we had about how long he'd stay, and so aggravating the staff there that we had no choice but to bring him home because they flat out abandoned him. Now we have to enroll him in yet another school, hasten him to outpatient treatment, and get back on the horse in terms of daily parenting on somewhat unexpected terms.

However, he's so worth it. When we finally got him out of juvenile hall today, he presented us with a long letter covered with hearts and smiley faces about how frustrated he is about "all my problems and how I put them on other people" and how he wants to keep trying, because he knows "we are a family and there's nothing I can't face down now." It wasn't a desperate letter - it was fairly realistic, very loving, and appropriately optimistic. Somehow, he has come out of this experience without any bitterness or cynicism, which is more than I can say for myself. He has a characteristic calm sense of endurance, coupled with a philosophical ability to scrutinize himself and recognize his problems and his promise. Now if only he could learn to govern his behavior!

Also of note: Tim and I made it through this insane and unexpected drama with our relationship intact. We worked hard every day to get T back - but we also slept at night, we went out for dinner, we got a little exercise, and we (kind of) did our jobs. We maintained our sanity. We stopped socializing, as we didn't feel like explaining what was going on, and we just conserved and focused our energy without getting all nuts. In my first year or so as an advocate parent, I had trouble accepting the turbulence and drama and I let it take a toll. I'm not a good parent and I'm not a good partner when I'm that stressed. We're battle-scarred but wiser and calmer now.

I will also admit that we are rather enjoying T's house arrest, at least for now. I think it might be the secret dream of every parent of a teenager. I jest, and don't advocate using the juvenile justice system for discipline - as we learned this week, that can be like lighting a candle with a blowtorch. But T is relaxed and engaging and fun to talk with at home, and now he has no choice but to be here. We missed him while he was away, and it's nice to know EXACTLY where he is for now. Which, at the moment, is in his own bed, in his own room, right next to ours, after a week when we feared we may have lost him.

Happy

2011-08-31T00:08:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, we had two back-to-back visits with T at the treatment house; a six-hour outing on Saturday, and our usual Sunday night family-dinner-plus-family-therapy.

He said something to me in the course of our time together that sticks with me. He mentioned that he was having some conflict with one of the other kids in the program and had gotten into some trouble for it. I started to ask for details and suggest corrections (read: nag). He stopped me and said,

"Listen, these things are about my behavior. I know I need to work on my anger. But it's going to take awhile. I can't do it all at once. But I've made a big change inside, you know? I feel different now that I'm not using drugs anymore. The rest will come."

I know what he meant. I said, "You seem happy," and he said, "I am."

Teenagers are Children Too

2011-08-21T21:48:00.001-07:00

Last week, during our family visit at the treatment house, I was being a nag. T lost his patience, stormed away from the table where we were having dinner and refused to come back for group family therapy (which we do every Sunday). We shrugged our shoulders and, after he made it clear he would not return, left.

During the course of the week, we got a reasonable apology letter explaining that "I get a lot of feedback here every day and sometimes I just don't want to hear anymore. I'm working on myself, and I'm making change, but more pressure from you doesn't help." He added "What I did was wrong," and also "You are the best parents I could have!" He excels at stream-of-consciousness.

We returned to family group this week, and T made me an origami paper heart while we were talking. He also made a lengthy speech for all present about how he is there voluntarily, and about how he came there because he wanted to stop hurting us. He went on to explain that he used to think that it was his choice if he wanted to do things that caused him harm, but eventually saw that hurting himself was hurting us, and realized he didn't want to cause pain to those who love him.

He also went on to share an epiphany that I found most striking. It went something like this:

I like to help other people, but I could never help myself. I wanted to focus on others, because to focus on helping myself would mean thinking about my history. I didn't want to look at my history. I've been through pretty much everything you can go through. I am starting to realize that I can help myself by looking at what I've been through, and that helps me listen better to other people too.

I am often astonished when the kids join us for the join parent/teen session at how much they illuminate the room with their insight and tenderness. Most are on parole, and all are "at risk", or however you want to put it. Many are not there voluntarily. And yet they are all working so hard to communicate with their moms and dads, and they are full of self-reflection and uncertainty and perception. It makes me think that perhaps teen addiction and teen treatment is quite unique; their motivation to repair a rift with a parent, and their awareness about needing parenting in the first place is surprising and moving. Their flexibility is also striking - they try out new ideas, and absorb optimism when it is offered to them. They are all still children, in many ways, some perhaps all the more because they have missed out on certain healthy experiences of adolescent independence by falling into substance abuse and dependency.

Tonight, we mixed it up and parents spent some time talking with a kid other than their own. The boy I was paired with told me how much he wants his dad to take him to the movies. He said that his dad works so hard that he only has time to talk to him when he does something wrong. He wasn't accusatory - he offered this in a shy, gentle way. What struck me was how earnestly he longed for his dad to just ask him to the movies.

I think sometimes as parents of a teenager, it's easy to assume that they'd rather die than spend time with you in public. But that's not true, according to these kids. They seem to just want a break from official parenting, long enough to see that you really really like them. As one of them said tonight, "When we were using, we stayed out all night and all we thought about was what we wanted. Now we're all in here, all we want to do is get that next visit with our parents. All week, I just think about when I'm going to see my mom."

My Kid is not a Hot Potato

2011-08-10T21:59:00.001-07:00

I'm bugged. Tonight we went for "family therapy" at the treatment house, only to be diverted into a group meeting with his treatment team, and faced with the possibility that he'll be expelled from the program.

It felt like an ambush,because this is a treatment house for drug addicted teenagers with "dual diagnosis"--in other words, co-occurring mental health issues. And yet, the subject of the meeting was T's behavior--he got into several "verbal altercations" and "punched a wall." We reminded them that he has a history of severe trauma, and a PTSD diagnosis, and that it wasn't too surprising that getting sober is producing some misbehavior. Forgive me for siding with my kid, but he's 60 days sober after several years of alleviating his traumatic memories with drugs, so if he loses his cool and punches a wall and calls someone a name, that is not a five alarm fire in my book.

Moreover, I get very tired of being preached at by "specialists" who don't take the time to learn his history, offer him some superficial palliative care, and then get angry with T when he doesn't change as fast as they'd like, and want me to side with them and tell him to get his act together. Their blame and anger were palpable. I spent the first fifteen minutes of the meeting counseling them and helping them calm down and recover their compassion for T. That annoys me. I understand exactly how challenging he can be. But if you think about his history, it is not that hard to stay objective and rational about why he is having difficulty, and get creative about treating him, without blame.

I am particularly un-cool with "specialists" who threaten him, by telling him that he'll be kicked out of their program, and may have to "go somewhere much worse." I probably don't have to tell the type of person inclined to read this blog why that is a bad idea for a kid with a long history of abandonment and multiple foster placements. Suffice it to say that ultimatums and threats generally don't work for anyone.

My kid is not a hot potato. He is not an interesting project to inform your graduate school paper until you begin to find his behavior challenging or unsettling and give him back to the system. He does not deserve to hear that the residential treatment program he chose for himself has now decided that he's too much to handle because he has trouble getting along with the other kids. We cannot continue to kick him on down the road and suggest that he find yet another program or specialist because his unique needs are just too much for his current provider.

If it were within T's capability to behave in a more civilized, conciliatory way right now, he absolutely would. Calling on one of my fave authors, Gregory Keck, I told them that I firmly believe that T is doing the very best that he can. At first they looked at me like I'm a fool. I repeated it. Then they looked at me like I am outrageous. They expected that we would be frightened and cowed by what they had to share, and they wanted to pass him back to us. We said no. We said, he's here voluntarily, to get help, and we want to work with you to get him that help. His behavior may not be good enough to meet your requirements, and in that case, let's make a transition plan to meet his needs. But let's not continue to talk at him and expect him to gain control of his behavior through mere pressure alone.

I also channeled one of my blogger pals, the Accidental Advocate, and, with her advice in mind, I proceeded to walk them through T's history and the THOUSAND AND ONE good reasons why a sober T might be facing some demons--and the thousand and one reasons why they are obligated to treat him. Thanks to T, I have finally grown into an adult who does not care if the other adults in the room think I'm a bitch--to assertive, too invested, too righteous. I am there to do a job, I am super-powered by love and attunement to his needs, and I will use every strategy I can think of to meet those needs.

By the time T came into the room, the lot of us were able to put on a united front. We let him know that he is frightening the other kids. We talked about the fact that it can be hard or impossible to gain control of your behavior if you are putting a lot of energy into avoiding difficult memories of your past. We told him that now is his chance to do the hard work to uncover some of the unconscious feelings that drive his behavior.

It pains me greatly to confront him in this way, particularly when I am surrounded and forced to ally myself with adults in whom I do not have complete confidence. Of course, he withdrew over the course of this conversation, and it went on much too long. The adults couldn't seem to stop talking at him. But he did listen and he agreed. He did not object to the suggestion that his current behavior is linked to a long-suppressed rage. His defiance melted away. He refused to speak to me afterwards, and asked to go to his room to be alone for awhile. Although it's painful to see him withdraw in this way, it also signals that we've hit upon the truth. I believe that it's appropriate that he should want to recover after such a conversation. Frankly, I think it's a little bit insane for a whole posse of adult specialists whom he has no reason to trust to think that a 17 year-old boy is going to hang out and talk about his feelings for hours on end.

Nevertheless, there are good people (one in particular) on his treatment team, and he has the possibility to get a kind of coaching there than we cannot provide at home. I told him I love him, I'm proud of him, I'll always be his parent. I hope by Saturday, he forgives me, because we have permission for his first outting, and I want to take him to the mall.

Thank you, fellow trauma moms, for understanding. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and if that makes you a bitch, then you're a bitchin' advocate mom doing her imperfect best in an imperfect world.

ADD and Attunement

2011-08-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

After one of the readers of this blog recommended Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which had a huge influence on me, I picked up his other book, Scattered. It describes the dynamics of early infant development and Attention Deficit Disorder. As I noted before, I resisted an ADD diagnosis for T for a long time, because it seemed to be the diagnosis du jour and I have a prejudice against medicating kids. While I still hold the belief that psychiatric medication should only be part of a treatment plan, I see now that I was wrong about ADD. Properly explained, it strikes me as a useful lens for helping kids like T and their adoptive parents get creative about addressing and sometimes repairing gaps in their emotional growth.

Besides the science, Mate is a lovely writer. I enjoy passages like this one, about early infancy:

Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional self-regulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain herself in a relatively nonstressed, non-anxious, nondepressed state of mind. Its clearest expression is the rapturous mutual gaze infant and mother direct at each other, locked in a private and special emotional realm, from which, at the moment, the rest of the world is as completely excluded as from the womb.

Mate draws a connection between the disruption of the mother/infant bond and Attention Deficit Disorder, which he says might just as well be called Attunement Deficit Disorder. In other words, if the dynamic of attunement goes awry, the prefrontal cortex may not develop normally, resulting in later problems with impulse control and emotional regulation.

When we were taking our foster/adoptive parent training courses, I remember that the teacher said that we must become “attachment experts.” She meant that we needed to find ways to help them create the tight bond with us that is at the root of the parent/child relationship. I hadn’t thought about attunement, and learned only by trial and error the practice of trying to remain calm and receptive in my mind so that T is able to sense that I am available to him. It also took me some time to learn that such bonding is mostly nonverbal, heavily dependent on eye contact and physical proximity. I watched Tim and T play checkers last weekend, and it was obvious that it had a more direct affect on T than any conversation could have.

Mate also writes about the fact that the dance of attunement and attachment is up to the infant, not the parent. The infant engages and, when he becomes overstimulated, withdraws. The parent is the one who needs to match the baby’s rhythm so that he learns that she is able to perceive and respond to his state of mind, and, thus, that he is understood. I found that useful, and true of T in my experience. In the beginning, we learned quickly that we needed to be available, but not assertive, and let him come to us and go away again according to his own needs and tolerance for intimacy.

It has proven to be absolutely true that it’s only when we are nonstressed, relaxed and open-minded that T is able to calm himself. In fact, living with a kid like him can be revelatory, because he senses any stress or unhappiness that we might be trying to bury sometimes before we are even aware of it. He is like the canary in the emotional coal mine. If he tells me I need to calm down, or that I’m getting angry, he’s always right, intuiting a change in my rhythm that I haven’t even noticed yet.

When one of us is displeased with his behavior and shows it, he often becomes very agitated. Last Sunday, during our family visit at the residential treatment house, he and I had a small disagreement and I made an expression of displeasure, which sent him into a tailspin and he spent the next half hour anxiously checking my face and trying to re-regulate. That kind of separation anxiety might seem tragic, but mostly it just strikes me as a sign of where he's at in his emotional development. His anxiety strikes me as a lasting indication of what he learned about life’s harsher realities, and a sign of the vitality of his surviving instinct to connect.

It’s tiring sometimes to interact with such intensity, in somewhat the same way that the constant needs of a young child can be exhausting. It can also lead to somewhat awkward situations in public; some people are taken aback by such a tall child interacting with his obviously non-biological mother with infant intensity. We don't really care though. We are busy bonding and filling that deficit of attunement.

Addiction and Adoption

2011-07-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

Adopting an addicted child, which is certainly not what I set out to do, and ended up doing anyway, is complicated. As T nears the end of his second successful month in residential treatment, I've had a lot of opportunity to reflect.

I grew up in a family where we spoke openly about addiction and recovery, because my mother had four brothers, three of whom went to treatment during my grade school years. The vocabulary of recovery and self-understanding is familiar to me, and I grew up in a context of understanding that addiction is a disease and recovery is a lifelong project that requires restructuring every area of one’s life.

However, when I became the parent of a substance abuser, I felt unmoored. A lot of writing about addiction and families focuses either on partner dynamics or on family pathologies that gives rise to addiction. I wasn’t really able to find one single thing written about adoption and substance abuse as we navigated our path with T. The commonly available sources seemed to fall into one of a few categories: the tough-love approach (a potential disaster with seriously traumatized children in my personal opinion); the literature about enabling and boundaries (mostly written on the assumption that the addict is an adult), and the common writing for biological parents of teens who are “at risk”, focusing on prevention (far too late for us for that).

What’s unique about a situation like ours is this:

T was way beyond “at risk.” He was “at risk” the moment he was born into chaos and suffering, addicted at birth. By the time I met him, he’d been using drugs every morning since the age of twelve, he was frank about it, and he could tell you with the presence of a 40-year old how drugs seemed to help him tolerate the abuse and alienation he suffered over the course of 14 years in 16 foster homes. He wasn’t making an excuse – he held his addiction up as a raw fact. He knew he needed to do something about it, but he was quite frank that he had no idea where to start. The writing on early intervention with teenagers—which tends to operate from the point of view that you’ve just found out your kid is in the early stages of drug use—made me feel like we were standing around talking about buying fire insurance when the house was already burning.

Second, the writing I found about family dynamics and addiction didn’t account for older child adoption, of course. In other words, the writing for families of addicts assumed that the people involved had always been a family. But T doesn’t have a cohesive family of origin – he has an assortment of birth relatives whose connections are broken up by extreme poverty, substance abuse, violence and constant relocation, as well as dozens of former foster parents and other assorted people who have parented him at times. Helping him means grappling with an exponential equation of complicated family dynamics involving people we don’t even know. Recovery means making sense of all of that history and figuring out which relationships need repair.

Finally, there just isn’t that much written about parenting the addict. T is a child, chronologically 17 and developmentally much younger in some areas of his emotional life. Some of the writing about addiction focuses (appropriately, of course) on boundaries and limits. As a new adoptive mom, I felt trapped in a huge dilemma; perhaps the only situation I can think of where one is truly obligated to stand by another human being unconditionally, regardless of the cost to oneself, is that involving a parent and a young child. And T sometimes is, emotionally speaking, a very young child. I felt keenly that if I erred too much on the side of setting limits with him, I would risk triggering the shame and alienation that underly his misbehavior and threaten the bond we were building. But of course enabling substance abuse was also obviously unacceptable. If there was a book written for parents of drug-addicted three-year-olds, that’s the one I needed. I really found nothing in the substance abuse literature that reflected our experience as adoptive parents of an already-addicted child. One thing we knew throughout is that we could not withdraw our support nor deliver an ultimatum that would sound like we were going to “give him back” – his ever-present fear and expectation.

I’m happy to say that today he’s been sober for two months! Longer than he’s gone without drugs at any time in the past five years. Not only am I happy and proud beyond words, but T is very proud of himself. He wrote me a letter recently, in which he exclaimed “I feel the happiest I’ve ever felt!” He is working his program, waking up every day and trying his damnedest to learn how to live an honest life without the anesthesia of addiction. He's working with his treatment team to get the right medication for ADHD (a diagnosis I mistakenly resisted for a long time, and now understand is key to his recovery).

Sober, T is an unusually perceptive, soft, receptive human being. Sober, his heart is finally convinced that he is loved and connected. He's begun reading, voraciously, again, and writing poetry and long, expressive letters in his funny, formal prose. He has worked his way up in the hierarchy at the treatment house and he takes as much pride in that as another kid might take in making first string on the varsity football team.

Best of all, quite unexpectedly, getting him in residential treatment made a huge impression on him in terms of what it means to have parents. When he was in his darkest depths last spring, I told him firmly "A loving parent doesn't let this happen. A loving parent steps in when your judgement is broken until you're ready to take over again." He trusted us enough to cooperate. Now, he finally has an example of what that kind of love means. It shows on his face.

I liked this quote in the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which one of the readers of this blog recommended to me and is now one of my most treasured reads. “Misplaced attachment to what cannot satiate the soul is not an error exclusive to addicts, but is the common condition of mankind. Our designated “addicts” march at the head of a long procession from which few of us ever step away.” I've learned a lot by working with him through his struggles. It's been soul-satisfying for all three of us in a most unexpected way.

Here We Go Again

2011-07-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

We had a visit last night at the treatment house, and a chance to meet T's therapist. The visit started out with a little "talk" that began "T is having some problems..." We heard about a food fight in the dining room, some talking out of turn in class, and some belligerence toward another kids. Then she said what we've heard so often from school administrators - she told him that he's on the verge of getting kicked out.

After that, she asked us to fill in some gaps in his history. Thanks to his social worker, who had to manage his intake at the treatment house for legal reasons, they have no history on him. All they know is that we've been trying to adopt him. So she asked me about his early childhood. As T and I walked her through it, she struggled to absorb the story. She kept asking about his birth mom. Finally, T said to her "I went into foster care at birth." She looked shocked. She asked if he was born drug addicted, and seemed surprised when we said yes. She asked the usual questions about childhood abuse, and the answer to every question was yes. I offered to draw her a timeline. I showed her how many placements he had, and the abuse that happened at various points along the timeline. I asked T's permission to speak freely about his history, which he granted, because he has always been frank and open about it. As the therapist listened, she teared up and could hardly talk. She told him how sorry she was with tears in her eyes. She saw what one always sees when one looks at the trajectory of T's early childhood: this is not supposed to happen.

This is the third or fourth time we've tried to get up to speed with a new therapist, only to find that they shy away from his history or have trouble absorbing the full force of its chaos and tragedy. This therapist has already diagnosed him and prescribed medicine on the basis of a few initial meetings. And yet she didn't know anything about his upbringing. She began the session by lecturing him about how he needed to try harder in the classroom, and yet she didn't know enough about his early childhood to understand why impulse control might be so challenging for him, or why it might be the case that he learned early on that negative attention is better than nothing. She let him know that he might be kicked out of the residential program, without understanding what that feels like to a kid who's lived in sixteen homes in his young life.

All this said, I like the treatment house and so does T. He is really doing the hard work there now, trying to learn to manage his behavior in the clear light of sobriety. He has good people on his side, and most important, he has other kids whom he supports and who support him in a true community. For as long as it lasts, it's a great gift and he knows it and he's making the most of it. He is open and aware in a way he's never been before.

But a part of me has sort of given up on therapy. I don't know why it is so hard to find a therapist who can be as frank and as open as he is about his abuse history. Until we do, he has other supports and he has formidable internal resources and he may just get what he needs through methods other than therapy. I used to put a lot of faith in therapy, but I don't anymore. Behavioral coaching, support groups, strong friendships, and connection to us have an obvious healing power. Therapy, so far, not so much. I am sure there are very able, knowledgeable therapists out there, but in my experience they're exceedingly hard to find and few programs are equipped for a child of his age and background. I've come to look at therapy as one method among many for healing, and, in the absence of a highly skilled and experienced practitioner, often not the best or most accessible.

Happy Endings

2011-07-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

The other day one of T’s relatives wrote to me and said “It’s so great he went to treatment. The hard part is behind him now.” Uh, not at all! I thought. The hard part is coming back to all of us and maintaining his self-determination! The hard part is continuing to live truthfully, hanging on to the wisdom that’s inside him in the midst of other people's denial.

I had the chance to experience a little bit of the pressure of other people's denial this spring when I was starting treatment for thyroid cancer. When I had surgery to remove my cancerous thyroid, people kept saying “It’s great that it’s all over now,” and “I’m so glad it’s taken care of.” Even when I explained that surgery was only a first step, and it might be several months or even years of ongoing treatment before I could finally be declared cancer-free and manage the side effects of treatment, it didn’t matter. They wanted to think that the hard part was past, and so they did. I suppose ambiguity and mortality make us uncomfortable. As a result, after the initial drama of surgery, I felt somewhat alone. I didn’t want pity or angst - I've adjusted to living with the disease and its treatment. I just wanted to be able to tell the truth about it.

I see a similar thing in T’s situation. The people in his life who believe the hard part is behind him now are well-meaning, but they are not well placed to be helpful. This is only the first step for him. It may not even be the hardest step. He may face his darkest hour sometime later. He has acknowledged--even wholeheartedly embraced, at the moment—that addiction is a problem for him. But living through life's inevitable difficulties and losses without the anesthetic he learned to rely on so early in his life is going to be really hard. He has a terrible time managing stress. He is not able to sooth himself effectively, no doubt because he was not soothed in his early development. Ordinary daily conflicts and problems hit him with an unfiltered force and confusion. There's no easy fix for that - it's a life project. It's not fair that he has to work so hard, but he does, and he needs friends and family to back him up and stand by him.

His treatment program is a wonderful respite for the moment. I feel like they are a strong eggshell protecting the soft yolk of his newly sober self. For the first few weeks, he was so proud of himself for being able to abstain from drugs that he felt like it was going to be a cakewalk. Then it got hard - he got into some conflicts with other kids, he lost his temper with an administrator, he refused to cooperate with some of the coursework. He demanded to come home, and raged at them, displaying the common stress-driven behavior that plagues him at school. But of course, they know what to do. They sat with him, calmed him, reminded him that he's there to work on this behavior and if he doesn't do it there, he's going to end up working on it in a less favorable environment. They didn't shame him or threaten him. And so of course he calmed himself down, and even proposed in the end that they enroll him in an anger management class. Such initiative!

He continues to be so emotive and alive. He writes the most beautiful letters - the one today said "I can honestly say you are the best parents I ever had and I never had real parents who were there for me me the way you guys are." I am so happy that he understands that in being apart right now, we are there for him more than ever. I am as proud of him as one could ever be.

Words Matter

2011-06-21T14:36:00.001-07:00

He's in!

I know a few readers mentioned that you are preparing to foster/adopt and considering an older kid/teenager. So for you guys, I wanted to share a text message that I got this afternoon. It came from T, while he was in the car (with his social worker) on the way to the treatment house where he's quite voluntarily signed up for a 3-month residential program. This is verbatim, as I know he wouldn't mind being quoted here:

"It feels good knowing I can make changes. I realized my decisions and the choices I was making weren't smart and I know I could be doing better but I thank you guys for being here for me and your support. I love you guys."

That feels great! We have been quite careful never to suggest in any way that he should feel gratitude toward us, but he has always found occasions to say thanks in a most genuine way. It occurred to me today that this is the first time he's ever moved from one home to another on positive terms that he elected for himself. I love knowing he does that with a strong sense of connection to us.

I wanted to post his text, because I remember so well that when you're preparing to be a foster/adoptive parent of an older kid and doing all the reading about various challenges and potential behaviors, it can be daunting. And as my posts over the past few months attest, it is! But I feel there's less said about how awe-inspiring the kids can be. I have many, many moments like today when T says something to me that leaves me stunned by happiness and a depth of love that astonishes me. I literally drive along in my car thinking:

"?!"

T is very good at expressing himself (in every medium: writing, speaking and behavior). As he's grown attached to us, I've noticed that he latches on to words and phrases we use and those become part of how he makes sense of the world. I'm sure any parent of a toddler has already learned that the words you use around your kid have a huge impact on their development. The same is true of a kid T's age.

We often talk in terms of choices and behavior, so as to avoid implicating his core being in issues that need attention. I see him using that language now as he reflects on what happened these past few months. He used to talk about his early childhood by saying things like "I was bad." Now he talks about the recent past by saying things like "I wasn't making smart choices." That's not just different language; it's a different sense of oneself and one's possibilities. We didn't give him that - he already had the capacity to believe in himself. We just helped him acquire the language to reinforce it.

We talk about sobriety in the same way, as a difficult and positive choice to be healthy, rather than just a "fix" for a problem - as a highly individual process, rather than an ultimatum. I've learned firsthand that if you hand him a different vocabulary for making sense of his behavior, he will borrow those words and use them to define his reality and that is what he is doing now - telling a new story about himself to the world.

Progress

2011-06-15T11:30:00.001-07:00

We're making progress. T has spent two weeks in a group home, a situation for which he volunteered in order to simmer down before entering treatment. He's been doing the requisite pre-treatment intake appointments and exams and we've been sorting through the bureaucracy to get him admitted. It's official now that he'll move to the residential treatment program in a few days. We feel really good about it. We miss him, but we communicate about a thousand times a day by text message and occasionally by phone. He is obviously, audibly more relaxed. I believe he is now ready for the intensity of residential treatment.

His adoption is proceeding apace. In fact, the dependency court judge who hears his case every six months was so impressed when T explained his decision to enter residential treatment that she ordered his adoption completed "post haste", congratulated him and us, and reminded him that "the teenage years are rough, and it is very impressive to see a young man who is asking for help, with the support of committed parents." I am so pleased that the system recognizes T's efforts to salvage himself. It sends a great message.

I thought it might be useful to capture my advice based on our experience so far, in case anyone else is ever facing a similar decision. I'll keep the list running, but here's what occurs to me off the top:

1. Trust your gut. I've learned that once you're bonded to a kid, whether they are six months or sixteen years old, nature has set up the "gut sense" as an advanced early warning system. Our sense that something was VERY wrong was accurate and proceeded in kind with the intensification of his crisis state. This kind of knowing-without-knowing feels a little crazy - but in my experience, it is deeply instinctive and reliable.

2. Know who you can turn to for support. My parents were great, and even relieved us for a weekend so we could go away and clear our heads and renew our energy. My therapist friend was, of course, fabulous and confirmed for me that it was time for more intensive care than we could provide at home. My boss, who has grappled with her daughter's ongoing mental health needs, has the unshockable quality of a mom who's been there. Pretty much everyone else is overwhelmed by our situation. I understand. From the outside, it seems like a lot of turmoil. But the bottom line is that this is what we signed up for. We knew when we joined up with T that we'd be helping him deal with trauma and substance abuse. What looks like a disaster to one family is a success story to ours. It helps to have friends who understand that the fact that T isn't at home with us doesn't mean we aren't family.

3. Be prepared to navigate different definitions of normal. Kids like T come from very extreme backgrounds and have experienced things that it's hard for us to even imagine. So their definition of normal is informed by a broader spectrum of experience than I'm accustomed to. It took us two years to absorb this fact. But in order to reach him, and gain his trust, we have to understand and sometimes accommodate his sense of normal. You can lose yourself quickly in that kind of relativism. I've found that it takes a lot of talking and thinking to be both flexible enough to stretch one's own definition of normal to make room for a kid coming from an extreme background and strong enough to assert certain non-negotiable norms in order to keep the family safe and take action when it's necessary.

4. Invite the child to be part of the decision about treatment. That sounds obvious. But when you're talking to an angry, intoxicated teenager about treatment, it's harder and riskier than I had imagined. At his age, I cannot commit him to residential treatment without his cooperation. Through his haze, he was able to listen and recognize that it was time. I really respect him for that. I suspect that having been more or less without consistent parents for the first 14 years, T developed the ability to function as his own caretaker at times - if you speak to him as an equal, sometimes you can tap into that sense of responsibility and self-determination.

5. Communicate from a position of love. It has helped me a lot in the past few months to know that T understands that our intervention has been entirely motivated by love. We wrote him countless letters and had many, many talks all of which had the same these: I love you, and I would not be a good parent if I allowed you to continue harming yourself. We tried to tell him at each step along the way what we intended to do next, even before we knew whether it would pan out.

6. Do not aim for perfection. I would have liked to hasten T to the best residential treatment facility in the land the moment he gave his consent. In reality, we needed to slog through a great deal of bureaucracy - obtaining an order from a judge, involving his caseworker, getting his medical history from DCFS over to the prospective facility. That has taken about two weeks, during which T elected to stay in a group home so that he would be basically under lock. I don't love that scenario, but it was the best one available to us and it worked out fine. The legal complexities of adoption out of foster care are such that perfection is often unattainable. I am bad at accepting that. Tim is great at it. He's done a fantastic job of reminding me that we are making steady progress toward the end goal, even if the road is bumpy and unpleasant sometimes.

7. Count on the child's resilience. It took me two years to fully appreciate how resilient T is. I think witnessing his pain perhaps led me to believe on some unconscious level that he was fragile. But suffering and strength are not at all mutually exclusive and I understand that now in a deeper way than I did before. T has both the ability to really sabotage himself and the ability--way beyond any I've ever seen, even amongst adult friends-- to look himself squarely in the eye and do the hard thing in order to make things right.

8. Communicate even the hardest things in positive terms. I strongly believe that T was able to get where he is right now because he saw - through our eyes and those of a few other adults like the adoption court judge - a version of his predicament that preserved his self-esteem. Also, as a child who survived extreme abuse, he detects and rejects anger and disapproval very quickly; if he catches even a whiff of those things, he disconnects. On the other hand, he is very motivated by affection, optimism, and the promise of future return.

9. Call on everyone else who matters and assemble a united front. We worked past and present social workers, teachers, therapists in order to send a consistent message. In the end I pulled out the final stop: I got in touch with T's relative who was his caregiver in early years. I told her exactly what was going on and asked her to help me convince him to get treatment. We have been polite but somewhat distant until now - she has no reason to trust me, and assumed I was naive and indulgent. When I opened up the conversation with her about T's substance abuse, she heard me right away. She responded as a mother. She spoke frankly about the family's problems with addiction that led to T being in foster care in the first place. As soon as she spoke to him, he sensed a united front. There was no crack to slip through, no way to exploit divided loyalties to justify self-destruction. It was powerful. And she and I are close now and we tell each other the truth.

I'm sure I'll return to these themes in the coming weeks as we support him on his path.

And We're Off

2011-06-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

We're off! Here's what we did to get ready for residential treatment:

- Hit the Korean Spa for a massage. T says he "can't go to rehab with dry flaky skin."
- Hit the mall for Polo pajama pants "perfect for lounging in the tv room at the treatment house!"
- Bought an iPod and filled it with music (his last one was confiscated by the school during one of his bad behavior sprees). "I'm gonna be spending a lot of quiet thinking time and music will help me," he said quite convincingly.
- Had a little party with a few good supportive female friends who ordered pizza, straightened up his room for him, and wished him off.
- Swung by the barbershop for a quick lineup. (Hair-tending was an early and enduring bonding thing for us.)

This morning we're listening to the Temptations. He's packing. He made off with my grapefruit ginger body lotion. He left me with strict instructions to paint his room a tasteful shade of grey while he's gone.

I laughed at myself because I keep making lists "Take your meds! Don't forget to meet us at court on Tuesday at 8 am!" "Call me if you need a ride!" and sticking them to his luggage, like he's Paddington Bear. He's lived in 16 homes in 17 years, and got used to moving on short notice with nothing more than some Hefty bags to put his clothes in and a ride from a social worker. He told me to stop making such a fuss.

I figure it's early practice for when he grows up and gets his own place someday. I'm a precocious empty-nester.

Thanks, friends, for your comments this week - truly, it makes a difference.

A Happy Unending

2011-06-02T14:12:00.000-07:00

The short version is: T has decided to go to residential treatment and we've got the wheels in motion to get him into a really good treatment house next week. They specialize in "dual diagnosis", which, for the layperson, means they don't treat substance abuse in isolation and instead evaluate someone's full psychiatric, educational and vocational needs. It's the kind of place you go when things are falling apart on more than one front. And that's where T has been lately. Expelled from school, placed on probation, anxious, drinking and getting high every day; he's been in a downward spiral for some months.

We had to call an emergency status meeting with DCFS and their advisors (Department of Mental Health) to get to this point. It was a very uncomfortable meeting. I didn't think T would go - he had been awol for days beforehand. In addition, I don't trust his primary caseworker, who still has most of the decision-making power regarding his placement. There were a lot of people in the room we've never met before. They are part of a large bureaucracy that (in our experience) has trouble recognizing foster parents, including pre-adoptive ones, as something more than babysitters. We have no legal status in terms of our right to make decisions regarding T. We can only make suggestions. It was hard and somewhat humiliating.

I called the meeting because I was out of other options. As Tim and I noted later that night, it felt a lot like that movie where Denzel Washington chases down a runaway train by racing down the track in reverse and hitching his locomotive to the full weight of the larger train and tugging in reverse against the odds. It was a crude and imperfect strategy, but we were trying to leverage the physics of the enormous DCFS bureaucracy to stop T's self-destructive momentum. And just at the moment when it seemed like we'd all go down in a big messy tangle, it was as if T woke up from a slumber, looked around, and applied the brake himself.

The strangest part of all of this that I will never be able to fully understand is that the moment he decided to get treatment, he returned to himself. I know this is fragile, temporary and not to be trusted, but it's also awesome to observe and it was the key missing ingredient that opened up a host of opportunity. He calmed down, started communicating; he was warm, reasonable, and confident. Because we have to get a judge's order to put him in residential treatment and the judge can't see us until next week, he elected to go to a group home in another county for a long weekend to remove himself from the influences - the friends, the places, the teenage social pressures - that have been facilitating his decline. He made this decision with a maturity and wisdom I have seen in him before, but not for a long time.

Before the meeting, I sat T down. He was drunk, high and angry, but it was becoming hard to catch him sober during waking hours so I went for it anyway. I told him "You are not going to like some of the things you're going to hear me say in the meeting tomorrow, but I need you to be there and I want you to know that I love you very, very much and I'm going to say certain things in order to make certain things happen so that we can get you some options." I told him I planned to ask that they provide him with residential treatment, and that we had researched a particular program we felt good about. He skimmed the pages of the website we showed him. He looked at me through his haze and said "Do what you think is best."

The next day he was ready to go at the appointed time. He looked surprised at the formality of the meeting when we arrived - nearly a dozen adults sitting around a conference table with name tags in front of each. I cried when it was my turn to talk, and I gave a brutally honest explanation of his recent behavior. I explained that his "status" with us (DCFS talk for pre-adoptive foster placement in our home) was not in question , nor had our commitment to him changed in any way, but we felt he needed to get help beyond what we could provide on our own.

He spoke next. He was warm, awkward, and engaging. He said that he needed to get away for awhile and remove himself from his peers. He explained that he wants to be a nurse some day, and needs to go to college, but he's having trouble making decisions and keeping himself safe right now. He said he thinks something is wrong with his ability to control himself. He said he won't go to therapy if its up to him, but he'd like to go to a place where he has to go, where he doesn't have a choice. At first, they couldn't believe their ears. Judging from the looks on people's faces, he may be the first teenage boy in the history of DCFS to speak articulately in a status hearing about his desire for residential drug treatment. Afterwards, one of the more cynical people in the room told me "He sure is charming, and that's probably part of the problem." I told her she's wrong - I haven't seen him be that articulate in months. He wasn't doing it to be charming - he was using the better part of himself to get help. It was admirable, not suspicious.

In order for him to help himself, I have to separate from him and let him go and accept the risk that it may not work, and/or that he may not be home for quite some time. On some level, I have to recognize that I've failed--not through any fault, but just because he needs more than we can provide at home right now. It feels very...umbilical, to separate from him in this way. I have to recognize that other people will have the authority to guide him and I won't necessarily have a say. I won't be there. We'll be in touch, but he'll be making his own way, and it's sure to be very difficult for him. He'll have to lay down new circuitry for himself based on his own strength of character and the help of professionals I may never meet. He'll be home someday - but we won't know exactly when, and there's risk that this doesn't work for him. I am typically very logical and I knew quite clearly throughout the last couple months that we needed to get him to treatment. But actually seeing him off and giving up our daily life together at home is literally gut-wrenching.

I feel very much like a mom, in a way I never have before. I think it must be a most maternal experience to give up a child to a risky next step with fragile hopes for his future. And also to do so in a way that hurts terribly and yet fills you with the greatest pride.

It's Okay that It's Not Okay

2011-05-29T20:42:00.001-07:00

Living with the nasty trauma monster is...exhausting. I have no coherent narrative for what we're going through right now. As I often do when I'm trying to reconcile complicated facts, I can only think in bullet points.

- We are beyond the place where we can get by with the anemic services we've had thus far. We need more robust mental health care for T.

- I am not sure we can get it. Because our adoption is not final yet, he is still a legal ward of the court, via DCFS. Particularly in Los Angeles, that is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy. His caseworker has long depended on the ritual dynamic of placement/disruption/7-day notice/replacement, and does not understand foster/adoptive parents who wish to locate intensive mental health services whilst remaining committed to a child.

- DCFS is clearly waiting now for the juvenile justice system to take over. T. recently received one-year probation, and T's DCFS caseworker continually defers now to the potential for services via the probation department. I understand where she's coming from; the probation department certainly seems to have more expertise and a broader range of programs and services for kids T's age. At the same time, I sense him passing from a situation where he is treated as a child requiring guidance to a situation where he is treated as a young adult deserving punishment. I am not sure the punitive orientation of probation is likely to benefit him.

- Lately I feel misunderstood and mischaracterized in almost all my dealings regarding T. His behavior has brought a host of consequences down on him and our household, and that means nearly daily conversations with caseworkers, DCFS supervisors, probation officers and judges. They are eager to tell me I'm too nice, too naive, to easy on him, too inexperienced, etc. I'm not really any of those things. I can't stop him from doing what he does, but that doesn't make me weak, dumb, or indulgent.

- I'm more aware than ever that sometimes there is no answer, no fix, no known solution to life's difficulty. I had cause to really meditate on this one recently while I was sorting out my health issues. It's even more starkly apparent in T's case. We human beings tend to dislike that ambiguity. It makes us uncomfortable. Currently, I am forced to entertain a constant stream of opinions from well-meaning, peripherally involved outsiders - I should get him into sports, I should find him a mentor, I should home school him, I should be harder on him. I no longer argue. He's a severely traumatized young adult, and I'm not going to succeed in MAKING him do any one of these things. There is almost nothing I have not tried. If you think you have the answer, spend a week at my house.

- At the same time, I am truly not all that distraught about all this. I am sure there are some out there who won't believe me. Here's the thing: I knew this would be very, very hard. I knew it would not be like traditional parenting. I did not WANT to be a traditional parent. I wanted to foster/adopt older kids and I actually knew some older kids in foster care as a young adult, so I had some sense of what I was getting into. There are certainly days when it's harder than I expected, or simply different. Lately, there are days when I am not certain T can stay here at home with us. But I was prepared for that going into this. I still love him very, very much. I still feel tremendously lucky to have met him, and somewhat awed that I like him as much as I do. I still trust that we are deeply attached to one another. Through all of his current rage and confusion, he still reaches out to try to connect with me, and I know he is as confused by his behavior as I am. That does not EXCUSE the behavior, but it means I am still the one person on the planet who fully comprehends how complicated he really is and shares some sense of where his misbehavior comes from. I am still his advocate. He is still precious to me. I would like to see him heal, but I do not NEED for him to heal right now. I can wait. I can take care of myself while I wait. I can accept that he may not be able to live at home with us and heal at the same time. That's painful to me in the immediate term, but it's okay with me on a deeper level, because it's just a fact.

Blessings to those of you parenting older traumatized kids. Your blogs have been a great sanity check for me lately. :)

We Were Not Always Like This

2011-05-16T14:00:00.001-07:00

Right now, we've circled back to a really difficult struggle to deescalate T's behavior and get him some mental health support. With the brief and urgent distraction of my surgery behind us, I have a renewed ability to focus on his needs, and what I see startles me.

He is not doing okay lately. In layperson's terms, he seems "lit up". His energy isn't right. He is utterly defiant in an uncharacteristic way. He has always been a strong, stubborn, risk-taking guy, but he is frankly self-destructive right now. He writes us letters and makes speeches sweetly professing that everything is going to change and he's going to get it together. Then that same day, he'll get wasted, steal, skip school and refuse to come home when asked. This has happened several times in the last month. With two court cases pending against him, and his refusal to cooperate with the things he must do to appease the court, I feel really worried for him.

Last week, when he started waking up and leaving the house at 4 am on school days to get marijuana and money on the streets and bragging about it, a switch flipped for me. I knew I needed to get help to protect us and to help T. I wrote to DCFS and his therapists for the second time in a few months. I used the code words that I've learned triggers help (and funding, and access) from the Department of Mental Health. I said: "I believe he is a danger to himself" and "If you do not respond I will continue to elevate this concern because I believe you have been negligent in providing for his needs." I'm a squeaky wheel.

It is very painful to do this. T is not a hoodlum. He makes very poor, even dangerous decisions fairly often, and yet he doesn't do so with the casual chronic bad attitude of a juvenile delinquent. He vacillates wildly, between sweet, loving behavior and rage. I believe he is scared - I can see it in his face and in his habits. It is gut-wrenching to see him try so hard and descend into such disarray. I have seen him in recent months struggle to talk about the prolonged abuse that happened in his early childhood and why it has been on his mind recently. I know some of the detail of what happened to him and it cuts deep and cannot help but create psychological vulnerability. He got as far as he could in therapy in recent months, and then he quit, telling me that he just couldn't stand to talk about what happened to him, and his behavior went off the charts.

I'm not a perfect parent right now. Both Tim and I have trouble with this level of sustained drama. It's hard for us to understand the crime - we grew up with clear, consistent, non-negotiable morality. Try as we might to maintain limits and rational consequences and to communicate unconditional love, we get tired and our emotions take over. When T. cusses at me and tells me he doesn't have to do anything I ask and refuses to give me space when he is raging at me, I feel trapped. I want to punish him. I want to control him. His rage tends to fix on me, because I am the closest target and I'm female. When I set limits these days, he often replies that " it's my fucking house too" and "I'll do what the fuck I want." It's hard to take. The person I am in that moment is not the person I want to be when I calm down and get some space.

I know he is in there and I know he's in pain. I did not expect to "save" him and I was ready for difficulty and pretty tapped into compassion. But we've gone beyond what I'm able to flex to tolerate. I'm working right now on asking for/insisting on help and creating an environment where we are not exploited and he is not neglected. That is a very hard balance to strike. I think it will require a small army. If he is not able to stay at home right now, I hope he will leave knowing he is loved and that we are still his people. Please wish us luck.

Mothers

2011-05-08T11:55:00.001-07:00

T. doesn't give Christmas presents and he doesn't receive them very well either. He's an insulting pain on other people's birthdays. And when I told him that it's polite take a gift when invited to someone else's house, he scoffed at me. But he LOVES Mother's Day. Besides his own birthday, which he regards as a national event, Mother's Day is the only other holiday he even acknowledges.

Last year I was touched and taken aback by his gravity about the holiday. This year, I found myself dawdling about my morning routine, waiting for him to wake up, half-hoping for a repeat performance. I didn't exactly expect one - just thought it might be nice.

And again! A big hug, a solemn "happy Mother's Day", and then he rushed Tim off to the store to make preparations and instructed me to "get ready for our day." We're going to the Korean spa to get salt scrubs after whatever else he has planned.

Who wouldda thunk? In my old age, I think the thing that will make me most happy is knowing that T loved and trusted me enough to think of me on Mother's Day. I'm also humbled to share it with his other mothers and touched by his respect and forgiveness for the women who have mothered him along his way. I've said to him more than a few times "You can never have too many mothers in your life," and I appreciate his even-handedness with all of us mothers. On Mother's Day, besides thanking me, he always calls his birth mom and his cousin who raised him for a few years. Each of those relationships was fraught with its own tragedy. But it's in his nature not to bear grudges, lament what he can't change or pine for the past, and his Mother's Day messages to each of us are sweet and to-the-point, surprisingly uncomplicated and uncompromised.

In celebration of mothers and other mothers, I got inspired to make a quick list. These are a few of the things I've realized about being a mother this year.

1. Mothering is very messy. The bond between me and T is full of veins and guts, not sugar and spice. It isn't nice or neat. There is nobody else who pays as much attention to him as I do and my scrutiny is both satisfying and annoying to him, both gratifying and exhausting to me. In the day to day, I experience the practice of mothering him as a very sloppy, intrusive process of getting in someone else's business, taking shots in the dark, snatching opportunities to connect on the fly. It's intense.

2. Kids really need moms and they're never too old to fill that need. I see through T's eyes that the absence of a mother in one's life is a deep tragedy. Early on, I overheard him on the phone once saying quietly to a friend who was complaining about her mom, "You don't know what you have. You should be grateful to your mom." He doesn't care that we're a mismatched set, nor that I arrived late in his life. I play a role he assigned me, driven by a keen awareness of his own need to have one person who puts him first above everything else in the world.

3. A mom can act a mom no matter what. When I was just home from the hospital after my surgery, I was dizzy, hoarse and in some amount of pain such that it was hard to hold my head up or sit up straight. But as soon as I saw T, I was myself. I had the sense that I could be missing half my limbs and still reach out to pick the pillow lint out of his hair. It comes from a place beyond me.

Happy Mother's Day to the mothers and other mothers out there.

Juice

2011-04-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've been offline for weeks; since my last post, I was diagnosed (quite suddenly and unexpectedly) with thyroid cancer, and had an urgent thyroidectomy this week. I got out of the hospital yesterday. I find I have almost nothing to say or write about the experience right now. The feelings seem so obvious - shock, terror, denial, anger, hope, acceptance, sadness, fear. It's a stark situation without nuance. I am managing the best I can, waiting for the post-surgery report/treatment plan and adjusting to replacement meds, which will be a long process.

This blog isn't about me, exactly. Really, it's about T and it's about parenting. I've decided to keep it so, which is not to say that the two things aren't connected, but just that I will protect this forum as a place for reflection on that aspect of my life. I am already keenly aware that I need a few opportunities to escape from the drama and strain of grappling with a cancer diagnosis. At the moment, most people in my life see me and think "cancer!", and it's already tiresome, even in these early days.

Our decisions about how to communicate with T about this and his reactions might be useful information to someone out there, so I'll try to describe them here.

As soon as I got my diagnosis, my very first thought was that T should not hear the "c" word. Some of my friends questioned that decision, but I just knew in my gut that the right thing to do was to tell him what was going to happen (my thyroid would be removed in a few weeks) with as little interpretation or drama as possible. He's had too much loss in his life, and his capacity to manage stress is not well developed. What's more, his adoption has just been approved - he deserves this moment, of secure attachment, without compromise. So I decided not to tell him more.

When I explained to him, he just nodded and went away. Later that evening, I was reading in bed when he came in with his giant box of Cheetos. He sat down on the bed and wordlessly offered me some Cheetos. We ate Cheetos together for about ten minutes and then he curled up like a little cat at the foot of our bed and fell asleep for a little nap. It was the best possible medicine - watching him sleep made me calm in a way that otherwise totally eludes me these days. When he woke up I was still reading. He came and stood next to the bed. "Is your thyroid what gives you a metabolism?" he asked. I said yes, impressed that he knew that much. "Is it a woman thing?" he asked. I told him that everyone has a thyroid, but that women tend to have more thyroid problems than men. He nodded knowingly and compassionately. "How long will you be in the hospital?" he said. I told him only one night, and that this surgery generally goes very well and people recover very quickly. "Oh good!" he said with a big puff. "Then it's no big deal. Toodles!" and he spun around and danced out of the room.

For the next few weeks we kept things low key and we didn't talk about the surgery at home. Like all teens, T is very involved in his own social world, and that works in our favor right now. We made sure to keep the routine at home. It went very well for the first few weeks - I'd even venture to say that this, plus some of our other recent challenges lately, stemming from T's misbehavior at school, have brought us all closer. We are each other's family and so we draw closer at times like these. Nevertheless, by the night before my surgery, things were off track. Inevitably, he picks up on any stress whatsoever - he can just smell it in the air. He also just tends to cycle through periods of calm and periods of disorder, and he was having one of his whomped up weeks, brought on by spring break, teen social drama, and his general struggles with addiction.

He refused to come home at curfew the night before my surgery. I asked him nicely please to come home so that I could get a good night's sleep. He freaked out and said he felt like a bad person, but he just couldn't. He disconnected his phone and slept at a friend's house without telling us. I went into surgery not knowing where he was or whether he was safe. Fortunately, the past two years have taught us to under react to such things. We knew that he was very likely sleeping at a friend's house and that we needed to get to the hospital. By the time I woke up from surgery, he had gotten back in touch and he was fine.

T and I didn't talk while I was in the hospital for the next two days, but when we returned home, he was waiting in his pajamas, cleaning the kitchen. He was bright and happy. He started out with "I guess you heard I've been a little wild lately?" (He does crack me up.) He made me some soup - spiced it up for me special with a kick of Red Rooster that nearly choked me. He told me how he'd been "pushing the limits" but planned to get back on track. I suggested that he try to just observe himself without judgement, to see if he can learn anything about why he pushes the limits. He thought that was interesting. He thought it was funny, too. I could see he was relieved. I was still his adoptive mom. I had a big bandage on my throat and I was sleepy-eyed from pain medicine, but I was still bossy and my advice still interested him. He asked me to help him pick out his outfit for a party that night and enjoyed my advice. He kept in touch and came home on time from the party.

I'm reading a wonderful book about addiction called "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", recommended by one of the readers of this blog. I will write about it later. One of the passages I enjoyed so much was the description of the brain circuitry that develops in an infant as a result of being nurtured by its mother. The author describes the physical behaviors and responses that take place between mother and child - the way the mother and child look at each other, the way the mother's attention causes the infant's brain to produce dopamine, and the way nature compensates the mother for the strain of caring for an infant by sending a rush of endorphins to accompany nurturing behavior.

I can feel this science at work right now. It's good juice. I'm sure that inadequate supplies of the love juice in infancy have everything to do with the addictions that plague T. I'm humbled and touched by his ability to seek out appropriate ways to create some part of the bonding experience now. At the moment, I am more aware of my physical sensations than usual, and so I'm conscious of the physical rewards of bonding in a way I haven't been before. The day I came home from the hospital, just having him sit next to me and tell me about his teen capers made me relax more than any pain medicine. And it was very obvious that he needed whatever hit of happiness contact with me produces for him. The bio chemistry of older child adoption is a topic of enduring fascination for me, and I'm sure it will continue to be a welcome comfort and distraction in the coming weeks.

T Day

2011-03-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

A mid-week aside:

Early on, we established "T Day" - which came to be days on which he volunteered at a local hospital. Although he was interested in and agreeable to this after-school activity (because his ambition is to be a nurse), volunteering also felt a little nerdy to him and it often left him tired at the end of his shift. So we invented "T Day": volunteer days became "T Days"--days when his will dictates our other plans, within reason.

He has since stopped volunteering but the "T Day" tradition survives. Now that he's in twice-weekly therapy and grappling with difficult memories, he has decided that therapy is his official after-school activity (fair enough!) and that therapy days are therefore "T Days". (Often, his logic is irrefutable in this way.)

On "T Day", he gets whatever he wants. Thankfully, his desires are modest. He wants a fast-food snack en route to therapy. He wants his choice of dinner. Sometimes he wants to go to a movie later in the evening, though rarely. He wants to be allowed to stay up an extra half hour.

But most of all, he loves to remind us that it's "T Day". It gives him a sense of power. If I disagree with him on "T Day" he'll get in my face and say playfully "What day is today? Did you forget? Is it not T Day?"

He refers to it that way, using the third person. It's hilarious. For example, today, Tim forgot and balked at buying an after-school fast food snack on the way to therapy. I apologized to T for forgetting to fill Tim in. "I got it covered," he texted me back "I know how to work T Day."

Indeed. A friend once commented, "He missed out on a lot of T Days growing up. Probably every day should be T Day!" I don't think we could stomach that, from a nutritional point of view. But I certainly agree - T Day gratifies an unmet need for indulgence. It also takes the edge off the intensity of therapy.

Surprise

2011-03-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

T has been in a fascinating place for the last few weeks: calm, introspective, warm and mostly engaged. He still has troubling behaviors that dog him and, realistically, probably always will. Nothing is "fixed" or "solved". We're just in a good place right now, and grateful for it. He's managed through a combination of the right circumstances (new school, for one) and personal resolve to take better care of himself.

He has a tendency to abandon himself, no doubt stemming from harrowing experiences of abandonment in his early childhood. He'll grapple with that for his whole life, I think. But he is also capable of modulating that instinct. He tries to keep himself engaged, aware and safe most of the time and he is capable of success and growth in that effort. It's like watching someone walk on a frozen lake that you're not sure can support their weight.

To avoid the perils of co-dependency (or perhaps one could just call it disappointment), we try not to worry or fixate on the sustainability of such good times. I try not to nag him or reveal my anxiety about his fragile balancing act. I try to look laid-back, as if I'm pleased and amused but not at all surprised by this recent turnaround. I try to congratulate him, and to make sure he feels the warmth and ease that can flow when you are not in crisis mode.

It occurred to me earlier this week that what we are all learning to do together is to get past the polarity of "good" and "bad". T often strikes me as being trapped in this polarity, driven by fear of being "bad" and self-imposed pressure to be "good" that, ironically, produces a lot of stress-based acting out. (I grew up in a traditional Catholic community and attended strict Catholic schools, and while I'm grateful for many things they taught me, I also think their extreme emphasis on "good" and "bad", and the consequent shame and guilt, helps me better empathize with T.)

The foster care system, at least as we've witnessed it in LA, exacerbates this tendency I see in T. In the first place, the kids are often taken from their families because something "bad" is happening at home. So now they are taught that the consequence of that bad behavior (that of their parent or caregiver) is very extreme indeed: the loss of everything.

Then, if they are not fortunate enough to find a loving, adept foster family (and there is a dramatic shortage), they tend to skip around amongst semi-institutional foster group homes (the kind where there are six or more kids, often around the same age). T did so for about 11 of the 15 years preceding coming to live with us. Those homes tend to have elaborate systems of consequences, and because the child must operate within that system of consequences before she or he has had a chance to form any emotional bond with the adult or adults in charge, they seem to me to privilege discipline over love. If you are "good" you get rewards; if you are "bad" you get consequences - and, as T's experiences makes plain, those consequences can include being packed up and shipped off to a new foster home if you are "really bad."

Then all of this instability creates difficult behavior at school. So now the kid starts getting negative feedback there. T, like other abused kids, developed an ultra-vigilant emotional intuition, such that disapproval or anger directed at him by teachers and administrators takes on a level of significance and threat in his mind out of proportion to reality. And all of that only served to confirm for him the assumption in his child-mind that all of these "bad things" happened to him because he was a "bad kid."

So all that is to say, when we are in a balanced, stable place as we are right now, I try really hard not to tell him he's being "good". I try to show him, and remind myself, that we are all capable of many kinds of behavior, some of it craven and selfish and some of it altruistic and loving. We try not to live on a rollercoaster of extremes or cast ourselves as angels or devils. We try to show him that we aim to avoid hurting ourselves or other people--and to avoid pressuring ourselves with expectations we can't sustain.

I try to do that by being specific with my praise, as in "that was so nice when you explained yourself to me in such polite terms." When I set a limit or a rule, I try to explain why I am making the request. For example, "Be home on time or you're going to lose your privileges" sounds like "don't be bad or something bad will happen". By contrast, "I'd like you home on time because I love you and when you're in the park late at night, I fear you might be hurt by someone else," feels a lot different. He sometimes looks frankly surprised by such explanations.

Surprise is a really good goal, I think. When he registers surprise, I know we've satisfied a need he didn't know he had. He's often surprised by fun, irreverence, unexpected gifts, laughter, and being listened to. Surprise is an interruption in the circuitry laid down by his early childhood. I like to imagine that, when we are most effective as his parents, we are like a gentle jack-in-the-box. "Surprise! You're loved!" or "Surprise! You're forgiven!" or "Surprise! Nothing bad is going to happen today!" The shock of abuse can dictate thought patterns that plague survivors into adulthood, but I think the shock of happiness can sometimes interrupt those patterns or suggest other, unexpected paths.

Now

2011-03-22T19:46:00.001-07:00

We are making the rounds of mental health professionals at the moment. We have a great substance abuse counselor whom we love and who has proven a good match for T. We had a family therapist who wasn't a good fit for us, with whom we recently ended our relationship, and a psychiatrist who has seen T intermittently and still oversees his prescription. Since hitting a really rough patch a couple months ago, we've been looking for a trauma specialist to do some cognitive behavioral therapy, in addition to the substance abuse counseling. And coming up a bit short.

I value therapy and I've been impressed by providers who really know what they're doing with traumatized kids. But those providers seem pretty few and far between. I'm a little exhausted by the convoluted mental health bureaucracy and the general difficulty in finding experienced providers who are comfortable with a child of T's age and experience. At the same time, I find myself grappling with what, for me, feels like a very personal, very maternal instinct, to protect my kid, and make sure he is surrounded by people who love and "get" him. This instinct is almost feral, it's so strong and instinctive. I didn't expect to feel this fiercely protective, and it's exhilarating and exhausting. T is very smart and self-aware, perhaps painfully so, which makes it all the more difficult to endure the awkwardness of finding him the right therapist. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing in promoting therapy at all - he has a very strong spirit, and occasionally I wonder if I ought to just focus on cultivating his relationship with me and Tim, and providing him with the time and peace to heal on his own.

I've written before about how I sometimes feel intimidated or just undermined by mental health professionals and social workers who seem to me to treat me like a paid babysitter, rather than a parent. When Tim and I are really overwhelmed, I've found it useful to ask "What would we do if T were our biological child?" just to be sure that we aren't being swayed by the system into anything less than parental authority and judgement.

I think what I'd say today is that I'm conscious right now of a certain toll that T's pain takes on me. At times I even follow his lead, taking his advice on when we "don't need to talk about it right now." I don't generally focus much on my own discomfort. The role of advocate parent suits me well and I enjoy it. But at the moment, perhaps because T is stable and calm and introspective and therefore doesn't need me so much, I feel bruised. I feel very aware that I feel some level of grief for the times I could not be there for him - for the things that happened before I met him, and for the suffering he endured when he didn't have any parent advocating for him. I respect him tremendously for the hard work he did to survive and raise himself in those circumstances, and deep compassion for the symptomatic behaviors that plague him to this day. I love him the same or more than I would if I had given birth to him myself, so the blunt fact that I didn't arrive in his life until it was too late to help him with his many traumas pains me greatly. It pains me all the more because he trusts me now and has recently started to refer more freely to what came before. I want so much to be worthy of his trust. It's a tremendous responsibility. My career, my relationship with Tim, my health, all struggle to compete with the obligation I feel to be available and worthy of providing stability for T. But I also know that it's extremely idealistic to subject oneself to that sense of obligation, and that if I fail to take care of myself and Tim, I'm sure to fall short.

Tim calls this vicarious PTSD and I think he's right. I am sure that if you bond strongly to an older, traumatized child, when you bond with them, you open yourself up to absorbing some part of their pain and some part of their difficulty navigating the aftermath of what they've endured. I like to think that in absorbing some of their suffering, you are lessening their burden, but I'm not sure that's really true.

It's a juggling act, with a whole bunch of needs and sensitivities up in the air, all of the time. I suppose that's how any parent feels.

Knock Wood Three Times If You're Reading This

2011-03-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

After several really tough weeks, we are catching a wonderful week with T. Complex as he is, he does have really admirable skills at relating when he's relaxed enough to implement them. He designated Sunday "family day", and planned (and executed) a pleasurable day together. That stretched into a peaceful Monday, and a playful Tuesday evening out as a family. Knock wood three times right now if you're reading this blog.

This moment in our foster/adoptive journey seems a good time to capture my present thoughts about what is and is not as we expected it to be. When you are adopting an older child from foster care, you tend to do a lot of reading, fretting over worst-case-scenarios, and searching for advice. There isn't a lot written about such families. We read books, scoured the web, and took county-mandated parenting classes. Some things turned out to be more true than others.

This is the beginning of a list of advice/stereotypes we heard before we became T's parents, and what turned out to be true for us. I hope this will help some prospective foster/adoptive parents who are in the early stages of reading/listening/imagining.

TRUE: kids coming from long-term foster care have a lot of problems.
Okay, this is true. But I HATE the way people say it! Of course our kids have a lot of problems: often they've been abused - sometimes severely. Their developmental needs have been neglected. Sometimes they've struggled to get enough food to eat, or to find a safe place to sleep--for years on end, perhaps even during infancy. Those are big problems! They produce big symptomatic behaviors. (I've found it to be absolutely true, by the way, that a kid will show you how he feels, by trying to make you feel that way too, because he may not be able to tell you.) So I always struggle with this one. In my opinion, the important thing for someone contemplating foster/adoption of an older child is to be really frank with oneself about whether or not you have a high tolerance and compassion for "people with problems." Some people do, some don't and it isn't about being a good person. It's probably just about your point of view.

NOT SO TRUE: he'll have trouble with bonding and attachment.
We read A LOT about attachment disorders and trouble with bonding. This has not been our problem at all. He was not quick to attach, but when he did, it was like a million tender tentacles reaching out to grab you. We are exceptionally close, even when things aren't going well. T taught me that being someone's parent isn't a legal or biological situation - children MAKE you their parents. They have within them a natural dependence on adults that drives them to attach, and if that capacity can remain more or less healthy (which by some miracle, it did in him, although he suffered other deep sustained injuries) they will bond to you so strongly that you will never again doubt that you are their parent, regardless of the legal or biological circumstances. We struggle with behavior issues, separation anxiety, and a lack of impulse control - but never with a loose or fragile bond. I know many adoptive parents DO struggle with children's difficulty in attaching, and in no way do I wish to detract from that reality. I just mean that it did not turn out to be our reality as I expected. Every situation is different. We wasted a lot of time fretting over the wrong thing in this case.

NOT SO TRUE: You need to work hard to facilitate and strengthen ties to birth family.
Okay, I know this is true and so essential for a lot of foster care situations. But I overprepared for this one, and overreached the goal a bit. I think we tried too hard at first. It took me some time to understand that what T. really needed was to know the door was open to have contact with his birth family and that we would support those relationships and never (ever!) criticize his birth relatives. However, this does not mean that he actually want us to make regular visits happen. He's satisfied with very occasional visits - the relationships are more distant and, in some cases, a bit more superficial than I really understood at first. It took me some time to ascertain that my role was not to deepen those relationships - it was to honor them, and to supplement them by cultivating a deep relationship with him myself.

NOT TRUE AT ALL: Adoption is just another way of making a family.
People used to say this to us a lot. They don't anymore - LOL. I feel strongly about this one: older child adoption, particularly traumatized older child adoption, is very profoundly different than other ways of making a family. I think talk about how "it doesn't matter where a child came from" is total nonsense, and worse, invites adoptive parents to feel very isolated when their experiences have nothing to do with those of their friends raising bio kids. I've found that I need friends who neither think it tragic/horrifying that T has "problems", nor that we are "saviors" for adopting him, nor that what we're doing is "just like" traditional parenting. I find it much more helpful to think of parenting traumatized older children as a kind of extreme sport, a pursuit one should train for in a specialized and rigorous way, and something one should expect to hurt, sometimes a lot.

TRUE: A child will grow and change at his own pace.
I'm certain after nearly two years with T that the surest path to insanity is to try to "fix" a traumatized, troubled kid. He will grow and change as he is able, when he is ready, and we are just like fertilizer, providing the nutrients he needs to do that work. There is no other alternative. I cannot prod, poke or provoke him to change. I must not "need" for him to change. And at exactly the moment that I give up completely and think things can't possibly continue as they are, he will change. T made me realize that children are change. That's their nature. The added complexity of raising an older kid with a trauma history is that T's development is extremely unpredictable. We can't pick up a book about time-tested wisdom for helping him navigate from teething to toddlerdom. He is all over the map. He jumps back and forth by years, sometimes decades, in a single day. He's like a cat that is sometimes a kitten and sometimes a lion and sometimes a house cat.

NOT SO TRUE: As transracial adoptive parents, you are going to need to work hard to make sure the child stays connected to his culture.
That's sound advice in general, like a lot of what we encountered before we were T's parents. T made this one very easy for us. We fretted over it a lot before he came to live with us, and it turned out to be very low on our list of things we ought to have worried about. He has a robust, healthy sense of himself as an African American young man, and he has no problem letting us know what we need to know in order to facilitate that. His friends are all Black, he takes African American studies classes, and we frequently talk about race and racism at home. We didn't have to work hard to keep him connected - he showed us where to hook up and that was it. He is interested in our cultural identities and expects we're equally interested in his. In this way, being his parent has qualities very much like a deep friendship or a marriage - he came to us already formed in some ways, and we fit our differences together.

NOT SO TRUE: the child will test you over and over again.
At various times when we've been going through some difficulty or other, someone (a therapist, a caseworker) has said "Oh, he's testing you," or even asked him directly "Are you testing them?" I find that somewhat simplistic. I'm sure it's often true that kids test their adoptive parents, in extreme ways. But in our case, I know in my gut that T is rarely testing us with his misbehavior. He misbehaves because he has faulty self-control. It has nothing to do with us. I think it's important to recognize that.

TRUE: the child is doing the best he can.
I'm a broken record on this one as any reader of this blog knows. But this simple statement by Foster Cline is my constant mantra. It is so true. Once in awhile, when we're really having a tough time, I even say to T "I know you're doing the best you can." It is so important to keep this in mind. I wish his teachers and his social worker would operate from the same assumption - it would change everything.

NOT SO TRUE: adopted kids feel grief about being adoption.
In our parenting training, we were counseled a lot not to be too quick to celebrate adoption, because it is, at best, a mixed blessing and kids naturally grieve the loss of their birth family. I think this advice conflated two different events - the loss of birth family, and adoption. For T, there was a very long lapse of time between losing his birth family and "getting adopted" (in his mind, he "got adopted" when he moved in with us) - time he spent in multiple group foster homes. So for him, adoption is a huge accomplishment. It truly carries no stigma, and has little to do in his perception with losing his birth parents. He feels he proved something to the world. Adoption represents escape from foster care and everything he associates with foster kid status. Of course he feels enduring grief about losing his birth family. My point is simply that the grief and his feelings about adoption are two entirely separate things - as I suspect they might be for other older children coming from extended foster care.

My list could go on and on...I'll stop here, but please feel free to add your own thoughts and I'll probably continue this list over time.

Just Words

2011-03-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

After the massive meltdown I described in my last post, things moved rather quickly. We got an intake appointment with a cognitive behavioral therapy program specializing in child trauma, and we also got T into an alternative school that seems like it's going to be a really good place for him.

The principal of the new school took the kids on an orientation tour. She showed them the restrooms and explained that they are a) safe, b) extremely clean and c) always locked, only to be unlocked by a hall monitor when you have been officially excused for a break. This sounds like a small thing, but for complicated kids coming from a large urban high school where the bathrooms are a shadowy setting for drug deals, gang graffiti and filth, this is a big deal. Safety is everything to kids like T, as are clear rules and calm enforcement.

The principal also explained that the teachers have all been instructed never to agitate the kids, to find something positive to say in every interaction, and to call the parents whenever there is a disciplinary issue. She explained that she never suspends kids from school (hallelujah - I have been incensed by "trash cleanup in lieu of suspension" at the old school, which seems to turn at-risk kids into unpaid janitors). Classes have no more than ten kids, sometimes fewer.

I'm also grateful for the child trauma therapy program we found (and for the advice of people who commented on my last blog post who helped me clarify what we were looking for). We had a two-and-a-half hour intake interview. In layman's terms, I feel like this therapy program is hardcore. I appreciate their clear focus on core trauma, over behavioral symptoms.

I feel good about all this. I feel we have tapped into options that have been set up by knowledgeable people to help meet the extraordinary needs of kids like T. I commented to my mom today that I don't feel hopeful, per se; hope would suggest being attached to a particular desired outcome. I try to stay very aware that we are not trying to "fix" anything. Instead, I feel satisfied--that we are doing the best we can, that we are seeking out environments where T has the opportunity to develop and evolve, and that there are people out there who understand kids like him. In a weird way, we have achieved the only desired outcome we ever really had, which was for T to have a home with people who love and understand him, and to feel sufficiently secure that he can begin to sort out his past and define himself (which is no doubt going to continue to be a very messy and occasionally frightening process).

I realized through all this that I have been somewhat deferential to some of the professionals we've encountered along our path, and that T benefits when I am a loud, proud, assertive, knowledgeable advocate. I am reminded of Advocate Mom and her binder. Although I am an advocate mom myself, I have sometimes allowed the counselors and social workers we deal with to minimize or ignore his needs, leap to conclusions or recommend hasty solutions without paying enough attention to his abuse history. I thought that they knew better than I did, and to be honest, I also feared that they would judge me unfit in some way. His behavior can be very difficult, especially in public, and I can fall into an attitude of begging forgiveness for his misdeeds. In addition, becoming his parent has involved an obstacle course of home inspections, certifications, and other bureaucratic intrusions, and on some level, I reacted to that scrutiny with a certain defensiveness.

I am reborn after the last few weeks. I realize now that there are no answers, and that nobody has a more certain knowledge than I do about what T needs, even when I feel profoundly uncertain. I live with him, care for him, listen to him, argue with him, empathize with him, and I probably know him better than anyone has ever known him. To get him what he needs, I need to cut through the various agencies and bureaucracies involved by educating myself about their language and using their words to connect him up to the best quality services that are available. I had the help of a very good friend in doing that recently, backed up by some very thoughtful comments on this blog, and it really made a very big difference. Asking for "an elevated level of care" rather than just "help", for example, or knowing to request a "trauma-focused program" rather than just "therapy" makes all the difference in the world. At the end of the day, either words obscure, or they pinpoint complexity, and wielding them properly is very powerful.

Help

2011-02-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s been quite a week.

As T unravels these past few months, we’ve experienced dramatic truancy, daily marijuana use (before and after school most days), and stealing, culminating with an arrest, for petty theft, on his birthday no less.

This week, we hit the wall. He was accused for the second time of stealing (from a teacher!), disrupting the classroom, and expelled from school. At home he was vengeful and full of rage, or withdrawn and disconnected. It’s hard to encapsulate in words, but the most alarming thing is that T is not a kid who is routinely delinquent – his nature is to be sensitive and soulful. His misbehavior has an aspect that hits you right in the gut – it feels wrong on an instinctive, animal level. Something is wrong! it screams. I suppose that’s a distinguishing quality of crisis.

Yesterday, in a tizzy, and with the help of a friend who happens to be an LCSW, I wrote a letter and emailed it to his past and present therapists and social workers. “I need help getting an elevated level of care for T” I said. It ended “We are committed to T but we urgently need help meeting his needs.”

By evening, we had an emergency psychiatric team on our doorstep. (Thanks, by the way, to his FORMER social worker, who was the only one who responded in a helpful way—we have yet to even hear back from his primary caseworker.)

I thought the problem was addiction and substance abuse. But last night I learned that I might be wrong.

They spent four hours here, talking to T, talking to us, searching his room, and formulating an opinion. Then they called us all together. It wasn’t what I expected. They said they considered hospitalizing him, because it’s clear he’s in crisis, but decided it wouldn’t help. He has PTSD and a hospital environment is likely to be overwhelming and frightening for him. They said that we are dealing with serious confusion stemming from sexual abuse, combined with puberty, and that kids like T often have their first major mental health crisis right about now. They said that his emerging sexuality combined with his abuse history lead T to fear he may hurt people and become a bad person. And so he is acting like a monster to try to save people from the harm he imagines he might do—and to try to get us to pay attention to what he can’t put in words.

I did not see that coming, though of course, as soon as they said it, it made perfect sense. They walked in and put their finger right on the raw nerve that is causing daily convulsions right now. Their skill and clarity were truly awe-inspiring. He has never discussed sexual abuse with a therapist before, and I'm the first adult he confided in about it. And yet it took these two doctors less than half an hour to identify the problem and open it up.

They had spare, direct advice for us. First, they said he feels safe with us and our home is the right place for him. He feels loved and secure here, they said, and that is part of why he is confronting his demons now. Second, they told me to adjust my expectations. “But he’s facing criminal charges!” I protested. They said yes, and there’s very little you can do about that. This is who he is and where you are right now. Deal with it.

They told us to let go of our desire to have him graduate from mainstream school. They said not to worry about the fact that his friends are dropouts and delinquents. “Those are the people he feels safe with, because he feels like he can’t hurt them or freak them out,” they said. They told us to let go of our attempts to treat the substance abuse, because it’s a symptom, not a cause. They told us to learn with him about the aftermath of sexual abuse and let him show his ugly bits. They said we must find ways to talk about what happened, and about sexuality, and help him do the same. They told us that “the human condition is to have both good and ugly feelings and thoughts” and to teach T that we are all complex in that way.

I learned so much last night. I learned that he wants help and he will comply. I learned that he trusts us. I learned that my expectations and sense of “normal” are getting in the way of recognizing his needs. We talked this morning, and he was calm, receptive and even grateful—I explained that the doctor talked to us about PTSD, that abused kids and soldiers who’ve been in wars often have PTSD, and that for now we need to make sure we reduce stress and avoid situations that are chaotic and noisy. He felt understood. He said he felt it might be best for him to be in a different school.

(As a side note, I have also learned this week that there is a HUGE difference in Los Angeles between Department of Mental Health programs and DCFS. That sounds like a bureaucratic distinction, but when you need somebody to help your troubled kid on a very bad day when the shit is raining down on your head, it’s a visceral thing. By using the right language, thanks to my friend, we got tapped into DMH, and to these two superhero ninja therapists in the middle of the night, after months of struggling with inadequate therapy and inattentive social workers.)

I don’t regret one moment I’ve spent with T. This week was horrible. I don’t know how we’ll find him a new school and a new therapist next week. I’m not sure I can stomach the external consequences that are being levied on him by people who know nothing of his story. But I understand that this is where we are, and I know that our job is to be his family. We are honest and we stand by each other in ways that I didn’t know were possible before. I am much stronger than I thought, and he is much more vulnerable than he realized. This kind of extreme parenting is exhausting, but I also find it to be soul-satisfying in its honesty, unpredictability and brutal acknowledgement of humanity in all its frailty and resilience. I find that happiness, for us, is not the avoidance of pain, but the acknowledgement of truth.

I love you I do this I'm sorry

2011-02-11T08:49:00.001-08:00

I returned this week to Parenting the Hurt Child, an incredibly insightful book by Gregory Keck that I think every person should read regardless of who or whether they're parenting. His honesty and tolerance for complexity relax me.

Lately, it is more or less impossible to get T to go to all his classes, or to go to all of them without first stopping off to smoke marijuana. We do substance abuse counseling. We've tried escorting him to school. We talk to the administrators. We restrict privileges. We offer incentives. Nothing works.

Last night, we decided to take a night off. We made dinner, left it on the table (he was awol at dinnertime) with a note explaining our whereabouts, and went out. When we came home, he was asleep on the sofa in front of the front door. I tucked him in with our own quilt and went to bed.

This morning I heard footsteps. I opened my eyes and it was T. "Shhhh!" he said sternly. He bent over and kissed me on the forehead, patted the top of my head, and tiptoed out.

Sometimes his adorable gestures mean "Aren't I charming? Give me what I want!" (money, a ride, some slack). But in my half-awake state, it came to me immediately that this particular kiss on the forehead meant "I love you. I do this. I'm sorry."

That could be a tragic apology from a certain point of view, meaning something like: "I have a compulsive drug habit and no impulse control and I feel badly about it." Certainly we're up against one of those moments when you're just not sure the child is yet capable of changing old habits and destructive modes of thought. But from another point of view, he has made progress.

His responses to caring adults used to tend more toward silent statements like "I don't know you, who cares what you think?" From that point of view, "I love you, I do this, I'm sorry" is profound. In fact, it occurred to me that in this recent period of escalated misbehavior and delinquency, I've now received three gentle kisses--the first he's ever delivered.

He used to try occasionally to kiss me on the cheek - not at my request, but of his own volition (he arrived extremely physically reserved and we have always let him determine whether and how we share physical contact). When he began trying to show affection, he'd get close to my face and then he'd purse his lips and squint his eyes and say "Ew! Can't do it!" (I did find this totally hilarious.) But two weeks ago, I got a sudden peck on the cheek one day, out of the blue. About a week later, on a day when we were relaxed and had spent some time together, I got a tiny kiss on the tip of my nose. And this morning, a farewell peck on the cheek.

This is in marked and dramatic contrast to some of the other "feedback" we get from him, just in case it sounds like it's all sweetness and light at our house. Indeed, two nights ago, I asked him to work with me on his homework to get caught up in a class he's been cutting. He flatly refused to even try. I said, "what are you doing instead?" and he said, "I'm doing me. What the fuck does that have to do with you?" Obscene, yes.

I said as calmly as I could, "Wow I'm very sorry to hear that you feel that way," took his iPod, and closed the door. The next day I left a simple note on his door. It said, "The legal consequences for truancy are..(x,y,z). After 3 unexcused absences the court may place you on juvenile probation. You have more than 20 unexcused absences. This is your problem and you'll have to deal with it. We will withhold all privileges until you do. Love, Your Parents."

God bless Keck and others like him. Before bed, I re-read the sub-chapter "Children for Whom Nothing Works." I expected to see a description of our situation. T has none of the behaviors on that list, which begins with "injuring, mutating or killing animals on multiple occasions" (page 156, for anyone eager to check it themselves!). I rejoiced. We're not even there. T rocks our pet kitten in his arms and sings lullabies to her. Phew. His range of available behaviors is extremely broad, extending from frank delinquency to tender loving compassion for all the world's small creatures. That's the wonder and the challenge of him, the risk and the opportunity as he moves toward adulthood.

Apart

2011-02-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of reading on parenting kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and ADHD. Over his many years in foster care, T has received several different diagnoses, all of which basically come down to the same profile of a kid who is severely stressed and unable to calm himself. I am not sure I really place value on diagnoses; something about the medicalization and medication of traumatized kids makes me very uncomfortable. However, the writing on parenting kids with profiles like ODD is often very thoughtful and helps me devise new strategies.

Today I read a nugget of wisdom I've been searching for all along:

"In some teenagers, ODD may represent a remnant of separation anxiety disorder, in which oppositional defiance reflects a reaction to feelings of ambivalence and anxiety that arise from the developmental move toward independence."

It was like an equation suddenly adding up; that is exactly what my gut tells me is going on with T much of the time. Many things make sense from that point of view: his anxiety and frequent refusal to attend school, his difficulty falling asleep by himself, his inability to regulate his feelings when he is outside of our presence, his annoying, anxious behavior toward his friends, his tendency to sabotage opportunities that would take him away from home.

In some ways, I think settling into a permanent home at the ripe old age of fifteen has actually exacerbated his separation anxiety and thus his misbehavior at school. I wouldn't be surprised at all if, unconsciously, he is kind of bummed about impending adulthood and would prefer to hit the pause button so he can fulfill some unmet needs first.

Separation anxiety can't even begin to account for an early childhood like his, with social workers coming in the middle of the night to remove you from your family suddenly and without warning, separating you from your siblings, and moving you from caregiver to caregiver (16 homes in 15 years). If separation anxiety includes worrying about losing someone/something/someplace to which you are attached, he is worrying over that every day, all the time. I suspect that when he leaves home for school each day, some deep instinctive part of him does not trust that home will still be there when he returns. He is defiant at school because he is extremely agitated.

Kids like T receive so many messages of failure. He is disruptive and challenging in the classroom, forgetful and unfocused on academics. From the F on an assignment he neglected to complete to "cleanup in lieu of suspension" for repeatedly getting up out of his seat during history class, his typical school week is full of negative feedback. That feedback feeds into an already negative self-perception that comes from being severely abused as a young child. And so the cycle continues, and on top of his agitation at being away from home, he experiences anxiety about his ability to control his own impulses and the impending shame and guilt that follow on misbehavior--all of which only serves to produce more misbehavior.

To counterbalance those messages of failure, at home it works well to offer him choices and suggestions for resolving conflicts and then reward him when he tries out a new strategy even if it's an awkward attempt. By trial and error, we've identified a few other techniques that seem to help:

- Asking for eye contact, as in "show me some eyeballs please." Even a split second's glance seems to interrupt the circuits in his head, especially if we can meet him with a gentle face.

- Staying physically close to him. When he is in a tantrum, the thing that guarantees that he'll completely come unglued is me walking away from him.

- Having talks in our bed. When he had his wisdom teeth out, we let him recuperate in "the big bed" during the day. It was eye opening. If we need to really hash something out, we all lounge around on our bed while we talk. Particularly if the message is difficult (the consequences of cutting class, for example), the physical proximity is soothing and he listens better.

- Shutting off television and video games an hour before bed. Invariably he spends this hour hanging over us and chatting about his day and tickling us and pulling our hair and making plans and generally reconnecting before sleep.

- Text messaging when we're apart. One of our basic house rules is "keep in touch" and he excels at this one, sending texts like little sonar messages to make sure we're still out there paying attention.

- Talking about the future. He love stories about what we'll do when we're old, or how we'll visit him when he lives on his own.

- Using requests like "let's see if we can get back to working together" or "take a minute to think about what I've said and then let's come together with a compromise" that suggest neither "let's do this my way" or "I give up, you win".

- Vacations in small spaces where we all have to pile in together - a long car trip, camping in a tent, heaping together in a hotel room. The more cramped the quarters, the more relaxed is T!

In our parenting classes, they often said "Parent the need, not the behavior." Opposition and defiance seem to me to be mostly behaviors; it's somewhat counter-intuitive to think the driving need is connection and reassurance, but the more we stumble upon what works, the more obvious that link becomes.

T Two

2011-02-05T10:13:00.001-08:00

Recently we have been working on a theory that there are two T's. The first we call "T Number One." He is generally balanced, perhaps a bit mischievous, mostly compliant, and approaches life with reasonable moderation. He accurately perceives the world, and has the capacity for judgment. He is generally optimistic, or at least practical.

The second, "T Number Two", is self-destructive, angry, defiant, and extreme. He damages friendships and other relationships, and makes dangerous decisions. He has distorted, negative perceptions of the world.

This week, unfortunately, we started strong with T Number One, and then by Wednesday, we were living with T Number Two. That pattern isn't unusual - his number one trigger is school, and he rarely holds it together for an entire school week. I think often of the wisdom of something Foster Cline says: assume that the child is doing the best he can. T tries hard every week. It is agony for him to be unable to modify his self-destructive behavior. And this is the best he can do right now. We try to stretch the capacity of T Number One to hold it together, and right now we can't get past Wednesdays. If we get to Thursdays or - one can only hope! - Fridays by the end of his junior year, it will be a monumental achievement.

I don't mean that T literally has a split personality. In the professional writing on such subjects, I guess you'd say that T number one is "regulated" and T Number Two is "dysregulated." His periods of dysregulation come on like bad weather - you can see them approach, they are intense and disruptive, and they pass.

I love him so much and feel so much wonder at the progress he's made and the meaning he's brought to my life that I probably do not always state clearly how difficult it is to be his parent. I'd hate for any parent of a traumatized kid out there to feel like I'm having an easy time of it while they struggle. I am as vulnerable as anyone else and I feel beat up and victimized by his behavior sometimes. He is intensely angry for many very sound reasons, and that anger has festered in him for many years until he doesn't even know it's name and when it takes hold of him, he is formidably difficult and frankly abusive. I am a strong personality myself, an "alpha" as I have said before. And yet when he takes revenge because we've withheld his allowance because he's using it to buy drugs, or when he rages at me that he is going to tell the social worker on me because I have restricted his privileges after he was picked up by a truancy officer, I feel despondent and exhausted.

At those times, I do sometimes withdraw from him. I cannot always maintain the authoritative parental stance of being strong, wise and compassionate. I get rigid and angry. I want him to just go to school, to hold it together just for five days on end without getting high, cutting class, interrupting my workday with calls from the dean's office. I lose my ability to communicate compassionately.

When that happens, I wait. T Number Two is not reachable, but he also doesn't stick around for long. He is a construct, a puffed up angry false self, perhaps produced by extreme duress to protect a tender T Number One when he was younger and constantly under siege. Indeed, when the storm moves on, T is often unusually tender and communicative afterward. He is apologetic, but he's also very receptive. He reaches out with many little tendrils of attachment to make sure you are still there, and upon finding that you are, grows very soft.

I worry over how little time we have to try to help him learn to regulate his feelings and modify his behavior so that he can hold it together in the grown up world. He is okay when he is with us - weekends and holidays are invariably peaceful. But a child who cannot make it more than three days at school without a meltdown is likely to have similar difficulty holding a job, or getting through college. Someday soon, he will be out of high school, out of the foster care system, and (eventually) out of our home. He will have to make his way in a world that takes him at face value, doesn't know or much care about his history, and delivers harsh and sometimes long-lasting consequences. Preparing him for that world is a daunting challenge.

Moving

2011-01-22T18:28:00.000-08:00

Next month we are moving. In part, we're moving because T wants a dog. In part, we're moving because our landlords/duplex neighbors are racist.

When T moved in, readers of this blog might recall that the landlords went to see their attorney before they even bothered to shake his hand or speak to him in person. Despite the fact that he was only 15 at the time, they tried to block him from moving in by claiming that he was an "adult roommate". They told us that they "know what these kids are like" and that there "used to be some gang bangers in the neighborhood" whom they knew to carry weapons. What any of this had to do with T went unsaid; they clearly saw his Black face and felt sufficiently justified to form paranoid opinions on that basis alone. We quoted the advice we'd received from the Office of Fair Housing back to them, and they backed off.

I've never been able to forget it, nor really to forgive them. Over time, I realized that I am subtly stressed and angry raising T in close proximity to people who may not wish him well. If he comes in the house late, or makes too much noise, or fails to speak to them politely when they cross his path, I find myself fretting over how they might treat him. I do worry about (and try to support him in preparing for) the effects of racism in his life - the teacher who assumes he can't read, the police officer who pats him down on the subway. Worrying about it at home is just one thing too many.

So we're moving. We live in a great neighborhood in a central part of Los Angeles that is not only truly integrated, but also has an unusual number of interracial and non-traditional families. We rent rather than own so that we can stay in this area, for that reason. On our block, we have several African American families, several white families, a group home for developmentally disabled adults, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics, a postproduction studio for an African American television station, and a couple houses full of recent college grads.

So we're staying in the neighborhood. But we're trading the racist landlords for a professional property management firm. I want my lease to be a business deal, not an opportunity for comment on my family composition. We have new neighbors including two young female rock musicians and a fashion designer - they make noise, and are unlikely to find us particularly odd. T wants to graduate high school next year and live at home while he goes to junior college. We are feeling good about finding a place we can all commit to long term.

I often notice the impression we make on new acquaintances. In general, people are nice and perhaps a little curious, though we often have to be fairly explicit in the beginning in order to establish that we are, in fact, T's parents. For example, recently T and I went to the animal shelter to look at dogs. The volunteer asked me how many children were in the home. I pointed to T and said, oh, he's the one. Confused about what I meant (and perhaps by his height) she said, "Oh, T, how many children do you have?" He looked at me aghast. "T is my kid," I explained, and laughed. "He's our only child." "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's okay," I said. "He's very tall." The moment passed, and she was very kind and took to T and helped him find his perfect pet. It just took a moment for everyone to figure out what was going on.

But things aren't always so friendly. People do stare, and sometimes leap to conclusions. Planes seem to be particularly awkward - T often travels in his pajamas, and he tends to hang all over us on the plane. More than once, other white passengers have openly stared throughout a flight, obviously unable to conceive of our relationship. Recently, on a ski trip, the lift attendant saw T and I approach together and said to me "Oh, it's okay, you can ride alone." I said, "I'd prefer to ride with my kid," and got on the lift with T.

I find that African American women have been the most openly skeptical and also the ones with whom I feel the greatest mutual understanding. They are not afraid to raise the topic of race, which I appreciate. I work with a number of African American women older than myself who see me with T on a regular basis. At first, I had the sense that some of them questioned my qualifications and my motivations. They probably also felt concerned about a Black child being separated from the community. At the same time, because that dialogue is on the surface with them, I find it can evolve. Recently, an African American colleague who had been polite but distant witnessed me in the hallway at work giving T some guidance - I was handing him his allowance, reminding him of our agreement about how he'd spend it, and telling him what time to be home. He was hopping from foot to foot, pulling my hair playfully and agreeing to abide. After that, she gave me the nod of approval. Whereas before, I had the sense that she regarded us with critical distance, now we are friendly and familiar - she asks after him and after me. I think she is convinced that I am doing the work. And I think she'd be pleased that when T talks about my work, he talks about people like her. "African American people work there," he tells his friends with great pride.

Recently I read an excellent article that is more than 20 years old and still captures a great deal of truth about interracial relationships. The focus of the article is on interracial romantic relationships, but I think much of the insight contained there pertains to interracial parenting as well. I think interracial parenting is probably hardest on those who are most sensitive to other people's opinions. I might seem so here, but in general, I am independent minded and so is T. We are both introverted and autonomous by nature, which I think protects us from some of the more intrusive attention we attract by being an interracial family.

I have heard it said of interracial romance that it matters greatly where you live, and I that's just as true of interracial parenting. I am satisfied that we live in the midst of a major city on the West Coast, where I think it is perhaps easier to be an interracial family than in other parts of the country. I'm also grateful for T's friends and for his generation in general, which is astonishing in its total embrace of diversity. The gulf between people his age and people like our former landlords is enough to make the latter look antique, and I hope that soon they are.

The United States foster care system has a higher turnover rate than most fast food industries.

2011-01-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

I read an article today that begins with this statement: "The United States foster care system has a higher turnover rate than most fast food industries. Of the estimated 200,000 licensed foster homes, from 30 to 50 percent drop out each year...Why are foster parents leaving? Of all the reasons, the biggest by far is that they are treated poorly."

All I can say to that is, yes, indeed. We might have fostered and/or adopted a few times in our lives, these days we are inclined to think that we'll do it just this once.

Our main reason is that we connected with T so deeply and have had such a profound experience becoming his parents that we fear there will never be another T and we might just hang up our parenting gear when he no longer needs us.

But the other reason we aren't anticipating a repeat performance is that the bureaucracy is too punishing. Unless we managed to meet a child with whom we can establish the kind of connection we have with T, we would surely be adrift without the support required to address the needs of a child with complex needs. We became foster parents after meeting T and only because we found him so compelling and there was such unusual chemistry amongst us. Without T as my motivating factor I just don't think I would be able to tolerate this bureacracy.

It's on my mind this week because we recently attended a court hearing to decide the matter of noticing his biological parents regarding the adoption (a discussion they have waited 18 months to even initiate). At the hearing, the court had to fire his present attorney who hasn't shown up in court on T's behalf for several years. The court appointed a new attorney exactly three minutes prior to the hearing, and the hearing moved forward despite the fact that the attorney knew nothing about the case. When we asked to address the court (about the fact that T's caseworker has asked him to notice his own mother) we were told that we can't speak to the judge. After I got back to my office that day, T's adoption social worker called me to ask what is going on with his case, and ask me to straighten out a huge misunderstanding between herself and his primary caseworker. Then T.'s biological mother called him at home to ask him what is going on with the court case because she doesn't understand the papers she's received from the court and the confusing phone calls she's had from his social worker and they've just managed to get her worked up and anxious, despite the fact that she's been aware of and not expressly opposed to his adoption all along. I wanted to scream.

To be brutally honest, we have mostly been treated like low rent babysitters by the social workers and inspectors and court officials involved in T's case. Often, to this day, have the sense that the myriad caseworkers and inspectors and bureacrats involved expect us to fail in our endeavor to provide him with a permanent home.

In my imaginary better world, becoming a parent should feel sort of like joining the Peace Corps must have in the heydey of the Kennedy Administration. There should be recruiters, and the recruiters should help people find a way to view foster parenting as a noble and unique endeavor, not a poor approximation and substitute for bio parenting. The training courses should be hard, and they should take place somewhere fun. (How about luxury hotels, that donate the rooms and facilities for a long weekend as a tax writeoff, like a gift to charity?) The trainings should include a panel of foster children to speak for themselves and their peers. Perhaps they could rank potential foster and adoptive parents: "This foster parent gets an 8 out of 10 stars in reviews from 32 other foster children..."

When we met T. we received a two page form describing his personality and interests. It was 90% inaccurate, with large portions that were frankly erroneous. It managed to be both clinical and superficial, a disturbing combination. Virtually everything we know about his background, his needs and his medical and educational history we found out from him. He in turn received nothing about us except the packet that we put together for him of our own accord. At some point (when his adoption finalizes? it's never been clear), the social workers tell us that we'll receive a thick packet of papers documenting his history; by then, we will have no use at all for the information it contains.

Thank goodness we fell utterly in love with him, I say, because we have mostly had to parent him from the gut while he has helped us understand over time where he's coming from. Had we needed to be more strategic from the start, and had he been unable to articulate his needs, we would have had a very rough time indeed.

In Tribute to My Friends

2011-01-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

My friends rock. Two of them particularly rock.

My Friend #1 is a private investigator who investigates the social history of people on death row. She worked in a foster group home for a couple years right out of college and her parents adopted an older child from foster care.

My Friend #2 is a licensed clinical social worker who supervised a program for homeless teenagers for many years, worked with traumatized kids in Kosovo, and now runs a free medical clinic.

They will both touch many lives in the course of their careers. But this week, I get the benefit of their wisdom. Tim and I are getting four full days off, thanks to them.

This is how it came about: I have a business trip to my hometown this week, and decided to take T with me. I figured I'd put him to work and pay him a bit for his time so I wouldn't have to worry about what he's up to while I'm away (winter school break is interminable this year thanks to LAUSD budget cuts). Of course that also means struggling to keep him occupied while I go about doing my job, being with him 24/7, juggling his needs with those of my coworkers. I booked a hotel suite for us with cable, video games and room service and hoped for the best.

Well, unexpectedly, T. announced that he'd be staying with Friend #1, who lives in the town where we're visiting, instead of with me at the hotel. This news was shocking and delightful, because he does not easily take to strangers nor to spending the night in unfamiliar places. Some months back, we had dinner with Friend #1 and her partner, and I guess he was captivated by her stories about her current case, involving a young man who grew up in a prison camp. I think he was also struck by her low-key compassion and hard-to-impress demeanor. So he decided to make himself her house guest. She loved the suggestion, and immediately got in touch to let him know that he should bring his xbox and come prepared to entertain her new pit bull puppy. His complete confidence and comfort about staying for five nights at her house is really touching to me.

Then my blessed Friend #2, who also lives in the town where we're visiting, offered to have T work at her health clinic for a day or two while he's staying in the vicinity. She knows that he wants to be a nurse, and arranged for him to shadow a male nurse at her clinic as he goes about his day. She isn't bothered at all that just three weeks ago I was ranting and raving to her about my problems keeping him in school, off drugs and out of trouble. Like Friend #1, she's pretty hard to impress and she's seen plenty of complicated teenage boys in her time. She has taken the time to listen to him and recognizes who he is, underneath the misbehavior. Like all kids, he rises to the level of expectation, and he responds to her respect and good humor.

One of the hardest things about becoming T's parent has been the isolation. We moved to Los Angeles just two years before we met him. That's not enough time to form deep friendships in middle age. We do pretty well, and we get home to our friends and families often, but I wish sometimes that we had stronger local bonds. It can be isolating enough raising a traumatized kid, because his intense needs and struggles have a way of drawing all of our time and attention and energy. Living in a town without close friends and family makes things harder and we almost never get even an hour off, much less a day.

So this week, I'm exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to distribute the wonders of T.'s company across the safety net of my two friends. He trusts them and feels he can be close to them because he knows how much they are a part of me, and that makes me feel good. Visiting with them gives him a chance to grow and experiment, and it gives me a chance to relax.

I hope every foster/adoptive parent of a traumatized child out there gets a break like I'm getting this week. Knowing that someone you trust who "gets" your precious, complicated child is going to stand in for you for just a little while is SUCH a huge mental and emotional relief. And for T., finding surrogate parents who are willing to open their homes and lives to him sends a profound message about belonging to a family, growing into an adult, and the value of strong friendships. They are my family, and now they are his as well.

Our Second Christmas Together

2011-01-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

Our second Christmas with T went a lot better than the first. We were smarter.

This year, we better understood that a lifetime of disappointment makes surprises very unsettling, and we let T make a wish list of desired gifts to guide our giving.

I didn't get a Christmas tree this year - I've learned that too much festivity just produces anxiety. We just had Christmas lights - like the frosting without the cake.

This year, I was better prepared for his...flawed etiquette around receiving gifts, and I didn't expect any display of happiness or gratitude. I just gave him things I wanted him to have.

And of course, in synch with my reduced expectations, T better managed his complex feelings about receiving gifts and even managed a polite thank you!

This year, I kind of got a present from T. T told Tim to get me something. I bought myself some nail polish. Tim gave it to T and T gave it to me. He took great delight in taking all the credit. Making himself emotionally vulnerable enough to make a passing gesture at giving a gift is a big step for T.

This year we didn't let the chaos of his birth family compete with our time with him. Instead, we gave him his gifts on the morning of the 24th and had a nice breakfast together. This worked well for him and he announced that forevermore, the 24th is "our Christmas".

We arranged the same Christmas Eve visit to the birth relatives we facilitated last year, and stressed less about it. We knew the visit would be chaotic, disappointing and depressing and that we can not control or prevent his feelings. (SocialWrkr24/7 had a great post about the complexity of holiday birth family visits here.) We kept in touch with him by text message, made sure he got fed, but didn't freak ourselves out completely when the adults took off and didn't supervise the kids. Their chaos is familiar to him, and he can manage it for short periods, particularly if he knows we are nearby and available.

I'm particularly pleased that T let us take charge of his visit with his brother this year. He was a "parentified" older sibling for many years and it badly frayed his nerves. This year, we made the plans for him: we bought his brother a gift, drove out to a neighboring county to pick him up, and delivered him to the relatives house on Christmas Day. We decided on the timing and duration of the visit. When T got frustrated with his brother in the car, we soothed them both and got them settled down. I felt really gratified by his concession to let us be the parents - that indicates a great deal of trust on his part.

I didn't feel so badly about missing out on T's company on Christmas as I did last year. Tim and I planned Christmas Eve as a treasured date night and we had a blast.

This year, I had a better understanding that the best gift I can give T as his parent is to reduce the burden of my emotional expectations and normalize and help him balance his scattered loyalties and relationships.

This year, my mom included his photo in her annual Christmas card collage, alongside my nephew. He plucked it from the mail, stared at it for a long time, then set it aside in a prominent location. Thank you, mom.

This year, he hoarded all the Christmas cards that had his name alongside ours on the envelope. "They're addressed to me!" he exclaimed. It is hard to explain the significance of Christmas cards and packages to a neglected kid.

This year, my parents joined us for a short ski vacation the day after Christmas. This year, T. referred to my dad as his "grampz".

This year, my cousin's 4 year-old daughter approached T and asked him sweetly if it would be alright if she called him her cousin from now on, and he smiled and nodded.

In our own way, it was a merry Christmas.

Loss and Learning

2010-12-21T13:57:00.000-08:00

My beloved 20 year-old kitty passed away this week. It was heartbreaking for me, and interesting for the three of us as a family. In the midst of my grief, I noted a few things that I thought I'd record here, to do with traumatized kids, grief and loss.

When T. was a young child, he lived in a chaotic home. He and his cousins had a kitten, and the kitten died while they were giving it a bath. The kids were very young at the time - probably ranging from 3 to 7 - and they were left unsupervised and told to bathe the kitten in the sink. He blames himself for what happened.

This is one of the first stories that T. told me about himself when we were getting to know each other. He told me more than once, which is very unusual for him. I understood in a visceral way that one does with a child that this story functions for him as evidence that he is "bad". I have always had the sense that this is his "origins" story, the original fall from grace that, in his mind, brought about his subsequent very bad luck.

Ironically, I met him at an event where we were volunteering to wash shelter dogs. I was struck by his extreme tenderness and careful attention to the animals. I realized only many months later when I heard the kitten story that he must have been terrified and traumatized, reminded of the kitten story and afraid that he'd drown the dogs. I recall that his hands were shaking.

When T move in with us he was, at first, very gentle and attentive to my cat. Over time, as he grew more comfortable, she began to annoy him and he let his annoyance show more freely, but he was still generally tender toward her. As she neared the end of her life, and I became more sensitive about her impending passing, he stopped grumbling about her mess and distraction. In the last days of her life, he build a little fort for her out of couch pillows, and monitored her heating pad to keep her as comfortable as possible. He did all of this quietly, with natural authority, when we were not in the room. His goal was to ease her suffering, not to impress us.

I rarely cry but I sobbed the night before she died. T. told me some time ago that he hates to see people cry and it makes him angry. I said, "Sometimes adults can cry in a way that feels out of control and its scary. And sometimes they can cry in a way that is meant to manipulate you. Maybe that's when you get angry. Otherwise, crying is just crying." He nodded.

It turns out he doesn't really mind when people cry. When he caught me crying he nodded in a forgiving way and gave me some hugs. Then he patted me on the head and said, "It's good to let it all out."

We sent him out of the house for the final hours while kitty passed away, because we felt that the atmosphere was too stressful for him. We talked about what would happen, and gave him permission to spend the day at a friend's house. He blew the cat a kiss, and headed out to do teen things. I think he was a little disoriented and upset when he came home and found her gone, but we didn't talk about it much. Her loss has a big impact on the general spirit of our home and it's a big change to absorb. But we all sat down to dinner.

I like to think that this was an opportunity for him to experience one of life's small catastrophes in the context of family, and gain some knowledge of how we help each other through tough times. I saw him learn another lesson, when he realized this week that I have feelings that are independent of him. We are so closely bonded now that sometimes he thinks he controls my feelings, or that all of my feelings are about him. It's hard to develop compassion until you understand and can respond to someone else's experience as separate from (but related to) your own. He did a good job with compassion this week, in his own child-like way.

I think it was also a healthy opportunity to experience what it's like to be in an "adult-led" household; we made the decision to let the kitty go without involving him, and took care of the arrangements quietly on our own. We told him exactly what was going to happen and when, so that he could be prepared, but we didn't ask him to do or feel anything in particular. We tried to show respect for his teen routine, even in the midst of our upset.

I know his experiences of loss have been devastating, traumatic and chaotic - in his young life, he's lost many close relationships, through circumstances he couldn't control. I like to think that this week, he got to witness grief and loss free of trauma and confusion. I like to think also that this experience is one more memory we share, one more private family matter than we will use as a touchstone and reference point in the story of us.

Awkward

2010-12-17T13:58:00.001-08:00

At our office Christmas party, an African American colleague unexpectedly asked me the question I dread: What made you decide to adopt an African American child?

It was uncomfortable in a number of ways, not least of which because she has never met my kid, and I never referenced his ethnicity, so it came out of the blue and it indicated to me that the composition of my family had been the topic of some discussion outside of my earshot. We had been chatting about the high cost of groceries and I had mentioned the vast quantity of juice that T consumes every week when she popped the question.

Of course it also made me blush because there really is no right answer to that question. The short answer is: Because we "clicked" and he felt we were the right parents for him. One could also explain (and I do believe I babbled on about it) that there simply are not enough willing parents to adopt older children who want a permanent family, so successful matches are often a bit idiosyncratic. In fact, T. attended adoption fairs and searched for an adoptive match for two years before we met. But that sounds apologetic - as if he would have been better off with an African American family but we were his only option. I don't think he feels that way and we don't either--like any family, we like to feel we are a match made in heaven, not a compromise wrought by a bureaucracy.

Of course there are complexities we can't begin to address adequately when this topic comes up. There is a painful history in Los Angeles regarding the way the child welfare bureaucracy demonstrated prejudice in removing African American children from families at various times. There are also strong feelings amongst some African American people that white parents may be unable to properly teach African American children about how to navigate racism and prejudice. And there are many people, white, Black and other, who question whether white parents can properly convey the richness of African American history to Black adopted children. All of that is fair.

My awareness of and sensitivity to that history caused me to babble on and on in a most awkward manner. I mentioned how, with a younger child, I would have worried about my ability to help him fully connect to the richness of African American identity, but given his age, what really happened is that he arrived with a very full and multi-dimensional Black identity of his own. He just assumes that we support that identity and even share it. We do talk about race and racism on a regular basis at our house. We are not naive as parents - when he was, for example, assumed entirely without cause to be illiterate by a white teacher this semester, we did not hesitate to call the school and ask them to address the obvious stereotyping going on in that classroom. And of course, we felt confident that, because of our own personal histories and relationships, our parenting would not be compromised by unconscious racism or stereotypes hiding in our own unconscious.

And yet, any attempt to explain that I think we're doing an okay job sounds a little...defensive.

I think next time, when someone asks me "why did you decide to adopt an African American child?" I might just say "because we loved him."

The No Good Awful Very Bad Week

2010-12-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

Last week, we had an epic eruption of misbehavior. In fact, we three decided that it goes down in family history as the No Good Awful Very Bad Week.

Truly, we got it all, within the span of a few days: suspension, substance abuse, absent-without-leave, petty theft, personal insults, you name it. It was as if T. gathered every shred of mental health he has so carefully cultivated and ignited it all at once in a bonfire of self-destruction.

It also just happened (coincidence?) to be the one-year anniversary of the date he finally moved in with us (the date T. considers himself to have "left the system" as he puts it); the week prior to our adoption court hearing, and, of course, the midst of holiday season. In other words, a Bermuda Triangle of triggers.

Then, as suddenly as it arrived, it blew over. By Saturday, he was communicative and affectionate. By Sunday he was apologetic, warm, and engaging. We went to the Korean spa together, where T. insisted that he needed a salt scrub, to overcome dry skin. "I think it will help me relax and turn over a new leaf!" he said brightly. On Monday, he willingly and without struggle joined us for a meeting with a new counselor who specializes in substance abuse treatment for adolescents (thank God for community mental health clinic, and they will be receiving all my spare laundry change when I quit this life), and signed up to weekly meetings. On Tuesday, he brought home weeks worth of neglected school assignments and asked for help in getting caught up.

When we were preparing to be parents, I did a lot of reading about attachment disorder. But my experience with T. is that he has something that strikes me as the opposite - call it detachment crises. When we have to separate (because we have to go to work, he has to go to school, for example) things go amok. He is not able to regulate his own behavior, despite his intelligence and gentle nature. And when he gets overwhelmed, he doesn't go mildly amok, in the way that peer-influenced way of most teenagers. He goes dramatically erratically amok, like a toddler in a 6'4" body. As we were reflecting on the Awful No Good Very Bad Week, we all agreed that the worst part (and there were many) was that we came disconnected; once we were able to come back together and be close, even though we didn't have any answers, things started to improve.

He said, "I just want you to know, I wasn't having FUN when I was being so bad." I understood exactly what he meant: he often appears to be having a wild time and even smirks when he is in the midst of a meltdown, but it's not because he's enjoying himself. Early on, we learned that a certain smirk actually means he's in full on panic mode.

I find that being his parent requires constant simplification of priorities. There are really only a couple things we can offer. The first is that we can show him over and over again that no matter how difficult his behavior might be, we will not "give him back." I know this, and yet I constantly underestimate how significant it is to him, and how long it will take to confirm once and for all that this is for good.

Recently he said to me "In the system, I had to be good, or I'd get given away." That is his fundamental reality: show your true colors, and nobody will want you anymore, and you will lose your home, your friends, and everything that is familiar. That causes him tremendous stress (his word) and his inability to manage stress in turn causes him to come unglued and do things that, in the end, cause him (and us!) more stress.

We were taught in our parent training classes how to prepare for the grief kids like T. feel at being separated from their families. But I don't think we were prepared adequately for the elevated expectations he had about being adopted. As we were telling our history to our new counselor, I was struck by how proud he is that he is adopted. When he moved in a little over a year ago, we expected him to be bothered that we are white, grieved that we aren't his relatives, alienated by our unfamiliar habits. What I missed, at least in part, is that he was terrified; terrified that we would uncover the real him, or he wouldn't live up to our expectations, or he wouldn't be able to change to fit in. Perhaps unlike the majority of kids in foster care, T. never lived with a parent. Getting adopted was a very big deal for him, a goal he set for himself late in his childhood. That's great, but it also put tremendous stress on him: to be wanted by someone, to be good enough to be someone's precious child. He doesn't really understand that we fell in love with the real T.; we could see him in there all along. We loved him for his intelligence and his complexity and his delicious smell, not for being "good".

Every time we survive one of these episodes, we experience a great leap forward afterwards. He trusts us more, comes closer, and confides more. Tonight he curled up on the couch and leaned against me while we chatted and his whole face was alight.

And just in case someone who is going through a tough time with a complicated teenager reads this and feels like it all sounds easy: it wasn't, and I was not a very good parent at times last week. I lost my confidence, got angry and sad, and had absolutely no idea what to do. I lost my composure and even avoided him for a couple days. By the end of the week, all I could say was "I love you and I don't know what to do." By Monday, I could say "I love you and I don't know what to do but I found someone that I'd like to ask for help," and he trusted me enough to come along.

T. teaches me all the time how little I control and how flawed I am. I am humbled by my own shortcomings, and daunted by how little I can actually do for him. But I do know that when he sees us falter and get overwhelmed and angry, and then find ways to reconnect with him afterwards, he finally understands how much we love him. He sees that he is not the only one who is overcome sometimes, and that family isn't really so fragile after all.

To Be Real

2010-12-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

Before we became parents to T., I didn't know it was possible to wake up fully convinced of one point of view, and go to bed fully convinced of the opposite. But that happens fairly often now. Just when we think T. is doing well, he falters. Just when we feel completely bewildered by his behavior, he gets it together. Just when we think we've grown accustomed to his extraordinary qualities, he blows our minds anew.

I am reminded lately of something we learned in our foster/adoptive parenting classes: "Parent the need, not the behavior."

Somehow I forgot that little bit of insight. The behavior can be dang distracting. Last week, we were dealing with broken curfews, marijuana use on school days, faltering (well, actually, failing) grades, angry teachers, and rude, surly, sneaky behavior at home. ("A lot of that is pretty normal for teens," my mom said, nonchalantly.)

The problem with parenting the need rather than the behavior in such situations is seeing the underlying need in the first place. By midweek I had no idea what was going on, and our family life had become a tangle of broken rules and half-dealt consequences. (It's very hard to follow through on consequences when they keep heaping upon each other! Did I take his phone for cussing at me, or for refusing to come home on time? Did he lose his x-box privileges for cutting class, or for refusing to show us his homework assignments? If I take his phone, how will I track him down when he refuses to come home on time?)

I think T. was more disgusted with his behavior than we were. One night midweek, he came to us to talk. He started with with a rambling, introspective description of his time in foster care. He described how in "the system" as he calls it, he felt he "had to be good" because "if you weren't good, you had to go." "I used to do better in school," he said. "But I think that was because I had to, or something bad would happen." We talked about 7-day notices and foster parents who called the social worker when you misbehaved and how hard it can be to trust adults when that's been your experience.

In our parenting classes, they often talked about how kids would "test" any adult who got close to them - pushing boundaries and buttons, perhaps convinced that nobody could truly love them. In our experience, this "testing" is extremely complex. In some sense, we "passed" the test. And yet, that isn't the end. T. isn't just testing us and our loyalty to him; he's testing himself, and the world. The fact that he can count on us raises a host of other questions he never had the luxury to consider. "What happens if I relax?" he seems to be wondering. "What happens if I'm not the good, responsible older brother anymore?" "What happens if I get angry?" "What happens if I refuse to do things I don't want to do?"

It took a full year of living with us (and that was preceded by six months of steady weekend visits) for him to gain enough trust to act out this much. And while he's indulging in bad behavior, he's simultaneously growing deeply attached. He snuggles and tickles, blows raspberries and naps in our bed. I often see him very much like a toddler with tantrums and faulty self-regulation skills, except that he's a toddler who can drive.

Last week, in the midst of a discussion about schoolwork, he said, "You think you know me?"
"Yes," I said. "I do. Ever since the day I met you, you have felt very familiar to me. You make sense to me." He nodded. "I guess you could say that we're similar," he said peacefully.

And therein lies the need, I think. Everyone needs to be precious and to make sense to someone. The utter loneliness of being "good" because otherwise you won't have a home anymore is subsiding in him. In its place, there's confusion, of course. And anger. But there is also authenticity, and the opportunity to love and accept love in return.

Friends

2010-11-28T11:01:00.001-08:00

For a year now we've been full-time parents to T. Our dynamic at home is highly idiosyncratic but it works for us. However, we're fairly isolated. We don't know many parents of teenagers and we don't know anyone who has adopted an older child.

Over Thanksgiving, we made a week-long visit to my hometown. The best part was spending time with my oldest and dearest friends, who finally got a chance to get to know T, and with my dad, who genuinely likes T. and connects with him. It was relaxing to share T. with other people who know us well, who don't puzzle over our choice to adopt a teenager.

One of my friends is a licensed clinical social worker who once worked with homeless teenagers. Another comes from a family where she had a foster sibling; she now works as a private investigator specializing in family histories in death penalty cases. Traumatized children are not new to them; they are easy and accepting with T.

One evening, we all went out to a trampoline park, and then out for dinner and arcade games. T. astonished me with his glorious behavior. He was polite, quiet, engaged, playful and outgoing. Often, he has a low tolerance for time spent in public. He can be very sensitive to noise, crowds, and chaos. However, this evening, he rolled along with the plan as it unfolded spontaneously, even eating dinner with the adults in a crowded noisy seafood restaurant where his cheeseburger did not meet his exacting specifications.

He is not a kid who attaches easily or indiscriminately. And yet at the end of the evening when one of my best friends invited us to her house, he announced that yes, we would be going, and that he would be riding with her in her car. This was most astonishing to me. As they pulled away from the curb, he gave me a playful wave from the passenger seat as I stood on the sidewalk with my mouth gaping in surprise.

The next day, he said to me and Tim: "I was so good last night! Wasn't I good with your friends? You could say that I was...at the center of things!" Gleeful smile.

From time to time, I am struck by the thought that it is very important to him that he be successful in his new role as our kid. As a young child, he intermittently lived with a cousin whom he loved. But it's clear that he never thought of himself as her kid - she had biological kids in the house who filled that role in his mind. The county located her and urged her to take him and his brother in and from that moment on, he clearly thought of himself more as a house guest.

He's an introverted person, so his feelings are rarely obvious. We catch glimpses of his internal life now and then. When we were preparing to become parents, I read a lot of books about traumatized kids, adoption and attachment. I think they led me to expect that his internal life would be filled with suffering, anger, confusion and grief. And of course, he experiences those things too, more than most kids. But what I didn't prepare for were these expressions of joy, pride in being successful in his new family, and love.

As an aside, my friends and my father all said to me at different times that despite his age and formidable height, T. struck them as a much younger child - about five years old. That's exactly right. When he is happy, he often seems about five. Not coincidentally, that is when he was first taken away from his cousin's house. Something froze then, and when he is feeling happy and secure these days, he appears to pick up where he left off.

Warning

2010-11-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a new homeland security advisory system for our little household.

Red: severe behavioral turbulence ahead; batten the hatches
Orange: high likelihood of tantrums, outbursts, insults and defiance
Yellow: elevated antics with no threat of harm
Blue: guarded relaxation; constant supervision not needed
Green: all systems go; no precautionary measures required

I think traumatized kids (and ALL teenagers) probably spend a lot of time in the yellow and orange zones. But as we head toward the holidays, security systems indicate we are in the red zone.

How did storm season announce it's arrival? With not one but two suspensions in a single week, two calls from the dean, one call from the guidance counselor, and three nights of not arriving home as requested for dinner.

Discipline has its limits. I figure self-discipline is a skill and a developmental achievement, not something one can just demand and expect compliance. We have rules and consequences, but this kind of shitstorm (pardon me) of misbehavior defies that kind of logic.

Today when the dean called me at work (she's great, it was a good talk), I said, "Have you noticed that T. has really been acting differently for the past, oh, two weeks?" And she said with a sharp relief, "Yes! Exactly!" He's got his history teacher on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he was hauled into the office by campus security, and in one of his classes he flatly refuses to stay in his seat. The dean and I agreed that I'd take him to work tomorrow instead of sending him in for "campus cleanup in lieu of suspension" and we'd see if a week of Thanksgiving vacation with us calms him down and helps us figure out what in the hell is going on.

Tonight when we all got home, we suggested that he take some time and come to us when he felt ready to talk. A few hours later he came to chat. "I don't usually get suspended," he said. "Something is wrong. I need to work on my behavior." He really does say things like that in a genuine way. At the same time, it sounded a little like parroting the sort of thing he thinks he's supposed to say. "Sounds good," I said. "But sometimes our behavior gets away from us and we just can't control it, even if we try. That can happen when something is bothering us inside and we maybe don't even know it."

"I think it's my brother," he said, right away. "Like, if I don't take him with us for the whole Thanksgiving holiday, then I feel like I'm not doing the right thing and I'm doing bad, but...." he trailed off, ashamed.

Oh shit! Why did I not stay on top of this?! Exactly two weeks ago, his brother called and invited himself for Thanksgiving. But we have plans to go away for a week, and that's a little more time with his brother than T. can really handle. So he dodged and said he'd call him back. I saw the confusion on his face and offered a fix, but when he didn't respond right away, I moved on and didn't try hard enough to go back and help him resolve it.

His brother lives in a group home, and longs to see T., but having grown up together in some severely traumatic situations and then been separated for prolonged periods, they don't have an easy dynamic. T. was very clear that he did not want to be adopted with his brother, long before we met him. He does however feel obliged to stay in touch and we encourage and facilitate that whenever we can. Visits are hard for him.

So when he described his dilemma tonight, it rang true right away. In short, it's the kind of dilemma that can produce a cascade of survivor guilt.

I offered, "I imagine also that your dilemma with your brother isn't just about this Thanksgiving - maybe it reminds you of when you guys were younger, and you felt torn about taking care of him." He gave me a long stare with the giant eyes and then a tiny nod. "Okay," I said. "I want to just give you two quick sentences of parental wisdom, if I may?" Tiny nod again. "I know it was hard and you felt responsible for him. What happened isn't your fault. You were a kid. There are things that happened that you just couldn't have changed. And you're still a kid, and that's okay if you just want to be a regular kid." Tiny nod. Huge eyes. Then he said, "Well, thank you for this talk." That's his usual exit strategy when he's reached his limit of emotional vulnerability. He hung around though.

After a breath, we came back to the issue at hand, and asked if he might let us take care of it for him. We agreed that Tim will call T.'s brother for him and offer a fabulous post-Thanksgiving weekend at our house. T. will be allowed to go out if he needs to. We told him he needn't worry about entertaining his brother, we'll take him to the movies and keep him busy.

He agreed quickly. He milled around a little more, said a nice good night, and went to bed early. The weird thing about T., in terms of security advisories, is that he often goes from the red zone straight to the green zone rather suddenly. We're in a crisis, and then we're fine. I guess that's life with a smart, traumatized older kid who is still learning self-regulation and sorting out some huge dilemmas.

It is a big deal for him to identify what's bothering him. It's an even bigger thing for him to allow us to tend to it for him, instead of trying to power through it all on his own, which has been his modus operandi for most of his young life. What an honor. I really mean that.

Lies

2010-11-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

When I was twelve, I spent the summer at my grandmother's cabin in North Dakota with one of my boy cousins. One day I came in through the back door and she was on the phone in a darkened back bedroom. I heard her hiss "If he EVER finds out it's not from you, I'll kill you." She was talking to my uncle. He had forgotten my cousin's birthday.

When we sat down for dinner that night, she produced a brightly wrapped gift. "Your father sent this," she said to my cousin. He was in a terrible state that summer - only fourteen years old, smoking cigarettes and surly. His eyes lit up as he unwrapped his fishing pole. He didn't even know to thank my grandmother for it. Today he's a successful professor with a happy family of his own and he probably still thinks that fishing pole came from his dad.

Last week, T.'s caseworker wrote to us and asked us to "persuade" his mother to accept a notice of termination of parental rights, after she refused to meet with DCFS. I hit the roof (and never breathed a word of this to him)- how is this his responsibility, when he barely knows his mother, and has never lived with her or formed a relationship with her? Then his adoption social worker came to our house. Before I could stop her, she told him how his adoption process is being held up because his mother refuses to accept the notice. She told him how "worried" she is about the delay, and how it could be seven months or more before we can move to official adoptive status. T. was practically catatonic during this conversation with his social worker. Afterwards, he withdrew for hours, then he stormed out of the house without permission and didn't come home until midnight on a school night. He's never done anything like that before.

So I lied to him. I felt what my grandmother must have felt that day on the phone with my uncle: a flash of rage and terrible pain that he was suffering, and a fierce desire to put myself between him and a cruel truth. Over dinner, I said as if it just occurred to me offhand, "Oh, I talked to your attorney for awhile today." (And indeed I did, though "talking" is a gentle way to put it, because what really happened is that I dialed up everyone involved in his case and voiced my frustration.) "He thinks everything will work out fine," I said to T. (The attorney didn't say that--instead, he told me that the county has, in his opinion, done everything wrong in handling his case.) "He told me that your mom doesn't mean to block your adoption--she just doesn't want DCFS workers bugging her at her house."

His face relaxed in an instant. For one millisecond, he looked up at me with such huge, naked eyes, even Tim was taken aback. All we can do is guess sometimes at what pains him. I don't know if what I said was the right thing, but he takes his mother's anger (which is diffuse and complicated) very personally, and in that instant, it was clear he needed relief.

I was so angry this week with his social workers (who waited to start the process of noticing the biological parents until AFTER the 45 day required window had passed, so that our court date next month is a total waste of time); with his attorney (who is rude and aggressive and told me he might not come to court on time because he has a dentist's appointment that day), and with the world. It pains me to think of process servers going to serve his mother, who is struggling to raise the fifth of her children, the only one she's ever had custody of. I hate everything about this process. I wish we could handle his adoption informally, perhaps sitting down with his mother, with whom he has never lived, to work it out. That's not realistic, for a variety of reasons. But the legal process of adopting an older child whose parental rights haven't been terminated prior to him being placed with potential adoptive parents is punishing to say the least.

And the reason I've been given for waiting to terminate parental rights (even as they put him in a "get adopted" program), freeing him for adoption after sixteen years in foster care? The county doesn't like to have "legal orphans" on the books. They knew he'd never live with his mom; he didn't even know her until he was twelve, and they mutually decided that it would not work out for her to be his guardian. The county adoption workers tell me that they like to wait to see if a potential adoptive placement is "likely to be successful" before moving to terminate rights. That makes sense in the abstract, but in our experience, it also starts to feel a lot like cooking the books, so to speak.

Anyway, I think T. has had enough "truth" about his legal status over his long life in foster care. It's time to construct our own truth, which is that regardless of when or even whether this adoption finalizes, we have made a family together. It's strong enough to last forever and flexible enough to encompass all of our other ties, including whatever tie he wants to build to his mother over time. And it's up to us, not to the court, or the county, or any external process.

Raising Alpha

2010-10-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm taken with Cesar Milan and Dog Whisperer right now. I watch it at the gym. Something about the formulaic drama of a dog, usually raised without proper discipline and order, trying to fit in to some family or other, and humans who do all the wrong things for mostly loving reasons I find...gripping. The dogs who pull at my heart strings are the alphas who don't have a pack to lead, or whose humans have let them run amok.

I often find myself musing on the fact that T. is an alpha. I don't mean that he is any way like a dog, or anything less than a fully human young man. But in the dynamics of the fear, aggression, anxiety and uncertainty of confused alphas that play out on Dog Whisperer I find a certain...poetic resonance.

Tim is out of town right now. When he leaves overnight, T. gets temporarily confused. I think he wonders whether, with Tim away, my power might be diminished. He also feels more vulnerable. Tim is a steady rock. I have a tendency to serve meals late and to "innovate" with household routines. That, coupled with the fact that I'm female, and nine inches shorter than T., leads to extra alpha behavior. He startles at unexpected noise. He checks the locks on the doors before bed several times. He hovers near me instead of relaxing at home. He thinks he's in charge. He's trying to help. I find myself being extra authoritative.

I think alphas are oft misinterpreted. In his assertiveness, physical strength and controlling behavior, T. doesn't intend aggression. He never hurts anyone--never even comes close. In his world, he's helping. If nobody is in charge, well then somebody better be, and he figures "It may as well be me." He is leaderly. He once told me in a quite guileless way "I have to test my teachers; I see if they are in charge of the class, and if they aren't, I take charge!" He said it in a very sunny way as if he were saying he picks up trash on the playground. I realized that on some level he really intends it as a service. LOL. (I don't have to tell you that his teachers aren't so grateful.)

When he is relatively secure, his alpha qualities have many lovely manifestations. He cares for young children at the hospital, and he loves his uniform and his responsibilities. Every night at our house, he makes a thorough investigation of every room before bed, turning off lights and tidying things up. In a former foster home with six children, he woke early every day so he could rouse the other kids and get them showered and off to school in an orderly way. (When the foster mom refused to drive them all to school one rainy day, he also led a "sit in" in the living room until she called the police.)

When he's not so secure, he has some more annoying alpha behaviors. He'll stand in front of you when you're trying to pass from one room to the next, effectively blocking your route and forcing you to interact with him. He issues demands, orders and prohibitions. He plays rough. He's just kind of bossy. Yesterday he texted me at work "Buy me some Cheez Its." Um, no.

I love my alpha child. I was an alpha child myself. I ran for student council class leader every year. I edited the newspaper. I dominated in sports. I was taller than everybody else. It's just how I was. I think it takes an alpha to parent an alpha. Without an alpha parent, an alpha child can reach for power that isn't appropriate. Alpha children need to be challenged with complex tasks and given constructive ways to demonstrate their strength under the guidance of alpha adults, but they also need to be kids, unburdened with responsibility for everyone else.

I think living with two alphas is a little hard on Tim because he isn't naturally an alpha parent. Tim is a negotiator; he is a classic beta. He isn't insecure or uncertain; he's just mellow. He is happy to be next in line, after the leader. When T. asserts his alpha-ness, part of Tim thinks "Okay, you're in charge." Then another part of him thinks "Wait, I'm the parent--I must be in charge!" and still another part of him thinks "Lulu is in charge, and she's gonna be mad at me for letting T. take charge!" He looks befuddled by the competing voices in his head. He is so important though - he is teaching T. to be respectful in the way he uses his power and showing him that there are multiple models of masculinity.

I think being a good alpha parent is about calm, confident, decisive discipline--but it is mostly about providing: protection, safety, predictability, food, money, shelter, advocacy and affection. T. doesn't need to do anything to get those things; it is our responsibility, being in charge of the household, to provide them. When he no longer needs them (at least not daily), he'll be ready to be in charge of his own pack, even if its a pack of one. Until then, it's our job. He can "help" - but he doesn't need to take over.

Taken Away

2010-10-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

A year into T.'s placement, we still have regular visits from social workers - an adoption worker, a caseworker, and occasional miscellaneous inspectors.

Right now, we have an upcoming visit from a social worker we haven't met before. Hers is a one-time visit to assess his ongoing eligibility for the therapy services.

We try to keep such things low-key for him. So last night I said, "There's a social worker coming tomorrow. She wants to ask you if we're going to therapy, and she might ask you how you're doing in school. She's not one of your caseworkers - she's one of the social workers who comes to check us out as parents and keep up on whether we're doing a good job and following through on their recommendations."

We were at a Korean spa (this is LA, after all) lolling around in the family area having a snack at the time. He rolled over on his back, put his hands over his eyes, and said in a monotone "They're the ones who come to take you away."

Uh oh! "I don't think so," said Tim. "She's just coming to check up on how things are going. There's some paperwork they have to do."

"Yeah," said T without uncovering his eyes. "I know the system. Those kinds of social workers are the ones who can take you away."

I said clumsily, "It sounds like what you're saying is that you've met this kind of social worker before, the kind who come to check up on the parents. You've been through that before, right?"

"Yeah," he said. He curled into fetal position and closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his head. He's 6' 4" and very much a regular sixteen year-old man-boy, but at that moment he was a much younger and more vulnerable kid.

He didn't really need for us to explain at that point that he isn't going anywhere. He wasn't really expressing anxiety that he'd be removed from our home - he was just remembering. He was removed from his relatives twice - around six, and again around nine. He told me that he cried when he was taken away from them, and he has never cried since. He worries about why he's unable to cry. He says nothing ever really carries the same weight as being taken from your family, so he has trouble finding the use in crying over anything these days.

I try to remember this when I'm low on patience or feeling intolerant of his anger and his need for control. Just the mere mention of an unexpected social worker visit was enough to make him nearly catatonic. That kind of fear doesn't subside quickly and in some ways it will be with him always, even as he grows into a strong, articulate, determined young man.

Parent/Teacher

2010-10-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

This was our third parent/teacher night since T. moved in last year and we're getting the hang of it. Back when we were novice parents - having never parented before T. moved in last year at the age of 15 - we made some naive assumptions. We went to our first parent/teacher night expecting that the child we know and love at home is the same one his teachers get to see every day.

Silly us.

This year we're smarter. It no longer shocks us that T. is either an A student or a D student with no happy medium. It no longer mystifies us that the kid who is generally very orderly and organized at home is scattered and forgetful at school, arriving to class without his books, without the homework he did the night before. We weren't caught off guard this year to learn that, although he's serious and thoughtful and introverted at home, he's the clown and the life of the party in class.

T. is the kind of child who makes teachers eyes widen when you introduce yourself. At parent/teacher night, they tend to speak to the other parents in a quiet whisper, looking through their grade books and sharing marks and little tips on how the student can improve. When we introduce ourselves, they push their chair back, shove the grade book aside, and--more often than not--launch into a lengthy reflection on his "colorful" personality. Sometimes they are visibly discombobulated, their eyes searching ours for a clue as to how to control him. A few have been plain old rattled by him, unable to hold back a flood of frustration.

A very distinct profile emerges of the teacher to whom he responds best. They are always women, young, soft-spoken, firm, confident and adept. In these classes, he requires an occasional quiet correction but generally excels, earning As. Algebra and Biology have gone this way. Other classes--chemistry, PE, geometry--have not. His marks have little to do with the subject area, the time we spend helping him with his homework, or the intellectual rigor required by the discipline. They have everything to do with the dynamics of the classroom and the confidence of the teacher.

His clowning in class isn't a simple grasping for attention; its a symptom of anxiety. When I go to parent/teacher night, I see what T's day is like. The public address system is blaring. The school looks rather like a prison - bars on the windows, guards at the doors. The classrooms are crowded. In one of his classes today, another kid jokingly called him a crack baby. T. replied that in fact he had been born crack-addicted. That's what school is like for him. Very little of his day has to do with learning. He experiences school as an exercise in social control, humiliation, chaotic authority, and general pandemonium.

There are some bright points. His African American Studies teacher this semester is one of them. He takes the enlightened approach that his job as a teacher is not to set traps or catch the students with tricky quizzes and homework assignments. He wants to engage them and make them love learning and love life, and love learning about the world. It totally works. Class discussion spills over to our dinner table that evening - T. is so engaged, he wants to keep the conversation going and tell us what he's learned and share the opinions he's learned to articulate in the class. But there are so few teachers like him.

It's hard to parent a child like T. sometimes, because his intellectual capabilities and general wisdom are so at odds with his emotional maturity. He is both five and forty-five at the same time. We want to be sure we hold him to the highest standards of which he is capable. At the same time, we want to create an atmosphere at home where he can relax and get what he needs, and that means keeping stress to a minimum.

It's also hard to explain how tangled his history makes basic issues of behavior. In his early life, he learned to avoid abuse by being perfectly compliant. As an older child who badly wanted to find adoptive parents, he subjected himself to excessive self-discipline, disguising his rough edges and showing adults what he thought they wanted to see so that he would be a "desirable" child. So I often feel caught in a classic catch 22: if I hold him to the highest standards of academic achievement of which he's capable, I contribute to his success, but I also play into his perverse perfectionism and stress him out. If I parent to his emotional needs and allow him to relax and behave as the much younger child he is in terms of his emotional development, then I fear that I'm undermining his potential for academic achievement.

So I ask myself a lot what matters. The part of him that is the youngest, freshest, newest and most vulnerable is the part that is loving and accepting of love. It's the part that recently started blowing us air kisses when he leaves for school in the morning. Bio parents who start with babies have years to build bonds before they have to turn their attention to preparing a kid for college. We arrived late to the party and we have to make choices about which message to send him at any given moment, and which growth buttons to push.

Drinking

2010-10-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog, because the back-to-school season and a busy phase at work kept my fingers from my keyboard.

Back-to-school: a mixed blessing for sure. We don't need to fill T.'s days. On the other hand, he's a junior in high school in a big city with lots of opportunities to get up to his business and a certain fragility in terms of his self-esteem.

Last Monday, we busted him leaving for school with a Coke bottle full of vodka and orange juice. How did we find this out? Well, we read his text messages. Imagine my horror when I discovered a text letting his friends know he'd be bringing some vodka 'n orange for an early morning rendezvous. Imagine how much I kicked myself for even having vodka in the house! Until now, he has been entirely averse to alcohol (but not marijuana), but it was stupid to have it around.

Had this happened last year, we would have freaked out completely. We're becoming more seasoned. After he left the house, we actually kind of shrugged and sat down to our morning coffee before thinking about whether he needs rehab or just a good grounding. In part, we've learned to manage our reactions better in order to preserve our own health and sanity. Adopting a teenager can be like going from zero to 100 mph without a period of adjustment and the g-force occasionally leaves us limp. Panic is the enemy, and no good for our partnership either.

I still didn't have the answer when I got home from work that evening. T was playing video games quietly in the tv room. I decided to just wing it. I went it, sat down close to him, and said "I think you left for school this morning with vodka in your orange juice. I don't want to argue about whether that is or isn't true. I just really want to hear from you why you did that. I'm worried and I need to understand what's going on."

He turned to me with his huge round eyes. He had a gentle sad expression. "I don't know why I did it," he said. He's not a particularly good liar, nor a particularly manipulative child. He looked genuinely quizzical. I said, "Were you angry? Have you been drinking before school? Did you hope that I'd notice?"

"I haven't been drinking," he said. "This was the first time. But my behavior has always been a problem. I don't know why. I do good in my classes, but I behave badly." He really does talk like this sometimes - in part, the "system" as he calls it taught him to be self-critical in this way. But it's also part of his personality.

"Why do you think that is?" I asked.

He made his puzzled face. Then he said softly, "I think about so many things. Like my mom is never going to talk to me again. And my brother, he's still in the system. We came in together, but now I'm out of the system and he's still in it. I think about it all the time."

Nobody planted this idea in his mind, and it's rare that he refers to his various tragedies - he despises the idea that anyone might feel sorry for him. He and I have talked about his mom and his brother a few times over the past year, but not often, by his choosing. We tried visits with his brother, but T. shut it down - the dynamic between them is extremely complicated and painful. For awhile, he had polite contact with his mom (and so did I, to a limited extent) but she flew into a rage last spring and cut him off. There is no easy obvious "fix" in this situation. It will take a lifetime to make sense of it.

We talked for awhile about the difference between teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol and using drugs and alcohol to cover up feelings that seem unmanageable. I told him that if I feel that substance abuse has got him by the tail, I am going to step in because I love him. T. and I have gone many rounds trying to make progress on reducing his use of marijuana. Consistent limits are a necessity, but the only thing that works so far is when we ask him to modify his behavior just because we care about him. No other consequences or rewards have made one lick of difference. I offered that instead of punishment, what I'd like is a quiet evening without television or video games, and for us to spend some time talking a bit more about what's going on with him.

It was a bumpy conversation. We sat together in his room for awhile and he stared at the floor. He told me how he hasn't been able to cry since the last time he was removed from his family. I told him how I think about his birth mom a lot and feel badly that she missed out on his childhood (they didn't meet until he was twelve). We talked about how maybe his mom doesn't know what to say and how to make it right between them. By way of helping him depersonalize his mother's rage, we talked about how using drugs for a long time change someone's personality and make it very hard for them to control their anger. He told me that there's a "secret reason" why his mom doesn't want to talk to him or any of his siblings, a reason he can't share with me. We talked about some options for rebuilding his relationship with his brother, and he offered that he thought he'd like to start with regular phone calls.

I also asked him what he would do if he were the parent and he found out his most-loved child was taking vodka to school in the morning. He got a very serious look on his face - he slips easily into the role of parent/counselor and he really likes this approach. "Well," he said, "I would ask him. Did he drink it? If so, I would treat it very seriously. Did he sell it? That would be very bad, and he would have to lose his privileges and be in big trouble. But if he took it and gave it to someone else, and he didn't know why, and it was his first time, I would talk with him and try to understand him, and I would let him know that if he EVER, EVER does this again, there will be very serious consequences."

That's some childish logic, and not the final word on the subject. Obviously giving alcohol to other kids at school is totally unacceptable. But I do appreciate the progress he's making toward recognizing a connection between his use of mood-altering substances and the pain and confusion that come from the losses he's sustained.

Since our conversation, we've had nearly two weeks of much more moderate, relaxed behavior. Recently, he asked me to fire our therapist. "We do our own therapy," he said. "She doesn't know me." (In another post, I'll write about our frustrations with therapy and the general lack of services for teenagers like him.) T. makes me realize all the time that all that keeps us from falling off the edge sometimes is knowing that we don't want to hurt or disappoint someone who's opinion we care about, someone we feel really knows us. We can't fix what's happened or stop T. from feeling deep grief about everything he's lost. But we can sit with him, know him well, be honest with him when he's off-track and let him be honest with himself.

Three

2010-09-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

One of the not-so-nice aspects of foster/adoption, and I'm sure it's true of parenthood in general, is that I don't think it's particularly good for one's romantic relationship. What's good for our relationship: Vacations to far-away destinations. A little extra money left over at the end of the month. Uninterrupted sleep. Heedless date nights where nobody is worried about getting home. What's not so good? A 6'4" teenager who wants to come watch cartoons in our bed because he's psyched about finally having parents. Who doesn't really like to go out much, and definitely not at night. Who follows us around, poking and tickling and teasing us gently about our middle-aged figures. Who believes we exist solely to gratify his needs. And who is so damned enchanting that we have trouble declining any opportunity to spend time interacting with him.

We are often tired, our capacity for intimate communication more or less exhausted by the intimate relationship we've been building with our new teenage son. We are exhilarated, but we aren't always exhilarated at the same time, or in the same way, and we often lack the time to catch up with each other's feelings. Co-parenting is a more emotional, less rational undertaking than I anticipated. There's a lot of parenting from the gut - perhaps the more so with a traumatized kid. And making decisions from the gut is hard to do in concert with someone else. As we get closer to T. it's easy to feel like we get further from each other.

With children by birth, I think we allow for that to a certain extent - the partner who gave birth is assumed to be recovering, and breast feeding and so on give physical expression to the intense and exclusive mother/child bond that's developing. With an older child, it's easy to go into it with an assumption of total democracy - we'll each attach to the child at an equal pace, and we'll parent from a common set of standards. But that now strikes me as profoundly unrealistic. Even though there isn't the intense physical dependency of infancy, the psychology of how an older child attaches to new parents (and they to him) is, in my experience, extremely complex, nuanced and idiosyncratic. It cannot be equally apportioned between two parents. It's much more organic than that. I've been thinking lately about the fact that a child doesn't really bond to a pair of adults - he bonds to one adult and then one other adult. Both adults have to earn it, and neither can cash in on the other's success.

That's not all bad. That dynamic also produces an objective awareness of each other that wasn't there before. Right now, I'm watching Tim and T. repair a game console together. They're hunched over a bunch of machine parts with a handful of screwdrivers and their heads are nearly touching. Did T. ever have a male parent who would put aside work to show him how to repair a beloved toy? Most definitely not. It's a great thing to see, and I notice how patient and calm Tim is, and how competent, and how T. responds to that with calm concentration. I can see Tim through T.'s eyes in a lovely way.

But there is also a mountain more labor to be done, and a heap of problems (some of them very complicated) to be solved that just weren't there before. Whereas before we were two adults who did our own laundry and mostly ate out, now we are surrounded by heaps of dirty basketball shorts and concert t-shirts, fielding constant demands for more chips, juice, breakfast cereal, and frozen pizzas. And they can't drive! As someone who hadn't parented before we decided to adopt a teenager, I am shocked at how much time one spends taxiing a child from one place to another. Moreover, the passenger is not often pleasant and polite - more likely, he's tired, stressed, hungry, hot, overstimulated or otherwise in need of soothing and attention, while you're driving.

I also feel like it's easy to feel blamed or to blame onself as a new adoptive parent. If my relationship isn't going well, I start to wonder: Do I lack good boundaries? Am I failing to make time for my partner? Have I become overly identified with T.? Am I too controlling? There are so many stereotypes one can internalize and indulge.

We often laugh and say "when we're eighty, we're going to look back on this time as the very best part of our lives." And right now, there's a satisfaction in knowing that, but there's also a very real difficulty in getting through it without denting or just neglecting our partnership.

Ouch

2010-08-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

This week, T. had his wisdom teeth extracted. For months, he has been asking after this appointment, checking up on it, anticipating it. This whole little drama of the wisdom teeth illustrates some interesting aspects of being an older child in foster care, transitioning to adoption.

To begin, his keen attention to this appointment with the oral surgeon struck me as a vestige of the feeling he had in foster care that he had to take care of himself and keep track of his own needs. He seemed anxious that we might forget about the appointment, a remnant of a general mistrust of adults.

We also did not quite anticipate the complexities of what it means to be pre-adoptive foster parents, in terms of the legalities. In order to have his wisdom teeth extracted, we had to speak with three different social workers (he has a caseworker and an adoption worker, and at some point in this process, one quit and another went out on extended sick leave so we had to begin anew with a replacement). The social worker needed to give us a form which we needed to give to the oral surgeon and then return to the social worker to take to a judge, to obtain a signature before we could have the teeth extracted.

One day shortly before his appointment, he also commented that "in the system" (which is how he refers to foster care), kids must see the dentist once every six months and foster parents must turn in papers from the dentist to the social worker, who in turn must show them to a judge. He mentioned that he's surprised, now that he lives with us, to see that we sometimes let our own dentist appointments slide a bit. We aim to get our teeth cleaned about twice a year, but our approach is inexact. "I spent so long in the system, I thought EVERYONE was required to go every six months," he commented quietly. "I didn't know you could make your own appointment and go when you want, like you guys do."

Most of all, it's been fascinating to take care of him today since he got home from the oral surgeon. When he returned (Tim was the one to take him to the appointment) he gave me what I call his "angry baby look" - a steady glare that basically means "Help! Can you read my mind?" It's a demand to intuit his needs. He was in pain, and that made him angry and confused. "How would you like to get in our bed and we'll bring the television in and you can watch movies?" I asked. He stared. He nodded. We moved the television and propped him up on pillows. He got suddenly very small, not at all like his day to day stubborn teenage self. He wanted to be spoon fed his dinner and desert. He let me rearrange his pillows and adjust his head. He called for ice cream and water and Advil. He mumbled "thank you" for each small favor. He seemed excited that I offered to stay home from work in the morning. (For a brief moment, he went wild with power and demanded that we go out and get him a milkshake at midnight, which we gently declined to do.) I am not sure he has ever been sick and allowed to burrow in a parent's bed before. He had an awkwardness and vulnerability that appear once in awhile when he is learning, a little late, what it's like to be so loved.

I think sometimes it's in these very small moments that he lets himself absorb kindness. I suspect it's also at these moments that he catches a glimpse of what he missed out on during his early childhood. Grief, relief, surprise, tenderness and embarrassment all pass across his face all at once.

Good at Family

2010-08-16T15:04:00.001-07:00

One of the things I admire so much about our foster/adoptive teenage son is what I think of as his skill at family.

It is beyond comprehension where he acquired these skills, unless you either accept that such things are innate, or decide that it's possible to learn positive skills through negative examples. In any case, I believe he is good (and getting better) at key aspects of family life: attunement, organization, reconciliation, and play.

Attunement: To me this means knowing how to get in synch with another person. I am pretty sure he developed this capacity through trauma - I'm sure it's quite useful when you're living with a severely abusive adult to be able to read and respond to their moods. However, he's able to carry this skill forward in more healthy environments. We noticed it early on. If you hum a song, he picks it up three rooms and way and finishes the tune. If the mood tilts too far in one direction, he'll switch it up to establish equilibrium. Sometimes he'll start an argument, just to get us back on the same page - he's like the princess with the proverbial pea under her mattress if there's something that needs to be aired and he won't rest until it is.

Organization: There is seemingly no end to the chaos that a life in foster care can wreak. T. has been in sixteen homes. He's had multiple caseworkers. Some of his case files are in another county, on paper, and thus not accessible to his current caseworkers. His birth family, for various reasons, had severe difficulties such that the whereabouts of his father and his siblings was difficult or impossible to track. He told me recently that he's not sure how he's actually related to the person he calls "grandma"; he's pretty sure she's his second or third cousin. Perhaps in response to all of this upheaval, he's quite orderly. When he first came to us, he was TOO orderly - I believe the clinical term is "overly compliant." After that eased up, he became just garden-variety organized. He keeps his important papers in a neat stack in his desk drawer. He remembers dates and appointments and names. He knows the phone numbers and birthdays of all his nearest and dearest by memory. He's taught me that children need organization, and that lack of organization is a cause of significant anxiety, especially for traumatized kids.

Reconciliation: Living in close quarters with others produces intimacy and some bumps and scratches. I greatly admire his capacity to resolve the inevitable misunderstandings and hurt feelings before they fester. He has bursts of temper like any teenager. But if we sit still on the sofa afterwards, he circles back repeatedly, "pinging" us with little attempts at reconciliation. If we respond with openness, eventually after a few "pings" he settles in for a "big talk." He doesn't get up until everyone has said their piece and we've moved along. Often he stays on to chat a bit, euphoric from the feeling of having been heard. It's a great skill, one that really surprised us the first few times we saw him in action following a conflict.

Play: One day when T. was telling me some anecdote about a previous foster home, I had an epiphany. He was talking about how he'd been disciplined, and what he'd done wrong to deserve it. I knew him when he was in that foster home, and I was familiar with the environment there and what his life was like then. "You know what always bothered me about that house?" I said. "I think parents have to give guidance. It's part of what we do. But we also have to bring the fun. That house didn't seem like there was much fun going on." He looked surprised, and he agreed. We play alot. T. likes to lick us by surprise sometimes - he'll sneak up and lick us on the cheek just to hear us squeal. He hides sometimes when we come home so we have to look for him. He loves to flop on our bed and tickle our feet, and he's very quick to pick up a silliness and turn it into an inside joke. We sass each other and tell each other the things that nobody but your family will ever tell you, like "your feet smell." He's just fun.

In all the writing about foster/adoption of older children, I think the basic skills of family living are often given short shrift. We navigate many complicated issues with him, ranging from substance abuse to grief about the relatives he's lost. His skill at attunement, organization, reconciliation and play are a big part of building the day to day bonds that support doing that work.

My Fantasy Baby Shower

2010-08-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

I went to my fantasy baby shower today. It was awesome, because I made it all up. Something about attending my third office baby shower of the summer got me started. (At each one, I'm invited to give thoughtful "welcome baby" gifts to people I barely know. I'm really not bitter or jealous - I'm totally happy for them. But I can't help but notice that when T. arrived, not one person said "congratulations" or felt it was a gift-giving occasion, and I find that a harsh commentary on the stereotypes that pertain to foster/adoption of older children. So I indulged my imagination a bit.)

My baby's no baby, so here's how my imaginary baby shower went down.

First, the 8 or 10 other people out there who adopt teenagers showed up. We read each others blogs, so you know who you are. There were gay and lesbian parents, straight parents, single parents. There was beer. Real, cold beer. There were a lot of war stories and also some kinda sick jokes.

You know what nobody said? Nobody asked me where his "real" family is. Nobody asked what race he is. Nobody looked at me with sadness because they assume that I can't have a bio baby. Nobody told me I have to put him on a wheat-free diet, or asked me if he gets good grades, or told me that "all parenting is the same no matter where the child comes from." Did I mention the beer?

Hell, since it's my fantasy baby shower, I'm gonna say T's birth relatives came along too. We're all gonna be seeing alot of each other on holidays for awhile so I guess they decided to show up and make friends. They took a pass on raising him, but today at my imaginary baby shower, they decided that they still want to be a supportive presence in his life. They brought banana pudding. He loves their cooking.

T loved his baby shower. He's been part of every decision we've made about becoming family to each other, so it was only right that he attend his own baby shower. He thought it was hilarious, as he often finds amusement in observing my awkward attempts at first-time parenting. He loves to dance, so there was dancing.

There were also really good presents. One foster adoptive mom gave us a gift certificate to Costco. "You won't believe how much juice they drink!" she said. Another gave us a gift certificate for iTunes. "Encourage them to listen to music on headphones," she said. "That's the closest you're going to get to some alone time for awhile." Somebody else offered to come by on a Saturday night to hold down the fort while Tim and I went out for a dinner date. Oh blessed relief.

My folks were there (they'd come in real life, for sure, and they did send a popcorn machine when T. moved in, to their credit). Tim's parents came too (in real life, they are confounded by our choices). Even his brother (who, in real life, recently said to me of our adoption "So what should I call him? Step-nephew?"). But here's the kicker: the neighbors (the same ones who, in real life, called their attorney when we told them T was moving in) showed up. They looked me right in the eye and said "We're sorry, we were racist narrow-minded bigots." Then they had a beer and got down.

As my fantasy baby shower drew to a close, T's socialworker came up to me. "We 're going to get out of your hair now," she said. "Let you do your thing." She slapped me on the back. "Thanks for stepping up!" she said. "And good luck with all this." Then she drove off into the sunset.

Now that was some good daydreaming.

Quoted

2010-08-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight just a quick post to capture a conversation we had tonight. We were out for a late night walk - I pay T. $3 to "train" me by jogging around the neighborhood before bed a few times a week. I get my exercise, and he gets to chatting. Rather like driving in the car, being side by side in the dark, rather than face to face at home frees the tongue.

So tonight, we were talking about why I'd like him to get involved in activities. But I was also trying to explain that this is a goal, not a criticism. So I added something like, "You know, you've accomplished a lot. You found yourself parents and got adopted your freshman year. That's huge. That's bigger than any high school accomplishment I've ever heard of. That's just so impressive."

And that's when he said: "You feel me? You know what the social worker said? Back when I was living at Ms. (former foster mom)'s house? The social worker came and she and Ms. (former foster mom) were sitting in the living room. I said I wanted to be adopted. And they said "Oh, people don't adopt teenagers. People want to adopt LITTLE kids." Man, I just went in my room. That made me feel so bad. Like, I'm gonna be in foster care forever? For my whole life? Like I'm gonna die in foster care. That just makes a kid feel, like, so hopeless."

Yes, exactly.

The Weather in Our Heads

2010-07-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

I tend to observe T. like a scientist, though I often act rather non-objective as a parent in the day to day. Several months of study suggest that he has a definite cycle. He's pretty compliant and communicative, for about three weeks at a time. Then a mood comes over him and for a week, or two, or three, he's stormy, somewhat compulsive, generally defiant and harder to reach. On the one hand, that's probably typical of many teenagers. On the other hand, we're grappling with a history of trauma, a marijuana habit, and some birth family drama. So his cycles are complex beyond those of the average teen.

I've decided to regard his cycles (and mine, because lord knows I have my own moods) like the weather. My mom's family is from North Dakota, where the weather is a daily drama. I have been there during clear spring days that ended in a blizzard, summer storms that delivered hail the size of grapefruits, and winter white-outs that leave you wondering if you're still on planet Earth. I think T., like a lot of kids in long-term foster care, grew up and grew accustomed to the emotional equivalent of life on those open plains. The fact that a day started out sunny and warm offered no guarantee that you wouldn't end up wind-whipped and disoriented that afternoon.

As a result, he's like someone who, having lived through a hurricane without any place to shelter, now prepares for disaster when he hears a few rain drops. How exhausting. Physiologically, the consequence of living that way is that he can only go so long before his system needs to power down. But life taught him that doing so is not safe, so he has trouble letting go. He can't relax himself; instead, he spirals into quasi-nihilistic episode of self-destructive behavior. It's as if he's telling himself "If I can't protect myself, I better just throw myself to the wolves."

The weather metaphor works for me too because it's as hard for me to control the factors that impact his mood as it is to control the weather. I can't prevent a call from his birth mom, stave off the intrusion of yet another social worker, deny a visit to see his relatives, or keep him from feeling let down when his best friend blows him off. Circumstances in his life are so complicated, he rarely goes more than a few weeks without a triggering incident. He is a deep, soulful person by nature and he absorbs these blows and processes them in a private place I can't always access. I try to protect him, but sometimes the elements catch up to us nevertheless. I'm making it a goal to teach him over time that the weather in our heads doesn't always have to reflect the weather outside. It is possible to build up internal resilience. You might open a door or window and let the rain come in, but when and for how long is up to you.

Year Anniversary

2010-07-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Today is the day one year ago when we did our first weekend visit with T. Starting on that July day, we went on to do 17 consecutive weekend visits with him; we endured one moment of crisis when he got mixed up in some serious trouble we weren't sure we could handle; we overcame our doubts and visited him through a brief and frustrating stay in a group home; we made ourselves a thorn in the side of county child services, and finally it worked and they let us become his parents, exactly 34 weeks ago, on the day he moved in. Seventeen weekend visits + 34 weeks of living together as a family = one helluva year.

To me, family is in the lived experience, not the shared genes. Potential parents and older kids "picking" each other strikes me as a near miracle and one I'd really like to convince other people to consider. There are thousands of older kids waiting in long term foster care (seven thousand in Los Angeles alone) who can't return to their original family or relatives and many of them long for a home and for parents and to be somebody's precious person. T. used to be one of them. Today, he proudly introduces us as his "adoptive parents." He obsesses over the latest Nikes, brags about his prowess playing x-box live, pushes the boundaries we set for him, tickles and hugs us and wakes me up early on Sunday morning to tell me the latest teen gossip from the night before. It's not "done" and it's not easy, but it has momentum. We'll be family to each other for always.

It reminds me of science. Once, for a job, I interviewed a research chemist. He described disease as a keyhole, and likened his work to investigating tens of thousands of chemical "keys", seeking the one that would fit the disease target exactly. He said it always seemed incredibly unlikely and at the same time inevitable that he'd find a match, and that science depends on the confidence that eventually one will emerge.

Our relationship with T. feels like that to me. He'd been searching for adoptive parents for two years when we met him. We had only just signed up to become potential foster/adoptive parents. We met him at the first "meet the kids" event we ever attended. I looked around the room and thought, well, I feel like I could parent any one of these kids (all boys, all between about 10 and 15). I had long planned to be a foster/adoptive parent to an older child and I was ready so it wasn't too hard to envision. Then I saw T. and something inside went "Fascinating!" He smelled good to me. His eyes showed a busy brain, and his facial expression showed tremendous (probably excessive) self-discipline. The slight tremor in his hands gave away his fear and the tremendous importance he attached to being adopted. I couldn't stop thinking about him.

The first three months after he moved in were hard. He wasn't used to feeling attached to authoritative adults. He understood rules, but he hadn't experienced the coercive emotional pressure of love. It was confusing to him. It made him feel trapped, to find that he cared what we thought. We worked through it. We continue to work through it. We aim for a mix of flexibility and consistency, but really it's mostly sheer innate compatibility that works most of the time.

I'm a broken record on this point, but I feel tremendous awe about parenting him. A good friend of mine said recently "it's his ego that saved him" and that struck me as being very true. He was born tiny and sick and addicted, passed through various homes while he survived those early years, then endured a very turbulent middle childhood being passed from one home to another and mistreated in ways that we've only begun to discover. At some point, when he might have broken, he decided "This is shit. I'm going to find something better." And he did. He doesn't feel grateful to us - he feels satisfied. He was right.

I do love the frank honesty of parenting a kid like that. It's as if we met in the middle of a vast, busy, often indifferent world and looked at each other and said "Okay, what have you got?" We all acted polite for awhile, and then we had to put our emotional cards on the table. We might have expected to be overwhelmed by his problems. He might have expected to be cruelly disappointed or rejected - that's what adults had taught him to expect. Instead, it turned out that we had the potential to create a soulful, life-altering connection to each other. We get how to crack each other up. When we fight, we understand how to make up. We know each other in a deep way, as if we have known each other for much longer than we actually have.

I do think people are spooked sometimes by the "knowing" child. Our cultural cliches of family suggest sometimes that parents are all powerful, while children are naive and unformed, and the process of parenting is one of transmission, of values and knowledge, from parent to child. Kids like T. are not like that. It's a much more democratic process of negotiation. He knows a whole lot of things I will never have the misfortune to understand. I know things he could care less about. We have to sort out tremendously complicated issues together, like how he feels about his birth mom, and why he should follow our rules, and how to balance love and loyalty to more than one kind of family.

I LOVE being that kind of parent. It makes me a better person. Nobody told us this was a good idea, and a lot of people told us it was impossible. But it totally works for the three of us. It makes me think that the world is a much more nuanced, multi-dimensional profound place than I would otherwise have realized.

The Storm Has Almost Passed

2010-07-18T08:40:00.001-07:00

Having T. and his younger brother in the same room is like touching the wrong cable to your car battery. I believe Advocate Mom saw this coming and gently warned me a few weeks ago, explaining that her boys tend recreate the drama of their early life together. Yes, exactly.

Things did calm down since my last post. Birth mama drama died down. Younger brother played video games with Tim and T. came and curled up behind me on the sofa like a cat and fell asleep with his feet in my armpit. Later we went to the movies (we took the boys to separate movies, T. to the teen requisite Eclipse and younger brother to Toy Story), and T. and I snuck off to Macy's for a few minutes to buy jeans. It's craven, I know, but hey, I have been known to distract myself from difficulty by going shopping so why shouldn't he?

Their conflict remained at a simmer rather than a boil. We came home and had cake and opened gifts. T. came into the room briefly, just long enough to hear his brother softly exclaim "This is my best birthday ever." (I swear, it's the little offhand tragedies that will kill you.) Satisfied or else plagued by horrible guilt (probably both), T. retreated to his computer and we sat and ate cake and helped younger brother load up his new iPod Shuffle with music.

I understand a few things better now. First, I have long wondered about T. where the pain is hiding. He's very strong and very private and generally doesn't bring things up for discussion until he's already resolved his feelings on the matter internally. This weekend his pain and frustration were on full technicolor display. I don't fear that kind of pain and I was grateful to see it.

Second, I have often wondered if he gets lonely here, because he's the only child and we don't know a lot of people with kids. I'm not worried about that anymore. I see that we are a built-in ever ready audience of two and the exclusivity of our attention combined with the general orderliness of our home (meals are served regularly, people behave predictably, if we say we're going to pick you up we arrive on time) is a respite for him.

Third, I have always loved his gentle touch with younger kids but it has dimension I didn't appreciate before. He volunteers at the hospital, where he plays with little kids who've just had surgery. He soothes and plays with my baby nephew like an experienced nanny. He is generous and gentle with his friends' younger siblings, letting them come over and borrow his things. I always assumed that this nurturing streak must reflect the way he cared for his brother. But I see now that it has a quality of atonement. He isn't capable of expressing that gentle side with his own brother: a deep, cutting irony. My guess is that he feels he failed when they were young and bad things happened. At the same time, he believes that, had his younger brother been a different, better child, things wouldn't have been so hard.

I often think with T. that nothing is all good and nothing is all bad. There is pain and anger in his good behavior: if I'm perfect, then people will see that and finally love me. There is honesty and resourcefulness in his bad behavior: see, this is who I really am and this is how I get by - how ya like me now? He intended for this weekend to be about the first part of that dichotomy, to impress himself and his birth mom with his generosity. It turned out to be about the second part, about showing us who he really is and where he comes from.

All weekend, he's been checking my eyes. While he's on the phone with his birth mom, while he's haranguing his brother, or threatening to punch him out, or twitching with frustration as if he's got a bad case of emotional hives, he keeps checking my face. His expression, a half-smile with a wince, is hard to describe. It's part claustrophobia, part desperation, part humor, part shame. Most of all it's a very intense question mark. "What's happening to me?" I spent a lot of the weekend just looking back at him with an expression that I recall. It's the way my mom used to look at us when we had the stomach flu. It means: Nothing is wrong. I'm here and it's okay. This moment will pass.

BFD

2010-07-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

So see previous post, where I expected this weekend to suck big apples. It didn’t take long for the BFD to kick on (birth family drama).

1:30 Younger brother arrives T. covers his face with his hands, yells “get away from me” when his brother tries to hug him. Looks at me and says “Can you buy him some clothes?! Look what he’s wearing!” Younger brother looks at me with his gentle smile, a little bit of heartbreak in his eyes.

1:32 Younger brother says to T. “Have you talked to mom?” T. says no, she isn’t speaking to him right now (she stopped speaking to him four months ago because he was visiting some other relatives he grew up with and didn’t go to visit her). Neither boy has ever lived with her, and T. only met her for the first time when he was around twelve. Younger brother turns to me and says “I told her I didn’t want to live with her and she told me to get out of her house and I haven’t talked to her since.”

“It’s good that you’re able to talk about what you want, even if it’s not what she wants to hear,” I say. “I know you guys will be close again some day.” I’m about to pat myself on the back for finding anything to say at all, when T. ruins the moment: “NO! She’s got problems!” he yells.

2:00 we go across the street to get McDonalds for the boys and return to find that T. has phoned their mom and left her a message. In turn, she called back and left an angry insulting message on his voicemail. He’s wound up, in the high-anxiety trauma place he goes when he panics. He wants to play the voicemail for me but finds he deleted it. I suggest that he let things go and focus on enjoying the time with his brother. He walks away – he’s not listening.

It suddenly dawns on me. That’s what this visit is about. He wanted to have his brother over so that he could show his mom that he’s a good son, and that he’s keeping the family together. Then maybe she won’t be mad at him anymore. Oh crap.

2:10 I go in the tv room to find T. has called his mom again. “Just listen to me!” I hear him saying. “Stop yelling! Can we at least come visit you? We’re here together.” I stop in my tracks. She hangs up on him. I quietly wave him into the other room.

2:11 I try explaining in a quiet loving way that we aren't going to take the boys to see their mom this weekend – although I’ve spoken with her on the phone, I haven’t met her. I don’t know whether younger brother is allowed unsupervised visits with mom, and T. hasn’t seen her in years. The situation is too volatile today because he and his mom are upset. I try to say all this without implying any disrespect or unwillingness to facilitate a visit some other time when we’ve all had a chance to plan it together. Of course, T. shuts it down, tells me he’s not listening to me, it’s none of my business, and he means me no disrespect, but he doesn’t want to hear my input on this topic. He storms out.

2:30 Tim gets both boys playing video games. By sitting his considerable presence between them, he’s able to get them off the phone and settled down a bit. If the first hour of this weekend is any indication, I’m going to need a week to recover.

I generally have a ton of compassion for T.’s birth mom. But today, I’m out of patience. I feel like telling her that these boys are not her boyfriends. They are children. They aren’t equipped to play this game with her where she accuses them of not loving her enough, leaves them nasty voicemail messages and hangs up on them when they call. It’s not fair at all to expect them to chase her and win her over. She wasn’t there, and they needed to survive and they have done the best they can. If she would free them to feel good about that, it would do them a whole bunch of good.

T.’s younger brother is the one with the more obvious behavioral symptoms. But it’s T. who, because he has a capacity to deeply repress things and extraordinary skills that make him high functioning in many respects, is far more volatile than his brother. His younger brother shows his pain on the surface and a lot of people help him through it. T. keeps his buried deep inside and when it bubbles to the surface – when his life catches up with him – he unravels and gets completely manic. He tends to be an utter control freak even on good days, and the chaos of his relationship with his birth mom pushes his controlling tendencies right over the edge. He tries to use his cognitive skills to solve the problem on his own and he can’t. It won’t ever be fixed. As that dawns on him, you can see him swept up in a vortex of horror as he realizes that all that pain didn’t go away after all – it’s sitting right there waiting for him.

P.S.
3:06 An old friend of Tim's calls out of the blue. His art framing shop is overwhelmed with business and he wants to offer T. a job for the rest of the summer. The mood lightens. T., excited by the prospect of making money, comes back to the present. I am flooded with gratitude. Kindness and support in parenting T. come from the most unexpected places and at the oddest times.

Parenting Kids Who Parent

2010-07-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

So this is the weekend T.’s brother comes to visit. As happens from time to time, it turns out my intuition on this has been mostly wrong so far – or at least one-dimensional.

I thought T. might secretly want his brother to come and live with us. At the moment, I think he’d like nothing less.

It started like this. I said something like “What shall we do when your brother is here?” And T. said something like “Shut up and don’t talk to me right now!”

Interesting. I tried again “I thought we could plan something fun for his birthday and it would help me to know what you have in mind.”

“It’s up to him,” he said. He went in the other room and sent me a text message. It read “goodbye.”

He is generally a sensitive and responsive, if strong-willed, kid. It’s unusual for him to shut something down so completely, or to be so abrupt. It actually struck me as funny, which perhaps says something about my ill sense of humor.

Tim and I gave it a few days, then tried again. We started with logistics. “So we got permission to pick your brother up at his group home on Saturday. What time do you want to head out there?”

“I’m not going,” he said.

“Okay, wait a minute. You INVITED him, right? Do you still want him to visit?” I asked. He said yes. Mistaking his refusal to do the drive for common teenage laziness, I said “You absolutely are going with us to pick him up. He’s your brother and he doesn’t know us very well. It’s his birthday and he’ll be happy to see you.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ll stay home and clean the house to get things ready.”

An offer to clean? MOST unusual. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” he said. “He bugs me! He really bugs me! Just DO NOT make me go pick him up!” He started pacing, making tiny tight circles on the floor.

I laughed. “Well, great, now I understand a little bit better. It sounds like he’s annoying to you.”

“He’s so annoying! You don’t even know. Sometimes I even want to hit him.”

I said, “Well, yeah, that’s pretty normal. This is going to be an interesting weekend. Let’s come up with some ideas for things to do so he doesn’t get on your nerves.”

“I don’t have to entertain him,” he said. “He can just be here and do stuff. I don’t have to do everything with him.”

Uh oh. I got an inkling. After all, T. has recently mastered the art of having a social life of his own - something he was mostly unable to cultivate in his many years in foster care. “But you will be here this weekend, right?” I asked. “I mean, you’re not planning to go hang out with friends, right?”

“Um,” he said. “I’m NOT going to just be here in the house with him. I'm a teen. I need to get out and do things. And he makes me REALLY MAD. I’m not his parent and I don’t have to take care of him all the time. I did that. I had to take care of me AND him when we went to foster. He gotta do things for himself now.”

Well, there it is. There are these moments when he says something – usually when he thinks he’s ranting and raving in a sort of casual bratty way when these nuggets of pure truth pop out. You just feel it in your gut. Bingo.

“Oh!” I said. “So let me see if I get this right. You had to take care of him for a long time and you were just a kid yourself and it must have been really hard. And probably you felt like you had to be a parent and you didn't want to. So now you want to make sure you don't have to be the parent again.”

“Yeaaaaaaaah!” he exclaimed.

I said, “Okay, great. We’re the parents here, right? So he’s coming to visit, and you’re going to be kind to him. But you're right, you don't have to act like his parent. You have your own life. We'll be here and we'll be in charge.”

Home run. A flood of relief. Singing, dancing. Came and flopped on our bed and wouldn’t stop talking at bedtime. Next morning we both got huge bear hugs before breakfast. Crazy love.

This is so counter-intuitive. I know it sounds like I’m letting him get away with murder. I know he’s being slightly cruel to his brother and we’ll have to manage that. I know he’s being outrageously impolite. But I also know it’s the right thing to do in the way I know most things with him, right deep in the middle of me for no rational reason.

We’re buying a cake and an iPod Shuffle for his brother and wrapping it up with a card with T.’s name on it. I feel like we’re supposed to take away the burden of parenting, grease a sticky emotional situation with a good present and a cake and a sleepover. And the whole weekend will very likely suck big apples. But in the big picture, this is exactly what he needs – he needs to experience the common order of hierarchy in the family where everything isn’t his fault and his responsibility. He dreamed of this and longed for it for a long time and almost got too old to get a chance to turn over the burden of parental responsibility to actual parents. But he managed to get himself some proper parents and by god, he’s going to grab every minute he can get to be the kid. He's going to be jealous and immature and express his guilt and sadness about what happened in their early lives in really awkward ways, and that's okay, because it's the best he can do, and it's a whole lot better than the overly compliant, parentified, repressed kid he used to be.

But this weekend is still going to suck big apples.

Fun

2010-07-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

There are so many meaningful things to say about being a foster/adoptive parent to a teenager, but its also just really fun:

- I currently have a command of the lyrics to popular songs that defies most members of my demographic.

- It's fun living with someone who still watches cartoons but also knows how to read a subway map and navigate in the car.

- Thanks to T., I can do the dougie and the charlie brown, and I even invented my own dance move, which I call "the scarecrow".

- I love Monday nights when we go to the movies in our matching pajamas that T. bought for us for Christmas.

- I really like shopping with him. He has great taste and his teenage obsession with switching up his style now and then is great fun. Adults should try it more often.

- When he's happy and wants to show it, he tickles my feet, bites my nose, or pulls on my hair. I grew up an eldest and I'm not used to being teased. It makes me feel great.

- I am a total jock, and I finally have a live-in competitor who keeps me striving. So far this year I broke one finger playing football with him and another when we took snowboarding lessons; we also tried surfing, rockclimbing, bowling, hiking and this summer we've planned to try indoor skydiving and waterskiing.

- I know how to play Fight Night, Madden 10 and Wii tennis now.

- Taken with the right amount of humor and distance, the ups and downs of teen social life are like having a soap opera play out right in your own home.

- We always have Doritos and ice cream in the house now.

I think there's a lot written about the difficulties of fostering and adopting teenagers and perhaps not so much about the joys. I'd love to hear from some other parents about what you do for fun.

Brothers

2010-06-27T17:11:00.001-07:00

One thing we learned pretty quickly is that sibling relationships can be really complicated for kids who've been in the system for a long time. According to the official record we received when we began weekend visits with T. a year ago, he is the eldest of two siblings. But according to T., he is the middle child of five, four of whom have been raised in foster care since birth.

And of course, T.'s version is the true version. (Technically, they are all half-siblings, since they have different fathers, but that hardly matters as they consider themselves brothers.) When social services took T. from his extended family when he was small, they took him along with his closest sibling who was living in the same home at the time. So in the official record, he became one of two, rather than the third of five. Social services didn't bother recording the fact that his birth mom had three other children - she was nowhere in the picture at the time and the social worker probably didn't even have a way of knowing about her other children. But of course, the birth relatives with whom he is in contact have told him of his other siblings and, despite having met them only once in his life, he considers them all something of a set.

Bringing people together is in his nature. When we recognized this and complimented him on it and made explicit that we would help facilitate his unifying instinct, he responded with great warmth and gratitude. It's a huge part of his identity. Given his history (sixteen foster placements in fifteen years), keeping in touch with his people (friends, family, extended family) is a very big deal. Anything that frustrates that instinct is a source of anxiety for him; anything that facilitates that instinct settles and soothes him.

His younger brother is coming for an overnight visit in two weeks. He lives in a group home. He's on juvenile probation for taking a kitchen knife to school because he was being bullied. He has serious behavioral and developmental challenges. T. invited him for an overnight to celebrate his fourteenth birthday without asking me first. I knew at the time the only possible response was "Fantastic. I'm going to call his social worker and his group home and make sure we have all the permissions we need in order to make that happen. I'd hate for him to be disappointed in any way on his birthday. Let's discuss the particulars together before we get any further." They want to go see a cousin in a nearby town. It's not clear whether she welcomes the visit. Everything about it is epically complicated.

We don't have both boys because T. didn't want to be placed or adopted along with his brother. He asked to be placed for adoption separately. His reasons are hard to explain and easy to understand. He tried to raise this brother for many years, from the time he was around four until the time he was around ten. In that time, they were both molested, physically abused, cycled through numerous foster homes, and finally the younger sibling was taken to a separate placement. When we talk about T.'s history, he often speaks in terms of "we" - what happened to him happened to his brother. To summarize what I intuit to be his feelings on the matter, I'd say he has tremendous survivor guilt, he torments himself about his brother's well-being, and yet he knows that, at least for a time, in order to develop himself he needs to be separate from his brother, so that he can finally be a child rather than a child-parent.

T. tells me that his next tattoo will read "My Brother's Keeper." If you've ever watched a child parent another child, you know how tragic it is to listen to him talk to his brother on the phone. He puts on a stern authoritarian air and counsels his brother with what he must imagine is fatherly wisdom, and it makes him sound so, so young.

So yes, this visit is a very big deal. I expect his brother to feel heartbroken seeing T. at home with us, in circumstances so different than the harsh environment of his group home. I half expect that in the mid-term, T. will propose that his younger brother come to live with us. I am hardly prepared for that, and yet there is only one possible way to respond: yes, of course, let's do some visits and see what we can work out. If T. feels that our home is a suitable safe place for his younger brother, there is really no deeper indication of trust. There is no way to say no. He is our child, and in some sense, his brother is his child and we will just have to stretch that far, if he asks. In an ideal world, I'd love for the county to find a foster family placement for his brother nearby, so that we could bring the boys together with the benefit of two sets of parents, one each. They deserve that intensive, exclusive parenting after what they've been through. But the realities of foster care are about as far away as one can get from an ideal world.

Parenting Child Survivors

2010-06-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've hesitated to write about this topic for fear of exposing confidences. But this blog has deliberately been made anonymous, I don't share it with people who interact with us firsthand, and I want it to be a place where other parents of traumatized kids can find some common threads. So I'm going to try to address this.

I want to share some thoughts about parenting a teenage survivor of sexual abuse. I think there is way too little said about this issue, given the sheer number of people (one in three children, by some estimates) who are survivors of sexual abuse. Frankly, some of the training we got as we were getting our license to foster/adopt was misleading and barely touched on the things a kid like T. goes through.

Like many children who weren't adequately protected growing up, T. was subject to multiple forms of abuse not only by his primary parent, but also by other adults who surrounded her. Her parenting skills were so compromised that he was unprotected and therefore vulnerable to many misfortunes.

His history of sexual abuse didn't appear anywhere in his (already harrowing) case history and he never shared it with a social worker or foster parent. (I would advise potential foster/adoptive parents of children coming from severely traumatic backgrounds to assume there is a lot that isn't in the child's official record.)

I think the number one thing a kid like T. is checking for as they gradually disclose what happened to them is: Will you feel differently about me because of this? Do you think I did something wrong? He is also looking for compassion as he struggles through the aftermath in the best way he knows how. He is saying "I do the things I do for a reason, and I need you to understand."

Knowing what happened to him helps us better understand his physical boundaries. We let him come to us and dictate how we would share affection - tickling and bear-hugging contests were his earliest solutions to how to get close without giving up control. Grooming is also very important - helping each other touch up a hairline, for example. Those are respectful, manageable ways to be physically close, things that he associates with care. He is working out how and when he likes to touch at his own pace. Lately, he flops on our bed at night when he feels like chatting. Coming into our room and lying down on our bed is a big step and you can see in his eyes that he is experimenting with this new lowering of boundaries and find that it's not only safe, but very fun and funny to boot. He tests intimacy and physical affection like a scientist, making studied experiments and processing data before returning for more forays into family life.

Knowing what he's been through also helps us better address other parenting issues, like substance abuse. I think all parenting is a balancing act between guiding behavior and nurturing underlying needs. I find that in grappling with substance abuse, it's easy to become all about policing behavior. As we've learned more about his past, we've been better able to understand why he's drawn to numbing experiences and things that help him relax and dissociate. It's not too hard to understand why, when nobody listened to him as a child, he eventually grew into an adolescent with a weakness for anything that will help him forget. He is very brave for actively remembering now, and sometimes it's overwhelming and he retreats to old unhealthy behaviors that nevertheless feel like familiar friends to him.

A certain type of person reminds him of a perpetrator, and we try to gently redirect him when someone triggers a trauma response, stepping between him and someone who makes him feel unsafe. We've learned that means taking a stronger hand in determining his teachers, among other things. We never question why he wears three layers of clothes in even the hottest weather - there are good reasons for that. I make sure his clean laundry always includes all three layers - he has rules about what he wears on top of what.

I think adolescent boys sometimes process the experience of abuse and its aftermath through the lens of their emerging masculine identity. I see T. fretting over whether he is strong, whether he should have done more to stop what happened to him and his younger brother. I see that he feels unspoken anxiety about sex and at the same time, he feels pressured by other boys and men to express sexual confidence. He wonders if what happened to him "changed him" in some way. By way of helping, I try to be very straightforward, positive and informative about sex, to balance some shame and confusion that linger for him. We try to be proactive rather than reactive, chatting often about issues like consent, safe sex, and intimacy. The car is our Camp David for sex talk.

The adoption process itself can exacerbate his struggles. T. really wanted to be adopted, but he was told by social workers that he probably wouldn't find adoptive parents, because people want babies and younger kids. He is smart, and he understood that potential adoptive parents are looking for kids "without problems." That played into his shame and guilt about what happened to him. It caused him to suppress his child-like tendencies and put himself under enormous stress as he tried to hide all his "problems" in order to get adopted. What a hideous thing, to be made to feel like you have to mask your pain in order to be a "desirable" child.

Parenting an older child (we started the adoption process at 15) with this kind of abuse history, is beautiful and rewarding. My partner and I are the consummate amateur parents. Aren't all parents amateurs? I believe in the power of amateurs. A child like T. knows the difference between a professional who is paid to treat him and a volunteer parent who just loves him like crazy and does their best for that reason.

There is also tremendous grief in parenting him and I imagine that is to be expected for any parent of a traumatized child. I feel deeply sad that I wasn't there earlier, that I can't do anything to take away the pain of what already happened. Although it's not rational, in some sense I feel like I neglected him by not arriving in his life on time. It's part of the crazy bottomless love of being his parent. I feel hugely sad that there is no perfect thing I can say or do when he confides in me to make it go away. It's not that I don't see the value in listening and responding with compassion. But I'd be lying if I said that I ever feel like it's enough. When he mourns, I mourn.

Lest anyone who is thinking about adopting an older child be deterred, I can also say that the conversations I've had with T. about his history have been the most honest and profound in my life. Kids like T. have shouldered incredible burdens, and survived shocking things. Surely, sometimes their minds and hearts break under the stress of what they've endured and professional help can be critical. But they are not a clinical problem to solve; there is so much more than that to be done and so much reward in doing it. Becoming a "chosen family" together makes me aware of the better parts of being human like never before.

I love the Hemingway quote "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places." In part because of what he's been through, T. is deeper, more considerate, more articulate, more emotionally intelligent than any teenager I've ever met. When he decides to tell us something that he thinks we need to know, his self-possession and introspection take my breath away. I never feel "sorry for him" - his greatest fear. I always feel awe, and a great deal of humility and respect. There are lots of kids who, in clinical terms, are "healthy" whom I find materialistic, narcissistic and boring. T. struggles with depths of pain beyond what most adults I know have endured and, among other things, it produces in him an extraordinary wellspring of compassion and soulfulness.

I think as a culture we have strange ideas about childhood, and we tend to feel frightened by children who have been hurt and who have special needs as a result. But a child, like T, who has been hurt and still seeks and builds relationships with adults who will listen and understand is the most wonderfully innocent child in the world.

Some Good Weekend Reading

2010-06-04T21:37:00.001-07:00

I read an excellent article by Heather Forbes titled "Issues Facing Adoptive Mothers of Children with Special Needs." I nodded so hard my neck got sore.

If you have time, I highly recommend reading it.

Here are a few tidbits from their survey of adoptive mothers of special needs kids that really resonated for me:

- Traumatized children may first perceive the adoptive parents’ love, not as a reward, but
rather as coercive and frightening. The child then works to attain safety through avoidance of the relationship the parents are working to develop.

- Of the mothers who were married, 100 percent of them agreed, and most strongly agreed, that their child targeted them more than he or she did the father.

- Adoptive parents were often dissatisfied with the (post-adoption) services available and used their own resources and experiences to educate the professionals who were supposed to be helping them.

- Many Americans still consider adoption as a second best to having children by birth. This prevailing mindset continues to leave adoptive parents to experience social stigmatization in their everyday lives.

- Several of the mothers identified their social service agency that placed the child as one of the most prevalent sources of adoption stress. One mother stated that social services ‘made it as hard as possible’. Another mother stated that it took almost two years to uncover the history of her child.

- In the area of grief and loss, an overwhelming percentage [of adoptive mothers] (79%) felt sad for not being able to protect and nurture their child before the adoption, indicating
that the mothers do experience the pain of not being available to their children prior to being adopted.

- Eighty-six percent stated that they have become better persons since the adoption of their child.

- ...[I]ndividual and family counseling services for special needs adoptions were less than adequate...possibly due to the fact that families who seek these services often experience difficult behavioral problems not easily remedied by any kind of intervention.

A great and thorough piece of writing on a little-understood topic that should be of great concern to anyone looking to support permanency for older children needing parents.

No-Strings-Attached Parenting

2010-06-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, I wrote about "no strings attached" parenting: trying to remind myself that I have no claim on T.'s feelings, and need to parent him steadily no matter what he gives back. I'm still knocking this train of thought around, holding it up to the light to see what's up with it.

Here's my new thought: maybe parenting with no emotional strings attached is particularly important with severely abused kids, because so often abusers have sought to control their thoughts and emotions earlier in life. Maybe they need safe space to learn how to have their own feelings - and to learn that feelings won't kill you.

When I listen to T.'s stories, it sounds to me like the adults who mistreated him had emotional objectives. They craved whatever state they felt they could achieve by using him to their ends. Maybe they wanted to feel powerful, or relieve stress and self-hatred by raging at a child. Maybe they lacked emotional self-control, and that was amplified by substance abuse. In any case, it sounds as if there was no distance between internal objectives and external rules - "rules" were made up on the spot in order to justify abuse. Listening to his descriptions of what happened in his early childhood, I feel utterly suffocatingly claustrophobic.

Moreover, I think he was so overwhelmed as a young kid - with hurt, shame, shock and loneliness as he cycled in and out of relative and foster homes - that simply HAVING feelings feels potentially life-threatening to him, as if he might fall into a bottomless well of unhappiness.

So I think in this musing about no-strings parenting, I'm trying to check myself, to be sure that I'm not pressuring him to give me something back for my own self-satisfaction. I want to leave open space for him to think and feel...whatever, when he's ready. I want to ask him to observe certain guidelines regarding what he DOES, but assert no restrictions or expectations of what he should FEEL.

This came up recently in family therapy because in one of his temperamental moments, T. told us that he wasn't sure he could abide by our rules and he thought maybe he should return to foster care. We were very calm and said, "No problem. You're welcome to talk to your social worker about that." I knew at the time that it was a test, and also an authentic expression of pent-up emotion: the alienation and anxiety that are a natural result of the adoption process. I wanted him to have room to air that and understand that the world wouldn't end.

Later in therapy, we went over it together. The counselor likened our relationship with T. to the early stages of marriage, and I think that's apt. On the one hand, "getting adopted" is supposed to be cause for joyous celebration, and T. avidly pursued adoption as a way out of what he saw as the depressing realities of long term foster care. On the other hand, it's a HUGE adjustment, acclimating to new parents and new expectations at the age of 15 or 16. So who wouldn't have a mix of strong feelings?

When T. was a young child, he learned that it was never okay to be mad, or to speak rudely, or to have a bratty meltdown. The abusive parent's moods ruled over everything, and subsumed everything, and the child catered to the adult. Foster care, unfortunately, reinforced the lesson that he must keep his feelings under wraps; he and his brother were both turned out of one home after years for being argumentative and disrespectful. So it's no wonder that today, he regularly denies having feelings. He was not allowed to develop a habit of expressing his feelings and learning how to do so within reasonable limits. Healing means giving ample space for him to be mad, rude, selfish and bratty. He may not hurt himself or someone else, but beyond that, most other things are okay and his internal state is his right. I want open communication, reasonable compliance, and general kindness - but I don't need him to feel a certain way.

It's so interesting to watch him learn this lesson. He looks deeply into my eyes when he's got strong feelings, and I often have the sense that he's trying to figure out if I'm making him feel the way he does, or if I'm feeling the same way he's feeling. I look back and try to help him understand by my expression that I'm not controlling his feelings, and by the same token, he isn't controlling mine. He's having his own feelings. And I'm not going to stop him. We aren't puppets ruled by a common master. It's the beauty of being human.

Sorry

2010-05-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

Oh what a funny duckie is T.

After a rough week and some rather steady decline in behavior since last month he came to family meeting tonight in a gentle mood. We wrote out an agenda. He grabbed the pen and added his two cents but kept his agenda item covered up. When it came his turn, he looked down at his notes and read his agenda item in a bashful voice: "Apology."

Apology is a concept he learned recently. Last week I wasn't being my best parent self and I let an argument with him go unresolved - I cut short a conversation and didn't return to finish it before bedtime as I try to do. I was just too exasperated with his escalating behavior at school and the chaos of it all. So the next day I texted him "I want to apologize. I should have come back and talked out our disagreement. Please forgive me. Let's make up later."

I saw him after school and he looked at me so oddly and said "I don't understand why you are apologizing?" I said, "Because we try to talk things out before bed and I left you hanging. I shouldn't have done that." He gave a surprised laugh.

So tonight he came with his own apology. He's sorry that he has been getting high after school. He wants to do what we ask, but he's having trouble resisting temptation. Consequences aren't really working for us right now - our life was turning into an unholy mess of consequences upon consequences. So I just probed for a little more information.

"Do you know why you smoke marijuana?" (we talk about this all the time, but it never hurts to see what today's answer is going to be.)

Awkward silence.

"Do you enjoy the way weed gives you a chance to hang out with certain friends and be cool and have a certain image?"

"No."

"Is it the effect it has on your thoughts?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me a little bit about why you started smoking more frequently? You were doing really well getting that under control since you moved in with us. It seems like something changed."

Tentative, "I don't know. I guess I just like it."

"Oh really? That's interesting. It seems like something changed around spring break."

Here we got some adorably bad acting - totally fake gesture as if to suggest a new thought had just occurred to him. Then he said in a very soft voice, "Oh, there is this one thing. I think maybe it was when my mom stopped talking to me. She won't call me back anymore."

And there it is. I know kids can be manipulative, but sometimes you just know in your gut that the kid just spit out a kernel of pure truth and things suddenly make more sense. We have been struggling to figure out how to explain his recent spate of unusually angry behavior. Of course!

Mom is mad at him because around spring break (at his request) we took him to see the cousin who raised him for several years, and his mother found out and felt jealous. Complicated. I won't go into the whole backstory. Suffice it to say his mom has five kids who all grew up in foster care and none of them have ever spent a single night with her.

I told him that I respect his mom, because he came from her. And that I know how much it hurts when your mom isn't talking to you. And that I wanted him to know that it isn't his fault that she's angry. He listened. I asked if I could do anything to help. He said no. Then he squealed "This is like therapy! Don't ask me any more questions! Can I go play video games?"

The change was immediate. His eyes are warm. He's more relaxed and playful. He asked to go back to the gym - one of his coping strategies that he's been dodging lately.

We'll go through cycles like this for as long as he's with us, I'm sure, and substance abuse is a bitch. But I sure do appreciate the tiny bit of self awareness he's achieved.

On on unrelated note, here's another funny and some recommended reading.

My dad gave me Nurture Shock for my birthday. A short while later, T. and I were having an argument. I said, "I don't want to argue with you." He freaked and said "I hate it when you say that! I'm not arguing - I'm trying to talk to you!" I said, "You know, you're right. My dad gave me this book for my birthday. There's a chapter in the book about teenagers and it says that teenagers' brains are different. Sometimes what adults think of as an argument is just their way of saying something important. So the book recommends that you hear them out." Moment of stunned silence, then a HUGE grin spread over his face. "YES!" he yelled. "Thank you! And now Tim needs to read that book too!"

Doing the Best He Can

2010-05-21T18:10:00.001-07:00

No week is easy with T., though they have a certain amusing rhythm, but this one just kinda sucked.

I've written often about T.'s ability to bond, which is extraordinary in a child with his background. He has a strong capacity (and even longing) for intimacy at home. Building and maintaining that bond is a first priority for us. It can make life at home a lot of fun. However, when we're all out in the world going about our daily business, outside our family life, things get messy. T.'s ability to bond does not extend to adults outside his most intimate circle.

This shows up in a pattern of defiance at school and he has conflicts with every male teacher he's encountered in the time I've known him. For a hurt child with PTSD whose been through 16 homes, school is a horror shop of noise, chaos, inconsistent authority, lax structure, social anxiety and occasional threats of physical violence.

His vulnerability does not, of course, manifest as such. It shows up as what I call peacock behavior - busting out the colors. The first time I attended his parent/teacher conference, I hardly recognized the kid that some of his teachers were describing - a defiant show off who pushes buttons. Then I realized that the teachers who describe this "other" T are all men, and tend to be the ones whose approach to discipline is to challenge him in front of other kids or threaten punishment they don't necessarily deliver. They trigger his most difficult behaviors. He doesn't even know what's happening - they set off a physical, limbic reaction in him.

All this leaves T. in a highly stressed state much of the time and he self-medicates by smoking - marijuana when he can get it, and it appears one can readily purchase it in the hallway between classes. The school is so short-staffed that lunch and break periods have turned into an anarchic sort of bazaar of vices. (And this high school is in the top 3 in the entire county.) So we are addressing that too, and it kicks his already tenuous situation at school up a whole other notch.

None of this is new, and we were more or less prepared for this when we started this whole journey. And I love him so much through it all. The thing I'm learning is that it's necessary to settle in to the rhythm of it - to stop responding to the drama and turmoil of the school week as a series of crises and just accept that it's where we are right now. I need to be a fierce advocate but I also need to maintain the endurance to advocate for him for a long time, so I need to weed out any desperation or self-deception that creep in. That's essential to my own well-being, of course. But achieving that resilience is also necessary in order to show him that we accept where he's at right now, and while we insist on a few really important rules and expectations, we never, ever change our minds about him. That's hard to do when you're exhausted.

Mary the Mom turned me on to a writer who said something so memorable. "Assume that the child is doing the best he can." To be honest, some days, I recite that to myself and think "Oh wow, really?" And he is. He absolutely is. He gets up and goes to school every day and mostly goes to his classes and he either gets As or Fs. He frequently acts out such that he is nailed for "cleanup in lieu of suspension" which in my book means "let the troubled kids substitute for janitorial staff because we don't really want to deal with them." And this is the best he can do right now. So my job is to talk to continue to get him to therapy, to talk to his counselors and the principals and vice principals and deans and teachers and try to work out the right equation for him so "the best he can do" can eventually grow just a little bit better.

We have an upcoming summit that we requested with one of the vice principals and his counselor. His intellect needs to be fed and challenged, and his anxiety needs to be soothed. He ought to be in a special school for kids with unusual emotional needs and behavioral challenges. He needs teachers who are cognizant that they are dealing with a CHILD, not a man, and that he will give back what he sees reflected in their eyes. Finding that in a large urban public high school system is tough.

It's Mah Birthday

2010-05-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday and I'm feeling reflective.

I always wanted to be a foster/adoptive mom to a teenager. Then I turned 35, and right around the time other people's biological clocks start to chime, the impetus acquired a momentum of its own.

I think it's just part of who I have always been. I went to a strict Catholic grammar school and in fourth grade, we had to do a presentation in the parish hall. About 80% of the class went with anti-abortion presentations. My best friend and I went a different route. We had a three-part posterboard with cartoon illustrations that we obtained from a local social worker - the "dos" and "don'ts" of child-rearing. The right panel advertised in large type the various hotline phone numbers for abused kids. My dad still jokes about the sideways looks he got from the other parents, but he proudly saved that posterboard for a long time.

So I guess it's not too surprising that I grew up and wanted to do this kind of parenting. Still, actually becoming T.'s parent has been a long, hard slog. Before him, I loved people and I was loved, but I didn't really believe in profound, life-altering commitment the way I do now. Our connection with him was like a bolt of lightening. Just under a year ago, we were volunteering at some stupid dog rescue event in Torrance, and I looked up and there was this boy, so tall and solemn and utterly withdrawn and the three of us fell into an uncanny synchronicity. It was like he had a beacon inside him sending out an unspoken message: "It's me!" On the basis of nothing other than this irrational hunch, we pursued our foster license, did five months of weekend visits while he bounced through two other foster homes, and finally wrangled DCFS into placing him with us. Keeping up the connection to him while navigating that process was like trying to keep your eye on a feather in the midst of a hurricane. But T. kept transmitting his signal, and we kept believing in him for whatever mysterious reason.

Tomorrow, the children's court hears his six-month placement review. The report going to the court contains one simple statement from an interview DCFS did with T.: "I like it here and I want to stay." The report recommends adoption (which has always been our goal, but you have to do six months of foster care before the court will consider moving forward with adoption in a case like T.'s), and we're likely to get a date now in adoption court a few months from now.

I'm not a perfect parent - in fact I'm very bad at it sometimes. And T. is not an easy kid - he has oddities and challenges that come from having been through 15 different homes before ours. I might fail him. I might be broken-hearted when he leaves home. I might foster/adopt several more kids. Or he might be the only one, and we might be close for the rest of our lives. I don't know. But if I died tomorrow, I'd be satisfied that I did this one small thing, however imperfectly

I really do feel that way.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T20:19:00.001-07:00

I had a most unexpected Mother's Day surprise. T. stumbled in to the living room early this morning with his hands hidden behind his back, then held out a card and mumbled "Happy Mother's Day." The ornate pink card included a simple handwritten note that said, "Thanks for everything. With love." Then he ordered me to go back to bed while he and Tim prepared pancakes. He brought the pancakes in and sat at the foot of my bed while we had breakfast and lounged around reading gossip magazines.

Since he's my first kid, I've never had a Mother's Day card before. Since he's been through 16 previous homes before landing with us, I didn't expect Mother's Day to fit into his realm of norm. And since this time last year I didn't even know him, I hardly thought he'd be serving me brunch in bed already. It's been a tough week, so it was a particularly sweet moment. (I find that parenting him often feels like a cupcake of struggle with a layer of delectable love frosting on top, and that's what this week turned out to be.)

He also picked out cards for his birth mom and for the cousin who raised him for several years before he was taken away from her. Even though his birth mom isn't speaking to him, he called and read the card to her answering machine, and did the same for his cousin.

I'm honored to share Mother's Day with his other mothers. It's kind of like being part of a relay race, with T. as the precious baton. It's confusing and difficult sometimes to figure out where we fit in relation to his birth family and previous caregivers, but it's sweet and humbling too. His connection to each of them is part of the equation that explains why he's been able to attach to us as strongly as he has.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you "other mothers" out there who coax, compell, urge, tug, propell, carry, drive and persuade traumatized kids forward toward the finish line of childhood and beyond.

Neutrality

2010-05-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

One of the things I find somewhat difficult about parenting an older traumatized kid is identifying and subsuming my own emotional agenda. Which isn't to say that I'm not emotionally invested in parenting him. But I find myself expending a fair amount of energy tucking my own (sometimes frayed) emotional edges out of the way before I dig in to do the hard stuff with him.

He needs intense parenting, which is to say, he needs focused exclusive unconditional attention. I can ask him for compliance, cooperation, and communication. But I can't ask him for love or gratitude - I have no claim on how he feels. What we do as his parents needs to be done regardless of whether he seems to appreciate it. It's like being a pair of headlights. I think our job is to be a strong, steady beam of light shining brightly on his path to help him see. We can't just flicker our lights at him and then disappear into darkness to see if he responds. We basically have to follow him around and light him up wherever he is. Tim did that yesterday - T. had gone awol, and Tim actually tracked him right up to the street corner where he was hanging out, and hit him with that spotlight of parental supervision and guided him home. Had he done it in anger, T. would have freaked. But he did it with the detached bemusement and calm of a sports refereee and T. didn't even really object - I think he was more surprised than anything else. Nobody has bothered to keep track of him for most of his childhood.

The second reason for keeping a lid on personal emotional needs is that he simply is not capable of a mature reciprocal relationship right now. He didn't get that early childhood experience of being the object of someone else's exclusive devoted attention, and that has to come first. He is quick to think that he must be "good" in order to be loved, and since he can't be "good", he must be unlovable. I don't think a person can give until they believe they have something to give. This must be common with abused and abandoned children. I see him reaching for an explanation for why nobody "kept" him during his early childhood, and the most readily available conclusion for his child-mind is that he must have been a bad person. So the pressure of reciprocity is too much for him - he isn't sure anybody wants what he has to give back.

And my third thought about why raising a traumatized kid isn't an emotional two way street has to do with the need for total consistency. My partner is a musician, and he always says that without the rigid structure of musical scales and notes, there would be no framework within which to create music. I think T.'s life is like that. Without a tight, predictable structure, he experiences anxiety and chaos, not freedom or creativity. Providing adequate structure means saying and doing the same things over and over again regardless of how tired or frustrated or excited or angry we might feel. It means writing down the rules, explaining them, then enforcing them over and over and over in the same exact way, in the same quiet voice, in the same few words, with the same warm facial expression. The difference to me between discipline and punishment has a lot to do with the emotional state of the person doing the disciplining or punishing; I try to feel the difference between asserting consequences in order to relieve my own frustration versus asserting consequences in order to provide predictability for T.

It's freaking hard! I've gotten incredibly attuned to the physical symptoms of my own feelings. When I feel adrenalin in my stomach, I know I'm getting angry and I need to calm down before I speak to T. When I feel my heart beat rising, I know I'm feeling frightened or out of control and I need to mellow out so I can project confidence and authority. When T. looks at me, I have to soften my eyes, even if he's driving me absolutely nuts, because he's looking to see if I've finally decided he's "bad" enough to give him back.

I don't know how you build this kind of emotional fitness and self-control. I find reading really helpful. When I'm about to pull my hair out, I often go to the computer and google crazy combinations of words until I find something apt. I google crazy things, like "foster kids fear of abandonment" and "at risk teens discipline consistency". So to all of you who write about parenting traumatized kids, thank you so much. I feel like we're a small virtual community that helps to train each other in the rules of an odd and important game.

What does it take?

2010-04-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was reading Faith A's blog at Adoption Under One Roof about what it takes to parent a traumatized older child. The comments got me thinking about my own answer to that question.

My list goes something like this (and I certainly don't possess all of these qualities, though I strive for them):

- Honest acceptance of your own personal history and mistakes.

- Gallows humor.

- A strong belief that no life is ever "ruined".

- Street smarts.

- Endurance.

- The ability to parent today for the sake of today - an acceptance that it might not "work out" in the long term and the child may end up in residential treatment, embroiled in legal problems, or otherwise struggling and that your decision to do this work now doesn't depend on any "result".

- A healthy skepticism of the system.

- Scientific curiosity. Why is my kid doing this? What happened right before he did this? What environmental factors can I change and how does he respond when I do?

- Empathy for the depth and range and duration of grief.

- Being cool with being different so you can weather the occasional social isolation of adopting an older child with "issues".

- Chemistry: one person's problem child is another person's "special someone". I can confidently say that, had I known the full facts of his case before I met him on his own terms, I would not have offered to parent T. And yet the three of us "clicked" and that natural chemistry ignited a deep mutual affection that gets us through things none of us would have signed up for on the face of it. We fit like puzzle pieces.

- Understanding that how far someone has come depends on where he started.

What did I miss?