Hubs is at an Adlerian theory conference. At a town four blessed hours away, lucky dog. He is finishing some required hours for a grant that pays back of *ALL* of his MSW schooling. Pretty Awesome eh? Last year we went with him and crashed at families, last year the kids had only been home 5 weeks, last year "things" were different.
Saturdays, Holiday's, heck ANY DAY that has been ear marked as "special", has the possibility to be somewhat enjoyable, will be sabotaged. I think it is just to much sensory overload, too MUCH possibility , too much good. As sad as it is chaos is where my kids are comfortable, NOT happy, but they have swam around in it enough to know it's where they thrive best.
Hubs called in-between breakfast and Hell. :) My phone died mid sentence.
The Playa's:
Scoobs 7- my domestic adopted darling.
Cookie 5- Haitian Chubbs.
Diva 5- Haitian tiny Fire-cracker
His text:
"Just wanted to say good morning and i love you.On a short break. Will touch base with you later."
My text back 10 minutes later , when I could plug in my phone:
"Sorry phone died....Diva was in time-in for stealing scooby's hootenanny while he was in time-in for tattling when I reminded him 3 x not too. Cookie was knocking on the wall pretending someone was here (so I would try to go see who it was)...while I was holding a SCREAMING Dude, after catching him climbing out of his toys and slurping syrup out of the empty pan....good times over here, and I won't begin to tell you about last night, or how I was woken up at 3:24 a.m., 0r 5:20 a.m. ..and for good a 6:38. Diva and I just got done trashing her room, sounds like she is re-throwing all of the shoes from the girls shoe bucket at the wall and taking turns bamming the door with a church shoe and slamming the door. HAPPY SATURDAY BABY!!!
...and that, sweet peeps is what ten minutes looks like in my universe.
It. was. a. night. ova here! Started great, some kids passed out watching The Cosby show, others went to bed easy-peasey. Small power struggle with El'Papillion over wanting to sleep on the couch, but nothin' I couldn't handle.
Sooo 3:24 rolls around, and P.B. is hacking a lung, moaning, and all stuffed up. I'm not sure if we were throwing up from the snots, or flu, fun non-the-less.
Got him settled, cleaned up,new jammies, new towels...washed my hands and Lysol-ed the bathroom. Checked Scooby's blood sugar, adjusted his pump...changed Dude's diaper.
Crawled in bed about 4:20ish....with
Lil Miss Faith decided she needed/wanted a cuddle and a bottle around 5-something, tucked her in with me...at EXACTLY 6:38, Cookie came in my room yelling "MO-OM I gotta go to the bathroom". (Now everyone may be way more rational being woken up for the third R.E.M. sleep within a 3 hour period, I am not one of those people, it makes me angry(like imagine RED LASER BEAMS OF DEATH coming out of my eyes irrationally M.A.D.). ..especially when the EMERGENCY pee session was more like a "tinkle, tinkle sprinkle" and honestly the "I need to pee" was really a "HEY MOM, I'm awake, you NEED to be awake TOO so you know that I am ALIVE"..."OH and by the way I woke up, Dude,Scooby,Diva and Chatter , BEFORE I came in to wake up you, Faith, Bugs and P.B."
Yes at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, eight out if nine children have been woken up by this one small fry.
Do I want to growl like a bear, and hang this child up to dry ....UH YEAH!...I take a quick minute to pray "Dear Heavely Father I need patience RIGHT NOW, so I do not yell, or un-do anything that might make him regress, I am angry, I am resentful , I am exhausted." (I have already had two Diet Dr. Peppers this morning)
So I take a deep breath, wait for the milli-second it takes for him to potty (cause he didn't really have to go)I sigh a DEEP sigh, and get up, I ask small fry to sit in Momma's rocker in her room...ask the little girls to play quietly in their room (cause they are way to hyper vigilant to be able to go back to sleep. Make another bottle for Faith and put her in her crib. Change Dude, give him a sippy with water, and put him back down.Check Scoobs Blood-Sugar, I tell Scoobs, P.B. and Bugs they can go back to sleep...and I get in the Rocker with Cookie on my lap. I HOLD him, I snuggle him and tell him that "I see YOU, and if it feels scary to wake up and not have anyone awake with him, come crawl in bed with Mama"...but waking everyone up makes them tired and grumpy. I ask him if he wants to climb back in bed with me and snuggle, or does he want to rock himself and watch me sleep , so he can remember how it looks to sleep.
He wants to rock in y big chair, peachy, I kiss him and crawl back in bed...and am so FRUSTRATED AND EXHAUSTED..I can't stop my heart and mind racing... I lay praying for strength for twenty more minutes and get on up to start the day.
Sooo see it started fabulously.
We made Hootenannies/German Pancakes for breakfast, they are like a casserole pancake.
Soooo to keep the down-low on my text short and sweet...I MESSED up in parenting...YUP me! I through the Diva into her rage..because I was not on my top game, I resorted to my "regular parenting", instead of therapeutic parenting.
Scoobs was on the top of his sabotaging game, we were all content, sitting down to breakfast, prayers were said, in MID-SCRIPTURE read, he wants to tattle on Cookie and Dude, and how they wouldn't go to sleep last night. (Unless it is LIFE-or-DEATH, we don't do the tattling thing, NOT ALLOWED, Bugs is the only one allowed to "check on kids for me and report"...cause the rest of them use it as a way to control, shame and lie about each-other...the Mama is soooo not getting wrapped up in that game"!) I say "Scoobs, love ya, but don't want to hear it"....and HIS COMPULSION TO TELL is ignited, HE , Can't STOP...it is like word-vomit now and he is spewing as loud and fast as he can what he feels he HAS to tell me. ...in turn this triggers Papillion...so SHE starts yelling..."Happy Breakfast time".
Scoobs is banished to the stool until he can keep his words under control...he is SCREAMING that "he is STARVING"... I go sit with him on the couch for a lil' Mommy and me holding time,I have to leave him to check on the kids and re-dish out seconds on juice and pancakes.
When he is calm and ready he rejoins the table to see that someone has partaken in his breakfast, while we were gone. (DEEP SIGH, EXCELLENT, I don't have anymore)
Diva is still working on her second serving...but the Scoobs plate is twords her, the bites taken are facing her, she is looking down with a mini-grin on her face.
*What I Should have done* - BUMMER! LOOKS like a MOUSE ate your breakfast while you were screaming, did ANYONE SEE A GIANT INVISIBLE MOUSE EAT SCOOBS BREAKFAST"...."Scoobs since a Giant invisible MOUSE ate your breakfast, what do you want to eat...ice-cream, potato chips, chocolate".
I would have let him pick it out, fixing his animosity to whomever ate the food, and letting the jealousy and injustice of him getting an extra yummy breakfast sit with the culprit, but not aggravating the situation.
But did I do that ...ummm NOOOOO, no I did not. :0/
It was 9:00 a.m. and. I. was. done.
I swooped in, dumped what was left on Diva's plate and gave it to Scooby. I told her I couldn't BELIEVE she had taken his food , when she still had her seconds on her plate. I shamed her, I showed her I was mad. I bought myself one WHOPPER of a tantrum.
She started with the frozen, not looking up,not talking or answering questions, drooling thing that drives me up the wall.
I should have read this post prior to my parenting flop.
Soo I sing-songed ,"Bummer babe, looks like if you are too tiered to hold that lil' head up, and answer Mom, looks like you need a little rest. Don't you worry ,I will help you up to your room." (She is holing into the door molding NOT budging, drooling)
So we go up to her room, I set her down on the bed, she jumps off. I tell her , when she is ready come on down and tell her brother she is sorry, come on down...as I close her door the first shoe hits the door.
The rage starts as I hear , "SHRIEK", BAM, "I HATE YOU" , BAM, "I am GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY", BAM....so I know she needs me, know she wants me to witness her rage, her fear. So I go on in and help her. "Sweet we are throwing shoes?, MY FAVORITE"..I throw the shoes too, I help knock all of the books out of the shelf.
I "help" trash the room. I yell "MAN I FEEL BETTER"! She is Shocked that I am being so crazy, she has stopped. I smile at her, "feel better", I ask. She flips me off. I smile again..."well this has worn me out, but go ahead and finish making this glorious mess babe! It has to be cleaned up before we come out and tell SCOOBY sorry, but hey , take your time do, your doing a great job."
Twenty minutes later this cute lil' head pops up and says "Mom I am finished, I even cleaned up my room and am ready to say sorry to Scooby"...I CHEER...I pick her up I swing her around , I KISS her cute cheeks, I snuggle...I go praise the heck out of the clean room and ignore the new marks in the door and the wall. I can Spackle those , her heart is way more precious than those dents and scuffs.
She hugs her brother, with-out me asking and offers part of her corn dog from lunch.
AMAZING eh? and we could have gotten here, so MUCH sooner , if I hadn't blown it.
Enjoy your weekend!!!!
Oi yoi yoi!! Isn't it so fun?? Hang in there!
ReplyDeletelove the drool. eeerrrrr!!!!!! Why oh why does that send me over the edge????
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for being so honest about your struggles on your blog. I'm still reading back, as you may have figured out by my comments over the past few days. But this has taught me a lot of important stuff.
ReplyDelete1. I'm not alone. This is huge. My son is 23 now and he first came to live with me at age 18. He was 14 when we started the adoption process. He definitely has attachment disorder, and your description of your issues with your children matches his behaviors almost to a T.
2. It's not because I've failed him. I had this naive idea that a few years of a loving home and a parent who loved him would somehow heal his troubles from his whole life, or that at least I wouldn't be the target of his rage and so on. I knew he might have serious problems and was prepared to do whatever it took to help him, but I wasn't *really* prepared, because all of it took me by surprise, and really has hurt me a lot. I know I'm not perfect but when I see that this happens to other adoptive moms I now realize that our experience isn't even that unusual or bad.
3. I've picked up a whole lot of ideas of how to approach things better just from reading your blog. I started out as a pushover and basically let him manipulate me a lot for the first year. Well, the honeymoon lasted a few months, but after that it got worse and worse. I finally started being a lot harder to manipulate and a lot more authoritarian to keep from being used and abused. This has worked well in that he now does chores. And it was a terrible, difficult 2 years in which we got to that point. But our relationship now is not at all good, and I want to improve it. I want to see and feel real healing, rather than just complying unwillingly.
So thanks again very much for having this blog. I love the way you handle things. If there is a book I could buy that would teach me some of these techniques, I'd love that. I can't afford to travel or go to seminars. I can't leave home because there's nobody to leave him with. But I'd love to learn more about theraputic parenting.