THE ROAD TO HEALING: Part 1

Time… it’s one of those commodities in the world that is so precious yet taken for granted.  As we face our oldest leaving home in a matter of months for college, I wish I could stop time.  As I wrap up yet another day, I can’t understand how time is so fleeting.  As I think about the fact that we have had our new children home now for 5 months, I think how time has just begun.  Time comes and goes, yet if we are not careful we allow it to slip through our fingers without absorbing, feeling, touching each grain of sand that passes through.

5 months doesn’t sound like much time, but it has felt like a long time as we have journeyed down this road to healing.  It has been enough time to see our children begin to settle into their new home.  It has been enough time to see their likes and dislikes.  It has been enough time to see what is or isn’t “normal” within the realm of adjustment in adoptive families.  As we continued to see more persistent behaviors in our son, we realized that something more was going on.  That realization is a moment that I believe many adoptive parents come to in this journey, yet those grains of sand continue to slip through our hands and time flashes by as we try to adjust and meld into a new life together as a family.

Do we give it more time and try to deal with it, or do we find out for sure if there is something beyond us that we are dealing with?

This may seem like a “no-brainer” to some, but when you are the adoptive parent in this particular situation, you are not on your “A” game and which road to travel down can become quite perplexing.  You have sleep deprivation, busyness, schedules, homework, meals, errands, work, emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion, other children’s activities, etc., etc., that you are also juggling and so what seems to be a “no-brainer” for which road to take can actually feel like you can’t find the road because the fog has set in so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face.  Now time becomes of the essence and you have to make a decision… do we wait it out or do we push forward into the fog not knowing what we might run into as we travel our chosen road?  What I learned is that you don’t need to push into the fog blindly, you can find out what is ahead of you.

You ask for help and find out for sure what you are dealing with!

A great place to start is by consulting your social worker who is visiting you numerous times during your first year home together.  By now this person should know your family pretty well through doing the home study and beginning your post adoption visits.  I think ours even knows us better than some of our own family does.  If your adoption agency has a counselor available by phone for post-adoption questions you can call them.  You should ask other adoptive parents about their first year home and experiences they had or resources they’ve used and who they recommend.  You need to become your child’s and your families best advocate.

Try to keep a log of specific behaviors you are consistently seeing, note sleeping patterns, diet, social interactions at home, school and elsewhere.  Did I do this?  Nope… and I wish I had.  You know the saying… hind sight is 20/20.  In my desire and passion to help others, I am willing to share my mistakes with you in hopes that your road isn’t so long or complicated. It would’ve been so much easier to keep a journal than trying to rely on my feeble mind drunk on exhaustion, memory loss, and the daily activities of 5 children, a husband and 2 dogs!

DISCLAIMER: I am just a mom sharing my story.  I am not an expert, just a mom living it.

What am I looking for?

• Behavior: oppositional and defiant, impulsive, destructive, lie and steal, aggressive and abusive, hyperactive, self-destructive, cruel to animals, irresponsible, fire setting.
• Emotions: intense anger and temper, sad, depressed and hopeless, moody, fearful and anxious (although often hidden), irritable, inappropriate emotional reactions.
• Thoughts: negative beliefs about self, relationships, and life in general (“negative working model”), lack of cause-and-effect thinking, attention and learning problems.
• Relationships: lacks trust, controlling (“bossy”), manipulative, does not give or receive genuine affection and love, indiscriminately affectionate with strangers, unstable peer relationships, blames others for own mistakes or problems, victimizes others/victimized.
• Physical: poor hygiene, tactilely defensive, enuresis and encopresis, accident prone, high pain tolerance, genetic predispositions (e.g., depression, hyperactivity).
• Moral/Spiritual: lack of faith, compassion, remorse, meaning and other prosocial values, identification with evil and the dark side of life.

This list refers to defining characteristics symptomatic of Attachment Disorder and was taken from a terrific website from the Evergreen Psychotherapy Center Attachment Treatment and Training Institute.

Attachment is the deep relational bond formed by a child and their primary caregiver in the first years of their life.  According the Evergreen Institute: Research has shown that up to 80% of high risk families (abuse and neglect, poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, history of maltreatment in parents’ childhood, depression and other psychological disorders in parents) create severe attachment disorders in their children. This statistic is just considering families in the US, so now imagine adding in our children coming home through adoption from similar backgrounds in other countries and institutionalized care.

We knew about attachment disorder before our children came home and in consultation with our social worker, we received confirmation that there was something else beyond normal adjustment that we were witnessing. He was having many issues relationally, emotionally, physically, morally, at home, school and church.  Now that I had confirmation I felt a sense of relief that we were heading in the right direction and I wasn’t just going to beat my head against the wall night after night wondering what I continued to do wrong as a parent. That started us down the road of getting help for our son.