Things come together and fall apart

Lately, I've noticed that I've become more anxious, due to both my thyroid medication and the more mundane realities of middle age. I've always tended toward a slight and useful paranoia, but circumstance and hormones have tipped the balance and I am substantially more prone to worry than I used to be. Although I've come through a disruptive bout with thyroid cancer pretty well, it left me with the lingering feeling that if anyone were to look too hard, we'd probably find some more bad news. I don't get through the routine mammogram as breezily as I used to, and the other night I woke up from a sound sleep with the distinct thought that, just based on age and statistics, my life (at least the active part of it) was probably more than half over, which was not a soothing thought. I am sure I am quite typical of American adults in their forties.

I'd like to quell the emotional edginess of my newfound perspective (or lack thereof), and at the same time, I'm aware that it's a fairly frank response to reality. As the Buddhist Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said, "Life is like getting into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink."

My fretfulness does not make me a better parent, but it does make me more like T, who is a world-class worrywart. Just today, he walked into the bathroom and said with absolute seriousness "What are we going to do when I'm not here to remind you to brush your teeth EVERY morning?!" Yesterday, he told me three times "Do not forget to lock the front door behind me after I leave!" The day before that, while we were packing for a short vacation, he must have asked Tim and I a dozen times "Is there ANYTHING we forgot? ANYTHING AT ALL?!"

Selfishly, I find this relaxing and a little bit comic (my thyroid medication compromises my short-term memory, and I'm embarrassed to admit that his post-traumatic stress-induced hypervigilance works out rather nicely sometimes!). There's little likelihood I'll overlook some obvious risk, so vigilant is he in alerting me to life's potential hazards. But I feel for the guy. It's no wonder he has a hard time giving up his beloved marijuana!

We had a nice weekend trip with T and his bestfriend, with whom he shares a very similar life story. Together, they create an odd atmosphere, both innocent and mournful, but they love each other best perhaps because they let each other ebb and flow and never let a stormy mood interfere with their absolute loyalty to one another. I think they are a bit ahead of me on the path to enlightenment, as obvious as their struggles are. (In fact, I have often wondered that T must be a particularly advanced being, because the universe seems to have conspired to hurl at him an epic and ceaseless array of thunderbolts from the moment he was born, while all it's really dealt me was an ordinary midlife crisis!)

Listening to them chat casually about this childhood disaster and that one, I was struck by their advanced awareness of loss. The lesson I am learning now--that I can't control or predict the future, that inevitably, everything I have and love will be lost or change--took a long time to sink in. Dumb luck made me arrogant; I became accustomed to having and holding on to what I wanted for myself. But T and others like him knew the truth very well a long time ago; through no action of their own, they've lost their mothers and their fathers, as well as numerous homes, many friendships, and most opportunities to experience a "normal" childhood. (While we were driving to the mountains, T's bestfriend casually said to me "This is so great- I was never allowed to go on trips like this when I was in foster care, because I had to get permission for everything from my social worker, and if was up to her, nobody would ever be allowed to even talk to me without being fingerprinted first.") Yet they manage to get up every day and take the next shaky step on their path, and listening to them together, it's impossible not to notice their open-heartedness.

Which brings me to another bit of Buddhist perspective, two quotes from the writer Pema Chodron that, together, capture my thoughts about bonding with and parenting an older traumatized kid. She writes, "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others."

And further, "We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

I'd say that only a grasp of those two ideas is required to make a decent foster/adoptive parent to a traumatized kid.

Happy New Year!

But Beautiful

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.

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.

Taken Away

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.

Parenting Child Survivors

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.