Happy Mother's Day

It was a very good day. T got off probation today, after a year. At court, he made a cute little speech about the power of addiction and how he's working his 12 step program. The judge, who knows us very well after the drama of the last year and has seen T through treatment, relapse, arrest, etc., was touched and thrilled, and he doesn't tend toward either. He called T up to the bench and held his hand and told him it was good to see him looking so well, and wished him luck and dismissed everything and sent him on his way.

After court, T wanted to go right back to the treatment house where he's living, didn't even want to "cheat" long enough to get a much-needed haircut, which I would have indulged. On the way back, we discussed post-treatment sober living (better known as a "halfway house") and he asked us to help him find a place. We called several and found a house just blocks from where he is now, where he can continue the groups he's been participating in. It's a community of young African American men, with a semi-structured 12-step approach, random drug testing, a curfew, and it's close to the community college where T wants to start taking classes. It has a computer, a hot tub in the back yard, clean, comfortable bedrooms and the men take turns cooking for each other. It sounds fun, like a college frat house without the beer and the mess. It's close to home, so we can visit often, and he can earn overnight passes.

For now, for as long as it lasts, it's a sweet and fortuitous transition. I'm grateful for the opportunity to help introduce him to semi-independent living, in a situation where he's supported and amongst peers in his struggles with substance abuse, and where he's still close to home and can get lots of love from us. I'm grateful, also, that circumstances came together so that we could communicate in a loving way that if you're abusing drugs and doing all that comes with it, you can't live at home - but you do have options, and we'll support you in pursuing them. Sober living is a good answer for him - he may need to return to such a place someday, and I want him to get familiar with the network of support that's out there. Last winter during his extended relapse, I could see that part of his shame and horror came from having little sense of his options - he couldn't see a way out. I hope from now on, if he needs it, he'll have a direct sense of where to go and what to do to get back on track.

It was interesting to see the way he approached the prospect of sober living when it came up. He preferred to return home, but we all agreed that he wasn't ready yet, and that the interim step of a semi-structured group situation would likely help him. The goal we set is sober living until he gets a job and enrolls in at least one college class, sets a schedule for himself, and then he can transition home. But when his counselor told him what sober living would cost per month, T was tentative in proposing it. He seemed horrified by the idea that we'd need to pay for it. "It could cost five hundred dollars a month!" he said, aghast. (It costs more than that, and it's a stretch to make it work, but we regard it the same way we'd regard paying for college.) I suggested that he think about the fact that he is precious and loved, and try stating his case in a way that reflects that point of view. (We ask him to restate this way a lot, because he has little practice asking for what he needs.) He paused for a moment, then said very theatrically, "I was wondering, if you would be able to pay for sober living because you love me!" "Yes!" we said, "We'd be happy to pay for sober living, because we love you!"

The lessons he's learning now are more valuable than any college could provide. If all that happens in the next few months is that he gets through the post-treatment period with the support of a few new friends who help him find ways to fill his time and resolve stress without running amok, that would be a great blessing.

He's a lovely person when he's sober - deep, loving, somber, wise, a little nervous. As always, he manages to seem both much older and much younger than his chronological age, and being his parent requires meeting him in both places at once.

Saying No

Well, joke is on me, two posts ago, because of course, as astute and experienced parent readers of this blog may have guessed, T has no intention of transitioning to independent living, and instead spent a good part of our first visit at his treatment facility lobbying me to let him move home after his 30 day "blackout" period is up. The goal in his program, as in all 12-step programs, is to go from 30 day treatment to a sober living home (also known as a "halfway house" in common parlance), and gradually transition from there back to one's community. T, of course, would like to skip that second part, returning home asap.

And that's not happening.

I find it extremely difficult to say no to him. I mean, I have said no plenty of times - taking away his keys, his phone, his ride privileges. But when it comes to the big NO ("No, you may not live at home unless/until you get sober and make progress on your recovery") I am a textbook case, straight out of an Al Anon character study. The same deep compassion that guides me in most things as his parent makes me foolish when it comes to his addiction. What's more, I'm selfish. I WANT him home. I LOVE being his parent. Even when it sucks, I work harder and it and derive more satisfaction from it than most anything else. Except that it's not good for him, not good for me, and not good for Tim to indulge that sentimental wish to have him back under our roof. I am not nearly enough to meet his needs right now. To allow him home and expect a positive outcome would be vanity at best. And at his age, as I told him today, he is naturally eager to be independent, and to frustrate that ambition only leads to problems.

But it is HARD to say no. What parent wants to tell a beseeching child that he can't come home? He could be forty years old and I'd still feel this way. Although I ought to have expected it, I was also taken aback by his plea, mostly because he has been so unreachable for the past few months. When he's in the grip of his compulsive drug-seeking, he becomes so remote. I forgot what it's like when he badly wants something that he needs for me to provide. It's quite a siren song.

We may allow him home, but we'll do so only if he spends some time in transition in a sober living home, and only if he either gets a job or enrolls in school. Period. If he complies with those conditions, we'll put a timeframe on it, and after the adjustment period is up, we'll require him to pay rent. We'll put his "rent" into a savings account that we'll give back to him for a deposit on his own place when he's ready. We decided all that tonight, and it came easily, because it's really the only option.

Addiction is a tricky, tricky thing. I am humbled every day by how easily its manipulative logic can fool me...and also by the skill and patient wisdom of people who work with addicts in the day-to-day.

Speaking of which, T is doing well. I like this place. I feared that in an adult facility, he would be exposed to more dangerous habits than his own. But as we sort of expected, he appears to be doing better amongst adults. They baby him, and he understands them, with the aged wisdom he acquired during what was supposed to be his childhood.

His program is full of people about my age. Some have recently been homeless. Others are apart from their spouses and children while they try to conquer addiction. Nearly all of them have legal problems. In this setting, T sees the consequences of addiction more clearly. Also, he is with women (not in his living quarters, but in his 12 step meetings), of about the age that his birth mom was when he was born, drug-addicted. He is a very female-identified guy, and I've always said that he'd do best if he could live in a house full of a dozen middle-aged mothers. He's gotten kind of close in rehab.

Last summer, when he first entered treatment, he was in a teen facility, sex-segregated. He did well at first, then took to fighting and tantrums. I asked him today if there have been any fights in the facility since he's been there. He scoffed - no, no fights. Not even close. "There are no teenagers here," he said, by way of explanation. LOL.

Things I Missed

T called and wants me to come and visit him in residential treatment tomorrow. I'm thrilled, I'll go, I miss him like crazy, I'll try to be a good mom while I'm there.

At the same time, all that said, I've had a fantastic week. I wouldn't wish him gone for anything in the world - even when his behavior is hideous, I love the soul of him so much. That said, he's a pain in the ass, and when he is being cared for somewhere else, it's amazing what little nooks and crannies of our lives re-emerge.

Here's a quick list of things I've been able to do this week that I sorely missed!

- Taking a shower with the bathroom door open
- Walking around less than fully clothed
- Leaving my purse, my car keys, my cash, my iPod - things with street value sitting around
- Going out for dinner without worrying that at any minute, his needs might interrupt
- Working late without feeling guilty for missing dinner
- Sleeping late on Saturday (he has the oddest habit of waking us early on weekends by stumbling into our room in his boxer shorts and hanging out, as if to chat, though he rarely says much)
- Drinking at home. For a year, we haven't had any alcohol in the house, as we've been supporting his intermittent attempts at sobriety. But this week I enjoyed wine with dinner, and a weekend nightcap of that really good rye Tim's dad gave us for Christmas.
- Watching television. The definition of monopoly is the relationship between the teenager in your house and your television/game console/telephone.
- Have feelings! Living with a traumatized, substance-abusing, high-drama teenager leaves precious little room for reflection and self-awareness.

I look forward to the visit tomorrow, but also...it's been a great week!

Back In and Out

T is back in residential treatment. This is our second go, with an interim attempt at out patient treatment that failed. I'm generally very proud of his persistent effort to confront his demons. Of course, to be honest, that feeling is tempered by a bit of reasonable suspicion that, this time, residential treatment is perhaps a "get out of jail free" strategy - his probation officer strongly suggested it, as he has a looming court date and has repeatedly failed to comply with probation. His recent choices created a mounting mess of circumstances that compelled him to treatment. But given where he was when he decided to enter, I'm just glad he's there.

Residential treatment is rough, I imagine. I feel for him, being as young as he is, emotionally as well as chronologically, and sympathize with what I imagine must be a certain sense of isolation. In an adult treatment facility (he's 18 now, and doesn't qualify for the youth facilities in our area), he may be exposed to habits that are roughter than his own. We considered all of that carefully and I worry about him. He's undisciplined and he went into this on shaky ground, having really unraveled of late. Rather than spend the summer in treatment, he'd like to be able to party with his peers, celebrating his high school graduation and the start of summer, but that just isn't possible. He is complicated and unregulated such that "partying" quickly turns into intense and frightening chaos. A "normal" adolescence is really not an option - such a thing can only follow on a "normal" childhood.

In any event, he's in for 30 days, and then he's eligible for a transition to a sober-living house with ongoing coaching. He wants to try that, with a goal of being ready to take community college classes this fall. God bless him for his ability to hang on to a vision and a goal, even through his confusion. Thankfully, as we've been doing independent study at home, we were able to wrap up his schooling and secure his high school diploma literally moments before he entered treatment, with the help of a flexible and sympathetic school administrator. From here on, we'll follow him one step at a time.

I know in my heart that I can't help him as much as I used to. He is more independent of us, as is natural, and he's also fairly committed to his mistakes of late. I love him very much, but this time when he left home, it felt like something was different. He may well be back home, but I think it likely that it will be temporary now, because of his age and his need to explore. Like a lot of kids who spend a long time in foster care, he was brainwashed to believe that 18 is the age of liberation. More so even that other teenagers, he fixated and waited for this age, promising himself that he'd be "free". Since his 18th birthday, he's been eager to find out what that means.

Likely, he'll transition into a semi-independent living situation, and we'll start a new chapter of being his parents as he lives out his young adulthood. It's going to be bumpy, for sure. I always knew that it would be - with his history, it's inevitable that the transition to independence will be rough. What I didn't foresee before I was his parent is the depth of attachment one forms and the semi-excruciating feeling of having the object of that attachment go out into the world without you. (That is, of course, tempered by the relief of suddenly having quiet order at home, and tons more free time!)

I feel good that he left for treatment on a loving note. (It also felt good that the treatment house is near home, in a familiar neighborhood.) Once he made the decision to enter treatment, we had about a week together, during which he seemed to draw closer, preparing to say good-bye and relieved that he had a plan that we supported.

The first time he entered treatment, last year, he was so confident that he would beat his problems with drugs. This time, he's humbled by his extended relapse, and his confidence in himself is shaken. He is more uncertain. The day before he left, we visited his favorite Korean spa and then had a favorite meal together. The morning that he started his program we got up early and had breakfast in peaceful silence. Then he turned to me and said, "You can't come. Go to work. You'll cry when we say good-bye." He was right, and he needed to be in control of our parting, so I agreed and we had a good hug. He and Tim drove down to the treatment house and he checked in.

I wish him the greatest good luck this time around. I look forward to seeing him on the other side, but I accept that the process of getting there may take a very long time, and we both may change in the meantime.

More on parenting and addiction....

...so while I'm on the topic (parenting and addiction, see previous post), I'm going to keep rolling with a thought that has plagued me for awhile. We are in treatment program number 3 right now, since we've been at this substance abuse thing for over two years, with various ups and downs. And for the third time, I am struck that the treatment model is ill-suited to foster/adoptive situations.

How so?

First, although I recognize that all kids struggling with substance abuse have underlying complexities, I feel safe in saying that kids who've been a long time in foster care tend to have an extra layer of complexity in their histories. Many have been exposed to drugs and alcohol before birth and face serious cognitive and learning disabilities. Almost by definition, they have been abandoned and sexually and/or physically abused, which is how they came to be in foster care in the first place. If they now have foster or adoptive parents attending treatment with them, those parents usually have a very thorough grasp of the child's unique needs and struggles. We have yet to work with a substance abuse counselor who takes the time to absorb that history. In fact, in two out of our three substance abuse program intake meetings, the intake counselor began to cry when I answered questions about T's early history, then cut me off, as if needing to know no more. I wasn't impressed that they were so moved, I was annoyed and alarmed that they weren't able to take a complete medical history, especially given that these are so-called "dual diagnosis" facilities who are administering psychiatric medication in some cases.

Second, it's been our experience that the substance abuse treatment programs in which we've participated have used a model for family therapy that presumes that the child has been with you since birth, and that the family dynamics are in some way contributing to the child's substance use. Of course, right? Except that in an older child adoption, whenever you're doing "family therapy", at least in our case, there might as well be a dozen people in the room. Who are T's parents? Over his lifetime, there have been five of us primary parents, and that doesn't count the 14 other foster parents with whom he spent time. It's complicated. The group family sessions are awkward for us, because when the conversation turns to family history, we all three struggle to fit our situation into the presumed model.

Third...well, I hope readers of this blog will forgive me for this one, because it might sound conceited. But: we are not your average parents. We aren't any BETTER, as people, by any stretch. But we do have a LOT of training, and we focused our training on parenting adolescents, so we aren't your average parents of a teenager, taken aback by the recent changes in our child. We are in that strange quasi-professional parent category that all foster/adoptive parents ascend to, by virtue of the seemingly endless mandatory trainings one must undergo in order to adopt from foster care. In order to be T's parents, we've been through 60 hours of county-mandated parenting training, plus annual re-certification trainings especially for parents of "extremely emotionally disturbed children", because T's social worker required it. We've also been in continuous family therapy for the entirety of our time with him, and we've worked with social workers, Department of Mental Health crisis teams, DCFS "resource" teams, special education advisors...the list goes on. Parenting a child who comes from county custody is like that - you are swept up in an enormous parenting bureaucracy. The family sessions in these substance abuse programs don't account for parents like us. They are geared toward more typical adolescent struggles.

The other night in a family session about "open communication", even T was struck by the mismatch. He turned to me and whispered "You have fat sausage toes. Also, we are WAY past this. We've had a lot more classes than everybody else. We already know all about open communication. We don't need to be here." Of course, that's not entirely true, and I told him that our issues are just like everyone else's - there can be benefits to being in a peer group. But it can be alienating to be the only family of our sort in the room, and I did appreciate his sense that we're ready for the advanced class, thank you very much.

So I'd just like to say: let's get real. Let's have child welfare agencies admit that the problem of addiction and substance abuse amongst kids with abuse histories and long engagements with foster care is HUGE. Let's not skirt the issue and leave foster and adoptive parents to traditional family group therapy. Let's meet the problem head on with specialized services that support families like ours. Then providers would have a place to refer families like us, and we wouldn't have to squeeze ourselves into a model that just isn't a good fit.

Parenting and addiction

We are at another juncture regarding T's substance abuse problem. I'll be honest that I hesitate to write about this, because I am deeply regretful about all of the older children in foster care who never find a lasting home because people fear the problems that plague abused children. Topping that list of problems is substance abuse and the mental health issues that often underpin and accompany it. So I will begin as I sometimes do by saying that nothing I am about to say causes me to regret being part of his life. (A biological parent with an addicted child would never have to give that explanation, and I love him just as strongly as any biological parent loves their child.) Amidst all of his confusion, he deserves unconditional love and recognition.

Right now, T is in outpatient substance abuse treatment and doing poorly. He did okay for awhile. He goes three times a week for four hours for a variety of individual and group therapy, drug testing and life skills sessions. Lately, he goes, but he continues to use drugs and alcohol, and he shows no signs of taking treatment seriously. (I would have liked to have had him in residential treatment, but he would not go voluntarily, so this intensive out patient treatment was an acceptable compromise at the time.)

As a friend said to me once, "Nobody becomes an alcholic because they like the taste of alcohol," meaning that there are complex issues that underpin all addiction. Certainly that is true of T. I won't even recap them here, because they are often the focus of this blog. Suffice it to say, his abuse history and mental health issues are inextricably linked to his substance abuse. I have no idea which comes first - is he abusing drugs because he has bipolar disorder and major depression, or is he failing to develop sane habits because he is an addict? In many ways it doesn't matter. The link between prolonged child abuse and addiction is well-established and harrowing. He needs to get out of his own head and escape thoughts and memories he can't process. He wasn't taught social and problem-solving skills. He learned early to use substances to find relief. As it always does, that addictive behavior escalated in his adolescence, leading to a host of problems.

T tries hard not to...poop where he sleeps, to borrow and slightly sanitize a phrase. But the chaos of his ill judgment eventually makes its way into our home. Recently he appears to have graduated from marijuana to pills, something we're sure he picked up in the treatment program, where he's been trading cigarettes for something that causes him to return home giddy and unnaturally social. He commits small crimes - begging gas money to get to treatment and spending it on cigarettes that he trades for drugs. That of course means we had to rescind his driving privileges, and that means if we want him to continue treatment, we have to take three afternoons off work each week to get him there as the facility is an hour away. He disobeys our requests, lately doesn't show up for treatment, and sometimes doesn't come home at night. He is still gentle and loving and if you talk to him about his behavior, he's very quick to recognize that there's a problem. But his self-awareness doesn't do any good - the circuitry that leads to self-governance simply isn't working. Unless and until he makes a choice to be sober, he isn't able to make any other progress or find any peace.

Parental love is a powerful thing, and it compels us to seek every avenue of assistance we can think of. At the same time, I am very familiar with the point of view that one must let go and allow the addict to determine whether or not to seek help. But let's be honest: it is nearly impossible for a parent to be that objective with a child. Addiction and mental illness are hell, and it is terribly painful and difficult to see your child enveloped in that kind of confusion. He has weeks where he is able to abstain and manage himself, and that makes the inevitable return of chaos and confusion all the more painful. I don't subscribe to a strict tough love frame of mind. I can indeed be tough - I have taken his keys, his phone, and his computer, cancelled his car insurance, rescinded his driving privileges and refused him rides around town. I won't enable him and I won't endanger him by expecting him to be capable of things that he's demonstrated he can't handle. But I believe that if he could do better, he would. He isn't willing things to be this way.

Resistance

Like other abused kids, T has developed formidable powers of resistance. It sometimes feels as if he is leading a sit-in right in the middle of our lives, though he doesn't really have a cause to protest. He's just protesting for sake of protest.

I truly believe that the origin of his resistance is a lifelong sensation of deep helplessness. Understanding where it comes from doesn't make it much easier to live with though, particularly when it is combined with a tendency toward episodes of self-destructive behavior and substance abuse.

A child with this level of resistance will make you want to tear your hair out sometimes. His behavior has, at various times, driven teachers to the brink of insanity, brought seasoned counselors to tears, and alienated friends and family. He acts as if he believes that everyone in his life is trying to FORCE him to do something, and his survival depends on completely resisting the will and wishes of others.

If you know a little about his childhood, that makes complete sense, in its own way. Adults did force him to do things, and did things to him, and constantly disrupted his life. His early life sounds to me like being strapped into a high speed rollercoaster you can't get off; it just kept going, at stomach-churning speed, plunging over steep drops and careening around disorienting turns and flipping upside down. When I think of it, I feel my own body tense up as if to say "stop!", so it's not too surprising he developed a mental habit of extreme resistance.

Today, as a young adult, that trauma translates into refusing to get out of bed, sometimes for the whole day; refusing to develop interests or activities; deliberately circumventing chores, favors and obligations, and not showing up when or where you are supposed to be if you want to make a point or feel overwhelmed. His tactics of passive resistance are extremely highly developed, and his resilience is very weak. Unfortunately, his opposition is totally indiscriminate; sometimes it seems that he resists nearly everyone and everything.

Usually at least one of us is frayed and worn from the needless power struggles, but we do have some techniques that work (sometimes):

- "I" statements. "You need to be here at 3 pm to go to treatment" creates counter-will. "I will be here at 3 pm and I'd like you to be ready to come with me" actually does work better. Not always, but more often.

- Unflinching acceptance of natural consequences. It is HARD to stand by and watch what happens if your near-adult kid refuses to do mandatory community service, for example, or get himself to his job when he's scheduled to work. But we have learned that no amount of coaching, cajoling, nagging, or offering additional incentives really makes a difference. Despite our very best efforts to help him, he is going to self-sabotage, and there are lessons he will only learn the hard (hardest) way. It is unfair to rob him of the opportunity to learn those lessons. I'd rather than he learn them while he is under my roof, before his rent money is on the line, too. So we provide guidance and choices, and then sometimes we just have to stand back and wince as he learns the consequences of his mistaken reasoning.

- Disengagement. T's behavior sometimes reflects a huge dilemma: a yawning need for attention, on the one hand, and a formidable suppressed rage on the other. The result of that is a confused attempt to meet his needs by doing things that are deliberately annoying, provocative, or downright confrontational. The only productive way to respond is to disengage. It sends the message: "I am separate from you and I have my own reality and my own feelings that you cannot control." This strategy works REALLY well to counter his resistance, because it removes the validation that comes from provoking and frustrating someone.

If that all sounds really Zen, please let me be the first to admit, it doesn't always work, and I burn out plenty often. The pointless protesting wears thin. Compassion can get you far, but some days, there's still a gap. On the upside, working with him has made me keenly aware of the fluctuations in my own will and counter-will. I notice it at work, where we are all asking one another constantly, some variation on "Can you do what I want?" and "Can I do what you want?". I hope T can grow to a baseline that allows him to participate in that normal adult kind of negotation.