Rough Weekend - Short Update

Sunny broke a long streak of great behavior by sort of falling apart this weekend.  Guy was out of town on a trip, and Sunny didn't handle it as well as he did on the last trip.

He had a fit on Saturday, and then a huge one on Sunday, where he pushed me in the supermarket because I wouldn't buy him the snack bar he wanted.  We went out to the car, and it took almost 15 minutes in the back seat before he calmed down.

It was quite depressing and tiring for me... but I'm looking on the bright side, as well.  Two steps forward, one step back.

How are you doing in your life?

BB's foster mom has been very irritated with the assessment delay.  At the end of last week, she called up BB's worker, and told her to "sh*t or get off the pot" (in exactly so many words) then threatened to call her supervisor.

As a result of all this pressure across multiple fronts, we're finally starting to see movement.  BB's foster mom confirmed that the assessment agency called her back and said they'd received the referral.  On our end, we submitted a subsidy letter so that we can get a presentation date, but we've supposedly reserved the right to change the amount in case the developmental assessment turns up anything particularly shocking. 

Today, BB's worker asked us what his adoptive name would be.  Like Sunny's name change, it's going to be the same as his old name, but with our last names added at the end.

It's finally starting to seem real.

We shopped a little this weekend.  We need to get a play area ready and set up gates and cabinet locks.  We also need a bigger bed, and one that's lower to the ground.

Sunny got to talk with FFB this weekend.  His first question was "So FFB, how are you doing in your life?"   Since FFB is only four years old, he didn't really know how to answer.  That question struck my mother as drop-dead hilarious.  She's been laughing about it for days.  She says she now lives in fear that someone will ask her, "how are you doing in your life?" and she'll have to struggle to come up with her own epitaph.  Sunny did eventually rephrase the question as "How are doing this week?", and FFB was able to answer that one.

Sunny's behavior has been pretty decent.  He hasn't had a violent fit in more than a week now.

Sunny and I have been watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold together, about an episode every other night.  I watched a few of those when I was a little kid, a long time ago, and I always wished I could have seen the whole story.  Thanks to Youtube, Amazon and the long tail effect, I recently bought the complete deluxe DVD edition of Mysterious Cities of Gold!



This was such a cool show.  It was a combined French and Japanese production; there's a rumor that Miyazaki was involved.  I do notice the characters sometimes doing subtle things that are intensely Japanese (cheerful head-bobbing).  As far as I can remember, it has a not-necessarily-imperialist perspective in that both the indigenous characters and Spaniards are presented as having complicated motives.  The Spaniards are not the automatic good guys... in fact, I think Gonzalo Pizarro is the major villain.

Sunny really loves the story, and it's something that we can both enjoy watching together.  The other show he's watching right now is "The Replacements".  It's one of those horrible screechy cartoons that doesn't seem to have much of a point.

The music to Mysterious Cities of Gold is especially awesome.  I love the theme, and the rest of the music sounds like it was composed by an avant-garde electronic group from 1970s Berlin.

Talking About Feelings

Last week's therapy was the first time Sunny had a meltdown with the therapist.

They were playing his new SMath game that he'd brought to therapy. I'd warned the therapist in advance that Sunny tends to get a little obsessed and overemotional when it comes to new games. Sure enough, he had an argument with her about the right way to play the game. She said that she wasn't able to play the game with him until he calmed down. He yelled and argued and cried and blamed her. On the positive side, he was able to pull himself out of the state, apologize, and finish up the session well.

He's on a trend recently where he reacts by instantly blaming others. We've been hearing a lot of things like "you just want me to starve to death", "you just want to ruin my life" and our favorite, "you just want me to be bored." Because it's just so much fun for us when Sunny is bored! Ha ha ha.

He had another meltdown before we even got to the parking lot of the therapist's office. She thought that might happen, and came outside for a little bit. We had a good talk about how Sunny needs to label his feelings more, because he's afraid of his feelings and defaults every negative feeling to anger, which then turns into "I'm angry because YOU made me angry."

After Sunny calmed down again -- and he stayed OK for the rest of the night -- we talked about how he was feeling embarrassed. He didn't want his therapist to see him lose control, and when she did, that made him very sad, and embarrassed, and then angry. I reminded him that maybe if he talked about being embarrassed, he could keep from moving into anger.

This morning we had another episode that could have turned into a hitting fit, but didn't. I asked him not to touch a sausage. He touched it. That's how it started. I just kept a calm tone and told him I was waiting for a real apology. There was a lot of yelling and accusations: I wanted him to be late for school. I wanted him to starve to death because I said he couldn't finish his cereal until he apologized. I wanted to ruin his day. I was a liar.

I stuck to my points:

- He needs to do what I ask him the first time I ask. I didn't want him to get hot sausage grease all over his hands. Contrary to his argument, I don't need to fully explain my reason before I ask him to do something.
- When he apologizes, it's not a real apology if he yells "Sorry" in a nasty tone while not looking me in the eyes.
- It's also not a real apology unless, at the very least, he takes responsibility.

He came close to really losing it at a few moments, but he finally pulled himself out of it. We were able to talk about the fact that we knew he was embarrassed. He knew he was wrong, but he kept inventing excuses, and that caused him to feel embarrassed and hang his head and hide his eyes and refuse to look at us. He agreed that he'd been feeling embarrassed.

I also asked him Sunny if he wanted to push me in the kitchen when he was angry. He paused a little bit before he said "yes, I did." I congratulated him for not pushing me. Instead, he'd come to me for a hug when he was ready to calm down.

It's so hard to know when an issue like this is a pointless power struggle, and when it's important to hold the line to establish consistency. One thing I've decided to give up on is making him wear sweaters or roll up his pant cuffs. It's not worth it. But I still think we have to come down like a brick wall when he starts with the blame routine. I believe Sunny's number one challenge in life is going to be anger management. We can't just let it slide. We have to do everything we can right now to keep it from being a bigger problem later.

Exploring "embarrassment" and maybe talking about shame and guilt as well is a path that seems very promising. It's not hard to tell when he's feeling that way, because he doesn't have any problems making eye contact under normal circumstances.

The "starve to death" accusations are irritating consider the vast amounts of food he consumes! But I think it's much more about keeping his brain temporarily occupied than about the food itself. He often wants to eat small things, just because eating is something to do. For example, he thinks of his tiny multivitamins as a dessert, and sometimes he says he's hungry so that he can eat his vitamins early, and after that he's satisfied.

We're pretty strict when it comes to snacks. He can eat everything he wants at breakfast and dinner; we encourage him to eat second helpings until he says he's full. But he doesn't get any more than one snack between mealtimes. I'm kind of a hardass on this issue because I think that nonstop snacking on candy and chips throughout the day establishes bad eating habits: that is, if you feel bored, you eat something, instead of doing something. It's hard to know when to draw the line, though, because I don't want food to turn into too much of a control issue.

Getting back to labeling feelings, I've watched this video podcast from Welcome to My Brain a few times. It applies so much to Sunny!  Our therapist is obviously on the exact same page.  The game sounds like a great idea.

Sunny went to a birthday party this weekend for his little neighborhood friend who just turned three.  All the other kids were around 3-4 years old, and Sunny played with them wonderfully.  His friend's grandparents kept telling me how much they love having Sunny come over to play.  I just wanted to mention that, so I'm able to end this post on a positive note!

Follow-Up and Miscellaneous

From the therapist (I love quoting emails, it's so easy).

Thanks again for the update.  I wanted to address the issue with visiting your cousin in greater detail than I was able to last night.  First of all, I think it was extremely savvy of you to figure out the emotional connection for [Sunny] between visits with your cousin and his biological mother.  It sounds like you hit the nail on the head and were able to deescalate the situation quickly as a result.  As I mentioned, [Sunny] and I discussed grief and bereavement and read a story about losing a loved one through death.  He seemed interested in the story as he sat quietly throughout, which is unusual for him.  He struggled to talk about the story afterward, likely due to the discomfort he experiences in facing his emotions head on.  We have been and will continue to work on this as I think it is the heart of the issue for him.  To answer your question regarding whether or not he should be allowed to continue with visitation, my answer is most certainly.  It is important to show him he can visit your cousin and say goodbye to her and that the goodbye will not be forever.  I would also encourage you to verbalize this to him (i.e., let him know when you will be coming back) and acknowledge and label his feelings for him (i.e., sad, scared, etc.).  This last part will be extremely important in whatever you are doing as it seems [Sunny] may not always know what he is feeling so the more help he can get with the identification of feelings the better.  Please let me know if you have questions.

I've tried reading books about loss with him before, but it's very difficult.  When we read Everett Anderson's Goodbye, he was crying bitterly by the end of it, and told me he never wanted to read it again because it was too sad.  It's nice to finally have some professional backup and guidance.

However, it's not entirely true I was able to "deescalate the situation quickly".  It took about 30 grinding minutes and felt like an eternity.

To a commenter who asked what medication Sunny is taking: it's a popular atypical antipsychotic that also begins with the letter A. If you look up any reference on that drug class it'll be right there.  That's the only med he's on.  I don't have him on any of the strictly ADHD drugs.  His foster mother tried Adderall at one point, but said it made him "act mean", even though it did improve his ability to concentrate.  Given his generally good academics, and the fact that I don't think he has standard ADHD, I don't want to give him any med that will change his personality, as long as he can get along OK in school with the support of his 504 plan.

Thanks to everyone else who's commented!

Later today, I'm going to start working on a blog post on the media around Haitian "orphan" adoption.  I need to get back to some controversial posts after a long string of just-about-family ones.

A Lightbulb Moment

We visited my cousin a week and a half ago at her psychiatric clinic.  I think I did mention the visit in a previous blog post.  I never had any qualms about the clinic environment, because it's a pretty nice, high-end type of place.  It's bright, airy, the staff are casual and friendly, and I've never heard anyone screaming.  When we go over there Sunny usually plays games with my cousin and anyone else who happens to be hanging out in the lounge area.

Last time, Sunny had some very bad behavior after we left.  We had to spend about ten minutes in the parking lot and back porch.  I always refuse to get into the car with Sunny once he passes a certain point of emotional turmoil.  It's because I don't want him throwing stuff at me while I'm driving (if he gets worked up while I'm driving, I immediately pull over).

Tonight, when we went to visit, I prepped him extensively.  I reminded him that my cousin might not feel well.  "If she has a headache, we have to turn around and go home." I reminded him that the clinic might have an outing, and we might have to leave early.  I told him to try and keep calm when it was time for us to leave.  I gave him all sorts of reminders covering various contingencies.  I was a little nervous of taking him anyway, given the rough week we just had, but he seemed to have recovered, and he'd been begging all weekend to visit my cousin.

So we showed up at 5pm, in the middle of visiting hours.  Luckily, my cousin was feeling well enough for a visit.  She always lights up when she sees Sunny.  He really is a little ray of sunshine (except when he's a thunderclap of doom, of course, but mostly, he's a little ray of sunshine).

We had dinner together, although she didn't feel quite well enough to eat.  She's on a lot of medications that do unpredictable things to her appetite.  He was so happy to see her.  He even repeated, unprompted, what I'd told him earlier: "if we come visit and you have a headache, it's OK.  We'll just come back when you feel better."

Sunny had a fantastic time playing Pictionary with my cousin and three other patients.  I told him we were going to leave at 6:30 and gave him plenty of reminders.  The game wrapped up naturally around 6:30, then we said our goodbyes, signed out, and walked out the back.  Again, out in the parking lot, Sunny started breaking down and picked an excuse to fight with me.  He wouldn't do his deep breathing exercise when I asked him to calm down.  He just got more and more worked up.

"All you ever do is mean things to me."
"I say I'm sorry a million times, but you don't listen to me."
"You just want me to freeze to death" (but this time I had moved back into the heated back porch and I was preparing myself for the breakdown)
"You never listen to me."
"You don't care about me."
"You're mean."
"You're a total idiot."
"You don't listen to me, you don't care about me, I hate you, you hurt me and you never say I'm sorry, you don't listen to me when I say I'm sorry, you're never nice to me, you're mean to me..."

At one point one of the staff came to the back porch and asked if we were having trouble with the door.  I just gave her a forced smile and told her we were going to be on the porch for a little bit because my son was having a tantrum, but he'd get over it.  I'm past the point of being embarrassed when things like this happen.  The only thing I ever worry about is people calling the police or child protective services.  I wasn't too worried about that here.  It's a psychiatric clinic, after all.

He screamed and cried and accused me for a while.  He started pushing and grabbing at me.  Finally, I had to put him in a light basket hold.  His fit wasn't as bad as it could have been.  He wasn't screaming curse words or trying to hit me in the face.  In his worst fits, I can't use a basket hold at all, since I have to restrain him so that he's incapable of head-butting.

Finally, he moved to the inevitable stage: from blaming others to blaming himself.  This is the only point where I talk.  I can't argue with him when he's blaming me.  He just doesn't listen.  But I can argue when he's blaming himself.

"I hate myself for doing stupid things all the time."
- "You shouldn't hate yourself and you don't make bad choices all the time, just some of the time.  You should say 'I'm nice'.  You should say 'I love myself'."
"I'm nice I'm nice I'm nice I'm nice.  IT DOESN'T HELP."

At this point a lightbulb went off in my head.

-"Does saying goodbye to [my cousin] remind you of having to say goodbye to anyone else?"
"Yes! It reminds me of the time I said goodbye to Mommy ___ and it was my last visit ever and I never saw her again and then she died and I'll never see her again ever.  It makes me feel JUST THE SAME."

Oh... my... God...

Sunny loves her deeply.  She suffers from a mysterious disease that adults can never really explain to him well.  Communication and access to her is completely out of his control.  Visitation takes place at a supervised institutional setting.  Of course it's exactly like saying goodbye to his biological mother.

One day, his worker and his foster mom told Sunny that there wouldn't be any more visits with Mommy __.  Termination of parental rights had been completed.  But there would be one last visit.  So they took him to the official visitation room and let him play together with Mommy __ for a few hours, and then he had to say goodbye, a goodbye on the last visit ever.   It brings tears to my eyes thinking about what he must have felt.

Sunny's rage towards me, and towards himself, completely vanished at that point.  He just cried and cried.  We talked a bit more about missing Mommy ___.  I told him that whenever you feel sad, it makes you feel better to tell another person why you feel sad.  And even if there's no one else around, you can tell yourself why you feel sad, and that will make you feel a little better.  Not all the way better, but a little better.  And of course he misses Mommy ___ and it was a terribly sad thing to have to say goodbye to her like that. 

It was 7:00.  We starting driving home.  I reminded him that he could talk about missing Mommy ___ anytime, and he could also call Nana N and talk to her about it, because Nana N missed her just the same as he did.  We did call his Nana N when we got back home, but he didn't feel like talking about it by then, even though I gave him a little reminder.


He was his normal happy self for the rest of the night and went to sleep right at his bedtime.

The difficult part for me is that I can't talk to my cousin about all this.  Her mental state is too fragile.  I'm going to take Sunny to visit her again next week but this time I'll bring someone else as well (Guy or Nana) and make sure we're totally prepared.  I think visiting and then breaking down afterwards is going to suck, but ultimately it's good for him to see that he can say goodbye, but my cousin is still going to be there next week.  I think it would be worse if I didn't take him on visits at all.

If she ever kills herself, I'm going to kill her!


Sunny is dangerously full of need and full of love.

No Hell Week Part II Post! Purgatory, at the Most.

We made it.  Whew.

Tuesday was the worst. I outlined the basics in the email to the therapist that I posted on Wednesday.  Sunny was in a terrible state.  He seemed full of hate.  It was like the hate came from outside and took him over.  He took the hate out on us, but I could tell, more than anything else, he hated himself for being that way.  When he told me in the car about the voices in his head that said "I hate you", it made me feel so sad for him.

We started him back on his old med that night.  Wednesday was a little better, but he still got called him from school for acting out.  We had a school meeting about him on Thursday -- we kept him out of school that day -- then let him go back for a half day on Friday.  He made it.

Thank goodness I can trust the people at his school. They're treating this like a "lost week".  They're full of sympathy for him.  There won't be any lasting consequences.  At another kind of school, they might have been talking expulsion or a move to a special education classroom.

By Friday, he was begging to go back to school! He was missing his "Math Message".  I don't know exactly what that is, but he sure does love it.

He had a sleepover with Nana on Saturday night.  Guy and I took a much-needed date night and saw The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, then went to Loca Luna for tapas.  We didn't go to bed until midnight and slept in until 10AM.  Then we met Sunny and Nana and another friend of ours for dim sum.  Overall, this has been a pretty good weekend.  The smile is back on Sunny's face.

The situation in Haiti, of course, has been weighing on my mind.  I emailed a Haitian friend I met through the Obama campaign and asked him how his relatives were doing and if we could do anything else besides donating (which we've already done). 

This man worked harder than anyone else on the campaign, and he couldn't even vote.  He must have registered hundreds of new voters.  When our small group went on a weekend vanpool together, he drove the whole time.  And he knocked on twice as many doors as any of us, with a bigger smile on his face, in the blazing summer heat... all while wearing a three-piece suit.  I really admire him and I feel terrible for what he and his family (a wife and six very sweet kids) must be going through now.

Sunny's therapist talked to him a little bit about the voices.  She told him that when he heard voices inside his head saying mean things about him, like "I hate you", he could tell himself positive things, like "I'm nice".

So we're back to square one with his medication.  I guess we'll try taking him off again next year.  I don't want him to go through the rest of his childhood on meds, but I can't risk 1) his  school and 2) our sanity.  Thinking about my younger cousin and his life, the thing he really regrets most bitterly is how he was warehoused in special ed because of his behavior, and never even learned to write until middle school.  He made me promise that I would never do that to Sunny.

Hell Week Part I

Hello [therapist],

Unfortunately, we have had a very bad week so far. On Monday, [Sunny]'s behavior in school was bad and we got a note from his teacher. Tuesday, [Guy] had to pick him up from school early because he was pushing other kids in line, and then had a tantrum and threw things when the teacher confronted him. They told [Guy] he was "out of control". They are having a meeting Thursday morning.

Yesterday, his gym teacher also said he behaved badly and was almost asked to leave the class. I also had to restrain [Sunny] numerous times yesterday. Once in the morning and once after school and twice after gym class. He would get very, very oppositional and when he was asked to do something say "I don't have to!" or "I hate you!" or "you're ruining my life by not letting me (watch TV/do XYZ)". We eventually got the routine done: dinner and reading and bedtime. [Guy] is especially stressed out.

[Sunny] is grounded (he can play outside but not go into anyone's house) and also has no TV privilege until he can have at least one good day at school.

One thing I have been worried about is that in the last week or so [Sunny] has seemed to hear voices when no one is talking. Sometimes I won't say anything, but he will ask "what?". This seems to have increased. I talked with him about it last week, and asked him if he was hearing voices that weren't really there. I didn't make a big deal out of it (he's kind of a hypochondriac so that would encourage him to get carried away). He said he does hear those voices sometimes and they say things like "I hate you".

He told me in the car yesterday that he was hearing those voices, that they were bothering him, and that "maybe he should see a doctor". Again, I didn't make a big deal out of it, I just asked him some questions about them. He knows they are not real. They don't come from the front or the back, they come from the inside of his head. I'm very concerned because I don't think he would say he wants to see a doctor unless he was really hearing them. He's not a big fan of going to the doctor, because that almost always involves getting a shot (though he loves going to the dentist because they have video games in the waiting room).

With all of this going on, I made the decision to put him back on medication. I just read that [the atypical antipsychotic] takes a long time to fully clear out of the system. So his good behavior last week, off the med, was not really indicative. He had a pill last night. This morning he did OK.

Response:

I am sorry to hear it has been such a rough week. I would agree with your decision to put [Sunny] back on the medication. I would also speak with his psychiatrist about this. You are correct that it takes time to clear the system of [med] which is likely why he did so well when he was initially taken off of it. In terms of the voices, auditory hallucinations actually seem as if they are coming from outside the body. In other words, it seems as if someone who is not present is talking to you. More than likely, [Sunny] is experiencing self-deprecating thoughts he is unable to control which translates (in his mind) to a voice of another. This is likely to abate once the medication becomes effective in his system. I would encourage you to monitor it to see if it changes over the next few days. Thanks again for the update. Don't hesitate to contact me with any additional questions or concerns.

Music Video Night with Sunny

Sunny's been a bit grumpy today, but no fits.  We had a fun time tonight watching videos on the computer.  He made me play that TI & Justin Timberlake song, "Dead and Gone", over again several times (I played the clean version, of course).  It was a huge hit on the radio here, and Sunny loves the song.



The video is rather pedestrian.  Plus, Justin Timberlake looks like he has some kind of fungus growing on his upper lip.  I don't know much about him, but I've heard he's supposed to be a sex symbol, which amazes me.

Sunny asked me what the song was about.  I asked him what he thought the song was about.

- "What does it tell your imagination?" 
- "I think it's someone singing about how his father just died.  And he doesn't have any other family so he's all alone with no one to take care of him.  So he gets in a car and he keeps driving.  He's going to drive all the way to another country to find a new family to take care of him."

What an interesting story!

We watched a bunch of other music videos.  I usually hate 80s nostalgia, but I have to say, they made some fun videos back then.  Take Golden Earring "Twilight Zone":



Sunny: "THEY'RE MAKING HIM CRAZY!  THAT'S CRAZY! AAAAGGHHH!"

We wrapped it up with the Sledgehammer video.
 

That got him so excited, he broke out into spontaneous breakdancing at the end.

I didn't show him the craziest 80s video of all: the original version of "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  It was censored for being really, really, really gay, and never shown on MTV. It starts off with a bunch of people waving condom-covered bananas around, and just goes downhill (or uphill?) from there. Not many Americans have seen it. It's pretty awesome.

Sick, Cold Weekend

Ugh.  I stayed in bed from 5pm Friday until 5pm Saturday.  My sinuses hurt, I felt achey all over and my neck had stabbing pains.  I feel a bit better today.  My health has not been good, in general, for this last week.  I think it's the cold weather.  I really want to get back to my exercise schedule.

Sunny's behavior deteriorated a bit.  Friday, all the schools were closed because we got a quarter inch of snow.  I'm sure everyone up north thinks that's hilarious.  He had two fits that day.

Yesterday, since I was sick in bed and my husband had to work, Guy dropped him off at Nana's.  My mom often jokes with me -- "I don't see what your problem is, he's always fine with me!"  We both share a dark sense of humor, so I know she really doesn't mean it. She's great with him, since she has a very strong personality and the ability to maintain calm.  But sometimes, yes, it does irritate me a bit that Sunny reserves the worst of his behavior for me...

He was helping his Nana take off the Christmas tree ornaments and accidentally-on-purpose broke one because he didn't feel like helping right then.  Whenever he breaks something or hurts someone on accident, he gets very perturbed, and he has to be assured that his apology is accepted and everything is OK.  Otherwise, he flips out.  I've had lots of talks about this with him.  When he does something wrong, either on accident or purpose, he is supposed to think about other people's feelings first.  They key in these situations is to speak to him very calmly, but tell him to think about what the other person feels and what he can do about it.

Anyway, after breaking the ornament he started crying and screaming.  My mother told him to go to the other room to calm down (first mistake).  I've grown to realize that telling Sunny to go away and be by himself is like telling him "I hate you and I hope you die".  When he screamed even louder, she actually lost her temper for a minute and said "For Heaven's sake, shut up!"  I arrived shortly afterwards and Sunny was screaming about how Nana hurt his feelings and told him to shut up and "spoke to me in a harsh voice".

I took him to the bedroom and had to hold him down for a while when he got more disturbed and began lashing out.  Then we had a long talk and I made sure he didn't leave the bedroom with me until he took responsibility and started seeing things in a more realistic light.  What we discussed:

- if an adult in your family asks you to do something reasonable, you have to do it.  No matter if you think their voice is harsh.
- saying "my feelings are hurt" is not a magic phrase that allows you to avoid responsibility for your actions.
- you have to think about the feelings of other people as well as your own.  For example, Nana's feelings were hurt when her Christmas ornament was broken.  That didn't mean she's mad at you, it just means her feelings are hurt.
- three-stage apologies!  I remind him of this almost every day.  Saying "sorry" is worthless unless you then take responsibility and third, see what you can do to make up for it.

I have to hope that eventually he'll start to internalize some of these messages.  He was remorseful afterwards and apologized to his Nana, and she gave him a big hug.

I'm not happy about his behavior deteriorating, but on the positive side, he's really no worse than he was on medication.

I'm still working on getting a neurologist appointment.  I think I have a line on a neurologist in a town not too far outside the Atlanta perimeter.  It's always a chore finding decent providers.  I think doctors that take Medicaid are 1) more altruistic than normal and/or 2) really crappy and substandard.  Our pediatrician falls in the "altruistic" category.  The office is a bit disorganized, but based on the hours they keep and their stated mission, they're doing it for all the right reasons, and I love the service we've gotten from them in the last year and a half.

Generally, though, based on reviews of doctors I find on the internet, the badly reviewed ones take Medicaid, and the well reviewed ones don't.  To find a good one that takes Medicaid I have to cast a pretty wide net.  Luckily, we live in a populated region.  If we lived out in the country, we'd be screwed.

I had a long talk with Sunny and BB's foster mom the other day.  At 18 months, she estimates he's about 4-5 months behind, but making steady progress.  She thinks he'll catch up.  I trust her opinion since she's taken care of a ton of babies with all kinds of special needs.  BB is starting to say words!  He says "Nigh-nigh" when he goes to bed.  He can also understand simple commands like "pick up your bottle". She thinks his brain is developing faster than his motor system, so he could speak more if he had better control of his mouth.

I'm starting to think about childcare when BB comes to us.  Our choices are basically daycare versus a live-in nanny.  We can't afford a regular professional nanny, live-in or live-out, but we could get someone from the refugee community to come and live with us in the basement studio... that sounds kind of exploitative, but the weird thing is, we have certain connections that if we DON'T do this, my mother and some other people who work with the refugee community would be kind of peeved.  The idea would be, "if you can afford to give someone a job, so that they don't have to work in the chicken processing factory, you're obligated to give them that job."

Going that route would be complicated, ethically.  If we could get someone who was a night student, or had a small child they could live with here, so I wouldn't be causing another mother to have to get her own childcare, I would feel OK about it.  On another level, I'd want to make sure it was someone whose approach to childcare I agreed with... a professional nanny (we couldn't afford one anyway) has all sorts of references and certifications and things, and we'd be kind of flying blind without that.

Then there's daycare. That would cost anywhere from 400-1000 a month.  It has a lot of disadvantages but BB would be around a lot of kids, and he's already showing that he's very social, much like Sunny.  It's important for him to bond with us when gets here but he's also going to need a LOT of stimulation from other kids, and maybe daycare would be the best way to get that.

So Far, So Good

The email from his teacher today:

[Sunny] had a pretty good day today.  He was excited and anxious to share things with the rest of the class.  We did have to refocus him a number of times - but I think part of that was the excitement of being back.  [Sunny] did not get angry or overly frustrated today over anything. 
He did say that his throat was bothering him and asked to go home frequently in the morning (but then appeared to be doing fine in between times so we were hesitant to send him to the office).

Just the usual ADHD and hypochondria, that's all.  So far, so good.  We're hoping he can keep it up through the week.

ETA: Hypochondria and ADHD aren't a bad combination, because the ADHD really lessens the effect of the hypochondria.  If he didn't have such a short attention span, he might obsess endlessly over his imagined symptoms.  As it is, he forgets about his terrible potential illnesses as soon as he sees something shiny, and they're pretty easy to manage.

- "Mom, I have a bump on my wrist!" "Mom, look at this bruise!" "Mom, my head hurts!"

- "Oh no! I'm sorry you're feeling bad. I'd better take you to bed so you can lie down for a bit."

- "Actually... I'm feeling better! Don't worry! I'll be OK! I'm going outside to play on my pogo stick now!"

Tonight, he was complaining that there was something blocking his nose, and if he took it out, new stuff would block up his nose.  Guy told him, "that's called 'boogers', and they're a lifelong condition.  I've been suffering from them all my life."

The Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Sunny is down to 25% of the dosage of his old med.  Today, he's going off it completely.  It's also the first day of school.

New Year's Eve, he had a monster fit. It was probably one of the more unpleasant New Year's Eves I've ever had in my entire life.  But since then, now that the new med and the old med are working out of his system, he seems to have improved his outlook.  He isn't putting on his "pick a fight" face. He seems happier and less angry.

The other night, when he I told him we couldn't visit my cousin at the clinic until Wednesday, he burst into tears.  He really misses her and worries about her. But after we hugged him and comforted him, he stopped crying, instead of escalating to screaming.

Later that night, Guy and Sunny were playing Yahtzee together. Sunny was throwing around the dice too wildly and Guy warned him to stop.  On his last throw one die flew off into a corner of the room.  Guy told him to go look for it and explained (in a calm voice) that the consequence if he didn't find the die was that they wouldn't be able to play Yahtzee anymore.  Sunny complained a bit but kept looking for the die.  Eventually, they found it.

Later, Guy told me, "Something really weird is happening.  I was bracing myself because I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen.  Sunny would throw the rest of the dice at me and scream that I was ruining his day. Then you were going to have to step in, and hold him down, and he would try to bite and hit you while calling us "&%$#@ *^%$ ^&$#@!" until he got hoarse. Meanwhile I'd be down in the basement office pounding my head against the wall and threatening to kill myself.  But then... none of that happened. What's going on?"

We're both cautiously optimistic.  I think the old med had both a negative and positive effect on Sunny.  Perhaps the positive used to outweigh the negative, but now it's the other way around, so taking him off is going to be the best thing.  We've had a six-month honeymoon, then a year of intermittent raging.  Maybe we're ready to move to a new stage now?  Or, he might have gotten tired of being angry on his own.

The real test is how he does in school this week. Towards the end of the year, his behavior was getting worse. We had a special conference to discuss problems with pushing other kids, throwing, and one incident where he slapped a crayon out of his teacher's hands.  Whereas his angry, physical episodes had been only 1-2 a day at the beginning of the second grade, they'd increased to 3-4 by the end of the year.  That was one of the reasons we considered the disastrous med change in the first place.  But maybe he'll be able to manage his behavior the same, or better, with no meds at all.  I guess I'll find out soon.

We're also lowering our expectations for him a little bit in the area of being alone. We're not expecting him to play "alone" at all, even for 10-15 minutes. We switch off so that one of us is always doing something with him, or else letting him play chess and board games on the computer.  He'd prefer to play the more high stimulation games at places like Lego.com, but the chess game is a good compromise.  They don't wind him up and make him as agitated as the other games.

Science Question

Sunny asked me a great science question today.

"Mom, is a speeding bullet faster than the speed of light?"

"Nope. Nothing is faster than the speed of light.  Light is the fastest thing possible."

"But what if you shot a lightbulb out of a gun?"

"Umm... the light wouldn't go any faster." (I had to think for a second there)

Fastfeet calling Coolfeet

I bought Sunny a set of fairly powerful walkie-talkies.  It's proven to be one of his favorites among the many presents he got today.  My cousin told him he needed a "handle", so he quickly decided to call himself "Fastfeet". I'm "Coolfeet". Dad is "Homebase". 

Sunny had a great time today running around outside, with my cousin's friend, testing the range of the radios, sending back various reports and yelling stuff like "THIS IS FASTFEET REPORTING ON POLICE CAR ACTIVITY".  We're still working on explaining that yelling very loudly into the walkie-talkie does not result in higher comprehension.

It's a great tech toy.  Aside from filing reports, he also uses it to pretend that he's fighting off alien invaders.  He does this from the next room, so we could really hear him without the walkie-talkie, but the walkie-talkie makes everything ten times as exciting and dramatic.

Christmas Morning On My Own Thinking about Problems

I'm spending this morning by myself, doing almost nothing, which is a pretty relaxing break. Later, we're going to meet up again at my mom's house to open most of our presents. Sunny and Guy drove to Sunny's sister's house. 

Guy just called to tell me that Sunny's little cousin is reenacting scenes from Scarface with her new Nerf gun.  Every time I hear another story like that it just boggles my mind. His cousin is 8 years old and she's watching Scarface and Saw and playing Grand Theft Auto.  It's lucky she's smart, sophisticated and has a great sense of humor, so I think she's able to keep a critical distance from all the mind-numbing media ultraviolence.

I tried to buy her an extra present for today -- a Tiana doll, since I know she would love one -- but of course all the stores around here were totally sold out of them. I'm about to order one online.

Now that I have some space to think, I'm calming down about the information I received a few days ago.  The "Merry Christmas, your son and his brother are meth-exposed!" message. I appreciate the kind comments on my last post.

I'm worried about the stigma on Sunny's behalf.  He already faces stigma for being adopted from foster care. We're open about that, because he's open about that. It's a trade-off between stigma and shame. If you don't hide something, people will pre-judge you negatively. But if you hide it, or are encouraged to hide it, you'll grow to be ashamed of something you shouldn't be ashamed of.

I feel I can be open in real life about his ADHD. It's such a commonly discussed topic. I can easily put it in a non-adoption context, since I grew up having a cousin with ADHD.  I'm going to go on telling people Sunny has ADHD.  The alternative is to say "We think he has prenatal meth exposure, which led to brain development issues including a set of behaviors which happens to include many of the same behaviors as ADHD".

But it's really not genetic ADHD. We already know that ADHD meds don't work on him well, or upset him emotionally to the point where he can't take them.  Many of his behaviors are nowhere near as severe as my cousin's were.

The scariest behavior that Sunny has -- and this scares me even more than the rages sometimes -- is his inability to be alone.  He cannot even put on his pajamas alone by himself.  He'll run out naked into the hallway putting on his pajamas so that he won't be alone by himself in the bedroom even for half a minute. It's not about attachment -- if we're not there, another adult or child  will do for an audience -- and I doubt it has anything to do with a particular past traumatic event.  He just cannot be alone with his thoughts.

We quickly realized that time-outs were pointless for Sunny, and I wish we had never tried them at all.  The idea behind a time-out is to calm yourself down, but they had the opposite effect on Sunny.  When he had time-outs, he would hurl himself against the door, beg, plead, sob, scream himself hoarse, "MOM DAD PLEASE SAY SOMETHING".

I think that being in that rage and panic state is actually much more comfortable for Sunny than being alone with his thoughts. Rages, in part, are a defensive reaction against being alone.  If he rages and panics, people will pay attention to him, and he won't be alone.  Because he can't stand to be alone, he finds it hard to calm himself down.  Usually, when people get mad, they storm off, which is often a smart tactic. Storming off means removing yourself from the presence of the person who is enraging you, and giving yourself a space to calm down, hopefully to come back later for a cooler discussion.  But when Sunny storms off, he hits the wall of being alone, snaps back like a rubber band, turns 180 degrees and comes back into the enraging presence, still enraged.  When he storms off, his storm-right-back line is about 20 feet indoors, 40 feet outdoors.

I think that his fear of being alone is very deep-seated, possibly related to the meth exposure, and I'm scared of what will happen to him as an adult if it never gets better.

1) people may be scared of him or avoid him because he won't seem to respect their physical boundaries in emotional situations.  If they draw away, he'll go into panic mode and follow them out of fear of being alone.
2) If he happens to fall in with anyone particularly manipulative -- perhaps a friend, group of friends, business partner, lover -- and they realize this tendency, they'll have him under their thumb.
3) He would be especially vulnerable to a cult or destructive religious group, which tend to create highly social environments in which people never have to be alone.

Balancing that out is the fact that he's very strong-willed and increasingly self-aware.  He isn't that vulnerable to peer pressure right now -- he's too strong-willed and argumentative -- and hopefully that will keep up as approaches the difficult teen years. So far, he's still very popular, but he's starting to get a reputation at school as a "crybaby", someone who can't control their emotions, someone who pushes when he's mad... I'm worried that if this escalates and kids are going to start leaving him alone, which would trigger a vicious cycle of panic, fear and more avoidance.  He's already become very sensitive about people thinking he's a crybaby.

Luckily, the kids at the school are very diverse, and some kids in his class have similar problem behaviors and some have different problem behaviors. He doesn't stand out as the only one, and the classroom has a strong focus on inclusion.

I wonder if a neurologist can address this in any way.  Maybe not.  Maybe we'll just have to keep working on giving him a lot of different tools that will help him handle the different symptoms of this base issue, because it's never going to go away or get better.

Also scary is the thought that when we get BB, he's going to go through the same things as Sunny.  His foster mom keeps trying to get the developmental infant people to examine BB, but they won't return her calls. Another effect of the budget crisis.


I'm definitely not going to talk to NN about this.  According to everything NN says, her daughter was practically a saint, and she died simply of a hard childbirth and a heart condition. I know she didn't really have a "heart condition". But why say anything to the contrary? NN will talk about the best parts of her daughter's life to Sunny, and the best parts are just as true as the worst parts, and if I died, that's the way I'd like to be remembered too. I don't want to talk about the meth exposure in front of NN, or anyone who isn't a professional or somehow involved in real life, because it's a huge issue with privacy.

At some point when he gets older I'll have to talk to Sunny about it.  That's not something I'm looking forward to either.  That means we have to move beyond "Your Mommy _ was very sick, which is why she couldn't take care of you, even though she wanted to" and into some of the uncomfortable details.

I feel like I worked through a lot of my stress just typing this up.

I'm going to move on and have a great Christmas Day.  I love watching Sunny open his presents, pumping his fist and syelling "YESS!"

I'm also heading somewhere warmer now.  The heating in our house failed for an unknown reason yesterday, and the probability of getting anyone to fix it this weekend is pretty low!  Luckily, we live in Georgia, not somewhere terrifying like New York or Michigan. So losing heating is an irritating inconvenience, not an emergency.

Short Sunny Update

Guy is out of town this week.  When we went on the same trip last year, things kind of fell apart.  That's the first time that Sunny ever hit me during a tantrum. Guy being away seemed to flip a switch in his brain and probably activated all his memories of the other people in his life that left him...

This week, it's been hugely better, so far. Guy wrote seven notes with little drawings and messages like "I love you" and "sleep tight", and I give one of those to Sunny every night.  He also emails Sunny from the road.  Sunny has a clear goals -- 5 nights of "reading nicely" and "no fits" means two visits to the play center this weekend.  His days are also much more scheduled. 

Guy does so much around the house.  Washing the dishes and getting Sunny's lunch ready and all the other stuff isn't easy on my own. I do have my mother helping out -- she's picking up Sunny from afterschool every day.

Sunny says "I miss Dad" and "I'm sad because I miss Dad" a lot.

After dinner we usually play a game of chess together. We've also tried (and failed) to do some dance videos together.  It's so hard! Also, Sunny really does not have good dance basics.  That's one reason I keep up with his hip-hop dance classes.  I think it's a generally good thing to know how to dance, and as Sunny grows up hip-hop is what the kids his age are going to be dancing to.  He doesn't dislike the classes -- if he did I'd have to discontinue them -- but he's not really excited about them, either, the way he is about chess club.

He loves singing punk rock songs though... or singing AOR soft rock songs in the style of punk rock. Guy recently taught him to sing this one.  It's not very hard to learn.

Our Halloween Visit

The visit this Halloween went well.  Sunny and I flew in on Saturday, and flew out Sunday night.  I scoured the web for coupons and specials and got very good deals on the hotel and rental car.

It's enjoyable spending time with Sunny's foster family. They're incredibly nice people and their family is large, boisterous but harmonious.

It's just that their environment really gets me down.  They live in a solidly middle-class, very white suburb.  It's a great place to be a little kid. Neighbors know each other. It's safe to play in the streets. But when you get to be a teenager, especially someone like me, it can turn into hell on earth. From the age of about 8 to 15 I lived in a similar environment.  Towards the end I simply refused to leave my mother's house at all.

It's in a different region, but it inspires the same familiar feeling of dread.

Plus, the food is awful. The regional food is practically inedible. I'm not going to sing the praises of Southern food -- it's mostly overcooked, oversalted and overgreasy -- but at least it has some taste.  If I can have a pork chop with some collard greens and fried okra I won't complain.  Even a barbecue sandwich is acceptable. When I visit Sunny's family I have to carefully plan out my meals. My only real options are chains: Cracker Barrel, Chipotle and Subway.  I don't know what I'd do without Cracker Barrel. Sunny's family mainly eats massive amounts of pizza, pasta and mashed potatoes. I would never refuse food in a formal dinner setting, but it's often a "make yourself a plate" situation there, so I'm usually able to duck out politely.

Being a food-snob burb-trauma victim makes the visits increasingly rougher. Once a year is more my speed.  Sunny's foster mother and I also discussed sending Sunny up there for a week visit as an unaccompanied minor. I think that's what we'll definitely do in the future, but I'm not sure if he'll be ready yet next year.

The family really goes all out for Halloween.  They had a corpse on the roof, and a collection of animatronic witches and bats on the porch.  I told their oldest son about how nobody trick-or-treated in my neighborhood, mainly because there are a lot of Baptists and others who think Halloween is anti-Jesus. He told me that the one time he was in Georgia he hung out with some "country boys" and was pretty amazed at how they would hellraise all week and then go to church on Sunday.

Their neighborhood was full of trick-or-treating kids and everyone had an incredible time. Sunny was Darth Vader. Toward the end of the night, he had to use his lightsaber to fight off a whole squad of Imperial Stormtroopers.

My other problem was that we had a fire drill in my office the Friday before Halloween.  I walked down an ungodly number of steps. That day, I was fine.  On Saturday, I woke up with agonizing pain in my calves. I could sit, I could stand, but anything in between and it felt like someone was stabbing me in the calves with a fiery poker. I could barely bend my legs.  I started walking like an arthritic penguin.  On Sunday, my back pain came back in full force, because I hadn't been maintaining proper posture. I could barely move. I was trying to spend a lot of time bonding with BB but I couldn't even pick him up.  It was so frustrating.  In order to fly back to Atlanta carrying our luggage -- luggage that included many pounds of Halloween candy -- I bought some compression bandages and wrapped my calves really tightly, and even then, it was tough.  My back pain finally went away on Monday and my leg pain went away a few days later.

I didn't want to show Sunny exactly how badly I was hurting. Little kids like it when their parents are a little bit off their game, because then they can show off being useful and helping out.  But they can get panicky if they think their parents are really not doing well; it's upsetting to their worldview.

BB looks great. He eats and drinks constantly, and is very active.  Some of his favorites activities: pushing his toy truck around the house, spinning things around, tipping over the trash can, dancing up and down, throwing himself down on a blanket, getting tossed up and down.  He's still not saying any words yet (he's 16 months old) but he does make happy sounds and frustrated sounds and excited sounds.  He plays nicely alongside other children.  In contrast, Sunny's foster mom's grandson, who is a few months older, is much more advanced developmentally but also likes to run up to people and hit them and throw things at their faces!  It's still kind of cute now, but hopefully he'll grow out of it soon.

Sunny and BB got to do some bonding, which was very sweet.  Sunny didn't have the patience to play with him, but he would stop and kiss BB on top of the head whenever he ran by.

On Sunday, Sunny went out with NN to a local playground.  They also hung out with his uncle, the one that Sunny used to think was his father. NN told me that her ex-husband, the disagreeable grandfather, even showed up, although he didn't interact with Sunny that much (this was the grandfather that threatened to disown his son, Sunny's uncle, if he adopted Sunny).

After we got back, Sunny was on pretty good behavior.  Then it fell apart on Wednesday.  He had a very long fit that night, although there was really more crying than hitting involved. He had a crying fit in class so that he had to be taken out of the classroom temporarily on Thursday.  He had another two fits on Sunday.  There's definitely some fallout from the visit.

We have an intake appointment at a promising new therapist office next week.  We're not looking into the ABC of Atlanta right now because we're really looking for play therapy, not attachment therapy, but thanks to anyone who left suggestions anyway.  This week is shaping up to be tough because Guy is going out of town for the rest of the week.  Sunny is NOT going to handle that well, no matter what we do and how we prepare.

When I walked into our office tower the Monday after the trip, it gave me a sense of shameful joy to notice that a quite a few other people were still walking like penguins.

I Have a Sneaking Suspicion About Our Adoption Subsidy

I hesitated to blog about this for a long time, because it might be possible to ascertain Sunny's home state from this information. However, I think it's worth the risk.

Last month, we got a letter from Sunny's home state. It started talking about the state's budget woes, which we are well aware of.  If it wasn't for their budget crisis, BB would probably be with us now.

The letter asked us to accept a cut in our monthly adoption subsidy. Since interstate general adoptions involve a supposedly ironclad contract when it comes to this subsidy -- as long as we are taking care of Sunny, we are guaranteed to be paid that amount until he turns 18 -- the letter said that we should VOLUNTARILY give up the money.  Why?  Because if enough people didn't give up the money, they would be forced to make vaguely defined "across the board" cuts.  The language was rather slippery and menacing.  The deadline is next month.

I've been trying to figure out what to do about the letter.  Some possibilities:
- We don't sign, and they don't make the cuts (no money lost)
- We sign, and they don't make the cuts (a known amount of money lost)
- We don't sign, and they make the cuts anyway (an unknown amount of money lost)
- We sign, and they make the cuts anyway (a known amount of money lost + an unknown amount of money lost money lost)

Based on that decision matrix, the option of signing looks really, really bad.

I finally managed to get hold of our local caseworker. She told us absolutely not to sign.  She didn't think it was even possible for them to make the involuntary cuts!  Her theory is that they're just trying to help the budget by picking some low-hanging fruit -- that is, scaring a few adoptive parents into signing the letters.

It's so sleazy.


They already cut BB's foster mom's adoption subsidies.  Since her adoptions are not interstate like ours, there was apparently less legal protection. Her income went down a combined total of $1000 a month. Two of her older children have FASD and need a lot of services.

We could get by with a lower subsidy.  But the subsidy helps a lot.  If it wasn't for the subsidy, we probably wouldn't have been able to take a risk on that extremely expensive course of neurofeedback Sunny did earlier this year.  In the long run, special needs subsidies help the state, as long as the parents are ethical and the subsidy is actually helping the child, because the money you invest in children now means less money you have to spend later on.  But the state is obviously desperate and not thinking about the long term.

BB's caseworker wasn't able to give us any advice on Sunny's subsidy letter issue. But I'm a little bit suspicious of the way she's been asking us to give her a subsidy request letter on BB even though we're missing some health paperwork on him.  His foster mom tells me that she's waiting on the results of a blood test to determine whether he has a sickle cell issue. Earlier test results were apparently ambiguous.

I'll write about my thoughts of our Halloween visit later on, maybe tomorrow.

Weekend Update with Gun Violence Q&A

I'm closing the weekend on a down note, although it has mostly gone well. Sunny's behavior has been pretty good. He had two rewards he was working hard towards. The first was going to see Astro Boy; I promised I would take him as long as he didn't have a fit or major snit. The second was a candy bar, which he could get if he won the "anger management game". This is just a simple point system where we get a point if he loses his temper and yells or backtalks, and gets a point if we tell him "no" and he doesn't lose his temper.

We spent the whole day together, since Guy was off on a day trip. Sunny ran lots of errands with me and was extremely helpful. He got in some quality play time as well.

I was very appreciative of Sunny today because I had a horrible nightmare the other night. In the dream, my family was vacationing in a city by the beach. The city was full of nightclubs and restaurants and hotels built almost vertically on high cliffs above the beach. The beach was full of swimming vacationers and also full of large sea turtles... it was hard to walk down the beach without stumbling over a sea turtle. Something complicated was happening and I had to run from place to place handling various issues. I ended up in a restaurant balcony on the cliff, watching Sunny play far below. All of a sudden, I saw a huge, 100-foot tall wave rushing out of the ocean -- it wiped the beach completely clean of everything and everyone. Guy and my mother rushed over to the restaurant, I figured out that Sunny had been lost to the wave and I started crying, and kept crying for what seemed like forever.

I have recurrent nightmares involving tsunamis. I don't know why. In real life, I have very little fear of the ocean or even of large waves, and I'm a strong swimmer.

We had an interesting talk about guns in the car today. One of my friends that Sunny knows was once shot in the chest during a failed mugging in Little 5 Points, and Sunny is kind of obsessed with that incident... I think it ties into his long-standing obsession with Abraham Lincoln getting shot. I had to answer a lot of questions about guns today.

If someone shot at our car, would the glass stop it?
- No, because the car doesn't have special bulletproof glass.

If someone shot at our car, what would we do?
- I would yell at you to duck down, then I would duck down and keep driving, and we would get away.

But what about you? I could duck down because I'm little, but you're too big, you wouldn't fit under the seat.
- I wouldn't need to duck down all the way.

How could you keep driving if you were ducked down so you couldn't see out the front?
- I could drive while peeking out of the corner of my eye.

Have you done it before?
- No, I've never driven under gunfire but I'm pretty confident I could manage it if I had to.

Can people who are big get shot and live like your friend who got shot and lived?
- Yes, but it's a better idea not to get shot in the first place.

If you get shot by a bazooka could you live?
- No.

If I was shot would I get killed because I'm little?
- It depends on where you got shot.

If I got shot in the leg I wouldn't die.
- Well, if the bullet hit your femoral artery in your leg, you might bleed out and die. Like I said, it's better not to get shot in the first place. A lot of kids die each year because they play with guns and they shoot themselves or their friends by accident. They think guns are cool because kids see so many movies where guns are cool, but they don't realize how dangerous they are.

So they didn't mean to do it? That's impossible!
- No, it's really easy, maybe they look down the barrel and they hit the trigger by accident.

How come Abraham Lincoln got shot in the head and he lived for three days?
- (I should have this answer down cold by now but I don't) Umm, because the bullet caused his brain to bleed, and the doctors couldn't get into his brain to stop the blood, so it took three days but he was bleeding too much in his brain to live.

The brain has a lot of blood in it because we need blood to give us lots of energy to think!
- That sounds right.

I was oddly touched that Sunny was worried about my safety during gunfire.

He also made me a really nice offer later on. I was pulled over by a cop for an annoying reason: not seeing a minuscule "No Turn on Red" sign. Luckily, the policeman didn't give me a moving violation ticket, but instead of letting me off with a warning, he gave me an even stupider ticket: not having proof of insurance (I had an insurance card but it was expired). Georgia has an automated system and they can look up proof of insurance in seconds, so I didn't even know you were still required to carry around a current insurance card! He obviously knew I had valid insurance... this "no proof" ticket is just a stupid nuisance. Anyway, Sunny said he felt bad for me and offered to pay my ticket out for his birthday present money! I told him, "No, it's my responsibility since I was the one driving, but thanks a lot anyway."

Back to the gun stuff... I believe in being pretty graphic about what guns can do. Here in the U.S. we get a ridiculous amount of positive messages about guns. Guns = instant power = instant masculinity, and so on. Gun messages start at a preschool level and just get stronger and stronger. There's no way to totally shield kids from these messages, and the idea of the gun is too powerful to fight against. The pragmatic remedy is to try and balance the idea with the reality. If you just tell kids that guns are evil and leave it at that, I doubt they're really going to take it to heart.

It's also important to know what to do in case of gunfire. I've talked about that with Sunny before. If you hear a gunshot, hit the ground and crawl to cover. I've had to do this more than a couple times in my life. Just last year in Charlotte, actually!

People who don't understand these simple lessons, perhaps because they were lucky enough to grow up somewhere without a strong gun culture, are really vulnerable. For example, I remember a party I went to a long time ago in Miami, where a friend of a friend publicly announced that someone had taken his .22 out of his backpack. He spent an hour trying to find it, then went to the police station at 2 in the morning to report it stolen (otherwise, if someone had shot someone with that gun, he might have gotten blamed for it). It turned out a drunk German backpacker who had washed up at the party had taken it, thinking it was a toy pistol, and was passed out on top of it in a bedroom corner somewhere.

I've heard a lot of anecdotes about young Europeans getting into serious trouble in Miami. In a lot of European countries, if you get in a bar fight, people hit each other, and the worst that happens is a bloody nose. But people are more polite in places like Miami, where everyone and their grandmother has a gun, because you should take for granted that your opponent isn't going to start a fistfight... instead, they'll just go out to the parking lot, get their gun and wait for you. Drunken soccer hooligan type behavior in a gun culture is a disaster waiting to happen.

Sunny's Pawpaw (Guy's mother's husband) has a gazillion rifles but he keeps them carefully in a safe. J's father (J is Sunny's friend, the pinecone lighter) also has a gun and keeps it in a safe. But realistically speaking, someday Sunny is going to end up in a house where somebody is not responsible, and kids/teenagers can get hold of the gun...

I've spent so much time writing about guns I'm too tired to talk about the reason I'm feeling down today. It's all about my dad. I was relying on him for something and he let me down. He can be such a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'll write about it later.

On all other fronts, things are going well. I feel pretty good about my health. Today was a day of rest -- relative rest, that is, considering all the stuff I did with Sunny. Yesterday, I finished my 5th consecutive Level 1 Slim in 6, did weight training at the gym and got an extremely painful but effective massage. There was a scapula pop involved. I'm not sure if I'm going to get all the way through Slim in 6 in 6 weeks, simply because my arm strength is not very good... I'm fine with all the leg work but I can't follow along 100% with the arms. At one point I think you're suposed to do about 16 push-ups and I can barely do 6. It's going to take me a while to build up the arm strength, and I'm going to be conservative and not start the next level until my arms are ready for it.

I also need to write a post about Astro Boy and adoption. The movie has huge, huge adoption issues, including a portrayal of two extremes of bad adoptive parenting: 1) the parent who wants to force an adoptee to fit their image of the fantasy child 2) the Fagin-type parent who takes in and exploits the orphaned.

Although, when you think about it, adoption issues are all over children's and fantastic and superhero stories. Superman? Transracial adoption. Spiderman? Relative adoption. It's rare to encounter a story without it. It's like a reliable motor to drive a story with.

I'll leave with some Twitter stuff. The hash tag #oneletteroffmovies has been really popular lately, and all the funniest one letter off variations have been done already. I contributed my own variation, #oneletteroffWernerHerzogmovies, though I warn you it will only be somewhat humorous if you're German, a film geek, have a juvenile sense of humor or some combination of those three qualities.

Aguirre, the Wrath of Cod
Bad Lieutenant: Poot of Call New Orleans
Cabra Verde
Fescue Dawn
Nosferatu the Vampire
Little Dieter Needs to Fry
My Best Friend

I love Werner Herzog. I can't wait for the Bad Lieutenant remake that's coming out next month. I don't know if it's going to be good, but it's going to be extremely something.

BB and Sunny Update

I haven't posted in a while. I just haven't felt up to long-form writing.

I finally spoke to BB's adoption caseworker... this is the same woman who was also Sunny's caseworker. I got a bit emotional on the phone with her and told her that this process was very hard on everyone, especially Sunny, who often asks us when he's going to be a big brother. I told her I was totally aware of the budget crisis, and that I was also aware that BB's case plan had moved to adoption many months ago, though we had no communication from the state about it. I asked her if things would be easier if BB went to his grandmother (NN) and then we adopted him from her in a private adoption (NN had raised this idea herself a while back). I even asked her if it would make things easier if we hired a lawyer... I added that I didn't mean this in any antagonistic sense, but was posing it as a sincere question.

She didn't have a lot of answers for me, and she didn't have good news either. Things have changed since they did the contract to place Sunny with us; because of the budget crisis, it's even harder for their state to work with private agencies like ours. If they don't have budget approval to do the contract with the agency, our agency would have to transfer our homestudy to Dekalb County and have them do placement and post-placement supervision. That would present another roadblock and potential area for delays.

We'll find out in the next few days whether this county transfer has to happen or not. BB has been in limbo for 14 months already.

At this point, if the ball ever gets rolling, they'll also determine subsidy information if he's special needs. I'm sure that by now he really is "special needs" according to the state definition. For those who aren't familiar with foster adoption terminology, special needs doesn't necessarily involve any defined mental or physical handicap. Special needs really just means "it's harder to find adoptive parents for this child than it would be for a healthy white infant". There are almost no general adoptions that aren't "special needs" according to some definition.

But BB might have real special needs. His foster mom says she's a bit worried that he can't use the fingers on the right side of his body to grasp things. He still grasps using only his entire right fist. Since she's raised double digits of bio and foster kids over several decades I trust her opinion on his development. And she believes he's behind, though not so behind that needs physical therapy... yet.

The longer he stays with her the more difficult his transition is going to be. It's tough at any stage, but some stages are probably worse. A toddler is more aware of different people than an infant, but they're not able to express the emotions they're feeling, like Sunny was when he came to us at the age of 6.

We're going there for Halloween -- just Sunny and I -- so I'll get a chance to see BB. This quick weekend visit is a big treat for Sunny, because he loves talking about how much fun the great big foster family has doing Halloween stuff together. However, the visit also represents a major break in structure, and that's had some negative effects. He had more fits, got mad on several occasions because I wasn't letting him do things that his foster mom let him do (and he almost never uses that complaint), has been especially needy, and regressed in terms of what he wants to watch and read. He's been watching Dora cartoons that are way below his level, but they're obviously comforting him, so we don't discourage that.

I'm a big believer in openness, and I don't think the visit itself is having these negative effects. Instead, it's the break in structure. If we had already established a clear schedule of exactly when we would visit his family, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. I think in the future we'll have to establish a single date and stick to it on a yearly basis. I can't afford much more than that... each visit means at least two plane tickets, a hotel room and a rental car.

Sunny has had some rough episodes recently, but this weekend, we also had some wonderful times with him. On Sunday, we went walking on the trails at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, and Guy taught Sunny how to skip stones into the beaver pond. Later that day, when they were driving together, Sunny wrote Guy a note:

"You are the best dad I love you and I will love you forever"

"Relationship Not Behavior" Advice

This seems like such a good piece of advice for older child adoption. I really encourage everyone to read the whole post if you haven't run across it already.

When I was a college administrator responsible for discipline I learned the concept, "Get them to respect you first, and later worry about them liking you." I took this principal into adoption and parenting and it ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WORK. Some of the kids never really came to love me as their mom and respect never came either.

Focus that first year on getting the kid to fall in love with you. If you do, you can worry about behavior. I'm not saying to ignore rule violations, but under-react. Keep the focus on the child, on attachment, on learning to understand your child and years down the road you'll be much farther ahead than those who started tackling behavior the day the kids moved in.

When it comes to Sunny's first year, I think we did some things right on purpose, and other things right purely on accident. But mostly, we were just lucky. Sunny attached to us quickly and strongly. His attachment issues are centered around separation and anxiety... not trust and physical closeness. He loves hugs and kisses and tickling and wrestling. He cares deeply about what we think of him. He draws pictures of us together as a happy family, and spontaneously writes notes that say things like "I LOVE YOU MOM AND I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAY".

I read a lot of blogs by parents who have adopted older children who have not attached so easily. I feel so bad for them (the parents and the kids). It would be such a hard road. I even feel bad writing this post because I don't want to rub it in their faces. But I think this issue sometimes falls under the banner of blog negativity syndrome (people blogging about when things go wrong, but not bothering to blog when things go right) so I just want to add another data point with this post. Sometimes children with a history of inconsistent caregiving in the early years DO NOT have issues with physical closeness and showing affection.

The hard part for us, of course, is dealing with Sunny's fits and rages. When he's trying to bash me in the face, it drains my emotional reservoir very rapidly. But in between fits, it fills up quickly, because he's so loving. If this were not the case, I'd probably be a semi-zombie by now.

We're also lucky that we have such a good relationship with his foster mom, that his foster mom is brilliant, and that his foster mom was Sunny's only placement for almost four years. That made understanding his personality and needs a lot easier as a learning process.

In the above post, I don't think that Claudia is saying that you should let the child do whatever they want, and bribe them, in order to manipulate love. That doesn't work. We started off with pretty strict rules for Sunny, and he still has most of them: for example, I don't know many kids his age who are only allowed to play video games for 15-45 minutes a week. But the rules were a natural continuation of rules he already had in his foster mom's home. I just agree with her totally, based on our experience with Sunny's first year, that the first priority is understanding what behavior can be changed, and what behavior you should just learn to live with somehow because trying to change it is going to make everyone miserable.

I thought we could have family reading nights together. I thought I could help him with his homework. I thought I could easily teach him how to play by himself. I thought we could transition him into waking himself up at night to go to the bathroom. I've had to abandon all these expectations, at least for the short term.

Again, looking back on our first year, I think we're very lucky. I always like to expect the worst, so that I'm pleasantly surprised when the worst doesn't quite happen.