trauma, again

We're just coming out of an awful time with Son.

When he came back from the residential both Son and Daughter seemed tired but happy. There was a maturity about them that was quite pleasant, and when Easter was over and it was time to go back to school I detected genuine sadness that the holiday was over. Usually school is a relief to all all of us, for the kids it's less intense than home and oh how they do like their routines! But I sensed, this time, that they had enjoyed home and were sad the break was over.

But being back at school had a terrible affect on Son. It happened right after the first day back, as soon as he walked trough the door. The tantrums, screaming, door slamming were back. He'd been doing it before the residential, but not when he'd got back. And this was something else. He didn't just want to let off steam, he seemed to really want to hurt me, both verbally and physically.

I don't want to go over all the incidents because I am only just now starting to heal from them, and I don't want to retraumatise myself, but it felt like I was pretty much his punchbag for two or three weeks. I dealt with him really well, I think. As I protected him and me from his violence, I acted calm, I acted bored, I sang him nursery ryhmes and a silly version of 10 Green Bottles, to try and get him to use a different part of his brain. I used a lot of reverse psychology, gave him permission to swear at me, slam doors, go mental, all the time giving him a choice to stop because this was soooo boring... could we not just find something better to do like, ooooh let's play Pokemon! Come on, tell me about Snivey, I like the look of him...

But inside I felt very different to how I was acting and after each episode I was a wreck; shaking, crying, panic attacks. The aggression was filtering into my sleep and I was having violent nightmares full of bombs and fires and plane crashes. The insomnia came back, awake at 3am, savouring being awake in my own home and no one was trying to hurt me.

And wouldn't you know it, all this happened whilst our family counsellor was away on holiday. We caught up with her a couple of weeks ago and she wanted the session to be about the difference between 'ideal' families and 'good' families. I nearly laughed out loud. Her face was a picture as I filled her in on some of the things our family had gone through since she had gone off sunning herself (she had a lovely tan! Lucky her!). She told us that our Son needed an urgent referral to a psychologist and that we needed family therapy as our situation was beyond family counselling. I nearly laughed out loud at that, as well. We'd had a psychologist under CAMHS who, looking back, was wildly out of her depth and did nothing but make us responsible for our Son's mental health issues.

We've seen our counsellor again since that session and she seems determined to get us the professional help that our Son and we as a family need, and she's given us some leads, but I can't say I'm full of hope. I don't think anyone had a clue what to do about kids like our Son, I really don't. They won't medicate him, so what's the point? But we'll try anyway, because what else can you do.

I told our counselor how I walk around all day juggling negative thoughts, because there are no positives. There is no escape. I'm currently under house arrest because Son cannot handle me going out, or Husband and I going out as a couple, we can't get babysitters in, so night after miserable night we *manage* our evening to keep him calm, and weekend after weekend, we do what the kids need us to do. There is no room for us, not as individuals and not as a couple. I miss cinema. I miss the theatre. I miss going out to eat in restaurants. I miss going out with friends. I miss my Husband. I miss being a couple. I am so bored. I feel so restrained. I want to scream because life is so fucking dull.

But I don't. I do what needs to be done. I am the parent our children need us to be. I don't show my emotion or my distress. To them, I am the calm, all-knowing, all-seeing adult who can take the punches and the insults and then tuck them up in bed at night with a smile. I am what they need. I don't have needs of my own, other than to sit sometimes, and read a book, or go out and walk the dog.

And Son is back under control. Obviously the residential had shifted some nasty stuff inside of him and he needed to express it. We went really strict with the rules, had a tight routine, and I took the punches, and now he seems to have gained equilibrium again.

But something inside of me has shifted too and I recognise that I have been traumatized by what I have just been through. I cannot get it out of my head that there are years ahead of us of this. At the moment he is half my size and I can protect myself from him and protect others from him. But he is only going to get bigger an stronger and then what do I do? The only relief I can find is telling myself that in 8 years time I won't have to live with him anymore. I have it all planned. I will put money in his bank account. I will put credit on his phone. I will make sure he has a bus pass. I will change the locks and I will give him a bag of his stuff and I will tell him that he is no longer welcome to live in this house. Then I can be in my own home and no one will hit me anymore, or scream abuse at me, or hold me hostage and not allow me to go out. I will be free.

Residential and RAD

My two children went off on a residential course especially for adopted children last week. I was having trouble with my conscious over it, because as much as I knew the kids would benefit from the experience, I was really doing it because I would benefit from two nights off. It really brought it home how little I enjoy my children and I was feeling very down about it.

A good friend and adopter of three children arranged for us to meet up with another adopter friend of hers, before the residential, as all our children were going and we thought it handy they all played together to ease some worries before actually going away.

It was this friend of a friend, also an adopter of three, an intelligent woman who knows a lot about adoption and the affect of neglect and abuse on children who mentioned Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Her daughter has a diagnosis of it and she told me how her daughter had just been away for six days with the Guides and that she had enjoyed her daughter being away 'too much'. She went on to say that one of the big indicators of RAD was that you don't miss your children when they are away and you don't look forward to seeing them again.

Well, bells did ring!

I knew about RAD of course. But I put away the adoption books a long time ago in an effort to 'just get on with things' and stop trying to diagnose and medicalise my children. But after this playdate I got straight onto the internet and started looking up RAD and my heart kept sinking deeper and deeper as I realised that they could very easily be labelled with this. What made it worse is that the telltale signs of RAD are often mixed up with signs of psychopathy, so how cheery was that?

I have yet to find just one website that says everything about RAD that needs to be said, but the condition, if it can be called that rather than just a personality, is typified by excessive need to control, inability to express or receive affection in an appropriate way from the appropriate people, sensitivity to touch, over sensitivity to change in routines, lack of developed consciousness which means a lot of lying and stealing and a need for chaos. 

Now, the good news is, I can state definite improvements in some areas. Both my kids still have a need to control but they have relinquished a lot of it to me and their dad. It's when they are with other people they try to dominate again. 

Appropriate affection was a massive problem with my Daughter, who would sit on the lap of every man going whether they wanted it or not, and used hugs and handholding and lapsitting to control, rather than for comfort of affection. Poor girl didn't have a clue. It was unpleasant to be on the receiving end of any touch from her. Thankfully she is much more appropriate and natural with her touching now. My Son was capable of affection touch but he also used to use touch to cause pain; digging his nails into your cuticles when holding your hand (where does a child LEARN that?), hugging too tight, even a High Five was about slapping as hard as possible. He was also one for pinching and tripping up. He had that awful year where went around physically hurt people as and when he felt like it. Thankfully this has stopped now.

Sensitivity to touch. Daughter stripping off because her clothes were hurting her? Son screaming in the shower because the water was stinging him like bees? Yup. But no more.

Change in routine? Much better! We used to have tantrums with every change of activity. Need to wash hands before eating? Scream. Need to come to the table to eat? Scream. Need to leave the table after eating? Scream? and on and on and on. Our first holiday was about intense trauma. Now? Now they can go away on three day residential courses and we have generally good holidays away.

So all of that is good.

The lack of consciousness, lying, stealing, need for chaos, we're still working on. It is these things that are the daily grinder, and the reason it is always such a relief to be away from these kids. They have no idea how to avoid an argument and seemingly no desire to do so. Quite the opposite in fact. Communicating through argument is quite natural for them. They can lie and steal and get into trouble for it, see me upset because of it, then go and do it again the next day without a single thought. Life, for them, seems to be about trying to get away with stuff, rather than trying to make good choices, and it's a slog, every day, to try and rewire their brain so that they do things for the right reason. Their need to spoil good things is exhausting. 

I didn't miss the kids when they were away. I enjoyed being able to actually relax in my own home, to eat when I was hungry rather than to schedule, not to have to give the living room over to my Son because it was his time to play on the wii, to chill of an evening rather than work towards a calm bedtime for them. It was such a relief to be able to leave my handbag and purse lying around. Husband and I went out for the day and the joy of being out and not having to spend energy on managing dysregulating children, or tantrums about Gift Shops or food, or constant arguments between the two of them. Nobody tried to spoil anything. Nobody did spoil anything. Then we came home and had a bag of chips and watched a DVD and went to bed when we were tired. Nobody banged doors, or shouted, or argued, or stropped, or sought to annoy, which are daily happenings in this family.

I am slowly gaining acceptance that these children can't be 'fixed', that all we can do is provide a healthy, happy, safe home and the rest of it is up to them. I do see how far we have come, but I can also see how far we have to go. My Daughter bragged to me that she was the only child on the Residential who didn't want to phone home. My Son had terrible tantrums before he went, one time me having to hold him down for his own safety, which is not that easy now he's 10 years old. But since they have been back all their stuff has been low-level. They had a great time and I think it's done them the world of good. My Son couldn't have handled this a year ago and this year he thrived. I have hope for next year. This is a marathon not a sprint, I remind myself.

I wrote this ...

Your grief for her

Who's that there
Who lies bedside you
Who holds your hands
and sits inside you

Who's that there
Who haunts your nights
Who brings the anger
Who grips you tight

That shadow, there
Before all you see
Your friend, your comfort, your enemy
The things that falls between you and me

The day to go home that never comes
The crumbs of memories
Life flicks away

The goodnight kiss ever missing
Mother's singing
Life took away

Who's that there
Who lies bedside you
Who holds your hands
and sits inside you

It should be me
I should be there
but your grief for her
Is too much for us to bear

No straight answers

ME: So was your teacher back today?

SON: Yes *pause* No, actually.

ME: Oh dear, so did you have the same supply teacher as yesterday?

SON: Yes *pause* No actually. It was a different supply teacher.

ME: Oh good, because you didn't like the one you had yesterday, did you? Did you like this one better?

SON: Yes *pause* I mean no. She wasn't a supply teacher. She was a teacher from another class.

ME: And you didn't like her?

SON: No, I didn't. I mean, yes I did.

ME: You did like her, then? Which teacher was it?

SON: The supply teacher.

ME: The one from yesterday?

SON: Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes it was, actually.

I made a point of trying to remember a conversation with Son so that I could write it down. This happened just an hour ago as I drove him home from school. We talked a lot more than this, but this bit I remember the best and it' s representative of how a conversation with him goes.

Now, my boy is 10yo, has a reading age of an 11yo, and a good vocab, and yet... you can see his complete inability to give a straight answer. He either doesn't know the answers to the questions, or doesn't want me to know the answers to the questions, both of which is a worry. My guess is he knows exactly what went on today, he just enjoys messing me around. Most conversation s with him are the same. If he's the one asking the questions, he has to pretend he doesn't understand your answer. It' s not enjoyable talking with him, but he never seems to tire of communicating like this.

A new development with him is picking at his face. He came down from the shower last night with two nicks on his skin. He told his dad he'd bumped his face into the shower-head! This morning he'd got several more and they've scabbed over quite dramatically.

I' d talk to him about it, but honestly, what would be the point.

grief, trauma and attachment difficulties

So son wanted to come with me on the dog walk. How lovely, I said, I enjoy our little chats when we go out together.

Bwahahaha!

It all started off fine. As usual. No sign anything was wrong. Son happily walked with me and the dog, then as the dog stooped to poo, he carried on walking. I called him back, he pretended not to hear, so I called him again. He waited, I joined him, then I reminded him, pleasant as always, that the agreement when he came on dog walks with me was that he walked by my side. He began to do so, quite happily it seemed, and we crossed the main road together, after which he deliberately walked off in front again.

He waited for me at the top of the slipway that goes down onto the walkway that used to be a rail line. I saw how different his face looked. Gone was the happy little smile that had been there a moment ago, now he was showing anger and defiance. The "I can do what I like and you can't stop me" face.

I think I handled it well. I told him that he did right on the roads, but that the instruction had been to walk with me, crossing the road or not. I needed to see that could follow my instructions as I was helping him keep safe. He' d said to me that morning that he wanted to be back on the scooter, he' d said he wanted to be on his bike. Ok, well, the first step towards that was for him to show me that he could follow my instructions whilst walking with me. He was not to walk off.

Ok.

We went down the slipway and he walked off. Just walked right off well ahead of me.

I let him. He was safe enough, with no where for him to go but on the path, as it's heavily banked either side. He barely kept within sight.

Eventually he got to the tunnel which he doesn't like going under and I caught up with him again. I told him we were walking back home, and this time he WAS walking next to me.

I asked him with genuine curiosity why he had walked off when he knew he was supposed to be walking by my side. Shrug of shoulders. Why not walk with me? Chat to me? Shrug of shoulders. What was his best guess? What did he think his best mate would say as to why he walked off when he knew he shouldn't?

Answer: because I am sad.

Me: why are you sad?

Shrug of shoulders.

Why would being sad stop you doing what I asked? I was trying to help you stay safe.

Shrug of shoulders

So I hypothesized. Maybe he liked to control how other people feel, and he could see I was happy so maybe he wanted to make himself feel powerful by making me angry? Maybe he likes to be in control of things, so he ruined our nice walk out before anything else could? Maybe being moody and disrespectful was such a habit that he was finding it hard to break. Maybe his birth mum had let him down so badly, he wouldn't let himself trust his adoptive mummy. Maybe he doesn't understand the dangers of being outside in a busy area and thinks he knows better. Maybe he' s really angry with his birth mum and thinks he can just keep taking it out on me. Maybe he likes the attention he gets when he does something he shouldn't.

I went on and on and on... And I was getting more and more pissed off the more I spoke.

And then I told him why I was pissed off. I told him that I was sick and tired of feeling punished by him and his moods when I had done NOTHING wrong. That I was NOT to blame for the bad stuff that had happened to him. My husband had done NOTHING to deserve the abuse he got this Christmas. We were NOT the parents who let him down.

I was sorry that his birth mum had let him down, I said, I felt sorry for him that he was angry at her but also missed her so much. I was sorry he had to go into foster care and be adopted when he just wanted to be with his mum. I was sorry he had to go through that. But none of that was my FAULT. I wasn't to BLAME.

By this time we were nearly home (yes, I did go on . quite a bit on and off) and he looked close to tears. As we got to the driveway of our house, I told him to go inside and find a pen and some paper and go upstairs and write to his birth mother. Tell her how angry he was at her, go mad at her, punish her for a change.

He did so. At least he pretended to. It sounded a lot like he was playing with his cars to me. Not long after he sought me out and told me he' d done it. He told me that he was angry and sad because his birth mum had never taken him anywhere or played with him. We talked all that through, and I listened but I made it clear that it was not right to punish this family for the anger he felt towards his birth family.

Then he was telling me about his birth dad, that his birth dad was very angry and would shout and hit. He started saying bizarre stuff like his birth parents' arguments were on TV and other jumbled up puzzling memories.

I let him do most of the talking, much as I had plenty to say. Kept saying "I' m listening" and "tell me more", that sort of stuff. I wasn't afraid of the silences. We sat for a long while together, picking through the fragments of his anger, trying to piece them together.

Trouble is both Husband and I suspect though, that five years on, he actually remembers very little of his birth home. He certainly isn't consistent with what he says and is generally incapable of telling anything reliably or understanding the truth of something. In short, he's known for making stuff up.

Another problem is that we suspect he has cottoned on that telling a sob story gets him sympathy. I always think there is a grain of truth in the things he tells us, but he' s telling us for all the wrong reasons. In this case, I don't doubt that he's angry that his birth mum neglected him and that his birth dad was violent. Trouble is, does he actually remember those things, or is he just rehashing what is in his Life Story book and things we have talked about before, and is he just saying it because he wants to go and play on the Wii and he needs to manipulate me?

Honestly, I don't know.

I would say that he truly is emotionally stuck in the trauma of losing his mum, and hasn't moved through his grieving process.

But I would also say that these frequent random episodes of oppositional behaviour are typical manifestations of attachment difficulties. He can't or won't let himself fully attach to me and his adoptive dad. He must cause conflict, where there need not be any. He must make things uncomfortable. He must remain in control.

He is getting better, I keep reminding myself. He is healing, he is talking more, his anger is more subdued, more passive. He's very lovable. I just spent two days nursing him, scrubbing his puke out of the carpet and feeling his hot brow. "I don't feel well, mummy," he kept saying and my heart went out to the wee chap.

But what to do? I' m not sure that a long lecture every time he has these episodes is very productive. Nor is giving him so much attention afterwards.

I think instead I am going to ignore it apart from verbalising my thought that when he's showing anger to this family, he' s really feeling anger towards his birth family. Use his birth mother as a sort of lightening rod to draw his anger away from us. Then I shall allow my boredom to shine through, because his shtick is actually getting very tiring.

sick

The kids have taken me by surprise and have been ill. They''re not ill often. Good immune system developed growing up in  filthy dump for the first few years of their lives. In over 4yrs they've only had three or four days off school between them, all this time. If they puke, they usually just puke the once and it' s over.

Two nights ago, knock on the door in the small hours MUMMY I'M GOING TO BE SICK!!!

And she was sick.

And I' d hold her hair back for her as she puked in the toilet bowl, then settle her in bed again.

And then another knock at the door...

Until finally I heard her puking and got up automatically only to find Son in the toilet being sick!

And so both of them carried on, taking it in turns to use the loo, like a puke version of musical chairs, until about noon the next day. It was a delightful spectacle.

Both of the poor lambs were exhausted, and so weak and vulnerable. I'm usually a bugger when I' m tired but I had the energy to keep encouraging them to drink sips of water, to check theirs temperatures and to clean up after them for all those hours, because they were so clearly very poorly. I got to take proper care of them.

I enjoyed it. No, really, it was lovely. To mother them. And they were so accepting of my matronly council. It kept taking me by surprise, how much they let me comfort them and do for them what needed to be done. And my sympathy for them, which is always in such short supply, just flowed from me.

And then they started to get better. And the need to control started to emerge again. And the pretending they weren't sick. And the confrontations about being allowed downstairs or on the Wii. I did manage to keep them in their beds all day yesterday, but only I think because they were too weak to do anything about it. First question from both of them this morning "when can I go downstairs?"

I did allow them downstairs today, because the puking had stopped and they both had a good night's sleep. Daughter took over an hour before she came down and Son chose to play in his room most of the day, so I guess the demands to be downstairs were more about not liking me having that control over them.

And now they are back to their usual selves, with Son even having had one of his episodes this afternoon, and I am back to being the person they project all their psychological shit on to. I preferred dealing with their vomit, to be honest. At least then I felt wanted and needed, like a real Mum.

post-Christmas summary

Looking back over the last two weeks holiday, three things stand out.

The first is that Daughter has handled Christmas very well this year. Normally she stops eating and drinking, has panic attacks and major trauma sessions. None of that has happened this year. All we've had is major attention seeking behaviour, a constant and intense babble of nonsense questions and chatter, and a new development of silly talk, involving lots of 'umms' and 'yeahs' and 'dudes', making a lot of what she said completely unintelligible. That's all calmed down now.

The second is that son's anger is less intense and shorter lasting than previously. What he could keep going for hours and sometimes days, he now manages to get over in less than an hour. He can apologise too and verbalise his angry thoughts more. It's quite obvious now, if it wasn't before, that the boy is grieving deeply for the loss of his birth family.

The third is how I have been. I started off the holidays with an unusual lack of confidence  This is our fourth Christmas as a family and the first time that Husband has only had the main days off. There is no childcare this time of year and so I knew I was going to be on my own with them an awful lot. The prospect of it really depressed me as I could see how anxiety/excitement was making them unpredictable and difficult, and knew they would need a lot of supervision. I really didn't feel up to it. All I could hear in my head was the criticism I've had from various people in my life about my parenting choices by people who think they know better. I was questioning myself, thinking maybe those people were right, what the hell did I know. I thought I was going to be out of my depth.

However, I have managed OK. Mostly this has been down to experience. Whatever these kids have thrown at me this holiday, I've dealt with it a hundred times before. I wasn't out of my depth. I am well practised at parenting these children now. I know how to keep a time-tabled day that suits them, and a week that mixes it up and keeps it interesting without overwhelming them. All those voices in my head, all those memories of when certain other people have undermined me and my confidence, they have quietened now.

The difficult thing, the sad thing, is how long it takes for damaged children to progress towards healing. Husband and I have to look back to this time last year to see a small improvement in their ability to cope with life and live as part of this family. Our Son, who has been away from his birth parents longer than he was with them, is still dealing with the fact of his adoption and it's eating into his childhood. All too soon he'll be a teenager and he'll have to deal with it all over again on another level. Anybody who has ever said that children are resilient and shallow, is wrong. They are fragile, easily shattered little beings.