Teenagers are Children Too

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."

Addiction and Adoption

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.

Happy Endings

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.

And We're Off

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

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.

Help

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

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.

T Two

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.

Drinking

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.