FEAR

Fears, we all have them. 

How many of you have ever been afraid, I mean really afraid.  Did your breathing get fast and shallow, did you freeze so no one would hear you move, did you ever run?   How many of you have ever had someone jump out at you and you get startled then your reaction is to get mad and swing at them?  

My girl goes through a state of fear multiple times a day.  Sometimes it is flash backs, images of her past, and reminders daily that she is different.  Her stuff is big and it is painful to watch her endure.  She carries a lot of big stuff around and when it becomes too much she blows.

I recently realized that her defiance and anger has nothing to do with wanting to dis-respect me as her parent but has everything to do with her fear. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of trusting, and fear of memories.  It is her reaction to fear that I see each day.

Her anger is directed at me but it is not about me.  It is a front for all the fear she is feeling inside.  Once I was able to see her anger and tantrums as fear, I was able to see her in such a different light.  Fear consumes her.  Her past was so unpredictable and scary that it consumes the very person that she is.  Her reaction to the fear is the anger that I so often see.

So, how do I help her to take away this fear?  I just need to be there for her.  I need to open myself up to her pain and emotionally allow myself to see her fear where she is at.  Most of all during these times when it feels like I can’t love her, it is often when she needs me to love her the most.   I give her a hug and tell her everything is going to be ok.  Acknowledge her fear and help her express it in a different way.  Through her screaming I tell her I love her and I am here for her. When she is done verbally abusing me and leaving a tornado in her wake I wrap my arms around her and tell her she is a good girl and that I love her.  She needs my love; she needs to know that she is loved. She needs to know that despite the behavior I will always love her.

Can you imagine being in fear all the time because your life has been so unpredictable that you can’t trust anyone that is around you?  I can’t imagine life being like that.  Each day I look at her I begin to love her more.  She is strong, she is working so hard to overcome and if it takes the rest of my life I will continue to love her through her fear to help her heal.

 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.1 John 4:18a

Today I wonder???

“Raising a child with difficult behaviors can be more than exhausting...it can actually be painful. It can hurt just getting out of bed in the morning. The day in and day out of being with a child who rejects you, defies you and disrespects you can put you in a place of even questioning your decision to become a mother. This level of stress leaves you tired, angry, frustrated, physically sick, resentful, sad, tearful, and/or hopeless.”   Heather Forbes: Beyond Consequences Love and Logic.

The life of a mom who has a RAD child is extremely trying. The quote above says it all for me.   Lately I have been feeling so defeated as a parent and exhausted from the constant challenges and some days I feel like just staying in bed and pulling the covers over my head and not getting up.

Unless you have raised or are raising a RAD child you will not understand this feeling that overwhelms a mom.  The overwhelming feeling of being disrespected, yelled at, spit on, kicked,  and having someone roll their eyes and do the exact opposite of what you ask out of spite makes you cringe.  Without words being told that nothing you are doing is good enough. 

The most difficult part for me is that all of this is done in private behind the 4 walls of our home and no one else gets to see this side of our Little R.  So sharing and expecting anyone to understand where I am coming from is impossible.  I don’t want to shed my little girl in a bad light, but I as a mom need support to survive this life that I am dealing with.

I pray each day that God will give me the strength to put on a layer of armor so that her words and disrespect will not penetrate and hurt me, I know that I should not take her behavior personally she is a hurt little girl surviving the only way she knows how, but it does hurt. It hurts a lot. 

I have had a lot of rejection in my life, and have spent many years dealing with it and healing from it.  I thought that I had gotten past the losses in my life, but when my little girl, who we want to love so much and give the world puts up a wall up and rejects me, it wells up in me such sadness and painful memories. 

Today I feel like a failure at this parenting thing, today I wonder if we are the right family for this little girl or if a more trained family would have been a better choice….  Today I just wonder...

.......Words will never hurt me!

Two weeks ago one of our pastors did a sermon on taming our tongue and how powerful words are.

I have been at the receiving end of many hurtful words.   Words have power, once spoken they do not easily heal; they stick around for a long time if not a lifetime.   Bruises and scrapes can heal and disappear and the pain is forgotten, but not words. It has taken me years to deal with some things that were said to me that I had to heal from and still to this day struggle from time to time with those popping up and I am in my mid-thirties so it has been a long road of healing.

Out of all of the wounds Little R endured words for her were the worst beating she took. She was told she was not wanted, a bad kid, stupid, not as good as her other siblings and the hurtful words go on and on. She recalls vividly things that were said to her but has all but forgotten the physical hurts she has endured.

Words do hurt.   I am  working hard to help Little R overcome these lie’s that she has heard and believes.  I have to be very careful about the words that I say to her as well. I work daily on encouraging and uplifting her and when admonishing her I remind her that we all make mistakes and she is still a great kid and dearly loved.

I have made many mistakes and have had to apologize for words I have said. One thing I realize though is that as I get closer to God and my walk is stronger I notice that when I do say something I should not have I often am immediately convicted and feel the need to think over what I said and deal with it. I love the power of the Holy Spirit that convicts me so I can right my wrong.   I also realize the power of words as I watch my Little R heal from so much pain and I am so much more aware of what I say to others and to children as a result.

Words cannot be taken back. Once they have left your mouth they are spoken and heard and the damage is done, even if you apologize. Children are very impressionable and once something is said they often internalize that and believe it to be so. I have a perfect example in my Little R.  A girl who struggles with self image, self esteem and believes she isn't worth anything.   We have to be so careful to choose our words wisely and remember to up life our children and acknowledge there good qualities and remind them daily they are beautifully and wonderfully made in God’s image.  Remind them that they can be anything they want.  Tell them you love them and think they are the best.  Give compliments often and minimize your criticism. Hug them and hold them and tell them you are so proud of them and the fact they are yours.   

 I remind Little R that the words that come out of her mouth have power the power to up lift and the power to hurt.  It is a difficult job to teach a little one about holding there tongue and speaking with kindness, and not gossiping, but what a beautiful friend and confidant she will become if she can master this skill.

Now if only I can master this  first so I can be a good example to her.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.  Eph 4:29

I am being watched

I know creepy huh? The thought of someone stocking you or watching you all the time and knowing things about you makes my skin crawl.

I knew as a parent I would be responsible for teaching and training my children and I also knew that as a parent of a foster child I would be re-teaching a lot of skills and habits that were incorrectly learned, but what I didn’t realize is how much you are watched on a daily basis in everything that you do.

Just recently Mike asked me if I had eaten breakfast and he always nags me when I don’t so I gave him that sly smile and said “yes I did” he turned to Little R and said “did mom really eat?” and she looked at her dad and said “ she must have she’s a Christian and wouldn’t lie”. OUCH!!! I quickly rectified the situation but it got me to thinking.

How often does she catch on to the things I do and say? The way I look at someone in the grocery store or respond to someone as I am driving and aggravated. How often does she catch little things when I am not being so “Christian like” and then what does she think when I expect the opposite of her.

How many of us quickly forget that our kids are watching when we get super angry at the car that pulled in front of us or the lady at the supermarket that looked a little funny and we chuckle. How about watching crappy TV but telling your kids it is not appropriate for them. (some exceptions of course apply). What about cursing and then telling your kids those are bad words and not to say them. I have been feeling convicted.

Little R is very attuned to what is going on in her environment due to her past trauma and needing to be "in the know" to feel safe. I wonder how many times she hears me grumble and complain or be crabby with Mike and I don’t think she is even listening.

I am suppose to be an example of Jesus to her. I am the hands and feet of Jesus to this little girl and I have a job and a task to teach her and train her and help her to navigate this world with a different type of attitude and response than her peers may.

I have a responsibility to this little girl to guide her and teach her and mold her in the way that God would want her to live her life and I can’t do that if I myself am not living the life that God would have me live. Someday if Little R learns nothing from me and never fully connects to me, the one thing I would be most please with is to hear her say that I was a woman of God and she could see that in me and learned something from me through this.

I am working with her to teach her skills and knowledge and change habits, but in turn she is unknowingly helping me to be accountable and in some cases get back on track with the way that I should be acting and living my life. It is not to say that I am running around like a crazy heathen but there are times and hours where I am less than pleased with the way I handled something and know my God is not pleased either and she provides a reminder for me of how I need to live my life.

I hope to each day remember that I am training our next generation and leading by example of how a Godly woman should live her life.

Proverbs 22:6  Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

It is simple.... I was called to do this

Can you imagine if God turned his back on us when we failed him?  Can you imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have a savior?   I can't imagine what it would be like to know that there was no Grace or mercy or unfailing Love?   I thank God everyday for his unfailing love for me.  His Grace when I fail him and his mercy when I deserve so much more reprimand than I receive.  I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like to not have a savior, a Redeemer, a Friend because I assure you I would not be here today if it had not been by the grace of God.

I have been told on many occasions in the last year that my husband and I are saintly, amazing, we have done the impossible.  We have been asked,  "how did you do it?"  “Why did you do it?”
  “Are you going to do it again?”  We have had many more questions asked of us surrounding the adoption of our girl as well.

Recently I was asked by a therapist “How do you love her even with all the hurt and upheaval she has caused you”.  I looked at the therapist and said “It is simple; I was called to do this”

I don’t believe that I would have chosen this path in my life had my body functioned the way that it should have and I had biological babies.  I certainly tried to avoid even in the adoption process a child with Little R’s conditions, but God had other plans for my life.

I was called to parent this child. God knew that I was capable of more that I could imagine.  He was calling me to something bigger than myself.    I was called to love a traumatized child unconditionally and give her my unfailing love.  I was called to provide grace and mercy to her during times when others turned her away and I was called to be her mother, teacher and friend. 

I do not see myself as amazing or saintly.  I am far from that, and I fail daily, but I do see myself as a child of God called to a task of helping this little girl heal from a traumatic past and grow to be a loving woman and child of God herself.

 How can I not love her, God made her.   He knew her before she was even born. He knew everything about her and still does.  He loves her even more than I do….her current condition is the result of human mistakes and she is paying the price.  I am to love her with the same intensity that God loves her and give her the Grace she needs to fail and try again.

I have the best job in the world.  I get to show my little R what a mom should be and I get to show her what true love is and I get to show  her that the world can look a lot different than she had envisioned and experienced.   So it is simple... I was called to do this. This is my calling in life.  Not to travel to remote parts of the world, or preach, or be someone amazing on TV, it isn’t even to sing which is my passion. It is to simply be a mom to Little R and help her heal and grow. 

Will we adopt again… well… my heart says yes but we will have to wait and see what God says as the next year or so goes by.

The big debate….to medicate or not to medicate?

When we met Little R she was living at a group home that had her in residential care for 8 months.  On her move in to the home she was removed from all medications to base-line her behavior.  She did fairly well at the group home so she was not returned to any medication.  She did well there because she did not have to attach or function in a family environment and she did not have to deal with a lot of her emotions surrounding that area of her life that was difficult for her.

I believed that our love, devotion and commitment to little R would heal her of all her hurts and pain and behaviors. I believed that the group home had somehow “fixed” her and she was miraculously healed from all her hurt since she wasn’t tantruming so much with them.   I thought that I could love her tantrums away and her anxiety and her depression and her fear of the environment and her sensory issues and her post traumatic stress disorder and her learning classroom issues and her Reactive attachment disorder.   My husband and I have worked tirelessly for our little girl over the past 15 months seeking out evaluations, therapies, services, talking to teachers and staff members educating family and friends and working hours with our little R at home to help her re-learn skills.  We have sought out natural herbal remedies and holistic approaches and food changes.  We have seen progress, she has changed, but her anger, defiance, fears and PTSD have continued at the same rate and she continues to struggle immensely in school and in social situations.

I thought that if I even considered medication I was a bad parent.  That I was giving up on her or on us and our ability to parent her.  I thought that if I considered medication that I was setting her up for addiction, dependency and failing her in some way.  I thought that if I put her on medication people would think that I was taking the easy way out and not trying hard enough to parent her and maybe we just needed to “try harder”.  We were encouraged to put her on some medication and we refused during our fostering stage. We were told by some friends and family it would be the worse thing we could do to put her on some medication.

I am writing this to tell any of you moms who are struggling with the decision to put your child on some form of medication that it it is not an easy decision one that you and your partner will have to weigh seriously and make the best choice for your family.  We did and it was the best decision we ever made.  Our life has been in chaos for the last 15 months and starting little R on a medication to help with her anxiety and help regulate her mood has made a world of difference.  It has given us back some normalcy in our lives and in fact is what we expected from parenting.   She has even told us how much better she feels not getting in trouble all the time and enjoying activities and events without being put in time out or removed from the venue.

We did not make this decision lightly and we still don’t . We did the research, we sought out a child psychiatrist who would listen to our daughter and us and build the right course of treatment for her.  Our Dr even told our little R.  “ I still want you to feel mad and sad and angry and all the emotions you have….but it seems right now that when you feel those things it is hard for you to not get Super mad and Super Angry and Super Sad and then you can’t turn it off, I want to help you control your emotions”.    I am not hear to listen to judgements on whether we made the right decision or not because I know that we did make the right decision for our family and our child.

Some people are born with imbalances in there chemical make up and some people have there balances messed with due to trauma in there lives and no amount of therapeutic work is going to be able to fix something like that.  A wise friend of ours who is a psycologist told me that sometimes giving a little medication will help the child be more receptive to the work we are doing in therapy, and accepting of those changes because they are in a better regulated state.   Our little R has been so strung out and anxious and physically in a place of dysregulation that she has not been able to take in what we are even trying to do with her.  Now her mind is calmer and she is feeling less anxious and able to take in some skills and learning tools.

I am so proud of her for the work that she has put into healing and I am proud of her as we talked about medication that she told me “mommy I just want to feel normal and not get so angry”.   When I asked her if she would be OK with me looking for a medication to help her not feel so angry so quickly and stay calmer  she looked at me with tears in her eyes she said “yes, please and soon”.  

Medication will never erase or completely heal our little girl. We have a long road of therapy and teaching ahead,  but we now finally feel like we are  on the road to healing.  

Exhausted...Mama's turn to vent

I don’t think I have ever felt this type of exhaustion before in my life.   I physically cannot even get out of my own way most days and wake the next morning still craving more sleep.

In April, I lost my job.   This set off a difficult tail spin of behaviors in our house from Little R due to the change and fears she associated with a mom not working.   It was a stressful phase in our lives but one that I hope Little R will learn from, that just because a mom is not working doesn’t mean she will be poor and not able to take care of her kiddo.  I was dealing with my own set of emotions over losing my job and feeling the financial strain and I wasn’t therapeutically parenting Little R to the best of my ability.  I was emotionally not able to meet her and was at times short with her, which did not make things better.

I found a job in late May and began a new schedule of working much later in the day than I ever have with Little R in the house.  When she moved in I was given a schedule of 6:30am-2:30pm. It worked out perfectly since she is an early riser.  I would see her in the AM, hubby would take her to school and I would pick her up from school in the afternoon.  We had time for homework, playing and our evening routine this was our schedule for almost a year.  My new job has me working at least until 4:30pm and sometimes later and not picking up Little R until 5-5:30pm and on occasion 6pm.  We rush home and have dinner and by the time that is done it is after 7pm.  Not a lot of time for playing or homework ETC. She doesn’t do well with being rushed and just shuts down. So her way of expressing her dislike over all of this change is through tantrums and defiant behavior.

In addition, the summer has been an extreme challenge for Little R.  She spent the better part of the summer throwing major tantrums and expressing her dislike of several changes in her life including my new job, school ending, and her favorite teacher leaving the district, my parents (her grandparents) moving to Florida and going to summer day camp.   She has made it clear that these changes were not acceptable to her but none of which I could change.  But even though I couldn’t change them nor did I cause them I was the punching bag for little R over the summer both physically and emotionally.

If I am not running around for normal life stuff, we are going to Therapy’s, tutoring or trying to fit in some family time on the weekends.  I have been sick over the past two months with colds and infections and some stomach trouble.  I haven’t been super sick consistently like this in a long time. 

I don’t know where the balance is.  Little R takes up about 75% of my time due to general care taking/ tantrums/explaining everything due to learning issues/re-direction/direct line of sight monitoring/therapy/tutoring and the other 20% is work.  I love her and wouldn't change being her mom but there has to be some balance.

Where and how do I fit in time for me?  I really don’t want to be selfish but I am exhausted and have ostracized myself from my friends and at times from family because I don’t want to “add another thing” to my plate and I can’t have Little R tantruming with them or I suppose I can I just don’t want to deal with it.  I am physically and emotionally burning out.  My candle has been going at both ends for over a year but in the past 3 months it has been running on just the wick in the middle and it is just about out.

I have been blessed to have a mother-in-law who wants to spend time with Little R and cares about how we parent her. She is always asking what she can do to make things easier and how she can "parent" her when she has her.   She will take her for a full day or overnight to give us a break.   She has been a reprieve for us on many occasions but the day in and day out parenting a special needs kiddo and working a full time job and managing Little R's many many appointments for therapy and specialist's is exhausting me and all I want to do is take a very long nap…….