Making parenting mistakes since 2008

• I am sitting on my couch with a glass of red, the dogs are milling about and although the kitchen needs to be tidied I would rather pretend that I have time to blog.
• I have 2 kids sleeping and one reading with P, it is only 8:30 and it is really, really quiet here.
• I took my socks off and walked outside in bare feet to get the dogs, that totally mean that summer is on its way which makes me happy on all sorts of levels.
• It also means that garden season is in full swing and finding time to plant has to happen this week.
• There are over a hundred plants to get in the ground that have been living in my room ( because it is south-facing) since February. I will be happy for them to leave.
• Homeschooling Fudge is going well, he is usually calmer and more regulated and that makes life easier.
• That was not the case today because Fudge is not a morning person and disrupting his routine makes him even less of a morning person.
• Calvin stayed home sick from school today which was not about Fudge but yet the change affected Fudge and so things were a little tough here today.
• Yesterday was a really long day, it was a really hard to be a calm patient Mom with Ramona.
• This morning I discovered we forgot her meds yesterday, so yup it was mother’s day which is hard for all of my kids and I made 100 times more difficult because I was exhausted on Sunday morning and forgot that important little pill.
• I will work on not forgetting that again.
• Yes I have a 6-year-old who is on medication to help her regulate her moods, until you have lived this life do not pass judgement on me.
• Meds mean the difference between her threatening to punch me while she screams I hate you and her actually punching me while screams I hate you bitch – just thought I would keep it real for the trolls who are going to comment about a medicated 6-year-old.
• All that being said I have to go the kid who is reading to move towards his own bed and there is a dishwasher that must be loaded.

Dear Ramona,

Today marks 2 months since we moved you from your big city to our small town. Last night while your father and I were talking over you so that you might assimilate some of what we were saying about how we thought you might be feeling after a difficult day you said something brilliant. You said, “I am nervous cause this is my last family”.

That sentence speaks volumes about what has gone on here in our family in the last month. We have had good times and really, really tough times. There are days when you manage to push the buttons of every single member of this family in a way that I never knew that a six year old was capable of and yet at the days ends and you melt into my arms, wanting and longing to attach.

Even though you can drive me absolutely crazy, I am loving getting to know you. This month you officially became a Beaver and you were so proud, you wanted to come home and tell your brothers all about it and show them your new necker. We went camping (only for one night) and you charmed the pants off every Scout leader you encountered. You had strawberries and rhubarb for the first time and loved it. You learned that spring around here means gardening and that means picking weeds and rocks. You are not a big fan of the garden but I think that you will get used to it.  You love bubbles, playing house and jumping on the trampoline. You are learning to love your brothers and to annoy them in that way that only a little sister can.

The other day you were playing with them as you ran through the house screaming that you were going to catch them I paused and marveled at how well  the 3 of you could get along. There was a minute when you tried to swear at them but caught yourself and then spent the next 30 minutes shouting that you were going to catch those puckers, it really was rather cute and there was really no way to correct you cause you were not really swearing after all.

Ramona, you are a fabulous little being, even if it is hard I am thrilled to be your parent.

love

Mom

We just adopted a 3rd child. She is wonderful and bright and exhausting. To be honest I must say that writing has not been at the top of my priority list in the last 2 months. As today drew near I had decided I was going to write about me, about taking care of me in the midst of all the chaos that is our lives right now but then the day got away from me and there was no time for me. Managing my time with 2 kids home all day ( be cause we are now homeschooling 2 even though this piece says I am not)  is a bit of a challenge that I am slowly learning manage.  So,  as I learn new time management skills I would like to share something I wrote in  the past about self care, it is just as relevant today as when I first wrote it even though I only had 2 kids then! 

One of the hardest things about being a parent is making sure that your all of your needs ( physical, emotional, spiritual) are met along with those of all the other members of your family. Often parents put themselves at the bottom of the list because there are just not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

 The rest is at Hopeful Parents… 

• I did not forget that I have a blog this past week things are just busy.
• Having 2 kids home all day and garden to plant means that there is little time left for anything at all.
• We went camping this weekend and we all survived.
• Fudge also survived a whole week of homeschooling and I must say that he can be really pleasant person to be around without the stress that school was creating.
• Today he wasn’t as pleasant but we all have says like that, homeschooled or not.
• If all 3 of the children are acting like 6 year olds than it is perfectly reasonable for them all to have 6 year old bed times which meant it was really quiet here after 8pm.
• Sadly I missed last weeks tapping call as I 600 things to do and a migraine but you can listen to it here
• listening to it was good for my heart but it made me miss my Orlando Mamas so very much.
• Ramona is still up to her antics, I have to remember to amuse you with some of them at some point soon because when I step back and watch some of it really is very funny even though I may not see that in the moment.

• When you start with 2 kids with attachment issues and add one more you better make sure you enjoy roller coasters cause holy cow 3 kids can make a day really, really long.
• Today I took 2 of my 3 kids to a clinic appointment at the hospital, an amazing and fabulous friend played with Ramona cause taking her might of put me over the edge.
• Yes I took both the boys to the appointment even though it was for Calvin because Fudge officially started homeschooling today.
• There was no homeschooling done though as we were sitting in a waiting room doing a lot of waiting.
• I was told that they though Calvin could be discharged from the rheumatology clinic but there was this abnormal blood work that they were a little worried about.
• I love it when a doctor says he is only a little worried about something.
• Fingers crossed it is actually just a sleepy lab tech and that we are not starting back down the ” What the Heck is Wrong with Calvin” path again.
• Ramona is keeping us all on our toes, it is hard to believe that we are not even at 2 months because frankly it feels like it has been forever already.
• I am not sure how I am going to adjust to having both Fudge and Ramona home all day everyday and I will miss the quiet but it is only 2 months till summer vacation anyway
• At least that is what I am telling myself.
• I am also telling myself that if I am not in bed by 10 we have and problem and since I crossed that line 15 minutes ago I need to step away from the computer now.

Fudge has been my son for 44 months which is about 1341 days or 32 184 hours… that’s a lot of hours.

For the first 38 of them he merely tolerated my presence in his life. I was not the Mom he wanted and there was little I could say or do to make him change his mind. In many ways we tolerated each other, he tried to make me miserable ( and succeed frequently) while I tried to make him love me. Although I did make some progress ( in the processing of teaching him to trust me) I really felt like was rowing backwards at the edge of a waterfall. He did come to me for comfort on occasion, he did occasionally reach out to me, there was a part of him that wanted to be loved but the walls he had built around his heart where solid and very, very high.

He let P in first and as a result for a long time P did much of the parenting of Fudge on his own. I met his day-to-day physical needs but when it came to handing out consequences or dealing with big issues P handled it. I supported him as best I could, I participated and Fudge knew we were in this together but since he was so very good at making me crazy it was easier to step away and let P deal with it.

There were so many days when I felt as though nothing was ever going to change and that I had to be ok with that. He might never attach to me, it may always feel as though he is someone else’s child and I am just taking care of him. I began to accept that he might never heal in the ways that his brother had. In many ways I had given up hope that anything was ever going to change. We were destined to tolerate one another’s presence, nothing more and as heartbreaking as that was for me I had accepted it as best I could.

( please excuse me while I now compare my relationship with my son to a baseball game)

Then one day in October, literally out of left field there was a ball, he threw it to me and I caught it. It was a small ball, a little tiny piece of love thrown from him to me. Slowly but surely he started to throw more and more tiny little love balls in my direction. Weeks passed although he was still throwing little love balls my way he was also throwing great big huge balls that screamed you don’t love me enough to keep me. As he threw those huge screaming balls he tested out how he could make me stop loving him. Catching those huge balls as they screamed toward me was infuriating and hopeful at the same time.

This past week he ran out of left field, circled the bases and met me at home plate. He ran straight into my waiting arms. I think he might be here to stay ( that doesn’t mean he’ll stop testing but he believes me when I say I love him) and it warms my heart to think that maybe, just maybe he might let me love him the way he deserves to be loved.

He is a fabulous kid with a compassionate and loving heart and I am so glad that he is finally trusting enough to let me take a little piece of it and keep it all for me, his Mama.

• It’s Monday.
• It is also 11:27.
• I should of been in bed 1.5 hours ago.
• We were dealing with the fallout of a Mom who is human and loses it on her kids big time occasionally.
• I am human though and I am allowed to freak on occasion.
• I apologised profusely to one child, hoped another slept through it ( although not likely) and waited till P came home to talk to the 3rd one because said child was the reason I blew up like a firecracker
• It was a slow burn to begin with but when the fuse, the fire and powder connected I totally went off.
• We talked with him for over and hour. He is in bed now and has been for awhile.
• I think I might make tomorrow a snow day ( even though there is no snow) and we might all stay home and do nothing cause that might be exactly what we need.
• And I need to go to bed, so that is where I am headed.

In the opening chapters of this fabulous debut novel by Stephen Dau we meet Jonas, a boy who has survived the trauma of war in the country of his birth. His family was killed and so with the aid of a humanitarian program he finds himself living in America with  foster family of sorts but carrying with him the trauma of living in a country in a war, as well as dealing with the challenges of being a teenager in a foreign country.

Dau does a fantastic job of describing Jonas’ pain and emotion as he struggles to find his way. With the help of Paul, his therapist and Rose the mother of the solider ( Christopher) who helped Jonas during the war, we begin to understand what happened to Jonas and why his grief is so profound. There were moments in this book where I was amazed at how real and raw the emotion was. The effects of grief and PTSD are profound, Dau clearly understands and  does and excellent job of portraying the reality of Joan’ life to the reader.

I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in a thought-provoking read about the realities of life after war.

This is a paid review  for BlogHer Book Club, all opinions expressed are my own. If would like to participate in an on-line discussion of the book, please go to BlogHer’s Book Club site.

A trauma trigger is an experience that triggers a traumatic memory in someone who has experienced trauma. A trigger is thus a troubling reminder of a traumatic event, although the trigger itself need not be frightening or traumatic.
Triggers can be quite diverse, appearing in the form of individual people, places, noises, images, smells, tastes, emotions, animals, films, scenes within films, dates of the year, tones of voice, body positions, bodily sensations, weather conditions, time factors, or combinations thereof. Triggers can be subtle and difficult to anticipate …

- taken from Wikipedia

This last week has been intense around here. It has been all triggers all the time for days and days.

I have three kids who are stressed and that means three kids who are easily triggered. I know the boys triggers and am usually  pretty good a coping with them. I am learning what Ramona’s are and will get better about seeing them coming but in the mean time I think we are all need hard hats and protective clothing.

When Fudge is triggered he gets stuck in the moment, he tries to fight his way out by arguing or yelling. Calvin is physical when he is triggered, his flight or fight response kicks in and I must say flight is a way better option but lately it has been fight which means that  people can get hurt. Ramona goes straight to a tantrum, if she was bigger I would probably call it raging but she is small enough that she can be contained and much like a toddlers tantrum once she is done she stops and moves on. The anger does not linger for her although she is vengeful and will pay you back if you have wronged her.

All that being said we are working on triggers over here. We are in therapy, we are talking about it, we are hugging and cuddling and trying to keep things contained when triggers cause huge feelings to take over and all hell breaks loose we work through it once everyone is calm and safe.

One of the things I am doing for myself right now, although I have not started doing it with my kids (yet) is tapping. I was leery, I thought my dear Lisa was a bit crazy when she stated suggesting it, but she is not. Tapping works, it helps and at this point anything that helps me get through the day is a really good thing. My darling Lisa made a video ( you can just follow along as you learn) just for Moms of hurt kids and there is an amazing online class coming up with Brad Yates who is the tapping guru so to speak. Lisa tells you all about the class here.

May 3rd my dears, be there.

Searching online can lead you to all sorts of places. A lot of people end up here because they are searching for directly for me or basic adoption stuff. Other people end up here totally by accident and some of the search terms that get them here amuse me and others make me realise that there is a need for people parenting hurt kids to be communicating with one another.   Here are just a few of the things that have brought people here lately…

“he is in pull ups”/encopresis “his pants”/girl smearing shit all over her self / spirited child withholding poop- clearly poop and kids gets you here, not surprised by that or anything.

self-care parent /therapeutic parenting attachment figure/you are not alone/subtle changes in a family/i am okay mantra/parenting mistakes – parenting is hard, it’s okay to make mistakes and taking care of yourself is really, really, really important too.

how many perogies for 80 people/ukrainian easter food/Ukrainian Christmas meals/Easter Bread -  being Ukrainian gets people here too.

why is there repeat in rinse and repeat/questions? comments? tomatoes/what does fine; fucked up, insecure, needy – people looking for random answers to expressions that do not make sense to them, F.I.N.E. is one my favourite sayings though so I am happy to share that knowledge with the world.

towels/unmatched kids socks/costco women’s one piece swimsuits – looking for random clothing reviews maybe?

attachment in older children/whiney manipulative kids are tearing us apart/shame into submission/how long does attachment take in older adopted children/older adopted child comfort attachment language - theses are the ones I expected to be here, hope that whatever you read helped.