Big Holiday Update Post
Our vacation was great.
It was a bit stressful being with Sunny 24/7 in my father's studio apartment. Luckily, the apartment does at least have a shoji divider, so we had 2-3 hours of semi-privacy every night after Sunny went to bed, which we mostly used to watch Season 2 of Prison Break on our portable DVD player. We ate a lot of great food, went to beaches every day and drove all over the island, although we couldn't afford any inter-island or boat trips.
Since Sunny was missing almost two weeks of school, he had a fair amount of make-up work, including a daily journal of at least four sentences per day. Getting him to do his work for an hour every night wasn't fun, but we didn't have any major homework blow-ups.
Sunny quickly learned how to make the shaka sign. There was a guy in the apartment building who kept running into us and saying to Sunny, "what up, li'l bruddah!" and Sunny just loved flashing the sign back at him. As usual, he was treated like a miniature rock star everywhere we went.
Sunny was a lot more interested in the ancient Hawaiian village than I thought he'd be. I tried my best to explain the difference between "people who live in Hawaii" and "Hawaiians". I told him that the Asian people he saw mostly came from Japan, the white people came from the mainland, the Hawaiians were already there before anyone else and got the raw deal, a lot of people were mixed ancestry, but everyone was an American.
I went to a very nice Jodo Shinshu service. The reverend had a thick Japanese accent and at first I thought the sermon would be rather impenetrable and arcane, but I was quite wrong. About halfway through, the reverend broke out the props -- a balloon and a sign reading "G.A.S." -- and used those to illustrate a point about joyful daily living and how we need to be filled with "good gas" not "bad gas". He had everyone laughing in the aisles.
It looks like Hawaii is in for a lot of pain due to the economy. The newspapers were full of dire statistics about hotel residency figures. I feel really bad for the people there. I used to work in the tourist industry... it's highly unstable, the jobs don't get a lot of respect and the tourists you depend on drive up your cost of living to the point that you can barely afford to live in your own home.
Sunny was not too bad on the three-leg airplane flights there and back. He didn't sleep very much, but kept occupied with his PSP.
We made a good adjustment back to Atlanta. It helped that we had a nice warm snap, and last week the temperature was in the 70s... hardly any colder than Hawaii.
The next time we go on vacation, we definitely need to do a combined trip with my mom and stepdad. It would be nice to have just one day to ourselves! By then, at the end of next year, I hope we'll have Sunny's brother as well. There's still no major update on that front. The biological father is refusing to get in contact. He's established paternity but isn't answering calls or showing up in court.
According to ASFA I imagine it could take 18 months to do a TPR if he consistently avoids every contact. If he or a relative doesn't want to parent, he needs to act. My worker tells me they are probably going to threaten him with paying child support if he doesn't move one way or the other, so that might cause a resolution.
Meanwhile, Sunny's baby brother is doing well with his foster family. We sent him a present: a little Hawaiian fleece robe. He's visited every week by his (and Sunny's) bio grandmother. I'm in regular contact with her now, and we'll give her a call tomorrow on Christmas Day.
Sunny misses his foster family a lot.
He had a blow-up last night that was probably related. It all started over the PSP (AKA the PCP). The PSP is going to be off limits for several weeks as a consequence. He pushed his dad, slammed doors and yelled a lot of things like "I hate you".
He was very, very sad afterwards. As he was crying in my lap, he said "I'm so dumb! I don't know why I said those things! I said all the good times we had together were ruined!"
"You didn't mean that, did you?"
"No!"
"Nothing could ruin the good times we have together. I know why you say things you don't mean, you say them to try and hurt us. And you wanted to hurt us because you're angry. It's okay to feel angry, it's just not okay to show it like that."
We talked about alternate ways to show anger. He already knows about taking a deep breath. When he can remember to do that, it helps. I also suggested a new one: going to his room, closing (not slamming) the door and yelling into a pillow.
I just realized his inability to be alone presents a real conflict with anger management. If you're angry, the fastest, easiest way to cope is to temporarily remove yourself from the person or situation causing the anger. But that route is closed to him. He moves away, but then snaps right back like a rubber band because he fears solitude so much.
I think without that problem, his tantrumming would not be a serious issue. He's actually more emotionally articulate than most children his age. I recently talked to another parent from our agency who's also having problems around this time (pretty much everyone is, which is why the agency holds a workshop on holiday coping) and unlike Sunny, his daughter doesn't say what's on her mind and who she misses and why she feels bad... she acts it out.
Sunny has already gotten a ridiculous amount of presents from one set of grandparents. He got multiple Transformers, Pokemon figures, remote controlled truck, air-rocket-launcher, slinkies and Hot Wheels. I wish they hadn't bought him so many toys. He loves getting them, but he plays with them for five minutes and then rarely uses them again. He just doesn't know how to play with toys by himself.
It's sad hearing about kids who come from foster homes with nothing but a trash bag. That's about the complete opposite of Sunny's experience. His foster family shipped us EIGHTEEN BOXES of his clothes and toys. We donated many of those toys, since he'd outgrown them. We just tell him that he needs space for new toys, so he needs to fill a box with the ones he doesn't want anymore so that other kids can play with them. He's always quick to do it and happy to help drop off the box.
We keep trying to downsize toys so his room can stay cleaner, but this Christmas is going to be a challenge. We were planning on having a small Christmas and de-emphasizing gifts, but grandparents got in the way. Also, it's his first Christmas with us...
He's getting about five presents from Santa. We've bought him a pair of inflatable swords that he can share with his friends, a flashlight that straps to your head (he loves flashlights), more Hot Wheels, a calculator, a hoodie with a flaming skull and guitars on it, a PSP game, Greatest Hits of Queen and Best of the Rockin' 70s CDs (he likes classic rock a LOT more than we do), a dinosaur sticker book and a chess set for beginners. On top of that there will be presents from two more sets of grandparents and foster family.
He's going to have to live without the PSP for a while, but we found him a great alternate game. It's at fantasticcontraption.com. Using a limited set of building blocks and the laws of physics -- gravity, friction, etc. -- you have to build contraptions to accomplish a simple task.
Right now, we severely limit any video games. I noticed even the educational ones were just encouraging button-mashing and shortened attention span, but this game looks like an exception. It's not too stimulating: simple shapes, slow motion, calming music. There's no time limit. You create a design, test it, then try to fix it when it fails, then test it again... failure isn't as emotional as in a life-based game like Super Mario Brothers. Sunny loves Fantastic Contraption, and he can keep his focus on it up to half an hour. I think it's helping stretch his attention span, so I don't mind if he plays it. He's solved it up through Level Five.
I hope everyone who reads here has a happy holiday season! Also, an extra thanks to Christine for commenting on my Racialicious post, because I think your perspective added a lot to the discussion.
I'll close on a negative note by mentioning one of the only things I HATE about Hawaii... the godawful Hawaiian Christmas reggae the radio stations there love to play. Hawaiian music, great; reggae, great; Christmas, great... but put all three together and you get a form of music guaranteed to make your brain bleed out your ears.
Foster Care System Perspectives
