Loss and Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awkward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The No Good Awful Very Bad Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Real

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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