Lots of things are going on right now and they are happening at a pace that is seemingly more and more difficult to stay on top of -- hopefully, just for now. Here is a short run down of what we're been up to lately:
- Dealing with a bullying issue at M's school AND seeing what the school is going to do to make it stop (they don't seem to 'get' that no response to bullying is a response)
-Going to M's volleyball games (this has been FUN!!)
-Working hard to help M get a major school project done (the grandparents were a HUGE help with this- they had M over all day Saturday AND Sunday to help her work toward getting her project done) and we think she is at least 85% done at this point - yeah!
-Working w/ M's doctor to change her dosage so she is feeling more in control of her emotions. She is on a trial right now of 20mg of her regular med and 1/3 of a capsule of the same med at a different dose.
-Checking out another school we could/possibly send her to another school (see lack of response to bullying issue above)
-M is starting Young Life tonight and a dear friend of ours is going to go to the first meeting with M (Tonight they are celebrating and making a 50ft ice cream sundae for the kids!)
-Trying to decide what kind of upgrades to do to our house. In the next few years we intend to sell, and we're trying to make improvements along the way.
-We are madly looking for a study skills program M could take to help her with organization & studying (please let me know if you know of any good places!!)
-All the above combined w/ regular, ordinary things has kept up super busy! Hopefully this week things s-l-o-w down!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Some recent funnies
M has really become more interested in make up lately. When returning from a recent outing she tried to explain to her dad and I that she "should be able to wear mascara - just mascara." When we asked, "Why, do you need mascara?" She said, "It will help me keep my eyes open better." Hmmm....I had to think about this one for a second...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On the way to school the other day I asked her to smell the sweater in the car-
(it was cold out and I'd forgotten to grab a sweater and I wanted to make sure it smelled ok; I have NO sense of smell, to be completely honest).
M: "It doesn't smell too bad mom. Someone would have to be really close to you to smell it."
Me: "Oh?"
M: "Yeah, they'd have to be really close to you to smell it!"
Me: "Well, what does it smell like?"
M: "Your hair, mom."
<<oh, dear!>>
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The music video for the song, "Woman" was on the other day. M saw Yoko Ono sitting on a bench. M looked at up and said emphatically, "Is that Michael Jackson?" We said, "Umm, NO."
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PS
I got some great pics from the goat farm we're volunteering at that I will post this weekend!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Mom Taxi
We’ve been pretty busy the past week or so and one thing that has taken up some time is well, is managing, M’s behaviors and trying to tease out what is ‘normal’ for her age and what is a product of her previous environment and trying to manage the two.
She has been on two medications that have helped IMMENSELY with her behaviors. Early on when she moved in we took her to Mary Bridge and I honestly don’t recall who recommended we take her there or why, but we are SO glad we did! She sees someone at their Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics office. During our last visit over the summer her provider offered that we might need to up her dose of Vyvanse, which, according to some is one of the latest ADD/ADHD new cocktails of drugs that helps with focusing and managing impulsivity. Doctors don’t really know why stimulants work yet (so we’ve been told) because if you think about it, if you have someone who is hyperactive you’d think that if you gave them a stimulant, it would worsen their hyperactivity, when in actuality, it does the opposite. Regardless of the origins of Vyvanse, we can see a huge difference in M’s behaviors when she is on it and more importantly, she expresses it makes her be able to focus better and thereby participate more appropriately in school increasing her confidence in general. The other medication that helps is Prozac and this taken once per day helps her manage her anger and emotions. The combination of the two, at least in our house hold, is the perfect marriage of medicinals.
What medicine doesn’t ‘cure’ we work to change through a combo of cognitive behavior management, suggestions from her butt-kicking therapist and things we think of or things others we know have tried. Recently, in therapy, we talked about how lately we’ve had a lot of arguing on M’s part in the morning for one reason or another. My response was that if she wasn’t behaving or was being overly nasty in the mornings (I drive her to school), I would not be taking her to school (ok, so she LOVES-loves-LOVES school, and, yes, there are laws stating she HAS to go to school, but the idea of NOT going to school, for M, is horrific!!) and while she usually gets herself back into gear, once I drove around the block a few times and when I came back to get her she seemed to ‘get’ that she needed to behave. BUT, her therapist came up with a much better, far more effective idea. In fact, when she suggested the idea in front of M, M’s jaw-dropped, in horror. The suggestion was made that when M was being nasty, she’d need to pay me to take her to school – that is right, pay me because I would become the “Mom Taxi” and when you ride the taxi, you have to pay for the trip. She hasn’t had to take the “Mom Taxi” to school yet, but I am sure it will happen at some point.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Tantrum strategies
This weekend has been a long one. Yesterday I had a migraine but last night and this morning has been overshadowed by M having some tantrums. Last night she was stomping, yelling – screaming. You know the kind where those handy catch phrases like, “are you being the parent or the child” -- don’teven touch the issue.
Ultimately, she wasn’t following directions and was told she was done with volleyball (this is her first year on a sporting team and she loves it) and was told this morning she needed to start her resignation letter to her coach. I then wished her good night and that I knew she would do the right thing (despite the fact she was yelling at me from her room). I then went back to my room and had a great time watching TV. (Being able to separate her anger and my emotions has been a process.)
This morning she gave us her completed letter and it read:
Dear Mr. Ward,
I have to quit because mom’s making me. She says that I was being mean, when I say I wasn’t. My mom’s making me (making is underlined twice) quit the team.
From, M
Did you sense any anger in her letter? Of course you can imagine the redirection we gave her after reading her letter. She wasn’t too interested in hearing it and more arguing ensued on her part. She likes to tell us she isn’t getting enough sleep (this line is one of her favorites and it may well be true) and she “wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sleep is so essential to M’s ability to function normally and maintain her behaviors it is amazing. I have heard that for kids who are adopted they have something like 5x the muscle movement at night in their sleep as compared to kids in a healthy birth family. This explains why so often we check on her at night that she is wrapped up in her sheets and blankets much like a mummy. Not having any birth children of our own I can’t make any comparison between sleep of a birth child and sleep of an adopted child, so I have to go on what I’ve been told.
We have been working to help M see that if she gets her homework and chores done when we ask rather than dilly-dallying she’d get to bed earlier and get more sleep. This has been something we’ve been working on for a while and I’m sure will continue to work on for a while.
Some of our strategies in this situation are to:
1) Give her the opposite of what she thinks she will get – like we did when she got to take a hot bath in lieu of a ‘punishment’. Once, we took her out to ice cream after an epic tantrum in a restaurant and we actually had a really great conversation over ice cream about how she has every right to be angry because of everything she went through with her birth family, but that she has to channel her behavior appropriately. Life is about choices, we tell her. She can choose to be angry and mean or she can choose to try and help others who've maybe even been through similar things. We've told her we'll support her however she wants to do this if this is what she wants to do. This example resonates with her as we have a doctor she sees who was once held hostage by gorillas in Mexico (not the animal gorillas), had a gun put to his head and now he is one of her favorite people to go see because he is so positive - he chose to help others!
2) Do something shocking – for a while when she would tantrum if I started making loud, weird monkey noises (or if at home I’d start dancing – anything to get her back on track with reality) she’d start laughing and immediately change out of her funk – this worked well in the car with just her and I -- when I do this now, she is horrified because, well, everyone around us MUST be watching us :).
During our PRIDE training one of the trainers told us about a child she had who continually had tantrums in the grocery store when they went shopping. Well, one day they went shopping for groceries in another town and the trainer decided she was going to have a tantrum. She got on the floor and started screaming and flailing her arms. The child was aghast but even better stopped having tantrums in the store.
3) Give her time alone to calm down be it in her room or her walking w/ the dog. We've done this in restaurants - she has to sit in the waiting area until our food comes at which point one of us will go get her and she can eat with us if she is nice or we take her food home for her to finish (we make this clear to her ahead of time so she can refocus herself). I've done this in the mall by having her stand somewhere specific in the store where we can see one another but we're not together.
4) Give her food –sometimes she will be upset and we’ll realize she hasn’t eaten in a while (for this reason we always have spare snacks with us in the car). She and I were in Costco once and she was just being rotten. I kept hoping someone would tell her how awful she was being, but that didn't happen. I finally looked at her and said, "Do you want some pizza?" She immediately stopped her nastiness and said, "Yes!"
What strategies do you use when your child is so wound up they can’t function appropriately?
Ultimately, she wasn’t following directions and was told she was done with volleyball (this is her first year on a sporting team and she loves it) and was told this morning she needed to start her resignation letter to her coach. I then wished her good night and that I knew she would do the right thing (despite the fact she was yelling at me from her room). I then went back to my room and had a great time watching TV. (Being able to separate her anger and my emotions has been a process.)
This morning she gave us her completed letter and it read:
Dear Mr. Ward,
I have to quit because mom’s making me. She says that I was being mean, when I say I wasn’t. My mom’s making me (making is underlined twice) quit the team.
From, M
Did you sense any anger in her letter? Of course you can imagine the redirection we gave her after reading her letter. She wasn’t too interested in hearing it and more arguing ensued on her part. She likes to tell us she isn’t getting enough sleep (this line is one of her favorites and it may well be true) and she “wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sleep is so essential to M’s ability to function normally and maintain her behaviors it is amazing. I have heard that for kids who are adopted they have something like 5x the muscle movement at night in their sleep as compared to kids in a healthy birth family. This explains why so often we check on her at night that she is wrapped up in her sheets and blankets much like a mummy. Not having any birth children of our own I can’t make any comparison between sleep of a birth child and sleep of an adopted child, so I have to go on what I’ve been told.
We have been working to help M see that if she gets her homework and chores done when we ask rather than dilly-dallying she’d get to bed earlier and get more sleep. This has been something we’ve been working on for a while and I’m sure will continue to work on for a while.
Some of our strategies in this situation are to:
1) Give her the opposite of what she thinks she will get – like we did when she got to take a hot bath in lieu of a ‘punishment’. Once, we took her out to ice cream after an epic tantrum in a restaurant and we actually had a really great conversation over ice cream about how she has every right to be angry because of everything she went through with her birth family, but that she has to channel her behavior appropriately. Life is about choices, we tell her. She can choose to be angry and mean or she can choose to try and help others who've maybe even been through similar things. We've told her we'll support her however she wants to do this if this is what she wants to do. This example resonates with her as we have a doctor she sees who was once held hostage by gorillas in Mexico (not the animal gorillas), had a gun put to his head and now he is one of her favorite people to go see because he is so positive - he chose to help others!
2) Do something shocking – for a while when she would tantrum if I started making loud, weird monkey noises (or if at home I’d start dancing – anything to get her back on track with reality) she’d start laughing and immediately change out of her funk – this worked well in the car with just her and I -- when I do this now, she is horrified because, well, everyone around us MUST be watching us :).
During our PRIDE training one of the trainers told us about a child she had who continually had tantrums in the grocery store when they went shopping. Well, one day they went shopping for groceries in another town and the trainer decided she was going to have a tantrum. She got on the floor and started screaming and flailing her arms. The child was aghast but even better stopped having tantrums in the store.
3) Give her time alone to calm down be it in her room or her walking w/ the dog. We've done this in restaurants - she has to sit in the waiting area until our food comes at which point one of us will go get her and she can eat with us if she is nice or we take her food home for her to finish (we make this clear to her ahead of time so she can refocus herself). I've done this in the mall by having her stand somewhere specific in the store where we can see one another but we're not together.
4) Give her food –sometimes she will be upset and we’ll realize she hasn’t eaten in a while (for this reason we always have spare snacks with us in the car). She and I were in Costco once and she was just being rotten. I kept hoping someone would tell her how awful she was being, but that didn't happen. I finally looked at her and said, "Do you want some pizza?" She immediately stopped her nastiness and said, "Yes!"
What strategies do you use when your child is so wound up they can’t function appropriately?
Friday, September 10, 2010
RAD behavior management strategies
So, RAD consequences are a bit counter intuitive and so some of the best saying to get M to rethink her actions are a bit different, as well.
Some of my favorite RAD-ish saying and strategies are:
When she is trying to maintain control: Are you being the parent or the child?
She tries, at times, to gain control of the situation because w/ her birth family this is what she did – she was in the position where she had to fend for herself all the time and so we’ve been working hard to reteach her how to be a kid – and do kid things. This saying forces her to acknowledge her role is to be the child. We are the parents and she does not have to do anything but be a kid.
When she is acting immature: Are you acting 5 (or however old) or are you acting 12 (insert the child’s current age)?
Then we’ll talk about how someone who is 12 behaves verse someone who is 5 (or whatever age). Of course, there are times where it is appropriate for her to act young because she didn’t get her needs met at those ages. For instance, in the tub she has toys and though she doesn’t play with them as much as when she first moved in, she still plays with them off and on.
When she isn’t following directions: What did I ask you to do? (Meaning she repeats back to me what she was told to do)
We use this when she has been given directions but has either gotten off task or has done something she wasn’t told to do. Having her repeat directions to us before she starts chores or does multiple step tasks does help increase her level of success.
The kicker...
When she is REALLY being nasty and we’re in public (we've used this in the mall the most often) to get her head thinking straight we will tell her, “M, you need to spit out your attitude.” She refuses and we’ll tell her again. Eventually she spits it out on the ground (at this point she is just spitting once on the ground). Then we tell her, “Ok, now say, ‘goodbye’ to your attitude.” She then looks at us and says, “Do I have to?” with that pre-teen glare. “Yes, you have to.” She says, “Goodbye attitude” while looking at the ground at her attitude. Then, we lastly tell her she needs to stomp on her attitude. If this doesn’t make her smile and/or laugh (this is, afterall, pretty ridiculous!) or at least change her attitude some, we make her stomp more and the combination of her stomping and noticing that people might be looking at her (of course, being 12 she is sure everyone is always watcher her), gets her out of her funk.
Some of my favorite RAD-ish saying and strategies are:
When she is trying to maintain control: Are you being the parent or the child?
She tries, at times, to gain control of the situation because w/ her birth family this is what she did – she was in the position where she had to fend for herself all the time and so we’ve been working hard to reteach her how to be a kid – and do kid things. This saying forces her to acknowledge her role is to be the child. We are the parents and she does not have to do anything but be a kid.
When she is acting immature: Are you acting 5 (or however old) or are you acting 12 (insert the child’s current age)?
Then we’ll talk about how someone who is 12 behaves verse someone who is 5 (or whatever age). Of course, there are times where it is appropriate for her to act young because she didn’t get her needs met at those ages. For instance, in the tub she has toys and though she doesn’t play with them as much as when she first moved in, she still plays with them off and on.
When she isn’t following directions: What did I ask you to do? (Meaning she repeats back to me what she was told to do)
We use this when she has been given directions but has either gotten off task or has done something she wasn’t told to do. Having her repeat directions to us before she starts chores or does multiple step tasks does help increase her level of success.
The kicker...
When she is REALLY being nasty and we’re in public (we've used this in the mall the most often) to get her head thinking straight we will tell her, “M, you need to spit out your attitude.” She refuses and we’ll tell her again. Eventually she spits it out on the ground (at this point she is just spitting once on the ground). Then we tell her, “Ok, now say, ‘goodbye’ to your attitude.” She then looks at us and says, “Do I have to?” with that pre-teen glare. “Yes, you have to.” She says, “Goodbye attitude” while looking at the ground at her attitude. Then, we lastly tell her she needs to stomp on her attitude. If this doesn’t make her smile and/or laugh (this is, afterall, pretty ridiculous!) or at least change her attitude some, we make her stomp more and the combination of her stomping and noticing that people might be looking at her (of course, being 12 she is sure everyone is always watcher her), gets her out of her funk.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Introducing Beamer
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Epiphanies
Today, at M’s first therapy session in 2 weeks, things went great. We LOVE, love, LOVE her therapist!!
We didn’t come by her the first try, but, rather the second and at a time when things were not going well. (The first therapist was good and knew her stuff, but wasn’t a good fit for our family.) We were eyeball deep with frustration, anger, resentment and lived day to day if not hour to hour dealing with M’s behaviors.
They. Were. Horrible.
However, they were typical RAD behaviors...She’d lock herself in the bathroom. Another time she hid at the bottom of her sleeping bag screaming and refused to come out. She would lie – often times about things that either could not be proved or not or things that were so wildly outrageous that it was almost comical. Once she told us it would take 5 hours to go across a nearby lake that one could cross in no time. Another time she REALLY wanted to wear a purple bra to school under her white t-shirt (I was beyond horrified).
M would yell at us, “You aren't the boss of me. My social worker is the boss of me. I don't have to do what you tell me, because my social worker is my boss....You aren't ready to be a mom...I don't have to do what you say…just wait and see what I do – you haven’t seen anything yet.” It was so draining and it went on like this for months! Everyday it was a battle to get her ready for school. Sometimes she refused to get out of the car - for long periods of time - once I got her to school.
It got to the point where I didn’t like coming home because I didn’t know what M might do or not do. And, people we knew either supported us or kept asking why are you adopting, when are you going to have your own child and we’d get the looks – you know from people wondering just what had happened to M to make her behave so inappropriately? Granted it was hard for some friends and family to relate just because although they sympathized, many of them had never had a RAD child.
However, there were SO many people giving us support through all of this. Adopting, we found out – fast!, is really alienating. We didn’t have a handful of friends with kids who had RAD. We did have some champions for us though who seriously kept us going - M’s therapist is one of those people. We discovered her in the midst of all this chaos and she has seriously moved mountains in our household and I’m not trying to say M is ‘all fixed’ or that we are the perfect family – because we’re not.
Things now are much better and my husband and I’ve worked hard to learn to not take M’s behaviors personally. This was SOOO hard for me! RAD consequences can be very counter intuitive and this took getting used to because (at least for me) I thought consequences needed to invoke an attitude of, ‘you did this so now I am going to do this (ha ha)’ element to them. Not so with the RAD child.
So as her therapist told us today that she thought that things were going so well in the regard that although M is still doing her goofy things off and on, the fact that we aren’t wrapped up in her drama though AND we’re holding her accountable for her behaviors is fabulous! Oh, and she also thinks we’re good to go for 3 weeks before we meet again! :) Woo-hoo! I NEVER would have guessed a year ago that we’d be where we are today. She even mentioned we were at the point in understanding RAD and how to help M, that we could train others – never, ever thought she’d say that!
As we drove home tonight I started making a mental list of what I’ve learned since we started the adoption process 2 ½ years ago.
Here are two of my bigger epiphanies from when M came home until now:
Control…M had very little control in her life situations before moving in with us. She needed to have that element there and for her it was her safety. It gave her an element of continuity that she didn’t have at other places she lived. Although it drove me WILD – it was to be expected and served its purpose for M. Overtime – she relinquished more control to us (she was MUCH harder on me than my husband) as we proved to her that we could handle her behaviors (we were keeping her!) despite the level of complexity and unanticipated timing of her behavior.
Consequences – don’t need to be hurtful – they need to promote brain growth and building new neural pathways in her brain. So, sometimes having her eat dessert for dinner after throwing a tantrum or taking her to a movie on an afternoon when she is grounded – although seemingly counter intuitive – they worked – kept her guessing and helped her brain re-route itself.
Understanding her desire/need/want for control when M came home and that consequences needn’t be mean, for me might seem obvious but living through it all – it was like trying to run through a mine field of chaos where we were constantly trying to uproot inappropriate behaviors and reseed appropriate behaviors - nonstop.
We didn’t come by her the first try, but, rather the second and at a time when things were not going well. (The first therapist was good and knew her stuff, but wasn’t a good fit for our family.) We were eyeball deep with frustration, anger, resentment and lived day to day if not hour to hour dealing with M’s behaviors.
They. Were. Horrible.
However, they were typical RAD behaviors...She’d lock herself in the bathroom. Another time she hid at the bottom of her sleeping bag screaming and refused to come out. She would lie – often times about things that either could not be proved or not or things that were so wildly outrageous that it was almost comical. Once she told us it would take 5 hours to go across a nearby lake that one could cross in no time. Another time she REALLY wanted to wear a purple bra to school under her white t-shirt (I was beyond horrified).
M would yell at us, “You aren't the boss of me. My social worker is the boss of me. I don't have to do what you tell me, because my social worker is my boss....You aren't ready to be a mom...I don't have to do what you say…just wait and see what I do – you haven’t seen anything yet.” It was so draining and it went on like this for months! Everyday it was a battle to get her ready for school. Sometimes she refused to get out of the car - for long periods of time - once I got her to school.
It got to the point where I didn’t like coming home because I didn’t know what M might do or not do. And, people we knew either supported us or kept asking why are you adopting, when are you going to have your own child and we’d get the looks – you know from people wondering just what had happened to M to make her behave so inappropriately? Granted it was hard for some friends and family to relate just because although they sympathized, many of them had never had a RAD child.
However, there were SO many people giving us support through all of this. Adopting, we found out – fast!, is really alienating. We didn’t have a handful of friends with kids who had RAD. We did have some champions for us though who seriously kept us going - M’s therapist is one of those people. We discovered her in the midst of all this chaos and she has seriously moved mountains in our household and I’m not trying to say M is ‘all fixed’ or that we are the perfect family – because we’re not.
Things now are much better and my husband and I’ve worked hard to learn to not take M’s behaviors personally. This was SOOO hard for me! RAD consequences can be very counter intuitive and this took getting used to because (at least for me) I thought consequences needed to invoke an attitude of, ‘you did this so now I am going to do this (ha ha)’ element to them. Not so with the RAD child.
So as her therapist told us today that she thought that things were going so well in the regard that although M is still doing her goofy things off and on, the fact that we aren’t wrapped up in her drama though AND we’re holding her accountable for her behaviors is fabulous! Oh, and she also thinks we’re good to go for 3 weeks before we meet again! :) Woo-hoo! I NEVER would have guessed a year ago that we’d be where we are today. She even mentioned we were at the point in understanding RAD and how to help M, that we could train others – never, ever thought she’d say that!
As we drove home tonight I started making a mental list of what I’ve learned since we started the adoption process 2 ½ years ago.
Here are two of my bigger epiphanies from when M came home until now:
Control…M had very little control in her life situations before moving in with us. She needed to have that element there and for her it was her safety. It gave her an element of continuity that she didn’t have at other places she lived. Although it drove me WILD – it was to be expected and served its purpose for M. Overtime – she relinquished more control to us (she was MUCH harder on me than my husband) as we proved to her that we could handle her behaviors (we were keeping her!) despite the level of complexity and unanticipated timing of her behavior.
Consequences – don’t need to be hurtful – they need to promote brain growth and building new neural pathways in her brain. So, sometimes having her eat dessert for dinner after throwing a tantrum or taking her to a movie on an afternoon when she is grounded – although seemingly counter intuitive – they worked – kept her guessing and helped her brain re-route itself.
Understanding her desire/need/want for control when M came home and that consequences needn’t be mean, for me might seem obvious but living through it all – it was like trying to run through a mine field of chaos where we were constantly trying to uproot inappropriate behaviors and reseed appropriate behaviors - nonstop.
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