When Adoption Isn't Easy

Newsweek article "When Adoption Isn't Easy"
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/14/when-adoption-isn-t-easy.html


The New York Times article "In Some Adoptions, Love Doesn’t Conquer All"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/fashion/18Adopt.html?_r=1

Wednesday Night

After Yelena and I finished dinner she went to play on her Wii for a few minutes while I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen.  I went into her backpack to get her lunch box to empty it out and clean it and I took a casual look through while I was there. I found two dollar bills. Our deal is if Yelena is on time for school she can buy lunch but if she is late she has to take lunch from home then next day. She loves buying lunch at school. It costs $2.00. The other day she told me that she could have lunch for free. I don't really think that's possible or maybe it is possible for children who need financial assistance but I explained that we can afford to pay for her lunch and we needed to do so. She had the money left over so I told her she could use it the next day and didn't give her any money. Obviously she didn't pay the next day either. Today she told me that she could get drinks for free in the lunchroom if she brought her own lunch. Something is going on here and I need to ask her teacher.

In the pocket of her backpack I also found a ring which belongs to one of her brothers. When he was in high school, his football team won the "super bowl" of their league and he got one of those huge clunky  championship rings with his name on it. It cost several hundred dollars as I remember. This is after I put a padlock on door to the boys room to keep her out of their stuff. I took a deep breath and finished cleaning the kitchen. I poured Yelena a glass of seltzer and got her pills out and put it all on the kitchen table and called for her to turn off the TV and come into the kitchen.

We have been trying to reward her for doing things that we ask her to do by giving her a quarter if she (for example) turns off the TV the first time we ask her too. The last few days it hasn't been working at all and I have had to say ten or fifteen times: "Please turn off the TV NOW." When she finally turned off the TV and came into the kitchen she asked if she was in trouble and I said: yes. I asked her what was on the table and she looked at the ring and said she found it in her toy bin (not true). I asked if she knew who it belonged to and she said yes. I asked if she knew that it was important to him and valuable and she said yes. I said (in my very calmest Love and Logic voice) "OK, Yelena, there is going to be a consequence. I don't know what it is going to be yet but try not to worry."

And then, of course, all hell broke loose. She had been drinking out of her silver baby cup that a friend had given her when she first came home and she took the mug and threw it in the trash screaming "I don't care. I don't care." I said (very calmly) "That's OK" and went upstairs. I turned on the bathtub for her and asked her to get undressed and went into my bedroom. She followed me, I sat down at the computer on my desk and Yelena started punching me in the arm over and over again. I asked her if she liked to hurt me. I asked her   if by hurting me she wanted me to hurt her back. No answer (too sophisticated a question). I said "Alright, that's enough please get undressed and get into the tub. If you don't want to take a bath you can just go into your room and go to bed if you prefer." I googled something on the computer and it came back "Your search did not match any documents. Suggestions: Make sure all words are spelled correctly." She started to laugh at me and tell me that I couldn't even spell and that I was so stupid. I turned off the computer and stood up to leave. She grabbed my sweater by the neck and I could hear the stitches rip. She twisted the neck until I couldn't breathe. She twists my necklace until it is choking me as well. I said "Enough. Let go of me." She twisted harder. I said "Yelena I will call the police if you continue."  She said "Send me to a CBAT. I want to go to a CBAT." She sat down at the computer and googled  "seebat" got nothing and then googled "seabat" and still got nothing that made sense. I turned the computer off. She took a magazine off my shelf and tore it up. She took the laundry basket and dumped it on the floor. She took a chain that she wears around her neck with keys on it and started slamming it repeatedly on the wall and then on the chair.

It all gets confused in my mind. How did I get here?  I am scared. I am frightened emotionally and physically. She is very strong and she does hurt me. I try to remain calm and centered. I want to cry. I want to hit her but I don't. I take my cell phone and go downstairs. I have been well trained at this point: don't yell back at her, protect myself, walk away, stay calm, don't say anything I might regret, think before I speak, stay calm, walk away... I go downstairs and use the bathroom. Yelena comes down and knocks on the door. When I open the door, she dissolves in my arms:  "I'm so sorry Mommy. I won't do it again. I'm so sorry." I don't believe it of course. I have heard that so many times before. It's hard not to be angry and something in me doesn't want to soothe her.  I cannot say: "Oh, sweetheart, it's alright. Every thing's okay. I know you didn't mean it" because that's not true. She can't promise me that she will never assault me again because she has promised me that a hundred times...

She says, "I am so stupid. I am so stupid. Aren't I?. Over and over again. I say "No, sweetie, you are not stupid." Over and over again. She says, "You hate me. You hate me. Don't you hate me?" I say, "No, sweetheart I don't hate you. I love you. I will always love you. I don't care for your behavior sometimes but I don't hate you."

Finally she gets in the bath. She is at the point where she is taking forever in the bathroom. I go in over and over again to check on her progress. Taking a bath and drying off and putting her pajamas on can take hours. She asked me the other day if she could shave her legs. I was shocked at the question but I think that I was probably 12 when I first shaved my legs. I tell her to wait for the summer. She cut her pubic hair off with a pair of scissors a few weeks ago. She told me she shaved her legs. Or the part of her legs she could reach and she shaved parts of her arm. I noticed last night when she was in the bath that she had totally shaved her pubic hair. I wishes she had let me help her. I worry that she will cut herself. Maybe we have to lock up the razors?

My husband came home and she was in her pajamas playing with the cat. He asked her how her day was, what happened, did anything upset her? (I had talked to him on the phone while she was in the bath.) I hold up the ring and ask her if she can tell Daddy what happened. We have a very calm but slightly befuddled conversation about it. We try to get the basic points across: You may not hurt us, you may not steal things. She is calm now so she says she understands but I don't know if she really does understand.

Monday Morning...

Yelena got to school at about 9:45 on Monday (it was closer to 9 AM on Tuesday).  I got up at the usual time and no amount of the usual cajoling, tickling and pulling the bedclothes off of her would get Yelena to stir. I finally laid down on the bed with her and started to rub her back. She tolerated it for a few minutes and then told me to get out of her room. I stayed where I was and she started to kick me. It’s hard to hold a child and rub their back and her while you are being kicked. I decided that I had enough of being kicked and I thought it would be better to stay with her rather than leave because in that case  we might never get to school. To occupy myself while waiting, I started to clean her room which really needed it. It is always a revelation to clean her room. Mostly old candy wrappers and an assortment of other peoples things that she has pilfered. I found a real Japanese sword under her bed that belongs to one of her brothers. Sticky Fingers…

We had a hard time last night. I’m not sure why but I certainly remember the feelings that I had on Sunday night when I was a child and I hated having to go back to school on Monday.

On Sunday, we volunteer for Family Table which is a food pantry through our synagogue. We go and pack bags of groceries for needy families and then deliver them. Yelena refused to help me so I packed all the bags myself. Yelena ate snacks  and told me she was organizing the food on the tables. In reality she moved the cans and bottles around for awhile and I didn’t pay too much attention because we would have been there all day. She helped me very briefly. I asked her to carry some of the bags out to the car for me. There was a red wagon that you could use to move bags of groceries and she became very fixated on that. She put 4 bags on the wagon and then went outside with them and refused to carry any more, I packed the car and we were off. She was nasty and snarly. She asked how much longer it as going to take and kept rolling her eyes. The first family we got to, Yelena stayed in the car and I carried the six bags up a flight of stairs and into the woman’s apartment by myself. At the next stop, I told her I needed her help and she had to get out of the car. I reminded her that we were doing a mitzvah and that there are a lot of people in the world less fortunate than we are. I had to remind myself silently that I was doing the right thing by dragging her through this – even if she resented participating, it was important that I show her that it was important to me to be a part of an effort to  help others who have less than we do.

Trauma

Childhood trauma in particular. It breaks my heart. So many children who have been abused in one way or another and are suffering the effects. And will suffer the effects for a lifetime. It does not matter what kind of abuse, it is all abuse. The Ten Shekel Shirt video Fragile (see Video Bar) breaks my heart especially because of the child from the Russian orphange. That could have been my child. It could have been any one of us. There by the grace of G-d go you or I.

Some interesting websites about trauma:
http://traumanation.ning.com/
http://www.childtrauma.org/

Big Sisters

For about 2 years, Yelena has had a Big Sister who she has gone to events with, out for a movie or dinner or on a walk with, etc. A few weeks ago, Yelena asked me when she was going to see her again and I sent her an email saying that Yelena was asking about her. Although she is 12, Yelena doesn't really use the phone or email herself to be in contact with others or arrange meetings. Her Big Sister sent an email back saying roughly : A lot going on in my life right now, sorry I haven't been able to spend time with Yelena.

I emailed the social worker who works with us and asked her if she knew what was going on.  Meanwhile, Yelena asked again when she was going to see her Big Sister.

Last week, Yelena had an early release day from school so in an attempt to fill up some of the extra time we had, I took her to do some errands and we ended up spending some time at the Mall. I was trying to get Yelena interested in buying some new clothes.  I think that one of the reasons that she has so many problems with other kids is that she has no sense of how to dress. When she was in private school last year, one of her teachers convinced her to get some jeans and all the kids clapped and told her how good she looked when she walked in wearing them. While we were at the Mall, the social worker called me and told me that Yelena’s Big Sister couldn’t continue with the program due to personal issues. I asked if they could see each other one more time to say goodbye and she told me that she had asked her if she would do that but she had said no.

Yelena and I found a store called “Forever 21” that had some cute clothes and I sat down on the steps because I was tired while Yelena looked around. After about fifteen minutes she hadn’t returned so I went to looking for her and I couldn’t find her anywhere. I looked through the whole store, asked several people if they had seen her and then started calling her name. She finally appeared and I asked her where she had been and she told me she had been upstairs (the store had 2 floors) and I told her that I had been upstairs and had not seen her. I asked her to show me where she had been.  We went upstairs and then she told me that actually she had left the store and was playing with the video game machines in the hallway.

Very calmly, I tried to explain that I didn’t really care if she was playing with the video games but that she had to tell me where she was and it was not acceptable at all for her to lie to me. She got very upset because I was angry at her and while we were in the car driving home she said angrily: “Yeah, and when am I going to see my Big Sister again? I know when: Never!” I think it had been on her mind and I was upset that this woman wouldn’t see her again to say goodbye.

When I got home, I wrote the social worker a note and said:

I need to say again that even a very short meeting with Yelena would be really helpful. I could bring Yelena someplace to meet with her and make it a 15 minute visit. I just feel really strongly that with reactive attachment disorder and being adopted, Yelena is so very sensitive to any issues around feeling abandoned and rejected.  Without her Big Sister explaining to her personally what is happening and having her just drop out of her life, I think it will be very hard for her. Yelena will feel like this is just another instance where she has been rejected yet again. I don't know how to say it more plainly than that.

I am sorry for all of her troubles and I am willing to do anything to make it easier for her. Of course, if she can't manage it, then we will just have to deal somehow or other but I hate to have this happen to Yelena yet again.

A few days later I got a message saying that Yelena’s Big Sister would meet with her for a final cup of cocoa.

Today, when we were in the car going to the Farm to see all the baby animals and the chickens that she loves so much, she asked again when she was going to see her Big Sister. I told her that she was going to see her next Monday after school and then I told her that this would probably be the last time they would get together. Yelena said “But she’s one of my best friends!” She asked why and I told that I wasn't quite sure but that it wasn’t her fault but she would have to discuss it with her Big Sister.  I told her that she could get a new Big Sister and she said that she would have to be as special as her old one. She was really quiet and sad for while and I put my arm around her. There is no way to protect her against people leaving her life who she has grown attached to and I am sure that this will not be the last time something like this happens.