do adopted children have super powers?

I have spent the day with daughter who is off because of the teacher strike, although son is still in school. Presumably his teacher is in a different union. As it's summer she's keeping up a bug watch. She's got a thing about bugs. For one, they're a great excuse for getting out of stuff. For instance, if you do not want to tidy up your bedroom, well, summon up a spider sighting and refuse to go in there. Or, if you've had enough of playing in the garden, then get all hysterical over a bee you can see in the next door neighbour's garden.

Not only is her use of bug sightings to get her own way over something very clever, but her ability to spot the minutest, atom sized speck of a bug is, quite frankly, supernatural. She can walk into a room and in about 0.8 seconds and she will have spotted every fly, spider, moth and bug, no matter how small or how well hidden. I never knew I lived amongst so many critters.

It's an unusual superpower, but it serves her well. I am struggling to see its application for good in the world however, or how it might help get her a good job one day!

New Families, Old Scripts by Caroline Archer

New Families, Old Scripts "A Guide to the Language of Trauma and Attachment in Adoptive Families", by Caroline Archer and Christine Gordon.

Or Extreme Therapeutic Parenting for Hardcore Adopters, as I like to call it.

Not a book, in my opinion, for placements less than a year old. I think to be able to practice the suggestions, and understand the basic tenant of this book, you need to have some experience under your belt. This time last year, for instance, I would certainly not have been in a position to "praise" one of my children for screaming at me "to let me know they have an issue." Learning to handle my children's screaming has taken a lot of practice and hard work on my part. If I'd have tried to be happy and encouraging of that particular mode of communication in the early months, I'd almost certainly have failed and felt crap about it. Most other parents would have too, I guess, the ones that were human in any case.

That said, I think it should be compulsory reading for every adopter of trauma chucking children (as I lovingly think of them). Its contents page consist of an Alphabet of Issues and so you can pick off your children's issues like meals off a menu. I'll have Attention Seeking for starters, then Control Issues for the main, then Emotional Outbursts for pudding, please! I think it really does cover all the dishes of trauma that our kids serve up to us, and it covers them in some detail, talking both in the general and using specific families as examples.

Seeking to explain why our kids have Control Issues or Eating and Food Issues, or why they have Puzzling Pain Responses, the book expounds that dealing with the underlying cause of the problem behaviour is the only thing that will help stop the problem behaviour. This apparently takes an awful lot of effort on behalf of the adoptive parents, requiring total commitment towards an understanding and fully empathetic attitude, completely banishing any idea of punishment. It is exhausting in its suggestions for how we can re-write the scripts our children have been reading from.

The theory that children's behaviour is their language - that they are communicating important information to us with their tantrums and defiance and such - has been one of the most important lessons that I have learnt as an adoptive mother. This book has really underpinned that lesson and has given my newly emerging therapeutic parenting tendencies a confidence boost.

Sadly, predictably, it offers no short cuts to healing children, no get-out-clause from the pressure of having to parent extremely well. In fact, it has nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. An extremely comprehensive, easy to navigate, incredibly helpful book, that is not for the faint hearted.

shark hunting

There's a famous scene in one of my favourite films, Jaws, where Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss are on Quint's fishing boat trying to catch the Great White shark that has been plaguing the waters of their island and eating people. In this scene Roy Scheider is nonchalantly throwing meat and blood into the sea to attract the shark, when the Great White with his enormous mouth and hellish rows of razor-sharp teeth looms quietly out of the water right in front of him. Shocked by the almost supernaturally large size of the shark, Roy Scheider backs slowly into the fishing boat's cabin and says to Quint, "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Last Friday such a moment happened to me. Nothing to do with sharks, but to do with the size of the demons my son is battling. He did something that shocked the hell out of me and made me realise the enormity of the thing we are dealing with.

To keep all this metaphorical - because I don't think I can write about what actually happened - there we all were, my family, in this boat, and I knew there was a shark out there and that either sharky would leave us alone, or sharky might attack and we'd have to fight him one day, but I did not realise that the shark was a bloody gigantic Great White capable of capsizing our boat and eating us all. Not until it came out of the water and showed me its huge mouth and teeth, I didn't.

So, we're gonna need a bigger boat. Or, in other words, I've gone to my GP who has made us a referral to CAMHS.

I don't know that I have an unshakable faith in our Mental Health Services. I will be cautious until they have proven to me their shark handling abilities and I will remain prepared to intervene if it looks like they are putting my son in the way of the shark, rather than trying to pull the shark's teeth out or punching it in the nose to make it go away. Having seen the size of the thing however, I can't just sit around on my piddling little boat anymore waiting for us to be shark's lunch.

But let me say this: if it comes to it, I am prepared to go one-to-one with the Great White that is circling my family. If I have to, I will shove a scuba tank in its mouth, shoot the tank, and blow the monster to fecking kingdon come. I will do that because that's what mothers are for. It would, however, be preferable if a bigger boat could come and harpoon the thing to death for us. Please please please could a bigger boat come and harpoon the thing to death for us.

the Hungry Ghosts I live with

It is often said about adopted children that they are vessels with a small hole in the bottom. You can pour all the attention and care into them that you can, but even as they are being filled with love it is draining out of them all the same. You can never fill them up, no matter how hard you try.

I was pissing around on the internet last night, avoiding going to bed and facing my thoughts, when I came across something about Buddhism and the realm of the Hungry Ghost.

The Hungry Ghosts are probably the most vividly drawn metaphors in the Wheel of Life. Phantomlike creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, and long thin necks, the Hungry Ghosts in many ways represent a fusion of rage and desire. Tormented by unfulfilled cravings and insatiably demanding of impossible satisfactions, the Hungry Ghosts are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed. They are beings who have uncovered a terrible emptiness within themselves, who cannot see the impossibility of correcting something that has already happened. Their ghostlike state represents their attachment to the past.

I don't think I have ever read anything that sums up adopted children so well. The 'Hungry Ghosts are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed', that's what they do, our children, they are on a constant and desperate hunt for something or someone who will make up for their catastrophic losses in early childhood. They try to get it from material things like toys and games or money, or from their adoptive mother's time and attention, but the more it doesn't work, the more desperate they get and the harder they try. The terrible thing is that no amount of wii games, or pocket money, or slavish attention from mother, will ever change what happened to them. Yet they are incapable of recognising this. They are also incapable of letting the past go. They will go on demanding ever more of everything and everybody in a perpetual hopeless attempt to change their ever-present past.

As an adopter you are encouraged to fill in the missing pieces from your child's past. To give them the intense nurturing they missed from their birth parents. But I am not sure, now, that this is the cure all it's supposed to be. I have given these children in the present what they lacked in the past. I have babied them. I have dressed and washed and fed them like they were helpless new borns. I have put my own life on complete hold for 20 months, given half the house over to them and the things they like, used no child care substitutes, and learnt to apply myself in every way possible to meet their needs. And yet, that terrible emptiness inside seems to have received not one drop of my attention. It's not that my attention leaks out of them, it's as if that attention never gets into them in the first place.

All the books I read, the ones for adoptive parents, say that healing can happen in adoptive children in six months or a year, given a certain type of therapeutic parenting . I don't believe them. I don't believe them because if that were true my kids would be healed by now. And I don't believe anymore that if I just keep on giving and giving and giving that my children's emptiness will get filled. In fact, I think that if I keep on giving at the rate that I am, that there will come a time when there will be nothing left of me.

Both filling in the missing pieces of care and therapeutic parenting are vitally important for the well-being of adopted children - it allows healthy personal growth and a chance to become a functional person - but they cannot satisfy the emotional hunger caused by past abuses. I used to think they could, now I know they can't.

My children are filled with rage and desire, and they are tormented by unfulfilled cravings, and just right now, after the events of recent weeks, I am not sure that there is a damn thing I can do about it.

In Summary:

Just at the moment, it is my belief that I could baby and therapeutically parent my children to a super human degree and they would still grab for my time and attention like their life depended on it. They are not clingy because I haven't nurtured them enough, or because I'm not being therapeutic enough, which is the misapprehension I have hitherto been labouring under. They are clingy because they have lost something they can never get back. When they get older they will try to replace that loss (or fill in that hole, whatever) with other obsessions and addictions, but right now it's me they're using.

coming soon... a happy post

Sorry to be so grim lately, but June is just an awful month for this family.

Come July, this blog will be a much happier place to be.

I hope.

Father and Mother's Day sadness

When husband and I did our first batch of Mother's Day and Father's Day with the kids last year, friends and family were so happy for us that we finally had children to celebrate these day.

But they were awful for us, both of them. Couldn't pin down exactly why though, but yesterday was our second Father's Day and now I think I can.

Firstly, if husband and I could have had birth children, we wouldn't have to share Mother's or Father's day with any other parent. As it is, our children's birth parents are present in mind if not body, for us as well as for the children, on both days.

Secondly, if husband and I could have had birth children, they would not have been screwed up by neglectful parenting, being in the care system and the trauma of adoption. Therefore our birth children would not be presenting us with such emotional and behavioural difficulties that meant I couldn't work, that meant sleepless nights and tears shed, that meant professional input was required.

Thirdly, our birth children would love us, which I am not yet sure our adopted children do.

Lastly, it's hard to take part in a day celebrating Mothers and Fathers when our children's birth parents - and those of the majority of adopted children in this country - were so unfit to be a Mother or a Father that their children had to be taken away from them.

So, yesterday was awful. The weirdest thing is that people who are close to us have no idea of the trauma such days bring to our family. It feels like someone died and they're being all jolly about it. Still, over now for another year.

it's definitely them

Last Saturday I asked is it me? or them? Why did I find Saturdays so difficult?

Well, today I have decided that it is definitely them.

I was in quite a good place this morning. I'd got the whole day mapped out and I felt OK about it. But after six hours of constant questioning and being followed around so closely it's like they are somehow attached to my belt, I am ready to blow.

Final straw: we've been trying to get them fancy dress costumes for a party they've got coming up. Son wants to go dressed as Mario. The costume is not in any of the shops by us. I can see he's really disappointed. So we, his dad and I, say we'll try online when we get home. We get home. I go to the toilet, more to get away from being harassed than to have a pee. I am pursued by daughter asking me yet another question she already knows the answer to. I tell her she's banned from asking me any more questions today. When I get out of the loo, son is there. He wants to know when we're going online. Now, as far as I'm aware his dad is downstairs, where the laptop is, and he could have saved himself a trip upstairs, and a short wait whilst I had a piss, and just asked his dad.

But he didn't. They don't. It's like they don't even see him. They just see me. They just want me. Every second of every day. They just want me.

I point out to my son, a bit crossly, that he has two parents, and that he could have asked his dad, in fact that he should ask his dad because that's the type of thing is his dad is there for. I then shut myself in my bedroom because I really feel that I am going to blow if I do not get some space.

I see a book. I relax. I pick up the book, sit back on my bed, and begin to read, safe in the knowledge that the kids will be busy with dad picking costumes out on the laptop. I can have a break.

I read half a page and I hear the kids come running up the stairs, noisily, hysterically, and go into one of their bedrooms and start playing. Of course. If I am upstairs, there is no way they will stay downstairs.

My husband enters the bedroom. I ask him what's happened. He's not bothered about the Mario costume, I am told, they both just want to play upstairs.

Of course they do. That's where I am, Trying to get some peace and quiet.

So, as Husband seems intent upon relaxing in the bedroom too, and as at that very moment I feel like I am allergic to human beings, I storm off downstairs, grab the laptop for myself (well no other fecker wants it, do they?) and shut myself away in the snug.

Closely followed of course, by the children, who have now decided, two minutes after going upstairs to play, that they now want to be downstairs to watch TV in the living room.

Of course they do. Downstairs is where I am.

I know these children need me. I know they have an acute sense of abandonment. I know that somewhere deep inside of them they think they are going to be taken away from me like they were taken away from their old mum. I understand all of the theory behind all of their behaviours.

But for the love of god, these incessant attempts to hold me hostage, to have me bound, gagged, and blindfolded, only able to move with them, speak to them, see what they are looking at, it's inhuman. These children do not want me to exercise the slightest iota of free will. They physically obstruct my movements, they don't allow me my own thoughts by throwing hundreds of nonsense questions at me, and they constantly direct me to look at what they are looking at, so that I am not even allowed to look where and at what I wish.

It's like they would drain my body of who I am and replace me with them. Like they would crawl right on into me if they could, and control every movement like I was a puppet.

This is a bad weekend. It's Father's Day tomorrow, which is hell for us all. This is a bad month. June is full of psychological triggers for the kids. We've had some big stuff from both of them recently, that have pushed me to start on the journey towards getting help from CAMHS. But, perhaps when this month passes they'll start to behave more normally again. I can only hope because if I thought this was going to carry on forever I'd be the one with severe mental health problems.

what's wrong with being working class, anyway?

I've always been plagued by middle class sensibilities. As a girl I liked to read books and ride ponies, and I despaired of my working class parent's taste in newspapers and food. When I took my first steps into adulthood I was drawn towards education rather than the factory floor. I used to have nightmares about ending up working in a shop.

I've mixed a lot with the middle classes since then, and they're OK. So help me, I even married one of them. I recognise myself in a lot of their wants and desires. I do some middle class things. I hold my hands up to having holidayed in Provence and attended the theatre many times. I am a Guardian reading, degree obtaining, home-owning, houmous and pitta eating, working class woman.

But I'd always assumed my children would be middle class. That is to say, my children's lives would be enriched by being able to play musical instruments, speaking bits of foreign languages, joining the Scouts and the Guides, holidaying in France and eating fetta salad. They would be in book clubs and know their times tables. And they would go to University.

I have, therefore, suffered some anxiety over my own children's strong resistance towards all things middle class. They can both play the recorder, but badly. We teach them a bit of Spanish or French, but they forget. They tantrummed over going to Scouts. We dare not take them on a plane. They once screamed at me when I suggested they try an olive. They're not much interested in books and education. I don't think they'll go to University.

For a while I tried to pull them towards the type of life that my own birth children would have had. However it was such a huge leap from the life they had had, that we got nothing but anxiety and panic. They want home, familiarity and safety. Not clubs, learning new things and having new experiences.

I was bereft.

Then something happened.

Some minor acquaintance on Facebook posted something about taking her son to a Folk Festival so that he could see musical instruments being played in different context. Her son is eight.

Let's just recap that. This lady wanted to take her 8 year old son to a Folk festival so that he could see musical instruments being played by men in beards, wearing Jesus sandals. He normally listens to and plays classical, you see.

I know this kid. He hates his violin. All he wants to do is play his DS.

My working class instincts rose up in indignation. It felt almost sinister. Like when you know someone who starts dating a really controlling person and their whole likes and dislikes change to accommodate them? At what point does 'enriching your kids life' stop and 'making them be someone they're not' start?

A revolution happened right there and then in my working class heart. If my kids want to learn to play a musical instrument, I thought, they'll tell me and I'll support them. There's always a chance they'll pick up a guitar when they're older, or try the drums around at their uncle's. I'm not going to hothouse them for the Philharmonic.

Since that moment, the middle class has looked to me like some stressful, silly clique that doesn't seem worth the effort. Life's a ride and I want my kids to enjoy it. I don't want them to worry about speaking the 'right' way, or going to the 'right' university, or reading the 'right' books, or earning the 'right' amount, or living in the 'right' postcode. That's just a complete and utter and total waste of energy.

Being working class is great. You get to sit on broken deckchairs, swigging Red Stripe, burning a few Asda burgers on a BBQ improvised from a cooker grill stuck over a couple of bricks. Your nan comes on holiday with you. You can put your own wallpaper up.

Rather than us working classes aspiring to be middle class, I think the middle classes should ponder the benefits of becoming working class. You can do your job half-arsed because you're not on a career ladder, and you don't give yourself a stomach ulcer worried about paying school and University fees. It's much more chilled and less expensive, and you don't have to pretend to appreciate Tracey Emin.

If my kids pick up a few words of Black Country dialect from their grandparents, that'll do me. As for clubs - who wants their kids in a semi-military organisation the pledges allegiance to God and The Queen, anyway? Not me! We shall holiday in a caravan*, they can eat all the Chicken Dippers, jam sandwiches and Wagon Wheels they like, and sod all the expense and stress of University. They can do something actually useful and productive with their early adult years instead.

I still insist they learn their times tables however, know who the Prime Minister is and understand the difference between 'they're' 'there' and 'their'. Being working class doesn't mean being ignorant.

* when I was growing-up, working class families used to go camping because that was what we could afford. Now camping sites are for the middle classes who want to 'get back to nature'. No thanks!

how very dare she!

I'm in a super market, at the till. Woman scanning my stuff through picks up my Loreal Wrinkle Decrease face cream.

WOMAN: (scoffing) Do you think it works?

ME: Well, I've been using it for years and I'm 63.

WOMAN: ----------

ME: That was a joke.

WOMAN: -----------

Bitch!

the Arab Spring

Like you I imagine, I've been watching the Arab Spring unfold across the middle east and north Africa, as we've gone from the amazing scenes in Egypt which showed the beauty and indomitably of the human spirit, to the enraging brutality meted out to the people of Libya and Syria.

For the past decade al-qaeda have hijaked the voice of the Muslim world, trying to tell us that Muslims want nothing less than the western world to burn.

But what we see in all those repressive states is people who want to live like human beings; to be free to speak their minds, to live without fear of death and torture from their ruling elite, to be part of a democratic process that sees their country and its people thrive. They want to work, love, play, be with their family without living under the shadow of a repressive regime that enjoys nothing more than to stamp on the face of humanity.

There's not a lot we can do to help these people as they grasp this one chance to throw off the darkness and live in the light. Our leaders will do what they will, our armies will do what they have to and bless them for it. There's not a lot that us ordinary people, in our thankfully ordinary lives, can do to help these amazing people giving their todays in order that others may have their tomorrow.

But, if you will, take five minutes out of your day, forget your worries, your bills, your work difficulties and the 'thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to', close your eyes, listen to this song and think of them. Just think of them.

a child's idea of handling grief

So, on Friday I talked to my son about how I think he expresses his worries through his behaviour and I suggested that if he feels worried, or sad, or angry about something that instead of being defiant, scream or tantrum, that he uses his words. Tell me you want to talk to me, I said, and we'll have a chat and a hug and I think you'll find that will make you feel much better than screaming.

Last night, it got nearer to bedtime and son started up his behaviour with husband, so I stepped in and reminded him that he had a choice. He could either stop this and tell us how he feels through using his words, or he could carry on and face the consequences. This settled him down a little.

When it came to say a final goodnight, this is how it went.

ME: Goodnight son, sweet dreams, see you in the morning.

SON: Mummy, I'm sad and I want a chat and a cuddle.

ME: (giving son a hug) Son I am so glad you could tell me that, tell me about why you feel sad.

SON: Because I keep thinking about my old mum.

ME: Oh I can see why that would make you sad, because you miss her, and also you feel sad for her because she had a sad life.

SON: Yes.

ME: And that makes you worry about night times, because at night you get worried that you're going to think about her and get sad?

SON: Yes.

ME: I understand. What do you think we could do to make you feel better?

SON: You could buy me some Pokemon Black and White cards.

Ahem!

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the strange world of the adopted child!

Sunday! Hurrah!

See, it's Sunday and I've woken up with a much better attitude! Don't feel the least bit resentful! I've seriously got to sort my Saturday problem out.

is it me? or them?

I have difficulty with Saturdays.

As you might have deduced from things I've written, our kids are what you might call 'high maintenance'.

We have to keep a structured weekend, one that is stimulating yet not overly stimulating. And we have to get out of the house if possible. A day with four of us stuck in the whole time is not good. If the weather is on our side we can at least just go to a park, but if it's not, we have to think of something else.

And that's why I hate Saturdays - it's difficult going places on a Saturday because everywhere is just so busy; the roads are busy, parking is difficult, there are queues everywhere. Cinemas, bowling, swimming, soft play centres, town centre, everywhere's packed. Cheaper places like museums or council run historical houses and such, I love, but the kids hate.

And, apparently, this problem is enough to turn me into a crappy mother every time that day of the week comes around. Saturdays are my very worst day as a parent. I don't want to spend time with the kids. I find it hard to be therapeutic. I feel resentful that I can't do what I want to do, even if I don't know what that is.

Today (a Saturday) husband decided that we were going to spend the afternoon in the garden as the weather was unexpectedly sunny. Of course, by the time we had had lunch it had turned overcast, chilly and started to spit rain. So I set us all a little project and we worked on it together in the living room. It was then I noticed something. The kids were hyper. We were supposed to be having quiet time together, drawing and such, but they were constantly bombarding me with nonsense chatter, fidgeting, unable to apply themselves for more than three seconds at a time to the task in hand. Over the hour we were together, nothing calmed them, not my soft tone of voice, not the low-key activities, not the quietness. They would not come down to my level of emotional regulation.

If you had watched my kids this afternoon you'd have thought them ADHD.

All day too, as usual, my kids have stalked me. If I walked past the room they were in, one of them jumped out at me to ask me a nonsense question. If I went to the toilet, one of them was outside the door when I came out. If I was in the kitchen, they found a reason to be in there too. If I was upstairs, there was suddenly something urgent they needed to do in their rooms. On the day I am at my worst, they want me the most.

I began to wonder. Is this the real reason that I find Saturdays such a strain? Or are they like this on Saturdays because of how I am? It's a chicken and egg thing: which came first, the untherapeutic mother or the hyper kids?

In any case, the solution is the same: we need to get out on Saturday afternoons. I am much better with them out of the house and the kids benefit from burning off some energy.

But...

then...

... it's difficult going places on a Saturday because everywhere is just so busy; the roads are busy, parking is difficult, there are queues everywhere...

Life Story Hell

Yesterday, husband and I went on a jolly, attending a course run by our adoption agency on the subject of 'how to talk to your children about adoption.' Well, apparently what you do is occasionally raise the subject of their being adopted in friendly, casual way, and talk about it in an age appropriate manner.

No shit!

One bit of advice did stick out. We were told that if your child doesn't often pick up their Life Story book then you need to be getting it off the shelf for them, and getting it out there. Children need to be lead the way, to know that it is OK to talk about their past life and their adoption. We were told the story of one little girl who loved her Life Story book so much that when the school asked the children to bring in their favourite book, that was the one she wanted to take in! Because it was all about her, you see! Oh, how we laughed.

Now, my children know where their Life Story books are, and whenever they have said one of their casual little anecdotes about their old mum and dad, I have reminded them about the book and suggested they take a look again. But other than the time I read through the books with them when they first moved in, they haven't read them since being with us, although they would have done so many times in Foster Care as part of their Life Story therapy.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the snug, busy on the laptop, and daughter had already tried and failed to draw my attention away from it and onto her just for the hell of it, when she hit upon the idea of asking me to get her Life Story book for her. There was stuff in front of the bookshelf and so an adult was needed to reach the across to the shelf and get it. Clever girl. She read her book without comment, getting slower and slower the closer it got to bedtime in order that she could control what time she went to bed. A double victory! Give that girl a round of applause!

Son read his Life Story book too because he saw his sister doing it. I hung around him, helping him out with who people were and what things meant. After that he went to bed, started sobbing and continued sobbing for two hours.

When he'd finally gone to sleep I went downstairs and read through the book myself. Oh. My. God. I had forgotten just how nightmarish it was. My children's birth parents had the kind of upbringing that would break most people, and it is heartbreakingly easy to see how they turned into the dangerously dysfunctional people that they did. I was chilled to the bone that night to think that those children lying safely in the rooms above me, those children whom I strive so hard to treat with care and consideration every minute, were once living in that household with those people.

Since reading his Life Story book we have experienced a marked increase in son's behavioural difficulties. Two days after, for instance, he walked out into the middle of the road, not checking if there was a car coming, saying he wanted to die.

So, when we were on this course yesterday and the Social Workers were telling us with gusto to get them Life Story books out and read 'em until you know every word off by heart, I mentioned this. I can't remember what the reply was, but I it was of no use what-so-ever.

It seems to me that Social Workers are still working from old models of adoption. Yes, there is a mass of research out there that proves that secretive adoptions were very bad for the well-being of adoptees and that an open relationship with their adoptive parents about their birth parents is immensely important, but this research is mostly based on adult adoptees who were babies voluntarily relinquished by their birth mother. They were not adoptees who spent several years with abusive, neglectful parents before being taken into care at an older age.

Perhaps all these nice Life Story books, that are so cuddly wuddly that the children want them as bedtime reading, were made for very young children, who were taken into care as babies or toddlers. Perhaps that will work for them.

But what about the older children? Can it really be beneficial for them to remind them on a regular basis of the hell pit into which they were born? My son has clearly been retraumatised reading his book and he'll not be allowed to read it again any time soon.

As husband and I were on this course, grandparents kindly picked the kids up from school. It was the same story; daughter was fine, but son couldn't handle it. He was moody when we got back, had a screaming rage at shower time, and later refused to go into his bedroom, never mind get into bed. I helped him through it best I could. When he wouldn't get into his room, I ushered him downstairs and he sat on the sofa whilst husband and I read. I didn't think he'd last 20 minutes before boredom would compel him back up to his room, but he held out for nearly an hour.

But I made a huge mistake. I was keeping calm and everything, but when he said he wasn't going to bed I tried to make him. Said he had a choice. He could either get into bed now, or if he wasn't capable of that, I'd assume he needed more rest and that tomorrow instead of coming home and going on the wii, I would insist he go for a lie down in his room. I was so tired after being on that course all day and I just desperately wanted him to go to bed so I could finally relax. Usually it works. Last night it didn't. In a parody of my calm voice he said that he didn't care about the wii, was fine with not going on it.

Now that's what he said last night. But nothing causes a shitstorm in our house like son being banned from the wii. He will remember the second he leaves the school gates that there is no wii tonight and he will be out to punish me with all the earth's fury.

I'm going to be brave. I'm going to take him up to his room when we get home, I'm going to sit out the traumafest, and then I'm going to talk to my son about his Life Story book. Because he might not realise why he's going crazy at the moment, but I do. Oh yes. I do.

addendum

Son brought up the subject of the wii ban as soon as we got into the car after school. I told him we'd talk about it, but not now. I told him the same thing when he brought it up again when we got home, and I held him off until he'd had a drink and a snack. Then I took him into his room with his Life Story book, and I said as age appropriately and as caring as I could that I think he'd gone crazy since he'd read the book. We talked a little about what was in the book, about adoption, about his memories and he cried a little, and I held him. The he asked if I would buy him a new wii game to cheer him up (always worth a try!) and I said no, but I would do a jigsaw with him. And we sat together, on his bedroom floor and completed a dinosaur jigsaw. There has been no screaming. He has gone to bed happy. I am so hoping I don't screw up tomorrow because I done good!

addendum #2

I found son loitering on the stairs at about quarter past nine; said he couldn't sleep because of something that had happened with two school friends that day. I suggested he write them an apology letter, as that would make him feel better, and I got him some paper and a pencil and took him back to bed. I checked on him twice and he was much happier.

conversations with a Dalek

ME: Excuse me Mr Dalek, could my son please tell you a joke?

DALEK: What's a joke?

ME: Something that will make you laugh.

DALEK: Daleks don't laugh

ME: Pretend you do.

SON: Why do Daleks like apples?

DALEK: I don't like apples.

ME: Pretend you do.

DALEK: I don't know, why do Daleks like apples?

SON: Because an apple a day keeps the Doctor away.

DALEK: Haaaa haaaa haaaa haaaaaaa haaaaaa

DALEK: I know another joke. Knock knock.

SON: Who's there?

DALEK: Doctor.

SON: Doctor who?

DALEK: Doctor Who! Exterminate! Exterminate!

Wow!

On Thursday night the children had grandparents put them to bed, on Friday night dad was out and so they had only me to put them to bed, and then on Saturday night I was out and they had dad put them to bed.

Our children usually no likey such a prolonged change to their routine. Son had some trouble and on Saturday night he tried the bee-in-the-room excuse again for not settling down and going to sleep, but husband dealt with it as I did and it fizzled out.

There was however payback last night from him. It started with him getting a bit moody at my suggestion that his room needs a bit of a sort out, ramped up to tantrum status when his dad cleaned off the face-paint he'd had done that afternoon, and then progressed into a screaming rage when we said he couldn't have a bath whilst he was 'upset' and let daughter go first instead.

I let him carry on for a bit, then went into his room and suggested he rip up the newspaper we put in his room for such occurances. I even did him a demonstration. He refused, what with his ODD being in full swing and everything. So I went and did a bit of housework, occasionally asking him if he was OK and getting a response that strongly suggested he wasn't. Then I had the idea of getting him to do a jigsaw puzzle, because I read somewhere that's supposed to be really calming. I took one into his room and poured the pieces onto the floor. He was curious enough to stop screaming, but he did tell me he wasn't going to do a jigsaw puzzle because he was rubbish at them. He'd benefit from some practice then, I suggested, as I sat in front of him and started to turn all the pieces up the right way.

And do you know what? He joined in. And he was suddenly fine and continued to be fine all night. Had a nice bath, went to bed happily, and stayed in room. Wow!

But what's even more Wow is that I didn't pick up his anger one bit. I felt complete empathy with him and just wanted to 'help him be OK' rather than 'get him to stop'. I would like to be like this with him all the time but I'm not, so I've been wondering what was different?

Well, first, I think husband and I have benefited this week from having some time out together and also some time out with others. Just to feel normal, to not have to do all that monitoring that seems necessary when with the kids to keep them from dysregulating. To be with other adults, have interesting conversations, be completely ourselves, not having to keep ourselves in that therapeutic zone of communicating - what a relief! We clearly needs to have time out on a regular basis.

This had lead onto the second thing - a normal family day out on Sunday. Husband is into wargaming and there was a wargaming convention in a hotel just down the road from us. We dithered about going because taking the kids to things that they subsequently show no interest in is like entering the seventh level of hell. But, we went, and we had one of the best family times out I think we have ever had. We hung our with Daleks and Star Wars' stromtroopers, talked to Doctor Who, reenacted the gunfight at the OK Corral (we were the Cowboys and we beat the Earps! Howzat!), had the kids' faces painted and bought some dice (they love dice, husband has lots of dice because of his wargaming hobby and they've started to collect them too).

But what was really good is that we all just forgot ourselves; the kids forgot to be a pain in the arse and husband and I forgot to get uptight. Daughter wasn't trying to control things, son didn't have a trantrum, husband didn't go off into his own world and I didn't storm off saying I hated my family. We just hung out together and enjoyed each others company! I mean, WOW!

I was remembering last Whitsun half term. Daughter wailed her way through the first four days, amongst other things constantly pretend hurting herself, screaming at non-existent flies, doing a go-slow on her food, hurting her brother. By the Wednesday I was a jibbering wreck, never mind her. Then son took over and finished off the second part of the holiday tantrumming all the time. If ever there was a time that I hated my new life, it was then.

And look where we are now. We can actually, as a family, drop the misery for a while and allow ourselves to trust and maybe even like each other for a few hours.

Biggest thing for me though is to learn that I can feel sympathetic towards son when he's going off on one, not just force myself to act that way through gritted teeth. That is one big WOW for me. One big massive huge WOW.

When Love Is Not Enough: Nancy L Thomas

The full title of this book is "When Love Is Not Enough: A guide to parenting children with RAD - Reactive Attachment Disorder", which I saw someone recommend on the AdoptionUK message boards. It seemed like it might be full of tricks and techniques to help deal with those, you know, slightly difficult aspects of parenting adopted children.

Nancy, the blurb on the back tells me, is a Therapeutic Parenting Specialist, who has a very high success rate in working with high risk children, 90% of whom have killed.

Yes, you did read that right. The author of this book works with children who are so disordered they have murdered. That might be quite shocking, but somehow, throughout the book, Nancy keeps up such a breezy note that you don't doubt children can be brought up from such depths in order to heal and become a functioning citizen.

This filled me with much confidence, because I'm thinking if Nancy can help a psychopathic child to love, then surely I can help mine be less irritating.

I do suffer some drawbacks though. Nancy lives in Colorado, "a land noted for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and desert land". She's therefore big on things like mountain hiking and horse back riding to help heal her children, which is very difficult to arrange in Birmingham. Also, her advice that after the child has been with you for 2-5 years you can let them 'shoot a weapon' and after college 'own a rifle, handgun, hunting bow or crossbow' are also lost in translation. Can't imagine my children ever wanting to hunt bears, and even if they did good luck finding them around here.

Nancy's old wild west religiousness is also difficult for my English, secular sensibilities to digest. I'm just not going to be using the Power of Prayer, it just ain't me. And also, I'm not going to tell my daughter that girls who wear lots of black round the eyes and neon lips are whores. In Birmingham they are known as goths!

However, despite such things, Nancy speaks my parental language. Some of the adoptive stuff I have read insists on using sunny language when describing a child's behaviour. You know, children are not attention seeking, they are attention needing. Children are not naughty, they just require boundaries. That sort of thing. But Nancy tells it like I feel it. Children can behave in a manipulative and sneaky and downright abhorrent way and I have seen it with my very own eyes, many times. (Note I don't say that the child is manipulative, sneaky or abhorrent, I say their behaviour is. Big difference.)

Throughout the whole book Nancy is totally on the mother's side and teaches how to call children with attachment difficulties on their bullshit. She has many a technique for dealing with the manipulative, controlling and passive-aggressive ways that make up the weaponry that children with attachment difficulties employ, and for that this book is worth the money. Underpinning everything she advises is the idea that you cannot make a child do anything, but that natural consequences will guide their way. For that to work the parent must act smarter than the child and must, at all times, be the one in control.

Big for me about the 'control' aspect was that the parent should be in control of the hugs, smiles and affection. Those things are meted out on the mother's terms, not the child's. This may seem abnormal, maybe even cruel, to people who haven't adopted a child with attachment difficulties, but you would not believe how they will use even these things to control the adult. And if the child controls the adult, there is no hope for healing.

Still, inconsistencies pop up in the book, the same inconsistency that appears in every book about parenting adopted children. That inconsistency goes something like this: don't EVER reject a child from your presence for ANYTHING they have ever done, NOT EVER, oh, unless they've done x y or z then you should. Here Nancy will tell us not to send a child to their room for more than 30 minutes because you can't bond with a child who who is in their room, she will also tell us to hug a child who has stopped showering, no matter how smelly they are, but on the other hand she advocates sending the child to respite care that is stricter and less fun than your own home so they appreciate what they have with you, and to make a child eat in the laundry room if they deliberately employ bad habits at the dinner table! Also, do you hug a child who won't do their chores to 'unstick them' or do you let them 'rust on the coach' until they do it, I'm not sure!

(What is it with American's and their chores? I'm sure half of USA parenting problems could be wiped out in a flash if parents just stopped expecting their children to sweep floors and take out the rubbish.)

So, this book, sometimes it's an odd read because I don't live in cowboy country and pray over my kids, but in other ways it speaks directly to me. It also made me realise that my kids have actually done some healing whilst they have lived with us and that they have every chance of leading happy, functional lives if I help them.

I shall keep this one handy.

Reviews

I read books, when I can, and I think I'll review some of them here, because I like doing that. I love writing opinions about stuff on Amazon and Lovefilm DVD and such, letting the whole world know what I think about something, so I might just enjoy doing it here too.

I sometimes read weighty tomes written just for adopters and so it will be useful for me to record all the fascinating, insightful helpful stuff, and the drivel, because honestly, at the moment, everything is muddled up in my head.

I might review other stuff too. Just for fun.

son attempts another blow out!

I have been an exceptionally good mother today. Very present and loving, and forgiving of all the little irritations that children give rise to. I would like to feel this affectionate towards them every day, but that's not usually how it is. Usually I am very conscious of what loving gestures I give to my children and when, keeping an audit as I go through the day to ensure that they are getting enough loving. But today, loving gestures just gushed forth without me having to make any effort at all.

The reason for this opening of the heart is I think because last night Husband and I had a lovely night out amongst non-trauma inducing adults at The Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath, celebrating my good friend's **th birthday. The sun shone (unfortunately into good friend's eyes for the first hour!) and we sat looking out onto the garden, soaking up the ambiance and consuming good wholesome belly-filling food for a fair few hours. The relief of being amongst interesting people, who didn't once offer to show me the scratch on their leg or use a whiny voice to tell me that someone had just called them a poo poo head, has obviously done me an immense amount of good.

While we were out experiencing normal, my mum and dad came and spent the evening with the kids. I had briefed my parents well on possible son behavior at bedtime and they dealt with him triumphantly. I am a proud daughter today.

It was the same story: son was absolutely fine all evening and then bedtime came and he just flipped. First sign of trouble was when son told mum that he wouldn't clean his teeth unless she told him off! Mum was like, 'erm, I don't really want to tell you off,' and so son replied that he wouldn't clean his teeth then!

Thereafter followed the 'I'm not going to bed' defiant behaviour. They seemed to have been goodnaturedly strict, with my dad finally saying to him, 'Look, if you don't want to sleep, you have your books, you have your toys, but you're staying in your room!' When son came out of his room yet again, my mum apparently said 'OK, but I'm going to go and watch TV' and after he'd been ignored for a while, no more was heard. Which is pretty much how husband and I deal with things.

Make no mistake, we do not shove our son into a pitch black room, shut his door tight and expect to hear no more. Both children have bedside lamps and are trusted to read or play until they are tired, at which time they can turn out their own lights (though we do check they are not on late on a school night). My son has a CD player in his room and can play some of the relaxation CDs made especially for children, and sometimes if something unsettling has happened, I'll lie in his room with him until he's asleep. We have a good, structured night time routine, that really winds them down and includes a fifteen minute 'practice separation', whilst husband and I 'get them drinks' before bringing them up for a final goodnight. And this is a small house! We're never very far away!

It took a lot of trial and error but our nighttime routine has worked well for about a year now, and usually there is no trouble, not even when we have sitters.

But, clearly, son thought after his little blow-out at my parents-in-law he'd test out my mum and dad. The bedtime defiance is something he's brought with him from his birth home; when we met his elder half-sister the first question she asked was 'Does x still hate to got to bed at night?' No doubt nighttime at his birth home did bring some terrors, poor little boy, but not anymore. I do feel it is an adoptive parents duty to move children on from old dysfunctional behaviours, even if those behaviours are sadly understandable considering their experiences in their old life.

Daughter, for the record, behaved impeccably again last night and both my mum and dad were full of praise for her. She can be good company and pleasant to be around sometimes and I should allow myself to start trusting that.

Anyway, I've put them both to bed with hugs and kisses tonight, and so let's hope they both stay there!

addendum

15 minutes after my final goodnight, during which I very clearly say that there is no school tomorrow and so read or play until you are ready to go to sleep, my son pops his head out of the door and says he 'can't sleep'. I repeat the advice from where I sit, put the TV on mute and listen to hear what happens. Can't hear a damn thing because of this stoopid tinnitus and so I go check on him. He's sitting up in bed reading and I ask him if he's OK and he tells me when he's had a nightmare. The thing is, he does have nightmares, but he hasn't been asleep yet and so quite obviously hasn't yet had a nightmare. I tell him no one is making him go to sleep, just to read until he's sleepy and then give sleep a go. We'll see.

addendum two

Twenty minutes later, out again. Says he can't sleep. I ask him what he can do about that (apart from trying to make it my problem), but he doesn't know. I ask him what he could listen to. He says his CD. Got there in the end.

addendum three

7.30am he woke me up knocking on his sister's door and calling her name. I go and see. Daughter is still fast asleep. I suggest he waits until 8am, and he starts crying saying he hates his bedroom and doesn't want to stay in there alone. There's a bee in there, he says. There's no bee, I say, because if there was you would hear it buzzing. Then I suggest he goes downstairs and has breakfast and watches TV if he doesn't want to stay in his room, but that everyone else in the family was going to carry on sleeping for a bit. He didn't seem very happy about it, but he did just that.