How Blogging Communities Can Help Kids - Neurofeedback Example

As anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows, our long-term goal is to get Sunny off his atypical antipsychotic medication. We tried at the end of last year, but his performance at school plummeted. Right now we're trying neurofeedback. I've researched it extensively, I understand the mechanism and I think it might work for him.

The diagnostic testing has already confirmed what I already thought. Sunny doesn't have "typical" ADHD. He has overactive areas of his brain that hurt his ability to focus on a task without becoming distracted or emotional. They also hurt his ability to self-soothe. The goal is to teach him to consciously or subconsciously lower the frequency of his brainwaves. It's like showing him a series of exercises for his brain, and the more he does these exercises in the sessions, the more he'll be able to flex those muscles (thereby calming himself) in real-life situations.

Sunny loves it, of course, because it involves playing video games.

We hit a major roadblock on the first week, though. We were planning on two sessions a week. Apparently, one of these sessions is going to use a neurofeedback variant called the "LENS System". Instead of the usual passive sensors reading brainwaves and displaying them on a screen, part of this system involves feeding low-voltage electric waves into the brain via a sensor cap.

Whoah!

This was not explained to me well. After I did the research, the whole thing sounds fishy. For example, one website claims "Symptoms associated with ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD, migraines and Asperger’s can improve significantly with LENS". Where is the study? I realize it's difficult and expensive to do truly good double-blind studies, but I can't find anything.

I'm extremely suspicious of alternative therapies, especially ones marketed to parents of special needs children. I know about the placebo effect and I don't trust anecdotal evidence. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I also want to know how something works before I try it.

I'm suspicious of traditional medicine as well, considering that Sunny is on his current medication not because a caring expert made an informed decision, but because some psychiatrist who met him for less than five minutes kept prescribing him a rainbow of different medications and finally stuck with the one that happened not to have too many apparent short-term side effects.

Anyway, the main neurofeedback doctor assured me that the LENS System treatments administered by the other doctor are safe, effective and would speed up the treatment process. I told him I had to do some more research and would get back to him. These were my concerns:

1) the LENS system was feeding electricity into my son's brain. That doesn't sound safe.
2) but if it is safe, and the voltages are so low that he can't even feel it, then they're too low to do anything at all, which means I'm paying a huge amount of money to watch my son sitting in a chair with a funny hat on.
3) Unlike regular neurofeedback, I do not understand the basic mechanism for how the LENS system functions.

Later that day I thought of Brenda McCreight, a neurofeedback therapist and adoptive parent of many special needs children. She wrote the scariest book in the world, which is how I knew of her in the first place. It's an awesome book, it's just very scary. If you've read it, you know what I mean. Then she started up a great blog focused on her adoptive parenting.

So I emailed her. I introduced myself and described my situation in detail, then asked, "Can you please tell me if you have any experience or knowledge, for good or bad, of the LENS system? I would be very appreciative of whatever advice you would care to give. Thanks!"

Here is her email response:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting me. I use neurofeedback extensively in my practice but I have chosen to not use, or get training in, LENS at this time. I am always concerned about putting anything into the vulnerable brains of our childen and although I have read extensively on LENS it has yet to sell me on the safety or even the efficacy- there simply isn't enough research to back it up at this time. For older children and adults with anxiety, I am now using HeartMath http://www.heartmath.com/ but I find it's too challenging for most 6 year olds so I stick to NF with them as well.

You will be able to find thousands of practitioners who swear by LENS, and maybe it's my own lack of understanding, but I won't use it on my own children or my clients. Maybe in a few years when there is more research, but not now.

I can only give you my opinion as I am not an expert in LENS, but you asked for my opinion - so there it is.

Good luck with your adoption - 6 is a wonderful age.

Brenda

I asked her for permission to post this response on my blog, and she consented.

I told the doctor that I am not comfortable with the treatments at this time. We're going to have to reschedule or go to once-a-week treatments. If I see some studies, I could change my mind.

I'm really glad that I was able to get such helpful and reasonable advice from Brenda McCreight. I'm also grateful that she is so forthright about putting her advice out in the open. So many professionals like to keep things behind closed doors for fear of offending their peers.

I've lost some trust in the main doctor. I feel like he sprang this on me. But I'm going to stick with the regular treatments.

Blogging, Anonymity, Trolls and Hatred of Motherhood

T0rina has just had to make Busy Intersection private because of a troll.

I've seen this happen before. Navigating the Maze is another foster care blog that closed to the public.

In a different but related happening, at Heart, Mind and Seoul (a blog by a transracial adoptee blogging honestly and forthrightly about racial issues) the blogger had someone threaten her children. She went private but then came back public.

All of this makes me so angry, and at the same time fearful.

I'd advise anyone connected to my blogging community: take as many precautions as you can. Heart, Mind and Seoul once used her real name. Busy Intersection posted multiple pictures. Pictures focus the attention of trolls and reveal vulnerability. It's like a deer flashing their underbelly to a wolf. Then again, Navigating the Maze stringently followed anonymity rules, and still got zapped. I'm not blaming any of these people for being victimized, I'm just trying to find a pattern and analyze the situation and predict the behavior of their attackers.

I don't use my real name or the real name of anyone I know. I don't post pictures. I do give my location, which is a major vulnerability. At first I thought it wouldn't be a problem, since I live in a county with a population of 700,000. However, two totally separate people have recognized my real life identity from my blog. After all, I'm an Asian hapa woman with a white husband and a black son. That's pretty damn conspicuous. The world is smaller than one might think. But I can't hide my racial vulnerability without removing the entire reason for this blog to exist.

Other things I do: last year, I changed a setting in Blogger that makes my posts not come up near the top of Google searches. I was getting too many hits from people looking for stuff like my collard green recipe. I comment a lot at Racialicious and have guest-posted there and Rachel's Tavern, but in future, I'm not going to link back to my personal blog. I enjoy participating in some really controversial topics at anti-racist and feminist sites, but I think I might need to change my nickname and not guest-blog or comment anymore as "atlasien".

Trolls love to vampirically suck as much mental energy as possible from their victims. I'm already a victim just because of all the time-consuming crap I listed above. For anyone interested in finding out more about troll psychology and strategies, check these two articles: one a deceptively light-hearted but insightful list, and the other a long journalistic investigative report.

There's a special kind of troll that attacked T0rina (and by attacked, I mean threatening to report her to CPS for having a "bad attitude" and a "potty mouth"). I've noticed they seem to always be men. They're motivated not by nihilistic sadism, but by a warped sense of righteous anger. They have the virgin/whore complex applied to mothers: the perfect mother/bad mother dynamic. The perfect mother is endlessly self-sacrificing, has undying love for her children and exists only so much as she loves her children. Nothing as corruptible as mere human nature would ever threaten her identity as a perfect mother.

The bad mother is anyone who is not a perfect mother. Bad mothers need to be put in their place and ground into the dirt. A lot of them are of the wrong race, or the wrong sexuality or the wrong social class. They don't deserve to have children.

Bloggers like T0rina -- prolific, honest, comprehensive -- perform an invaluable service for current and prospective foster care parents. She is parenting a child with RAD, FASD, cerebral palsy and sexual predatory behavior. A child with severe special needs that will probably never love her back. Her experience reinforces a very important truth: love is not enough. This is something that got pounded into us during our foster care training. They even had each one of us pour water into a cup with a hole in the bottom. "The water is your love. The cup is your child. What happens if the hole isn't closed by the time the water runs out?"

The answer is commitment. I'm much more of a selfish American than I am Japanese, and I'd be miserable in Japanese society, but I do really appreciate the value that Japanese place on commitment, duty and obligation. According to the fuzzier American pop-psych thinking, the right thing to do is feel, and you have to feel what's right. This ideology fails miserably when it comes to caretaking. If you love and love and don't get any love back, your love is not going to stay the same... because we're human beings, not freaking robot love fountains. You have to have something else that keeps you going, and by extension, keeps your child going.

One of the most difficult parts of being the parent of a special needs child is how much it isolates you. One of my friends told me, a few minutes after meeting Sunny, "he's just a normal 6-year-old!" and kept repeating how wonderful, happy and healthy and normal he was. I live in a more complex reality, but she doesn't want to hear about it.

And my case is easy. Sunny's special needs are not severe. He has some anxiety, some irritating behaviors; at infrequent and not-unpredictable intervals, he'll freak out and try to punch me in the face. Otherwise, he soaks up love and gives back love... it's not hard to be proud of my son and happy when he's around.

Parents of special needs children find online communities literally life-saving and life-changing. Finally, there are people who will listen. People who can give advice and suggest therapies and tell you you're not crazy and a bad mother for feeling or thinking the things you do. People like T0rina who explain how commitment works and what it looks like.

I'm not saying they're utopias. I've written before about online communities that create group-think, and an attitude that everyone is above criticism. I've given advice before (to international adoptive parents) that was received as an attack on someone's motherhood when it really wasn't. But giving someone honest advice, or criticizing certain institutional practices of parenting and child welfare... this is not the same as telling someone they are a bad mother and should have their children taken away because they don't fit your deranged fantasy of a perfect mother.

Adoptive parents of children from foster care do need to be held to a higher standard. But this higher standard should not be about us, or our value as human beings... it should be focused on the children. Not "am I good enough?" but "am I good enough to raise this child?" This is not about what we are, or even what we feel, it's about what we do. A child doesn't care about your individual moral worth or deservingness. That's not a step on Maslow's hierarchy.

Being involved in this world long enough will usually make you less judgmental of any kind of parent. For example, my sister-in-law's parenting choices are ones that often make me cringe. She feeds my 7-year-old niece a steady stream of soda and Cheetos and lets her play Grand Theft Auto all day on the weekends. But my niece is also safe, and loved with a fierce commitment. If only all children were so lucky... for the first years of his life, my son was not.

Everytime I hear of a troll attack like this, it reminds me of an experience I had in my childhood.

I was 11, and I was alone at home. I'd had dinner with my grandparents. My mother was out on a business trip and would not be returning until 9pm. I'd been trusted to stay home alone for a few hours.

The phone rang. I picked up and said hello. A man with a deep voice breathed heavily for a few seconds. He said "little girl, I'm coming to get you" and then hung up.

I called my grandfather, but I was so scattered when I talked to him on the phone, he didn't understand the urgency. I thought about walking twenty feet over to the neighbor's house, but the man might "get me" on the way there. So I turned off all the lights, grabbed the biggest knife in the kitchen and crouched hidden under the desk next to the front door. If he came in that way, I'd at least go down fighting. I crouched under the desk, holding the knife, quietly crying and shivering, for the next half hour, until I heard the most welcome sound in the world: my mother's bracelets jangling as she walked up the sidewalk towards the front door.

The man who called on the phone got a fleeting amount of pleasure, took no risk, and made me experience some of the worst fear of my life. It's a simple equation. It taps deeply into the corrupt part of human nature, and I wish I knew the cure.

Back from the visit

I'm still exhausted.

The visit was a lot of fun for Sunny, and mostly fun for my mother and me. Sunny's foster mom organized his birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, and his grandma and all his foster brothers and sisters and his foster cousins and some of his friends from his old school came over. He received a ridiculous number of presents. Most of them are being shipped back to Atlanta.

BB is doing great. His personality is a lot like Sunny, even at seven months. He likes to cry, he likes to laugh and he likes to jump up and down. I learned how he likes to be held and all about his habits. I know nothing about babies, so this is all important stuff.

The most stressful part was (not) meeting BB's dad. He wanted to meet at the restaurant where he worked at 1pm. I was there at 1pm, he wasn't. I called and he told me he worked a double the night before and had the day off, but couldn't tell me in time.

It seems part of a pattern of general avoidance and shirking. Like not visiting his newborn son for seven months. He could have left a message for me. He could have gone to the meeting even if he wasn't scheduled to work at that time. He could have met later... I floated the idea of meeting him somewhere else shortly before we left, but he couldn't do that either.

Then when we talked on the phone later, he said he wanted to start the procedure to give up custody at his next court date. He wants BB to be placed with us and wants to have an open adoption. His goal is to get a job as a truck driver and move to Atlanta, where he already has a lot of relatives living.

I thanked him and said I just wanted to see BB in a committed home. If he could commit 100% to parenting, that would be great as well, but if not, we would commit to BB and to raising BB and Sunny together. Also, I warned him that open adoption was not a guarantee of anything. It would be a relationship mostly between us at the early stages, but then it would become a relationship between him and BB, and I have no way of predicting what's going to happen 5 or 10 or 15 years in the future. Finally, I told him that the process was going to drag on for a while, so if he wanted BB to be placed with us he would have to be firm about it and definitely show up at all his court dates.

It sounds like I badgered him... it really wasn't that bad. I gave him positive encouragement and said I knew this was a really hard time for him. It's just that he was really very vague, and I was forced to take the lead. I do wish we could have met. I have no idea what he even looks like. It's hard to believe he came to this decision without even meeting us! I did leave him an envelope at his work with some articles on open adoption and some pictures of us.

I felt like I got two body blows over the weekend. The first was when BB's worker told me that even if BB's dad is in full accord and moves quickly, we might get placement at the end of this year. It depends on interstate paperwork more than anything. The second blow was when I realized BB's dad wasn't going to show up to meet me after I'd been psyching myself up for the visit the whole weekend. It's all very stressful, but I just have to keep an even keel. Having my mother there was very helpful.

At least I know BB is in a great place right now.

Sunny and BB's foster mom always fights for what's best for her kids, even when they're not "her" kids. That weekend, she had two children staying with her who weren't even foster kids. She had fostered the 3-year-old from when he was a little baby, but the courts had ruled for reunification. This boy also happens to be Sunny's old buddy and Sunny always talks about him. Sunny was so happy to play with him on this visit... he doesn't know quite how he feels about BB yet, but he's full of love and affection for the 3-year-old. Anyway, after reunification, this boy went to live with his mom in another county, but she still has a lot of problems and has been dropping both of her two younger children off with ex-foster-mom for weeks at a time. For a year. BB's foster mom could easily report her, but she doesn't want to, because then the children might end up at a different foster home and might not receive the best care. The 3-year-old's little sister was staying there too, plus another 3-year-old she's officially fostering. That's a total of four under-fours including BB. And she seems to handle it all effortlessly in a bright, cheerful, spotless house.

The talk with BB's worker (who was Sunny's original worker) was also helpful, despite the body blow. She knew their mother very well. In fact, the workers seemed to be the only people in her life that gave her consistent positive feedback and structure. I'm never going to know exactly why their family was so messed up that they allowed both Sunny and BB to go into foster care. Both BB's worker and foster mom warned me that the grandmother's stories changed with the wind. Race was definitely an issue, but not the only one. Sunny's mom's cousin has children whose fathers are black, and Sunny's grandmother is very close to all of them.

According to the worker, the underlying issue was that Sunny's mother's family was very much like the one ruled by my egomaniac uncle. Family members were played off against each other, constantly measured and found wanting, expelled and embraced in alternating patterns according to the latest power play.

At least Sunny's women maternal relatives tried. Sunny's grandma wasn't very effective at keeping the family together, but she cares deeply. The men are a more disappointing bunch. Educated, able-bodied middle-class white men with more resources than 99% of the people on this planet, but they just can't be bothered to drive ten minutes to visit... or even look at a photo. Sunny's grandmother said she tried to send some pictures of BB to Sunny's grandfather (they divorced a while back) but when he replied, he just accused her of "being morbid". He pays for a lavish funeral for his daughter but won't stretch a finger for his daughter's children.

We spent a lot of time with Sunny's grandma over the weekend. It was a bittersweet for her, especially at Sunny's birthday party. She often cried quietly to the side.

The visit helped me put a lot of the pieces together. I didn't go out investigating or ask probing questions, I just listened to what a lot of different people told me.

BB's father is older and has several other children including a teenager. He's not parenting any of them, but he pays child support on some. No one knows him well, for good or for bad. He doesn't have the kind of criminal record that would bar him from parenting BB, but his position in life isn't very good right now either. When I talked to him, he pinned a lot of his hopes on moving away and becoming a truck driver. I hope things are going to work out for him.

Sunny's mother's cousin, who raised Sunny for at least a year, knew Sunny's father. He has a very bad mark on his record and was also totally incapable of parenting, but other than that, she says he wasn't all that bad, or currently dangerous. If we ever want to contact him, it would probably be easy because you can look him up in a web database... I think that says everything you need to know about the Very Bad Mark. I'm filing this away for future reference. Far future, perhaps when Sunny is 16.

Hopefully BB's dad will follow through. Apparently it's very common for people in these situations, especially men, to simply refuse the responsibility of deciding. Instead of saying "I can't/won't parent", they do nothing at all, and that way let the courts make the decision for them. But I think BB's dad is ready to take at least some responsibility.

I'll probably have another post on open adoption soon... time to try and wind down a bit more from the visit.

Sunny's behavior since the visit has been pretty good considering all the emotions that must have been brought up. Who knows what the fallout is going to be. Right now, he's concentrating mostly on all the loot he picked up from his visit. I think one of the most positive parts was seeing his little 3-year-old buddy. He's been away for almost a year, but everyone is still there... that must mean a lot to him.

ETA: I forgot to include medical stuff amidst the parental info dump. My ankle burn has not healed. It got better, then it got worse, and now it itches horribly. I went to a walk-in clinic today and got a tentative diagnosis of a fungal infection. I'm waiting for lab results, but at least it's probably not MRSA. I got some antibiotic pills and antifungal cream. My medical expenses for this burn are now approaching the triple digits and I'm seriously thinking about calling Sunbeam and threatening to sue unless they give me money for burning me with their stupid heating pad. On the reproductive front, my RE tried to put me on 225cc of Follistim a day for my next IUI, but I just flat-out refused. I'll take my lower chances with a vastly cheaper and less stressful non-medicated cycle.

How the Talk Went

It went sort of as I expected.

He says he's feeling very confused.

I'm going to meet him this weekend at the restaurant where he works to talk some more. He said he wanted to find out more about open adoption, so I printed out some articles I found on the internet.

There's very little that applies specifically to his situation. Most of the stuff that's not for adoptive parents is geared toward young pregnant single mothers. I searched for articles written from a male or African-American perspective and couldn't really find anything.

I don't think he plans on parenting... it's more a case of choosing between relatives. The fact that some of his relatives live in Dekalb might be a major factor.

When I meet him, I'm just going to talk a little bit about ourselves and Sunny and give him some pictures. I'll say again that I can't tell him what the right thing to do is. The only advice I would give him is that whatever he decides for his son should be a situation that's as committed as absolutely possible. If BB starts getting bounced around between different relatives and foster homes and caseworkers, he'll end up with the same psychological scars as Sunny, or even worse.

He did say that he agrees with me that BB and Sunny should have a relationship whether they live together or not.

I'm off to the airport in an hour with Nana and Sunny... I'll update in a few days.

About to Talk to BB's Dad - Any advice?

THE RECAP:

I met Sunny's first worker at Sunny's mother's funeral in August. She became BB (Baby Brother's) worker soon after that. Since the funeral, I have had no contact with her. We've just been waiting, waiting, waiting to hear of any word on BB's case.

BB's grandmother has been very supportive of us adopting BB. She tells me again and again that Mommy ___ wanted BB to go live with his brother and us if anything happened to her. In fact, every time I talk to her on the phone, she tells me the same story about her daughter's dying wish, and starts choking up and crying a bit.

I don't handle conversations like this well... at least I don't think I do. I get very uncomfortable and don't know what to say. This is a big reason I'm bringing my mother with me on this visit. My mother always knows what to say. Her emotional IQ is at supergenius level.

I have been hoping to talk to BB's worker for a while. Everything I hear of the case comes secondhand, from BB's grandmother or foster mom. For example, BB's grandmother told me that BB's dad said that maybe his mother could take care of BB. Then she said she investigated and had a background check run on BB's other grandmother. According to the investigation, she would not be a good candidate, and was neither able nor probably willing, especially since BB's dad already had other kids that he wasn't taking care of, and neither was she.

When Sunny's mom died, BB was in limbo. His dad had the right to raise him, but he equivocated. He didn't come to the funeral and never went to visit his child. His relatives had a say in what would happen to him, so Sunny's grandmother asked that he be placed with Sunny's old foster mom, which is what happened. Sunny's foster mom already had a baby placement, but she was willing to take BB as well because of the special circumstances.

Seven months later, the state is about to file for permanent custody. BB's dad needs to make his decision. Today, he met his child for the first time.

That's what BB's caseworker just told me.

We have no legal standing at this point, of course. But if BB's dad decides not take care of BB, and if his close blood relatives don't make a vigorous case, we're the default.

My position throughout this is to say that yes, of course we want BB. I really had no expectations of adopting a baby going into all this, but we're willing to do it because it would be important to keep Sunny and BB together, and because their mother wanted that.

NOW:

BB's caseworker told me that BB's dad would like to talk to us. He's still making up his mind. She's not happy that it's taken him seven months to get to this point, but also says that he's exhibiting more care and concern than many other parents she's worked with in the system.

I know basically what I'm going to say to him. I'm not going to tell him "this is right" or "this is wrong". He has to make his own decision; we can tell him how we'll act according to that decision. If he signs away his rights and lets us adopt BB, we'd be willing to have the same openness we have now with Sunny's grandmother. Calls/emails/pictures, plus a visit once a year. And if he decides to raise BB, we would hope that he does a similar thing and encourages the brothers to keep in touch and have a relationship even though they live apart.

Sunny's grandmother says he's a marijuana dealer. I know his first name, and his race (black). That's all I know. I'm not going to make any hasty judgments. It's not impossible for people to pull their lives together quickly. But it is kind of improbable.

The worst case is if he decides to raise BB, starts the process... then backs out and stops visiting or won't take care of BB. BB would get shuttled around, leading to the same kind of baseline anxiety that has plagued Sunny's life.

I'll be calling him tonight or tomorrow night. First I'll call BB's foster mom and ask her input, and I'll also talk to Sunny's grandmother again.

My mother, Sunny and I are leaving for his birth state visit in a few days. We might be visiting with BB's dad as well, now.

Got any advice for me? This is kind of nerve-wracking.

I didn't sign up for this!

Atlanta thundersnow? I've lived here for more than a decade but I still haven't come to grips with the fact that we do sometimes have a snow day in winter. It just doesn't seem fair.

Guy phoned me last night to ask, "do you think it's really going to snow tomorrow?" I said, "No way. It's 60 degrees right now, the weatherman must be on crack." Then around noon today a bunch of nasty wet snowflakes started cascading down. Argh!

I HATE snow. I prefer climates where there are only two seasons, a wet season and a dry season, and absolutely no "winter" allowed. Sunny wanted me to play with him in the snow... ha! Not likely. I watched him play for a while, but the snow was so muddy and slushy that he and the other neighborhood kids couldn't really do much with it.

We couldn't do any more activities today because the roads are a huge mess. In order for Sunny to get his requisite physical activity, I had to resort to chasing him around the house in endless circles while trying to "whip" him with a fleece scarf. We tried it the other way around, but he's too fast. It's exhausting, but since my alternative is being woken up at 4 in the morning, I had a strong motivation to keep staggering after him.

Besides the snow, another annoying aspect of this weekend is the nasty little burn I got on Friday. That's when I went to sleep with a Sunbeam electric heating and massage pad at the foot of the bed to keep my toes warm. Something horribly wrong happened and I woke up the next morning with a second-degree burn on my ankle. It soon swelled into a burn blister the size of a dollar coin, protruding about half an inch upwards. To keep the blister from painfully bursting I've been jury-rigging protection for it. I create a thick square of padding from tissue and gauze, cut a hole in the center the size of the blister, tape the padding over the blister and onto my ankle, tape a carefully-cut-out plastic lid onto the padding and onto my ankle, then wrap a flexible fabric bandage around my ankle. I air it out for an hour every morning and night, replacing the whole thing each time. I'd put up a picture of the burn blister, but it's just too freaky.

I've decided what we're getting Sunny for his birthday. Infrared stealth goggles (surprisingly cheap!) and a keytar. Soon, he'll be able to sneak up to people in the dark and assault them with loud, tinny power chords.

Saying "No"

Don't crawl under that. Don't crawl on top of that. Don't put that in your mouth, that's extremely unsanitary. Please put that down. Thank you. Please stop twirling that around your head. Thank you. Don't do that in public, it's very rude. Stop kicking that. Don't do that, it's dangerous. Don't jump off that, you might break it. Don't use the oven handle as a pull-up bar. No, you can't have a mint. No, you can't have a quarter. No, you can't have a snack, you already had a snack and you need to save your appetite for dinner. No, you can't play that video game. No. Don't push that button. No, you can't have your banana custard until after dinner. No. Don't type that into the Youtube search bar. No, and I'm not going to argue about it. No, and no backtalking about it. Put that back on the shelf, please. Thank you. Don't jump off the sofa. Don't jump off the chair. No, you need to do that for yourself, I can't do it for you. Don't yell, use your inside voice. Don't throw that. Put that in the trash. Thank you. No. Don't pull that. Don't push that. Don't go over there, you're getting in people's way. No. No. No.

That's what I sound like when I'm spending the day with Sunny. A steady stream of these directions punctuated by lots and lots of conversation, because he's also throwing out lots of observations and questions that can't be filed into the Mom-can-I-do-this yes/no category.

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head but he still lived for several days with a bullet in his head? What does J-I-F-F-Y-L-U-B-E spell? Do you know why the pool is closed when there's lightning? I bet I know why! What's eight hundred and ninety seven plus fifty hundred and forty one? Do you know what my favorite song by Queen is? Guess how many hawks I saw last week!

Sunny is impulsive, smart, FAST... and notices everything. On the plus side, I can trust him not to seriously endanger himself. He wouldn't rush out into a busy street, or jump off anything taller than about five feet. When I ask him to do something, he either pouts or he doesn't pout, but then he does it quickly. He has to be in a very nasty mood to dawdle, and even then, he's not very good at it.

On the minus side, he's got all the skills of a supervillain hacker. For example, after only a few minutes of unsupervised fiddling around with my mother's iPhone yesterday, he set her alarm to go off at five in the morning. The same thing happened with her satellite radio. She let him sit in the front seat of the parked car for a few minutes, and that was enough for him to globally scramble all the preset channels. It's frightening how good he is with electronics. He's much, much better at it than my stepfather, for example.

I try a few tactics to break up my monotonous stream of "no".

• congratulating him for not complaining or not pouting when I tell him "no."
• using an even tone of voice, trying to remove strains of peevishness, irritation or exhaustion
• using "please" and "thank you" liberally and expecting the same in return.
• every so often, instead of saying "no," saying "what do you think I'm going to say?" and when he says "no," saying "yes, that's right."
• reducing pouting by rehearsing "no" ahead of time. "What's going to happen if we get home too late and I tell you no, we won't have any time to watch TV?"
  
• making lots of effort to notice positive things he does, such as offering to help clean, or asking how we feel
  

Other than that, I don't see any recourse. I have to use mostly negatives, not positives. I certainly can't say, "keep your hands at your sides at all times, walk at a measured pace, use a soft voice or stay silent. Reverse your personality." He's an exuberant, wriggly kid. "No" is the necessary boundary between his right to be himself and the rights of other people to personal space, property and sanity.

Guy is gone for the weekend, so it's just me and Sunny. Actually, that's stretching the truth. I spend up to 2/3 of these days with my mother, so I have a huge amount of help. Having my mother live less than ten miles away makes my life so much easier!

This time has gone by much more smoothly than the last time Guy was out of town. Sunny has been doing what I tell him, without pouting, about 99.8% of the time. He hasn't been waking me up at night. He's earned two stickers for good behavior. I still have Sunday left before Guy gets back, so I don't want to speak too soon, but I feel really optimistic.

One reason I'm feeling optimistic is that I've had some nice success on the manners front. When meeting adults, Sunny already has very good manners he learned from his foster family. But he's living in the South now, and that's a whole new level of politeness. Native Southerners of any race expect to hear "sir" and "miss" and "ma'am". Adults still love him if he doesn't use this words, but it makes him look bad in comparison with other children. And Sunny has been having trouble remembering to incorporate those words into his vocabulary. I resorted to naked bribery today: Sunny will now be receiving a penny for every "thank you sir" or "thank you ma'am." He quickly earned two pennies today and has found a new enthusiasm for honorifics.

I also had success on another minor front. When Sunny had a headache last week -- I believe he had a milder version of my nasty ten-day cold -- I rushed out and bought him some children's Tylenol. I didn't really notice that it was chewable bubblegum flavor. Since then, he's been complaining of mysterious headaches that don't affect his activity level... "but the medicine would really help my headache, mom! I know it!" He's a terrible liar, so I never gave him medicine for these fishy headaches. I'd just drop him off at school and tell him to go to the school nurse if he still had a headache. Today I finally found some non-flavored children's ibuprofen pills, and told him that I gave away his bubblegum pills because I had some better ones that didn't have any flavor... would he like one of those for his fishy headache? "My headache just went away, Mom. I'll, uh, tell you if it comes back later." Those candy pills are pure evil.

There's one thing I never say "no" to... and that's when he asks to be picked up when he says he's tired. Even though he's not really tired. It's good exercise staggering up a parking garage ramp carrying a fifty-pound boy! I'm the only one in this family that's willing and physically able to carry him. Since I never got to carry him as a baby, and he'll soon get to the point where I can't carry him at all, I might as well do all I can right now. People look at us rather oddly when they see me carrying him, but it doesn't matter.

Email to Sonny Perdue our Idiot Governor

I just can't word this in any more diplomatic way.

You are already a terrible governor, but even for you, this is a new low. I can't believe you are going to put your bankrupt party ideology above the benefit of all Georgians and turn down stimulus money. Is this what you want your legacy to be? I will be protesting your ridiculous decision loudly and through as many venues as possible.

AJC article: Perdue may turn down some funds

Frivolous Post

I haven't bought anything for myself this year, so I have an excuse for spending several hours today at yesstyle.com.

I really like the clothes there! I don't know if the quality is any good, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's mostly South Korean brands at relatively cheap prices. Of course, the women's clothes don't fit me, because I'm too big. I'm happy with my weight, I'm just way too tall and broad-shouldered to fit in non-plus-size clothing ranges in an Asian country. Whenever I go to Japan, I don't even bother looking at women's clothes... also, the largest shoe size they stock is still three sizes smaller than mine.

Men's clothes (especially pants) often fit me better than women's clothes. I found out I wear a Korean size M/L, so I have quite a large selection to choose from. The men's clothes are colorful and neat-looking. The models are also very easy on the eyes!


Mr. Scowly


Mr. Not-the-Face


Mr. Dreamy


Mr. Space Cowboy

They even sell matching couples outfits. I love the idea of this trend. My husband would fit in these clothes, but I'd never be able to persuade him to wear them.

Sunny and Music

Christie D just left a comment suggesting that Sunny listen to music when he wakes up too early in the morning. Actually, he already has the choice to do this, but I thought I'd mention a little bit more about his relation to music.

Music definitely moves him in a very deep way. Sunny told my stepfather recently that when he listens to music, he draws pictures in his mind. He's not a huge fan of reading, perhaps because he hasn't gotten to that stage yet of active imagination/creation that he's already achieved with music.

Our therapist is not really giving him therapy, but she's given us some great advice. One is to have periods of "quiet time" with Sunny where we all hug on the couch, turn off the lights and listen to calming music for five minutes. Guy puts on instrumental stuff like Miles Davis. It's sort of like meditation and helps him practice self-calming. We haven't done this in a while and probably should get back to it more.

Another piece of advice our therapist gave us was to put a CD player in his room. We have an old one my cousin gave us, and that's become his CD player. Choosing what music to play gives him a sense of control over his environment. We put on music for him at a low volume when he goes to sleep. His perennial favorite is The Wiggles "Big Red Boat".

He also plays his own music at whatever volume he likes when he gets dressed in the morning, when he puts on his pajamas at night or when he has the chore of putting his clean clothes in his closet. Otherwise, he doesn't spend any time in his room, because of the whole separation anxiety issue (when he puts away his clothes he always wants to have someone in the room with him).

When he's in the car with us, he has definite favorites for songs and radio stations. He often has us play "air band" with him. "Dad, you sing, Mom, you play guitar, I'll play drums!"

I don't think he has the attention span yet to actually start learning an instrument. He'll mess around on some hand bongos for a few minutes, but that's it. Maybe in a year he might be at the right stage.

Unfortunately, his favorite music is classic soft rock. I hate classic soft rock. Oh well!

This is his favorite song ever.




This is more my kind of music.

Dekalb County Goings On

Right now Dekalb County is getting a lot of attention because of the feud between the new CEO, Burrell Ellis, and the Chief of Police, Terrell Bolton.

Police chief, CEO feud embarrassing, familiar

No one other than Bolton and Ellis can say exactly what caused the dispute that erupted last week in a public relations disaster for DeKalb government.

Ellis fired Bolton’s top civilian aide and put Bolton on leave pending an investigation into unspecified allegations. He said he is not satisfied with Bolton’s practice of taking comp time, his frequent trips to his family home in Dallas or his job performance, including Bolton’s efforts to reduce crime.

Bolton labeled the investigation a “witch hunt” and asked the GBI to take over that probe and investigate Ellis as well. The GBI said Friday that it could not do so based simply on Bolton’s request.

Among Bolton’s complaints was the conduct of county sheriff’s deputies in Ellis’ security detail. The presence of those deputies — from the independent Sheriff’s Office rather than the county government’s own police force — has its roots in DeKalb’s history and Ellis’ political experience.

I know which side I'm on. I don't agree with the "you should all get along like adults" finger-wagging. So far, I have faith that Ellis is doing his best. He needs to clean out Dekalb, which is rotten with incompetent Vernon Jones cronies like Bolton. I read Dekalb Officers Speak so I get a sense of what's going on behind the scenes; yes, it's a highly biased blog, but I've followed their links to read what mainstream media in Houston has said about Bolton, and none of it is flattering.

Even though Bolton is really a Texas outsider, maybe he'll decide to follow an old Dekalb tradition and assassinate Ellis. I'm sure Ellis has had the same thought, which is why the separate security detail is an excellent idea. I just hope Ellis can fire Bolton as soon as possible and get further into the serious work of cleaning out Dekalb.

Almost There

Sunny has earned six stickers so far. On the day he last woke us up, he still earned a sticker because he didn't do any name-calling or pushing or hitting. As long as he can make it through today, he'll get seven stickers, and then he can take back his beloved Legos.

His behavior has been quite good lately!

He said an interesting thing last night. As Guy was tucking him into bed, Sunny said, "tell Mom I love her, and I'll love her even after she's dead." Guy laughed about it with me later that night... "I guess when I die, the love gets cut off right away!"

The visit to see his foster family and bio grandma (and maybe his mother's grave) is coming up soon. We probably should be prepared for more emotional storms at that point.

The Chest Pain Was Not a Bruise...

... the pediatrician said it was a simple muscle strain caused by overexertion.

Sunny did have a long nature walk with his Nana yesterday, then played lightsabers with his friend for half an hour. I wouldn't have thought it would be an issue, considering what a dynamo he is. I guess it's a good reminder he does have limits.

I told Guy to pick up some Tiger Balm or mentholated rub on the way back home. Apparently Sunny's already saying he feels better.

Whew!

Down and Up and Down and Up

On Friday night he had another violent fit, this time upon refusing to go to bed at 9PM.

We took him out to the car again. He tried to hit us. When he did that, I sat next to him, holding his hands, and told him we were not going to let him hurt people. Unfortunately, Guy happened to turn his head around from the front seat at the exact wrong moment and got a nice punch in the nose.

This one didn't last as long as the others. Within 45 minutes, he had apologized, and said he was ready to leave the car and brush his teeth and put on his pajamas and go to bed. And he did, peacefully.

The next three days were pretty good. He's earned three stickers so far, for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. He needs to earn seven to get a drawer of his toys back. He'd still lost all his video game time for the weekend without hope of redemption. On Monday he did ten workbook sheets with me without any crying or complaining. Later that day, I took him out for ice cream as a reward for his good behavior so far (he's out of school all this week and I was out of work on Monday).

This morning he woke us up at 4:30 again.

It's hard to explain how incredibly irritating this is. One of us goes to lie next to him for a bit to get him back to sleep, but he doesn't want to do that... he wants attention. So when Guy left to go back to our bed, he started yelling "GOODNIGHT" at the top of his lungs at us, every minute.

We both got up and gave him a choice. He could stay at the dinner table doing workbook sheets, or we could go to the car. He wouldn't choose, so I picked him up and we took him to the car. He didn't kick and fight, didn't call us poopooheads, and he got in the car by himself. There, we were faced with another problem. He wasn't raging violently. If you're a sleepy kid and you're in the backseat of a car, that's not a punishment at all... so I had to keep waking him up every few minutes by shifting his blanket (we couldn't let him be in a cold car in his pajamas with no blanket).

Whereas before, we had bad behavior plus violent raging, the two problems are now split apart. That's good, but it means we have to change tactics yet again.

He eventually decided to go inside, where he did workbook sheets. He complained a lot, but he didn't scream. This was the worst of it:

Sunny: "When I get older I'm not going to live with you anymore."
Mom: "Well, most kids don't live with their parents anymore after they get older and turn into adults."
Sunny: "I was planning on staying with you anyway. But you give me too many time-outs, so I'm going to move out when I get older."

We told him we were not happy about his bad behavior, but we were glad he didn't make his bad behavior worse by hitting and name-calling.

We meant it. The highlight of my morning is the fact that I was not called a poopoohead. The exhilaration almost compensates for the grinding fatigue.

He's lost all his TV time for the day, but Guy is giving him a chance to earn it back later by doing more workbook sheets.

Also, Guy just told me Sunny has been complaining about a pain in his chest when he breathes deeply, so he's going to take him to our pediatrician in an hour, as long as Sunny says his chest is still bothering him. We both panicked a little and thought about telling our agency worker. Then I went over the events of this morning and realized that since Sunny got in the car by himself, there is no way we could have caused it. It's probably a bruise he got by falling asleep, on his stomach, on top of one of the seatbelts. Sunny always complains very dramatically about minor scrapes and bruises but then forgets about them quickly once he's distracted. We'll see if he still wants to go to the pediatrician in an hour, and then see what she says.

I can't wait for the adoption to be finalized. Until then, we're always going to be panicked about even the most remote possibility he could be taken away from us.

I still plan on following almost all the same rules after finalization. No locking in or out, no physical discipline. I agree with their spirit. It's just that we won't have to worry about every single scratch and bruise so much.

Octuplet Rage and Foster Care

I'm not interested in attacking or defending the woman who had octuplets. I still don't fully comprehend why she's getting so much attention. I'm beginning to work it out, and the reasons are ugly.

As someone who's going through fertility treatments (albeit pretty mild ones) I know a fair amount about reproductive technology and about what having octuplets involves. It's scary. I would never get into that situation. If I even got CLOSE to that situation, I would hit the big red flashing ABORT button.

I think she made a pretty bad decision. I also think her doctor is unethical and the ART field should be more regulated, much like it is in Europe.

But in a larger context, people make bad decisions all the time... much worse decisions than she's made. There are men who go around creating babies like freaking lawn sprinklers without feeling the slightest sense of responsibility. These men don't end up all over the news. They don't get anonymous death threats because they're "wasting taxpayer money."

The hatred for her is way out of proportion. An article at Racialicious looks at the racial angle, and there definitely is a connection, because some of the vitriol ties into anti-immigrant sentiment. Ultimately, I think it's more like 60% sexism and 30% class and 10% race. She's become the archetypal "bad mother," a scapegoat for societal fear and loathing about women.

I just don't see what she's done to deserve all this rage. One criticism is that she's "stealing from taxpayers". What about all the bailed-out executives who got billions in bonuses? Her media rights will probably be enough cover medical expenses anyway, and even if they're not, any added tax burden is dwarfed by other more successful, less hated thieves.

The most disturbing part is the dehumanizing language toward her children, with so many people calling them a "litter". Whatever you've judged that she's done, they're little babies. Sins of the mother? Come on.

I wasn't going to post anything, but Torina just put up a rant, and I have to chime in and say that I feel much the same way. Apparently some of the commenters on this case are even saying that her babies should be taken away, which is ridiculous.

I CARE. I care about every kid out there. But those octuplet babies are STILL BEING TAKEN CARE OF. Let's worry about the KIDS THAT ARE NOT BEING TAKEN CARE OF. HELLOOOO!!!! They are all around us! There are 650 kids waiting in to be adopted from foster care in Minnesota RIGHT NOW. If you care about children, what about these kids???

Kids are removed because their parents NEGLECTED THEM, BEAT THEM, SEXUALLY ABUSED THEM. Not because their mom had too many eggs implanted by some idiot doctor. Let's start caring about the kids we already KNOW need us. These octuplet kids, as hare-brained as their mom might be, she hasn't hurt them or done anything criminal yet. So let's move on to the kids who really need us.

And to address another type of comment on this case -- as I've said here before, using children in foster care to condemn parenting choices you don't like can be really exploitative. "The octuplets' mother should have adopted from foster care" -- I don't think so. She sounds way too immature to handle that. I'm adopting from foster care, and I don't go around using my choice as some kind of self-righteous bludgeon, because that's not fair to anyone, including my son. Whenever anyone says "X should have adopted a waiting child instead of Y" I always wonder, have they put their money where their mouth is, have they themselves been through foster care, or have they been involved extensively in some other way? And if none of those things are true, they probably need to shut the hell up, because they're just exploiting the existence of waiting children without helping the situation at all.

I Just Had a Long Talk with Sunny's Foster Mom

He would sometimes do the same thing at his foster mom's house... wake up the whole house at 5AM on a Saturday morning by screaming as loudly as possible.

She used to take him out to the car too!

I feel a lot better now. She has a ridiculous amount of parenting experience. She has four or five biological adult kids, four special needs adopted kids and has fostered for decades.

She talked for a while about how she noticed a huge difference in kids that she parented "straight from the hospital" versus at two or three years of age (like Sunny). The ones that came to her older had control and attention issues (like Sunny), and the age was a lot more of a factor than things like drug exposure.

She wasn't talking about attachment in and of itself, although it's definitely attachment related.

I'd emailed our worker earlier about the tantrums, and she asked me if the adoption finalization might be a reason behind this increased turbulence. I don't think it is. I asked Sunny tonight if he was sad about it, and that it was OK if he was sad, but he didn't seem to be interested. As far as he's concerned, the finalization is just a boring adult ritual that means he can finally get a magical thing called a passport that will let him visit Japan.

I also asked him if he was sad because mom might have a baby. I told him that I wasn't sure if that was going to happen or not, just like I wasn't sure BB was coming to live with us, but I hoped it would all happen because then he would get to be a big brother. He seemed more mildly hopeful than sad. I showed him that clip of the easy no-blood natural childbirth scene from The Business of Being Born, and he was really impressed, and asked me if that was happened when Mommy ___ gave birth to him. I said I wasn't sure, but that it was probably like that.

I asked him if the trip to see his foster family was making him sad. He said that it was... that he really wanted to go, but sometimes he was sad thinking about the trip.

I'm trying to wrap my head around that. Maybe he knows he's going to be reminded that he's not integral to their family anymore. He'll be a visitor, an outsider.

Ultimately, I don't know if we're going to be able to untangle the emotional logic behind all this. We just have to stay consistent, yet flexible, and above all, keep a cool head and not screw up.

Plan of Action - Implemented

Well, he did wake us up at 6AM, like I thought he might. It was obviously a power play... nothing to do with nightmares this time.

We burned through stages 1-3 pretty quickly, and ended up in the car. By the way, I like using the car (the email comment a few posts ago gave me the idea) because it's a safe place to have a tantrum in. It's padded. He can't get out because of the child locks, he can't throw anything, he can't destroy anything -- it's Guy's car, which is a lot older than mine and the upholstery is nothing we need to worry about. Guy and I took turns sitting in the front seat.

When he started hitting I went into the backseat and held him down. I hate, hate, hate doing this but it has to be done. He'd struggle for a while, then promise to stop hitting, then I would let go of his arms... then he'd hug me and cry some more. I'd tell him, "I love you, I won't hurt you, but I will not let you hurt other people."

We told Sunny he could leave the car either when it was 7AM (his normal wakeup time) or when he apologized and wrote ten sentences. We ended up staying in the car until 7AM, but he did apologize.

I'm going to tell our agency that this has been going on and how we're handling it. I want to make sure we're covered and that I'm following all the discipline rules, which are pretty strict. As our trainer once quipped, "you can't lock them in and you can't lock them out." I would think it's OK to lock them in a car, as long as you're in the car as well.

I asked Sunny why he was doing this all of a sudden, but he didn't know. We also told him we were willing to do this every morning if necessary, and he was going to get to know the inside of the car really well if he choose to continue this behavior. He also lost all his TV time for today.

I'm proud of Guy... he kept his head and made it clear to Sunny that we're on the same page.

As soon as we got back into the normal morning routine, Sunny was in a great mood again.

Tomorrow morning might be easier because Sunny will have had swimming after school, so he'll be a more tired out. Guy is also planning to take him on a nice walk with the dog.

I'm just choosing to be very detached about this rough patch. I'm not going to let it emotionally exhaust me. We're thinking about getting his medication upped, but we're going to try and wait it out until he's well into his neurofeedback treatments.

Plan of Action

Last night Sunny slept like a log, of course. But tonight Guy and I are ready with a plan of action.

If Sunny wakes us up at four in the morning:

1) He gets a hug and instructions on how to go back to sleep. If that doesn't work...
2) One of us will lie next to him in his bed for a while to see if we can get him to go back to sleep. If that doesn't work...
3) He will get instructions to play quietly in his room while we sleep. If that doesn't work and he escalates (almost certain at this stage)...
4) Door-slamming will get the door taken off the hinges. I told Guy I want the hammer and WD-40 ready. Hitting, kicking or biting will mean he gets held down until he stops. Screaming and insulting means he gets taken out to the car and put in the backseat, with one of us in the front, until he stops raging and can give a real apology, however long this takes.

I just hope we don't have to implement any of these stages tonight. I've still got that nagging low-grade cold and my throat feels terrible. I'm going to take some cold medicine soon and go to bed early.

Sunny's behavior has been pouty but overall decent. These last two nights we've spent the hour before bedtime playing Scrabble, and he gets whipped because he can't build words bigger than three letters... but he always tries hard and handles losing well.

Feeling a Bit Better - Products!

I'm starting to feel vaguely human again.

Guy is going to talk things over with Sunny after school and will apologize for yelling. My mother is cooking dinner tonight, so I can relax.

Here's something to lighten the blog mood: a couple personal care product reviews for Sunny. I had an old draft post with more product reviews for things I use myself, such as Giovanni Straight Fast Hair Straightener, but I'm too tired to finish up all my recommendations.

These products (available at drugstore.com) are great because...

- they work
- the fragrance is not too strong
- they're not all just petroleum jelly or mineral oil
- they're cheap


Vaseline Intensive Care Cocoa Butter Deep Conditioning Body Lotion
Sunny needs a lot of moisturizing after every shower or bath. I used to buy a more expensive Aubrey Organics lotion, but it got used up so quickly. The Vaseline brand lotion works great, it smells good and it comes in a huge bottle with a convenient pump. I've tried a few other lotions in the same price range, but this one is definitely the best. It's powerful, and he has never had dry knees or elbows using this lotion.



Cantu Shea Butter Leave In Conditioning Repair Cream
Sunny likes his hair super-short. I cut it myself with an electric shaver. However, for the winter I've let his hair grow out just a bit in order to keep his head warmer. I used to use a dab of oil (again, an expensive natural organic mix) but that wasn't doing much of anything once his hair grew longer than a centimeter and little ringlets started forming. This Cantu hair cream is awesome and keeps his hair looking shiny and healthy. It needs to be reapplied every morning. It comes in a large tub, and only a small amount is necessary.

Email From a Reader

I have an email from someone who wanted to leave a comment but couldn't because of my registration settings. I asked for permission to post it here so others can read as well, got it, so here it is.

First, when I was a kid, I had bio-feedback (like neurofeedback I think) and it was very effective for me. I went for a few months when I was in high school- fifteen maybe- and I’m now 36 and I still use the techniques I learned then and they still help. I was taught them for pain management, but I’ve used them very well for anger management as well.

Also, I have two children adopted through foster-care. My oldest, S, has fits like Sunny. I wanted to let you know there are others in the same boat, and to share what we do that has helped (it’s a bit of a different situation; S is five, he’s been with us for three years, and so he doesn’t really remember his other families although he *knows* of them and we write and talk on the phone). So, for what it’s worth, here is our approach and why we developed it:

We live in an apartment, with our landlords below us, so the screaming is REALLY an issue (although they are very nice and patient about the whole thing). Since it's me he wants to have with him 24/7, my poor wife gets stuck with this (otherwise it's a reward) but we take him out to the van (naked once when he was younger- it was a shock to him that we really did, but our van's windows are coated so it wasn't too immodest) when he starts screaming, hitting or throwing. He goes in the back, and my wife sits up front and at least pretends to read a book. Every minute or two, she looks up and calmly asks if he is done. When he is able to say yes (this can take a long time) she goes in the back with him, cuddles and talks as needed, reassures him he's loved, and brings him back inside. If it's really cold out, she buckles him in and drives while he screams. We prefer not to drive if possible though because he's distracting and we dread having to explain what's going on if we got pulled over! Over time the hitting has stopped (it's been about a year) but he still throws things if they are to hand. Anything he throws goes into time out for a week.

Thanks for the blog- I really enjoy reading about your experiences and perspectives.

-J

Exhausted

Yesterday Sunny had great behavior. I congratulated him and gave him a special sticker. This was one of the seven in a row he needs to earn back a toy drawer. As a bonus, he also got another one of his Hot Wheels back.

But he was in a very bad mood when we woke him up at 10:30 to pee. Then he got up at four in the morning and made us miserable for the next four hours.

If he wakes up with a nightmare, he can come in our bedroom and get a hug. Then he has to go back to bed, or else play quietly in his room. He's done this successfully a couple times before, but not tonight. He didn't want to be awake and alone in his room, no matter what, and he started getting mean about it.

DOOR SLAM
MOM AND DAD AREN'T BEING VERY NICE TO ME
WHY AM I ACTING LIKE AN IDIOT? WHY AM I SO STUPID???? WHYYYYYYY???!!!!?
DOOR SLAM
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIILLL
MOM AND DAD AREN'T LISTENING TO ME
MOM AND DAD ARE IDIOT POOPOO FARTHEADS
DOOR SLAM
ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH
I'M VERY MAD
THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT
WAAAAAAAAAILLLLLL
DOOR SLAM
IF MOM AND DAD AREN'T GOING TO BE NICE TO ME I'M NOT GOING TO BE NICE TO THEM
DOOR SLAM

I tried reasoning, but he was already in that state of cold rage.

I ended up getting up at 5:30 and going to the living room with Sunny. Guy got some more sleep. I am very irritated with Guy right now, because he made the situation worse with his temper. He's great at parenting except for a couple weak spots and this is one of them: he isn't good at being woken up.

When we lived in an apartment, I once had to pull him away from attacking our terrible upstairs neighbor, who started playing the R. Kelly song "Ignition" on auto-repeat, at full volume, and then left to get high for the night, not returning until one in the morning. When I say "pull him away" I mean that literally. As soon as our neighbor got back home, Guy kept charging up the stairs at him, and I kept grabbing him by his belt and vigorously hauling him back down the stairs (I'm fairly strong and I weigh a lot more than Guy). When I told my mother the next morning, she replied, "Welcome to a long life of pulling men off of other men."

When Guy gets upset like this I not only have to figure out how to calm Sunny down, I have to figure out how to keep Guy from yelling and cursing at Sunny. Sunny needs to have consequences for his bad behavior but they can't be given when people are out of control like that.

One consequence Sunny got was that his mattress is now on the floor. I warned him last week that if he showed his anger by jumping off the bed in a threatening manner, I would take away his bed. Also, the next time he slams the door, it's getting taken off its hinges.

I'm willing to try just about anything. Once his adoption is finalized, he'll be allowed to sleep in the same bed, and if he has a nightmare, he can come sleep with me for a while. It's going to happen soon... we sent off the signed affidavits the other day.

I've also decided that he's not going to be allowed to hit. If that happens, he's going to be put on the sofa or bed in a hold-down. I don't care how much he is screaming that we're hurting him or twisting his arm or "using too much pressure" (yes, he said that). He's going to hurt himself worse if we don't hold him down. I told him that too. I said, "we are never going to hurt you, but we are not going to allow you to hit."

I don't think Sunny was being as remorseful as normal in the morning. He was still in a very nasty and controlling mood, although he stopped being totally oppositional. He was doing so well yesterday.

I was lecturing him on the way to school. I don't know if any of it sunk in. He said he was thinking about moving to another home when he got older. I told him he could move out and make all his own decisions when he was 18, but other than that, he was stuck with us. He said, "I know, I'm talking about when I turn 18." I ended with a pep talk... he was a good boy, and I knew he could do better if he tried harder to control his anger.

This is depressing. I'm exhausted and stressed, and I have a mild cold, and my period cycle is way off because of the stupid drugs. THE WORLD ISN'T BEING VERY NICE TO ME! WHYYYYY?!?!?!

I recited nembutsu this morning in the car on my way to work and that calmed me down a lot, as always.

Hilarious Picture

The picture I just took tonight was hilarious. You'll have to take my word for it.

Sunny is lounging in the bathtub with a plastic bowl on top of his head, pretending to smoke an imaginary cigarette.

So It's Not Just Me

I had a nice talk with Sunny's foster mom last night. She said she was wondering if he was going to have those big, way-out-of-control hour-long fits with us.

When he first came to them he was "fine", but after a while he started having those hourlong tantrums. That's when they started trying a series of medications, ending up with the atypical antipsychotic he's on now. She said he still had the fits, and they could be set off by an adult or child in the house telling Sunny what to do... and the pattern was pretty random.

She said "I was beginning to think it was just me!"

Now I feel the same way. Whew, it's not just me. This is not the absolute worst Sunny has ever behaved.

She believes he has something neurological that makes him behave that way... of course he doesn't want to do it, he feels compelled.

It's impossible to put a finger on exactly why. I seriously doubt he has real (i.e. genetic) ADHD. I don't think he has any kind of bipolar either.

Here's a pretty broad list of childhood bipolar symptoms with my remarks added. I'm aware of a lot of the controversy regarding overdiagnosis of childhood bipolar, and I'm taking the list with a grain of salt.

• an expansive or irritable mood (Sometimes)
• extreme sadness or lack of interest in play (Never. He's very resilient. He'll get sad, of course, but he recovers quickly)
• rapidly changing moods lasting a few hours to a few days (No. He's consistent. He's either energetic and sweet, energetic and cranky or just plain energetic.)
• explosive, lengthy, and often destructive rages (Sometimes)
• separation anxiety (Yes, definitely. But he's OK at school or playing with other kids or other adults.)
• defiance of authority (Sometimes... more at home than at school)
• hyperactivity, agitation, and distractibility (Yes, although he's able to focus for quite longer periods of time on things he really enjoys, like Legos)
• sleeping little or, alternatively, sleeping too much (not really, 10 hours a night seems to be his natural time)
• bed wetting and night terrors (Bedwetting yes, night terrors yes, but rarely)
• strong and frequent cravings, often for carbohydrates and sweets (Come on, this is a ridiculous "symptom")
• excessive involvement in multiple projects and activities (yes, has a harder time staying on activities in school compared to his classmates)
• impaired judgment, impulsivity, racing thoughts, and pressure to keep talking (Yes, very impulsive and talkative... impaired judgment, not really)
• dare-devil behaviors such as jumping out of moving cars or off roofs (No. He's daring, but has a great understanding of his physical limits.)
• inappropriate or precocious sexual behavior (No)
• delusions and hallucinations (No)
• grandiose belief in own abilities that defy the laws of logic -- ability to fly, for example (No)

He doesn't fit any other diagnoses. I think FASD is out of the question. He was more than 8 pounds when he was born, and many of his particular mental strengths are the mirror image of the problems that kids with FASD tend to have. He's a Go Fish expert card-counter, and his sense of direction and memory for landmarks are better than my own.

I don't think these fits have changed my basic approach to Sunny's issues. Number one, he's a strong-willed child. He'd be a strong-willed child even if he had a totally normal and boring childhood. Number two, his mother was not consistently there for him when he was an infant and toddler, and then he lost her. Other people were there for him, which is why he doesn't have attachment disorder, and why he's so trusting . But it's still a huge loss. Knowing that she died is another loss, but I think it affected him less than the initial loss... the time he knew for sure he was never going back to live with her.

We can't change Sunny's basic personality. I wouldn't want to. But I'm confident we can help him grow out of these fits, and that he will find ways of untangling the complicated knot of loss/control/anxiety he's been forced to live with. I think when he can be alone in a room by himself, at ease with himself, this will be a huge marker of progress. It sounds so simple...

The Latest Fit Was Very Bad

Sunny had a fit a week ago that lasted an hour and a half. It was pretty bad. My husband lost it about halfway through and started yelling at him to shut up.

I kept them separated, and eventually Sunny tired himself out and I was able to put him to sleep.

When he gets into this state, he can't be reasoned with. I've tried some things that worked before. Saying how he feels -- this doesn't help because he already knows how he feels (very angry). Asking him what he wants -- he doesn't know what he wants. He'll just repeat accusations. Mom and Dad are being idiot poopooheads and it's all their fault.

We can't ignore him. That just makes him angrier. We can't send him to his room. He won't stay there. We apply consequences like taking away toys and privileges. That makes him angrier as well. I'll ask him if he wants a hug, but even if wants to hug, it won't stop him being angry.

Tonight he had a fit that was shorter but even worse. My husband didn't lose it this time... I almost did, though. I was horribly upset because he started hitting me. He was escalating, and I felt helpless to stop it. First there was running up to me and pretending to kick me, then he threw a stuffed toy at my head, then he actually kicked me to see what I would do. I told him hitting was unacceptable and said he was going to get toys taken out of his room if he continued, I started taking toys out, he started punching me and running at me.

It all started when he wouldn't eat his vegetable. The usual consequence for that is that he doesn't get any extras or dessert or after-dinner mints. He seemed more upset than usual about that, and called us idiots. Guy gave him a long talk and asked him to look into his eyes. I thought that was bad idea -- I just wanted to give him a time out right then -- but I didn't say anything, I just went to clean up the kitchen.

Then it was my turn to make a mistake. I wanted to make sure he'd do his time out as soon as possible, so I told him he needed to start it. I should have waited for a cool-down first. That's when he started running up to me...

The worst part of this was, I had just found out earlier that my mother had a suspicious mammogram result. If there's one thing that reduces me to a quivering wreck it's thinking what would happen if her breast cancer came back. My father was the one who called and told me about the mammogram result. He gave me a meant-to-be-reassuring-but-actually-horrible-demoralizing speech: "you know, at our age the shadow of the big C is everywhere!" So I wasn't 100% in the game tonight anyway.

Sunny was in a cold rage. He wanted to hurt me. I didn't know know how to snap him out of it, so I just figured I needed to take out his toys and stand my ground.

He broke down crying a couple times and claimed I hit him. This is a pattern I've seen before. He throws himself around violently, bangs himself (never seriously) and then blames someone else and starts crying. I think it's his own way of trying to deescalate, of trying to bring himself out of the state of aggression. He knows it didn't really happen that way, and he never persists in that claim after he cools down.

Sunny snapped out of it a few minutes later, after he went downstairs to talk to Guy.

He apologized thoroughly. We decided that his toys were going to stay out of his room, and he could earn them back. Every week that went by without a big fit or calling us names, he can choose a drawer of toys to take back. Guy had another talk with Sunny about hitting. I gave him a big hug and told him this was the worst behavior I'd ever seen him do, but I still loved him and always would.

Sunny and I spent the last 30 minutes before bedtime doing a scissors-and-paper activity. We put him to bed with no problems.

Guy said he doesn't know if Sunny really loves us, but I told him I didn't have any doubt about that. Of course he loves us, but he hates us a little bit as well. Gaining us meant having other people taken away. He's going through a stage right now where he isn't interested in talking with his foster mom on the phone. That might be part of it. I told Guy I really understand how he feels. Sunny has so little control over his life... sometimes when we tell him he has to do things, it's like rolling a dice and one out of every hundred times we get the wrong number and the switch will flip and he remembers all the things he lost control of, and he tries to get it all back by lashing out.

Just because I understand it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell. I was crying for a while tonight after Sunny went to bed.

Just because I understand it doesn't mean we'll be able to stop it in future. Maybe the neurofeedback will help. Maybe his medication needs to be raised slightly (this would be a last resort).

There's a big likelihood my mother's results are nothing to be worried about. I'll know soon. If they're not, as my dad reminded me, plan B has to swing into effect. My mother isn't quite old enough for Medicare, she's otherwise uninsurable because of prior breast cancer, but she's still covered under national Japanese healthcare. She'd have to go to Japan to be treated, and I'd go there as needed. I hate Tokyo and it always makes me miserable and depressed. I want to go visit Japan with Sunny as soon as we can get him a passport... but spending as little time in Tokyo as possible. I hate the U.S. healthcare system most of all.

I'm an optimist when it comes to Sunny. 99% of the time he's a fantastic kid. He has a lot of empathy and intelligence in order to learn how to regulate himself better. Our therapist thinks all he needs is time. We're going to her now more for us... last session she didn't even bother talking to Sunny. It's just helpful to go every few weeks and hear we're not totally wrong, and get a few useful tips in the process. For example, I told her about how I recently realized Sunny had a very hazy understanding of who was black or white, so we went over a lot of people he knew. His bio mom was white (not black as he originally guessed) and a lot of his friends he thought were white when they were really black. In terms of famous people, I reminded him Obama and MLK are black, Beethoven and Bach from his music class are white (turns out I could be wrong about Beethoven). She told me this was all pretty normal. She gave me a tip for when we go on the visit in March: if we decide to visit his mother's grave, Sunny should be given a useful task to do while he's there in order to feel more in control of the situation.

Typing all this stuff out has helped me feel better. I'm going to bed early now.

I Suck at Support

I thought I'd mention this in relation to the last post.

My cousin (here's my last long post about her) has been up and down. She hasn't had a major attack in a while. Her disability checks finally started coming in, so her financial situation is better.

My mother went to therapy with her earlier this week. My cousin mentioned that she was very intimidated by me, and I often made her feel insecure, even though she said she knew it wasn't my fault.

For example, recently my cousin told my mother and me that the therapist did a budget with her, and she felt like it was a really great step. I said, "Awesome! Now all you have to do is stick to it."

In light of the fact that I'd made her a budget last year that she never followed, apparently my words really hurt her.

From my perspective, it's hard to know what to do about things like that. I'm a straightforward person, and I'm not good at reading other people's emotions and predicting their reactions. I thought I was doing well because I never once nagged her about not sticking to my original budget. In that original financial advising session I told her she should cut out all salon expenses, and then a few months later I saw she got a new weave, and I never said anything. Using a budget is 10% formulation and 90% follow-through... that's all I wanted to stress to her.

She doesn't blame me, I don't blame her, but our relationship is not what it could be.

I tend to think she's a lot more secure than she really is. That's a common issue with her. She used to be a high-powered saleswoman; she cracks jokes all the time and appears to be totally confident. I used to be a bit envious of her confidence and social ease, in the sense that I sometimes wondered, "Would I have grown up to be that way if I hadn't been through so much social trauma as a kid? Is that a genetic inheritance that should have been mine as well?" But my mother explained how it's all just a front she had to put on in order to survive her toxic family environment. It's even self-defeating, because people assume she doesn't need the help that she really needs. I don't have that insecure core because I was raised in a healthy family structure.

It's almost impossible for me to act in a way that I don't feel. I'm kind of an anti-actor. I can be diplomatic, I can choose words carefully, I can put on a very detached front, I can slip into a teaching persona if I speak in front of a crowd... but that's about it. I'm incapable of manipulating people. I'm even incapable of flirting. It's been both a blessing and a curse. It's hard for me to understand the behavior of people who are presenting with a "false front" because I can't put myself in their shoes.

I want to make a positive difference in people's lives, and I think I've succeeded in some ways. I have to work within my limitations. For example, I'd make a terrible therapist. If I know something that can help someone, and they're interested in learning it, I can teach it to them pretty well. But other than that, it seems like it's better for me to step aside and just listen.

Sigh... anyway, I've offered to go into the next therapy session with my mother and cousin. This is with the understanding that it's totally for the benefit of my cousin, and is not all about me. I just want to know the best way to support her. My mother let my cousin know about my offer, so I'll wait and see if she wants me to come.

Meandering Reproductive Thoughts

I'm on my first IUI.

I wasn't originally going to do any drugs, but my doctor persuaded me to take some. So for the last three weeks I've been taking a colorful spectrum of drugs to be swallowed, injected or otherwise inserted. I thought it would all be covered by my insurance, but it turns out the injectables weren't. Argh!

So far I haven't had any side effects other than an increased craving for carbohydrates. I'm definitely gaining weight because of this.

I've been reading a few fertility forums. The information is really valuable. But I have some problems dealing with the atmosphere of relentless positivity and emphasis on support at all costs. For example, the idea that mentions of pregnancy and childbirth are something that a lot of women need to be protected from.

I don't want to judge other people, because it's really about me and my own issues. Maybe I'm a horrible jerk who lacks empathy. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. In other types of environments where the goal is support at all costs, I've noticed that the goal is often achieved by stifling dissent or constructive criticism. I understand the need for "safe spaces" and I've benefited many times from belonging to them. The important part of a safe space is that you should be protected from people who deny your reality (something which can be depressingly common outside the safe space). But there's a tricky balance involved as well.

It's a bit easier to describe in terms of adoption communities. Forums that cater to adoptive parents are common. If an adoptive parent is feeling hurt or frustrated or in pain, the support can be really healthy. It can also be really counterproductive and infantilizing.

For example, on one forum I'm at (which is primarily but not 100% supportive) a parent asked for advice on how to explain that her young child, adopted from Russia, was of Roma descent. She was already fielding a lot of questions about how her child "really didn't look Russian". Especially in summer. She was worried about anti-Roma prejudice so she was thinking of how to keep her child's background from being a topic of discussion.

All the adoptive parents of color on the site, including myself, gave her the exact same advice. DON'T KEEP IT A SECRET. Emphasize Roma heritage and Roma pride. The child is going to have a much, much different experience of race than a white Russian adoptee. Realize that you're in a transracial adoption even though you never signed up for one. We all did this with as much politeness and empathy as possible.

She didn't want to hear our advice. She just wanted to be propped up in her decision to keep it a secret. In fact, she quickly left the forum in a huff because she wasn't "being supported".

A need for emotional support shouldn't translate into entitlement to act stupidly or selfishly.

And this has very little to do with infertility, but I'd like to mention how much I hate the word "triggered". I would never use it myself, because it reduces me to some horribly passive inanimate object. I can be insulted, angered, enraged, humiliated, upset, disturbed, shocked or saddened. But I can't be "triggered", unless I actually had a flashback or a seizure or something like that.

In any online environment where the word "triggered" is really popular, I get the impression that the participants are presenting themselves more as collections of traumas than the individual human beings that they undoubtedly are. Why would you want to depersonalize yourself? I don't understand the motivation.

I'm probably reading too much into it... ultimately, it's just a case where a word is undergoing a semantic shift.

Anyway, back to the infertility stuff. I'll make some posts about my protocols and results because I want to contribute to the same sharing of information that has already given me great benefit. But I'm just not into the emotional support aspect.

A set of information that really helped me was reading (on a different board) accounts of the LEEP procedure. I had that about twelve years ago for cervical dysplasia. I've wondered for years whether it would affect my fertility, but my doctor says my cervix looks great and is definitively healed.

I had such a terrible experience with the LEEP. It really have me a healthy fear and distrust of any medical professional who gets close to my reproductive system.

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have had the LEEP procedure at all. A lot of times if you come back in six months for another pap smear, the dysplasia clears up on its own. But the doctor recommended the LEEP and I was so scared of cervical cancer that I agreed with anything he said. I was told it would be a simple outpatient procedure with no pain, so I planned on taking the bus home afterwards. When I got onto the table, the nurse placed an oddly-shaped, heavy pad on my thigh. "What's that for?" I asked. "Oh, we're just grounding your thigh." That's when I started panicking. The doctor brushed aside my questions and gave me the attitude that he was doing me a big favor and I needed to quit whining... so I just laid back and let them go ahead and electrocute my cervix in what turned out to be the most painful experience of my entire life. And then I took the bus home.

Many women who had the LEEP procedure reported back that it was no big deal. But a few were like me, and said things like "OH MY GOD THE PAIN" and "I had a really painful natural childbirth and it was a walk in the park compared to the LEEP procedure." What must have happened was that the local anesthetic was not working correctly. Instead of giving me more anesthetic or looking into the problem, the doctor just didn't give a damn...

I wish this was all information I knew beforehand. But now I'm always going to research the hell out of any drug or procedure.

Let's see how IUI #1 goes.

Sunny recently asked me a birth-related question. We were talking about someone else's baby, and he asked, "how do babies get out?" I said they came out through the vagina, which was part of the private parts that women have. He seemed kind of weirded out by that. He said that that wasn't the only way that babies came out, sometime they came out through the stomach. I congratulated him on knowing that, and reminded him it was called a Cesarean section.

We haven't really had any big talk yet about this stuff, partly because he knows a fair amount about the facts of life already. He knows that you have "sex" and that women can get pregnant and have babies. He knows proper words for private parts but messes them up sometimes, most hilariously, "peanut" for "penis".

I've stressed the word "private parts" in that they're "private" and they belong to him only. For example, when I put lotion on him after the shower, he's always responsible for lotioning his own private parts. I think he needs to be more educated in this area, but I probably wouldn't be the best teacher. Luckily a group we belong to has great classes on stuff like this, so I think I need to sign him up soon.

I'm thinking about showing Sunny a carefully selected clip from a great documentary called The Business of Being Born. There are a few scenes where a woman gives birth very easily, at home, with no blood and no screaming, and it's very inspiring (although not terribly representative of the average birth).