Restraint Concerns: The Gruesome Details

Sunny asked me last week if he could take karate classes. He asks me this every so often. In light of his increased rate of fits recently, I had to laugh bitterly and say "hell no!" I mean, why would I pay money so he can get lessons on how to beat up his mom and dad? I'm not going to be compliant in my own ass-kicking.

I know the argument is that martial arts increases self-confidence and self-discipline. In our case, it's not a valid argument. We already have therapy appointments for self-discipline. And Sunny doesn't need any more self-confidence, he does quite well in that area already.

At the now-defunct blog Toots and Noodles (I hope the family is doing OK!) the mom probably regretted having her daughter take karate lessons, although they worked great for her son...

More bad

Toots blew up again yesterday. Was it because I told her I couldn't take her shopping when she wanted? Did she get mad when she was asked to leave her brother alone? Don't know.

Anyway, she grabbed several bottles of assorted medication, ran outside, danced around on the lawn, took some, scattered the rest of the pills across the lawn. Patrol cars and an ambulance were involved. Oh, she also used her karate skills to whack me and Lew in the head, groin and arms. Hard.

She's not in grave danger, but she spent the night in Pediatric Intensive Care.

More to come.

I don't think Sunny's issues are anywhere near as severe, but I like to keep the worst-case scenario in mind.

Sunny asked me when he would be old enough to take karate classes. That's a fair question. I told him I would put him in classes after he had a whole year of no violent fits with no hitting. That gave him some food for thought.

We used to take Sunny out to the car to have his fits, but now that they're shorter in duration, we've found it's easiest to just use a carpeted area inside the house. I use a restraint where he's laid on his back, and I sit with bended knees on either side of his upper thighs while holding his arms down.

I know a "basket hold" is most commonly used, but I don't see how that doesn't leave you wide open to painful backwards head-butting.

The other hold that works for us is sitting down next to him, on a couch or on a car set, in a looser hold, legs draped over his upper thighs so he can't kick out. That way, when he head-butts, he's doing it into a cushion. The only problem with this hold is that it's a bit of a struggle to keep him from biting our arms.

This Friday, Sunny had a bad fit, and I wasn't there. Guy called me as I was driving home to tell me about it. I don't think Guy handled it well, so we're talking about adjusting the "action plan" if it happens again when it's only him. I'm not blaming Guy. If it was just me alone, I might have screwed it up in a totally different way. We didn't have an argument. It was more of a breakdown and "lessons learned" session.

Guy ignored the initial stages of the fit for too long. Sunny had starting throwing things down the stairs. He should be tackled as soon as he throws the first thing. Ignoring the behavior for several minutes gave him an opportunity to build up his anger more and more, so that when the time came to restrain him, he was pumped full of adrenaline and fighting really hard. Then, once he engaged, Guy couldn't get him into restraint fast enough. Sunny bit him, then he had to hit Sunny on the arm to get him to stop biting. Luckily both of them are fine and don't have any noticeable bruises.

I couldn't figure out why Guy wasn't able to restrain him until yesterday, when Sunny had another fit (very short, thank goodness), and Guy watched the way I restrained him and figured out why he couldn't do it exactly the same way. He's just not flexible enough. He can't fully sit on Sunny's upper thighs. That gives Sunny enough wiggle room to work his knees out and lash out with his legs.

In the future Guy is going to have to stick to the couch/car seat hold.

We're also buying Sunny a punching bag and trying a new experiment: encouraging him to punch the bag in the early stages. Asking him to take a deep breath or go yell in a pillow is just not working at all. We've been asking him to do that for six months and he's never staved off a fit that way. I did not want to buy him a punching bag before, because I was worried it would teach him how to do more effective punches, but Guy thinks it's worth a try now, and I agree.

One thought I've been having lately, and it's very disturbing, is this one... what would have happened if Sunny had been adopted by a much older couple or single parent, or if they were physically less able, and could not restrain him? He probably would have been disrupted very quickly once the fits came on. Or perhaps medicated into a drooling stupor.

Looking back, I'm reasonably sure that there was a tacit conspiracy between his foster mom and the worker to downplay the potential violence of his tantrums during the matching process.

He's getting stronger every day, and we're getting older. I guess it's time to get serious about fitness, and maybe sign us up for an aikido or wrestling class.

I know this sounds awfully grim, but I'm just facing the facts. I see a lot of good progress based on the fact that his fits are getting shorter and shorter in duration.

Disaster!

Sunny just beat me at chess for the first time. All the hours I spent playing computer chess to stave off this moment... in vain. If I want to be competitive I'll actually have to study moves again.

I underestimated him and went for the quick checkmate in the beginning of the game. Mistake!

"The Miracle Noodle"

I happened to see a text ad in my Gmail this morning... "The Miracle Noodle Japanese Women Eat to Stay Thin." This stupid ad sparked my curiosity. I followed the link, and quickly discovered that the Miracle Noodle is nothing but vile konnyaku. Konnyaku has featured in this blog before. It tastes like solidified mucus.

I've never understood its popularity in Japan. My mother has a good theory, though: the Japanese palate is less sensitive to taste but more sensitive to texture. So Japanese cuisine features a lot of food items that don't taste like anything (or taste like solidified mucus) but add interesting or unique textures to the meal.

Go ahead and check them out if you're interested, I'm sure they're healthy... I eat a fairly low-carb diet, but I will definitely not be buying any Miracle Noodles.

David Scott Healthcare Town Hall Report

We went this morning, although we didn't stay for the whole meeting. It was very low key, like the Hank Johnson meeting, with no chaos beforehand. Supporters outnumbered protesters almost 10 to 1. I think the anti-reform side has lost some momentum. Also, many of them probably went to a competing rally today at Centennial Park.

From AJC.COM:
Rep. David Scott fielded dozens of questions from about 600 who showed up at Mundy's Mill High School. The event began at about 10:30 a.m. and Scott answered questions for more than two hours.

Although there were no major disruptions, both sides of the issue were clearly passionate about their views.

At times some audience members tried to shout down each other. And at other times questions or comments were answered with rounds of boos or chants of "Yes we can."

Check out my video!

Race, Choice and Consequence

Christine had a long, interesting comment on yesterday's post on race and identity. I'm not sure if we disagree or agree. I understand the point that race is not just what other people think you are.

I'd phrase it more this way. Race is first what other people think you are. If you think of the formation of racial identity as a process in time, the first step in that process is that other people assign you a race. You have absolutely no choice in this step. In the second step, you comprehend that other people are assigning you a race. It builds from there, and gets more complicated.

For people of color who are also members of a minority, the first step is often violent (emotionally), and the second step is wounding. It was definitely that way for me. I think of ethnicity and culture are positive forces that connect me to my family and my ancestry... but race was not. Race was initially a force that violently worked against my connection with ethnicity and culture. I tried to explain my Japanese heritage; they would say, "go back to China."

I later went through a third step (or maybe it was the fourth or fifth) where I accepted race and racial solidarity. In other words, since I'd been insulted for looking Chinese, I should be able to find allies among people who looked Chinese, whether they were actually Chinese-descended or not. That concept then extended to "people of color" consciousness: the idea that all people of color, while very different, have something in common because they're harmed by racial hierarchies.

I think white people experience race in a much less violent manner. Though if they have loved or greatly admired people who are not white in their lives, and they become aware that other people are treating them as "white", that second step -- the comprehension of racialization -- creates a sense of melancholy and loss. It means there is something huge that will forever separate them socially from their loved ones.

There is no choice in being initially assigned a race, but after that first step, choice does come into play. I'm reminded of Sunny's friend, the older boy with Asperger's syndrome. His mother is a light-skinned African-American woman, his father is white. Their son happens to look white. While he's brilliant on many levels, I don't know if he's ever going to have the social intelligence to form a racial identity. He can barely read basic emotions like happiness, sadness, irritation or interest. He can understand that people are having these emotions if they state them, in words, clearly, but then he forgets soon after. He's probably never going to make it past the second step, even though race has played a large role in his family's history and they talk about it freely.

One example: his mother told me that when her son went through an especially difficult period as a child -- head-banging, I think -- they were taking him to the emergency room almost every week. She stopped taking him because the hospital officials looked at her, a black mother, much more suspiciously than they looked at his white father. So his father had to become the one responsible for all emergency room visits... otherwise she was worried she'd be reported for child abuse and their son would be taken away.

I'm not sure if being unable to form a racial identity means he's lucky or unlucky!

Once people comprehend the range of their assigned identity, they can choose to present themselves more as certain race than another race, deny they have a race at all, or identify primarily as people of color, or identify primarily as multiracial. There's a lot of choice involved beyond the second stage. But making these kinds of choices presumes understanding what race is being assigned to you. You have to make it past the second stage.

There's a lot of choice, but once you start to consider the sacrifices involved in making these choices, the realistic range starts narrowing drastically. Here's a few examples.

• If a white person denies they have a race, in most environments, they don't face any penalty. Many people of color will be privately irritated with them, but not say anything about it to their face.


• If someone whose racial presentation is ambiguous, possibly white, chooses to present as white -- perhaps changing their hair, changing their name, etcetera -- they will gain benefits, especially economic benefits, but possibly also lose support among people of the race who feel rejected.
  
  (The name thing is especially huge. Because I happen to have such an Anglo name, I've gotten a lot of unknown benefits from that over my lifetime. If I'd had my dad's last name, which is almost unpronounceable in English, a small but consistent percentage of people would have thought, "I don't want to call on this girl, it's too embarrassing to have to try and pronounce this name" or "she probably doesn't speak English well, I'd better not take the risk." As long as contact is restricted to the phone and internet, I totally have white privilege... something that's in marked contrast to this fascinating account: a white woman with a "black name" and her experiences of racism.)


• When Tiger Woods claimed a primarily multiracial identity and called himself a "Cablinasian", he infuriated a lot of black people. Whether people have white ancestry or not, choosing one side or even refusing to choose a side means certain consequences. Since Tiger Woods is also filthy rich, the social penalty he paid probably wasn't terribly onerous, but it can really add up for people in more normal circumstances.


• Barack Obama chose his primary identity as African-American, not multiracial. He had an ethical reason for doing so, and I don't disagree with his choice in any way. But it was also a politically convenient choice. If he had not identified as African-American, he would have alienated many of his most passionate supporters: other African-Americans. Early in the election his African-American support wasn't guaranteed, by any means; he had to work hard at it. And he would have had to work much, much harder if he'd made a Tiger Woods kind of statement. Calling himself primarily biracial would have alienated some supporters, and it wouldn't have gained him any extra gratefulness from white people.


• If you are a multiracial person with white ancestry, but you don't look white, can't make yourself look whiter, and still claim to be white... you're regarded as pathetic and potentially insane by both white people and people of color.


• If you're not instantly identifiable by race, but visibly not white, you have the dubious freedom to say almost anything you want, and strangers will believe you. For example, I once meet a Chinese-Cuban-American who used to claim he was a "full-blooded Seminole Indian" because it dramatically increased his sexual attractiveness to white women. Of course, only a few people are so sleazy, and most want to give true and ethical answers when they're questioned. Unfortunately, the multiracial person is still going to be under a constant cloud of suspicion. Often, when they answer truthfully, they will be accused of lying. "There's no way you're ___. You look more ___!" Just by existing, they confuse people. And instead of saying honestly, "I'm confused", people often react by projecting a stereotype onto the multiracial person: "They must be confused. The fault is theirs, not mine."


• If you choose not to identify as white, but look white, you will also invoke the "confused" stereotype in people. You will sometimes be accused of "passing" even though this is the opposite of your intent.


• If you look white without making any special effort, and choose to identify as white, though without denying your non-white ancestry, because that's what strikes you as the most ethical and non-appropriative choice... honestly, I don't know enough to detail what kind of consequences are involved in this case. I think this choice might have major psychological implications, but few social ones.
  

Then add to these general consequences the group-specific consequences of choice:

• African-Americans, because of the history of slavery in this country, were subjected to attempts that tried to strip away every trace of their African ethnicity: language, customs, religion. The combined ethnicity they have in the present day is inextricably tied to racial solidarity in a way that is not true for, say, a second-generation Ethiopian-American. So for African-Americans, race is like a two-sided coin: a violent force reinforcing a vicious hierarchy on one side, a positive source of common culture and heritage on the other. Rejecting race without rejecting culture is almost impossible.


• Asian-Americans have more freedom in that it's possible to identify primarily as your ethnicity and not your race... sometimes. I say I'm a Japanese-American to my friends and my family and in certain communities, and I can be reasonably sure that my statement will be accepted and understood. But in other settings, my statement is irrelevant and will be ignored. I'll be treated as an Asian. In those other settings, no one really cares about my ethnicity, and my assigned race totally subsumes it.


• Being ethnically Latino means having to come to terms with two different sets of racial rules: the white-majority U.S. rules, plus the rules of the Latino family/local culture. Sometimes a single choice will mean two entirely different consequences in each rule set.


• Native Americans... oh boy, this most be complicated. I don't even want to go there because the rules and consequences are so mind-bending.

And then on top of these race-specific consequences, add the family-specific consequences. The mother that feels you are rejecting her if you identify strongly as a different race from her. The cousins that feel you are setting yourself up as "better than them"... and so on.

I think the process of choice in racial identity is like a feedback loop. Social acceptance/rejection influences personal choice, personal choice influences social acceptance/rejection.

Because the first steps of race are so violent, I don't want to participate in that violence by telling my son, "you are black." I don't think he has a very wide range of practical choice; I don't want to take away the small degree of choice he does have. But I don't see any realistic, positive scenario under which he rejects racial solidarity and says "I'm not black."

Right now I'm just trying to lay the groundwork for the choice he's going to start making. I want him to be aware of the depressing reality of these racial rules, but be able to consider them without fear or shame. I especially don't want him to feel that identifying as black would mean rejecting any of the people in his life that are not black... such as myself, Guy, his biological mother and his foster family.

Best Political Blog Post Title Pun of the Season

I'm still chucking over this title, hours after reading it.

I’m re-doing the den with hardwood floors and death panelling

This living will = "death panel" stuff is just unbelievable. Mind-boggling.

Personally, I wanted to get a living will and DNR order years ago. I just wasn't sure how much to trust those free forms you download from the internet, and I didn't want to pay for an expensive legal session. I joined a legal insurance organization this year, however, and I really do need to go ahead and schedule something now. Death panel, here I come.

Some Great Talks about Race and Identity, Started off by Politics

My mother and I are very political -- so is Guy, although he doesn't join groups and do stuff as much as we do -- and we talk about politics freely in front of Sunny. It's the way I was raised.

I tone down the sarcasm and dark humor a bit in front of Sunny, but other than that, the conversation stays at an adult level. Sometimes he's bored by it. Other times he's fascinated, and asks us to stop and explain something further.

He has a very active political imagination. During the election, he told me he had a nightmare where Barack Obama and Sarah Palin got in a fight, and Sarah Palin jumped out of a helicopter with a machine gun trying to kill Obama. And when we heard about the Australian fire tragedy that happened last year, killing hundreds, and I mentioned what a terrible thing it was, and that someone must have set the first fire on purpose, Sunny asked, "Was it John McCain?"

I periodically take things down to his very literal level and explain that the people we disagree with aren't bad people... it's just that we think they have bad ideas. And we also talk about the importance of getting along with people when they like different things than you, or believe different things than you.

Right now there's a lot of stuff about race in the news, and we've talked about it. The other night, he asked us "what color am I?" It's a question he's asked several times before, in different variations. I told him, "you're café." This means brown in Spanish, and it's a word he feels very positive about... he loves to say that café is his favorite color. Guy said, "your color is... beautiful!" Then I talked with Sunny and told him that if he was asking about race, race wasn't really the same thing as the color of your skin... for example, Guy and I have skin that's almost the same color, but I'm a different race than he is. I told him that race is a very complicated thing, and its hard for adults to understand, and REALLY hard for kids to understand, and sometimes people are scared to talk about it, but whenever he has any more questions, just ask us. He said, "yes, it's really complicated, and I don't understand it." He often learns by repeating something he just heard; it's like he's thinking through it out loud.

Then this morning in the car, we were listening to a Rachel Maddow podcast. She talked about the hate mail that Rep. David Scott received and how it was full of "the n-word". Of course Sunny asked, "what's the n-word?" I told him that it was a very bad insult that was sometimes used to describe black people. He asked again, "Am I black?" This time I had a better answer. I told him that much of "race" is what other people look at you and see. So you don't get to choose your race. And going by that, people would look at him as black. I told him most of his friends at school were also black.

"Is my friend [Ali] black?"
"Yes."
"Is my other friend [Ali] black?"
"Yes. And you know who else is black? Miss [K] across the street. Even though she has very light skin almost the same color as mine."
"Wow! I didn't know that. What about my friend [J], is he black"?
"Well, he looks sort of black, but he has a white mother and black father, just like your Mommy __ is white and your bio father is black, so he's also biracial. That's a word for people whose parents have different races."

I also told him that although people don't really get to choose their race, they do choose their identity. And all the different people that have loved and cared for him can be part of his identity as he grows up, so he did have some power to choose. He repeated thoughtfully, "I have the power to choose my identity."

This went so much better than last time. I think we're moving slowly along the path I outlined in the post earlier this week.

When it comes to racial identity, he has a very limited choice. He can think of himself as biracial/multiracial first and black second, or he can think of himself as black first and biracial/multiracial second. It might sound like a tiny distinction, but it can be huge. I want him to be able to decide on his own.

I made a subconscious choice, at some point when I understood my range of choices and how narrow they were, that I was Asian first, multiracial second. It's just the way the genetic dice rolled: my face looks more Asian than white, so I've always been treated as some kind of Asian. I happen to have enormous white people feet (10.5 women's, a size that few men in Japan even wear) but people look at my face first, not my feet. I'm aware that some people with the same ancestry, who look like me, have made different choices; other people with the same ancestry, who look much more white, have a different set of choices. I'm OK with my own choice.

Among all this, saying "I don't have a race," and trying to live by that statement... I don't think this is a healthy choice. Yes, race is a totally fictitious, weird concept. But if you're not white, and you reject it entirely, you make yourself psychically and socially vulnerable. Many white people won't believe you and will laugh at you and think you hate yourself. Many people of color won't believe you, and will laugh at you and think you hate yourself, and think that your choice insults them.

I've read accounts from a lot of Asian transracial adoptees who were raised along that "race-less" path, not being taught any other choices, and they're generally not too happy about it.

If you choose it freely as an adult, I think that's fine... it's just insanely difficult, and only the most eccentric and strong-willed people can manage to pull it off without being insulting.

36-hour Turnbackaround

Sunny's behavior was fantastic yesterday. Then it fell apart when we went to read in bed. We were going to read five pages of a book he'd already started with Guy the other night. We'd already talked about what book he was going to read, how many pages he was going to read and so on. It would have represented about 5-10 minutes of reading.

Halfway through the first page he started saying he was too tired. I said, "OK, we'll go out and read in the hallway then. Or, if you want, you can read sitting up in my lap instead of lying down." It just escalated from there until he was running around, slamming doors, then lashed out at me. The fit didn't last very long, just five minutes or so, but it meant losing three stars within 15 minutes: Read Nicely, No Backtalking and No Fits.

We ended up reading the five pages out in the hall after he calmed down.

Guy and I have decided we're going to hold the line on reading in bed for the rest of the week. If it's still a nightmare, we're going to give up.

It's frustrating, especially because he's not a bad reader. He enjoys reading words all around him, on labels and signs. He even enjoys reading books, once he can get past the difficult starting stage. But he's gotten worse about his willingness to read books at home, and we're now at a low point at which he reads something on his own for maybe 15 minutes... a week. And this is with books he personally chooses and says he wants to read.

I am prepared to make a tactical retreat in this area. I don't want to keep fighting about something that makes us all miserable. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

Probably as a result of the fit, he had a nightmare last night that the clothes in his closet were monsters. There was also a chainsaw involved. The nightmares were strong enough to wake him up around 3AM, and he yelled "goodnight" at us a couple times, which woke us up.

He shouts out in his sleep several times a week. Sometimes the sounds are really loud and disturbing... as my mother noticed during one of his sleepovers, they sound like screams of rage. Since he started the neurofeedback, he's been able to sleep through them, or put himself back to sleep afterwards.

This morning he was doing fairly well.

24-Hour Turnaround

It's too soon to call it a trend, but Sunny's behavior has improved remarkably after the first day of school.

This morning, I was careful to list the things he did right, and congratulate him on good behavior:

- He walked out the bedroom not dressed correctly, I reminded him to change, and he accepted it
- I told him he couldn't have breakfast at school instead of home, and he accepted it
- I told him we didn't have time to put another Lego in his bag, and he accepted it

He didn't use any of these things as an excuse to start an argument or scream or throw himself on the ground. He was happy and excited to get to school and start his day.

His behavior was great last night as well. This morning, I put up four stars on his chart for Monday. He got all the stars except for "no backtalk". I encouraged him to try hard for five out of five today.

I'm also reminding myself to correct him with a smile on my face and a cheerful tone instead of a peevish tone.

And in response to Johannah... thanks. I actually get enough time to myself. I don't complain much in that area because I'm very lucky. My husband really spends more time with Sunny than I do; in fact, sometimes I worry that I don't spend enough time with Sunny. But Guy really loves to do some of the same things as Sunny, such as skateboarding and biking and going to the water park.

My mother gives us frequent breaks. Sunny has a sleepover at her house once every two weeks, sometimes once a week. Sunny also spends a lot of time over at the neighbors... the ones with the older son with Asperger's syndrome. Sometimes we have to be careful that he doesn't intrude on the neighbors' time too much, because Sunny can be very pushy, but they're happy to have him over almost any time because he helps their son with socialization. We joke with each other that Sunny has the opposite of Asperger's.

So although Sunny is very demanding in some ways, such as his inability to be alone, we've got a good routine built up where either one of us can take a break when we need to.

Hank Johnson Healthcare Townhall Meeting Was Great!

As far as I could tell from outside, that is. I didn't actually get into the townhall. I went with a contingent of other people, but although we were an hour early, there was no way we were getting in. The line was already around the block. There must have been thousands of people.

We stood outside with signs: large, simple, direct, polite signs. We got some good attention, and maybe some media coverage.

Supporters of healthcare reform outnumbered opponents by a lot, maybe 5 to 1. There were a couple whacko screamers. Someone yelled "YOU'RE NAZIS" at us. Another man yelled "you want to send all our money to Kenya!" However, there were so many supporters that the really rude people never achieved critical mass, and the atmosphere outside remained calm. I saw a ton of people I knew, including our old therapist!

There was heavy security, and apparently the rules for the townhall were very strict and carefully explained at the beginning. People who yelled or were disruptive would be escorted out. I can't wait to read a summary to see how it turned out.

In related news, there's been a lot of local coverage on how Rep. David Scott, of the neighboring 13th District, supposedly "lost his temper" at a non-healthcare townhall when he was asked a healthcare question. I saw a video clip in question, and I don't believe he loses his temper. And I'm not saying this because I like David Scott, because I can't stand him. I think his political career is full of corruption, and he's nowhere near the caliber of, say, John Lewis. But in this case Scott is right. The media coverage surrounding the video clip was ridiculous and racist. Whatever the man's faults, he's a slick politician... he wouldn't freak out in front of a camera. If he was white, the headlines would have said "strong words" at the most, not "loses his temper".

Here's what he has to say in his defense:

"The first question that comes out of his mouth, 'Why did you vote for this?'" Scott said. "Wait a minute -- I didn't vote for anything. We haven't had it to vote on."

What you didn't see in our original report was the three minutes Scott spent answering the doctor's question before he raised his voice.

Watson asked Scott, "In hindsight, seeing those clips, did you lose your temper?"

"No, I did not lose my temper. I was very firm and I talked very firm -- and if you looked at that, my words were there. I didn't bite my tongue about it. I was very, very disturbed with him," Scott said.

But Scott is even more disturbed about mail he has received in the days since the story aired.

Scott held up a sheet of paper to Watson that had a picture of President Obama on it, his face made to look like the joker in Batman, a swastika on his forehead. Then he read what it said.

"They address it to n----- David Scott, 'You were, you are, and you shall forever be, a n-----'," Scott said, reading from the letter. "I got this in the mail today. Somewhere underneath this, bubbling up, is the ugly viscissitudes [sic, because 11alive.com hasn't discovered spellchecking] of racism. We should be proud we have an African American president and celebrating him willing to take on the difficult issue of healthcare, an issue that reflects 19 percent of our economy. Here we are in Congress trying to grapple with an almost impossible task -- almost two improbables together, bring the cost of healthcare down while expanding the coverage of it. That is a difficult assignment and it should not be relegated to these mobs of people who will come and hijack a meeting, and you expect me not to stand up to that and not to show that we're not intimidated?"

Scott is hosting a health fair and healthcare forum at which he will do questions and answers on the topic of healthcare reform.

It will be held on Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm at Mundy's Mill High School in Jonesboro.

I'll be there!

Thank goodness Hank Johnson will never be accused of losing his temper despite incontrovertible blackness. Maybe it's all the "Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō"s he recites... he projects an almost supernatural (though slightly gawky) aura of calmness.

Back to School - Transitions can be Tough - Fit Update

Today is back to school day for Dekalb County. Sunny will be starting second grade. He has not been taking it well. He's been wetting the bed more and having more fits than usual. He also wet himself during the day a couple times last week, and tried to hide it (we don't punish him for wetting, so that wasn't a motive) . Our new therapist agrees that his behavior is definitely in response to the transition, and represents temporary regression.

We're definitely tightening things up and getting stricter. Some upcoming changes we've talked about:

-- no video game time on weekdays
-- no playing or going outside until homework is done on weekdays
-- no going inside the neighbors' house on weekdays until he can be trusted not to wheedle them into letting him play video games
-- going back to reading books at night. We had slipped into the habit of reading him classic Spider-Man. From now on, reading Spider-Man to him is conditional on first reading something else on his own.

There are a few more "consequences" we're instituting:

-- When I 'm talking to him and he puts his hands over his ears, I will assume he doesn't want me to speak to him, therefore I will not say anything at all to him for five minutes (I don't have the heart to do this any longer, he is generally crying his eyes out after a couple minutes).
-- If he refuses to read a book at night in bed, we will go out in the hallway and read the book there.

I've started up a formal behavior chart again. The five entries are: Do Homework with No Complaining, No Fits, No Backtalk, Flush Toilet and Read Books Nicely. Flush Toilet is the "gimme". He usually does it anyway, it's just really nasty when he forgets.

He already lost the "No Backtalk" star for today. This morning, while I was making breakfast, he got to the screaming point about a class he's taking at school. I could tell it wasn't really about the class. He was really casting about to find something that he sort of wanted, but I wouldn't immediately give him, so that he could have an excuse to blow up.

He's been having 1-2 fits every 7-10 days. We're both very used to them. When he gets to that point of cold rage, there's nothing else to do but tackle him and pin him down. It sounds horrible, but there's no other option. The only variant is that if he's not on a carpeted surface, we carry to him to a surface that is carpeted, and then we pin him down. This variant is often quite painful, since it gives him a chance to get in some kicks and punches.

I used to softly reason with him during these fits, but our new therapist, who has experience working with kids in a residential treatment facility, tells us not to say anything at all until Sunny calms down, and the rage will fade away a little faster. It turned out to be good advice. He's not listening to a word I say during that time, anyway.

Guy is learning how to handle the fits better. He used to almost go into a rage himself. It was the cursing. When he came to us, Sunny's strongest curse was "poopoohead". His neighborhood friends taught him a lot more. Now during fits we get random strings of really nasty curse words, including M-F. I had no problem ignoring these but it took my husband a while to develop tolerance.

He had a fit just last night. The names he uses during fits are bad, but oddly enough, the threats are awfully mild. I've heard of much, much worse threats from other foster/adoptive parents. For example, he doesn't say "you're not my real parents". He'll say, "I hate this crazy house!" or "I wanted to stay with (foster mom)!" or my favorite threat (I've got to find the humor where I can): "When I'm 18 I'm leaving this house!"

After the fit, when he's truly remorseful (sometimes he fakes it, then tries to hit or bite me when I let him go), I hug him and rock him for as long as he needs, then he goes and hugs Guy and apologizes. The only bright side is that they're a bit shorter than they have been in the past. They're rarely longer than 15 minutes now, whereas in the past, they've lasted up to an hour. Then we talk about how he needs to work on controlling his anger, and not let his anger control him, and to try harder next time to fight back his anger and take a deep breath instead. We've had the exact same talk a gajillion times but hopefully at some point it will sink in.

I don't think that negative consequences after the fact do much to stop them. So we don't punish him for them, other than sometimes taking away DVD time or video game time for the night. We're trying to reinforce positive consequences for "No Fits" instead.

We also talk candidly about the things we're doing to stop the fits, such as neurofeedback and medication. I told him yesterday that it was especially important to help him stop the fits now, when he was young, because when he was an adult, if he had a fit, the police might shoot him. He said, "that's not very nice of them!" and Guy said, "No, but it doesn't matter if it's nice or not when you're dead."

I know that sounds pretty bad. We shelter him from a lot of negative things in the world but I believe in total honesty in this area. I so often read news like this -- Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile Justice System -- and it scares me so much. I could barely stand to read that article.

If he still has behavior like this as a teenager, we'll be in a Catch-22 situation. I would have to call the police on him, but then I'd have to make sure the police didn't shoot him.

Obviously, that is the worst-case scenario. Ideally, he'll grow out of it... and these are just extra-strength tantrums that will pass once his brain develops more. Or maybe he does have some variant of bipolar disorder, but will learn how to control it with a combination of medication and therapy.

Anyway, I worry about this stuff, but it doesn't consume me. I was just saying to Guy last night that we have to be happy in the present -- there is no other time to be happy! That sounds a bit sappy, I know...

I'm hoping that some of Sunny's stormy behavior will turn around after the first week. He says he hates school, but when I ask him what he doesn't like, it's 1. having to do homework 2. having to do "boring stuff" in class sometimes. He has a ton of friends and loves most of the stuff he does in class.

We're working out rewards for the behavior chart this week. I'm trying to work out a few things that aren't just treats or extra minutes of video game time, but involve him getting more control over his environment in some way. I know control is very important and lies close to the root of much of this behavior.

This stuff sounds like a battle. It can be... but I think of it more as a game of chess. In fact, I've been playing some computer chess just to make sure I can keep beating Sunny at chess. He got very good at the game very quickly after chess camp! At the ending tournament, he won second place (4 out of 5 games) in his age division. Sunny is very smart, uses aggressive tactics and would quickly overwhelm a less prepared opponent. Beyond that, the parenting/chess analogy breaks down because he doesn't really know what he's playing for, but I do.

Also, I added the "Nurtured Heart" book that zunzun has been recommending to my wish list, and I'll get it in the next batch of books I order. I'm looking forward to reading that. Guy also took Sunny to see a new psychiatrist. They gave us an order for a blood test to get baseline chemical levels and make sure his atypical antipsychotic wasn't causing any serious imbalances. The test came back all clear. We'll be taking him back to the psychiatrist in a month or so for a follow-up. I like the cautious approach.

Hank Johnson Healthcare Townhall Monday Night August 10th

I'll be there. I'm sick of this whole debate, and it won't be fun at all. I'm also sick of hearing about the people who have been disrupting these events with their screaming.

Monday, August 10 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Georgia Perimeter College Clarkston Campus
Cole Auditorium/FineArtsCenter
555 North Indian Creek Drive
Clarkston, GA 30021

This country desperately needs healthcare reform. My family desperately needs healthcare reform. My mother is currently uninsured and uninsurable. We're just hoping she makes it to Medicare age without a recurrence of her breast cancer.

When the insurance-company-funded right-wing hooligans try to disrupt Hank Johnson's townhall, I want them to fail miserably. The only way to ensure this is to get so many of us reform supporters into the event early that there's no room for the shouters when they show up.

Please come if you're a local supporter. If you're not a supporter, I despair at convincing you otherwise. I have nothing to say to the other side anymore. A red mist comes over my eyes and I start thinking "YOU DON'T CARE IF MY MOTHER DIES". I'll leave the job to other, less emotional debaters.

Richard K. Morgan: The Steel Remains

To break my string of "complaining about relatives" posts, I'll go ahead and talk about my impressions of the latest Richard K. Morgan book. I've read everything he's written. I like him a lot, and my dad is also a fan.

What's good about Richard K. Morgan? He's sort of a Marxist, and like China Mieville, the economic and political environment is not just window-dressing... it's absolutely essential to the plot. A lot of mainstream science fiction is set in extremely boring, poorly imagined worlds, and you can tell the author knows absolutely nothing about how economies really function, or else they're relying on a naive libertarian framework.

C.J. Cherryh is another writer I'm very fond of in this respect, although she's not particularly leftist. Her worlds are incredibly realistic and three-dimensional. You get the point of view from the starship captain, and also the point of view of the starship deck swabber third class whose main career goal is to move up to starship deck swabber second class.

Star Trek is an example of a poorly realized, not very complicated world. I really enjoyed the latest movie, but I enjoyed it for what it was... space opera. What does it mean to have an economy where you can create things with materializers and teleportation is commonplace? Who cares! The world in Star Trek is there so bold men in fast ships can zoom around and blow up stuff.

Richard K. Morgan's worlds are beautifully realized. I wouldn't want to live in them -- they're also brutal and dysfunctional. But they reflect/project our current global power system in very, very interesting ways.

He writes intricately-paced plots -- periods of long reflection punctuated by periods of intense action -- that contain generous servings of ultraviolence. His heroes are brooding, cynical, tormented. There's a lot of masculine cliches going on, but he also has enough sensitivity to have female characters criticize these cliches.

I didn't like his last book (Thirteen) all that much. It was based on some anthropological theories that I thought were kind of stupid. I did appreciate the ambition behind the book: it was set in a near future where a lot of modern-day conceptions of race and religion and sexuality were still strongly present and influenced the plot.

The Steel Remains is his first fantasy book. I'm almost done with it, and I've enjoyed it so far, although I don't think it's perfect.

Good stuff:

As usual for Morgan, the world is innovative. I cannot stand reheated Tolkien. It was good the first time around, but not the ten thousandth. Fantasy books with Tolkien-based geographical racism -- the dark swarthy evil lurking to the South and East of the map -- especially irritate me. The Steel Remains introduces two major civilizations and one collection of barbarian tribes, and they don't have instantly recognizable modern-day or Tolkien-based analogues. The civilization of the Empire is united by a religion that roughly resembles Islam, whereas the other one seems more like European-style feudalism under a polytheistic religion. There are some non-human races, a couple of which are vaguely elf-like (long-lived, magical, attractive). You can never escape elves!

Innovative characters. The main character is gay. Of the two secondary characters, one is a middle-aged barbarian guy and the other is a half-human, ebony-skinned woman who is probably a lesbian, and 200 years old. I'm especially impressed by the age of the woman. Commonly, men in fantasy novels can be hard-bitten and world-weary, but leading women don't get to that stage -- they're usually all fresh-faced and princessy. For a great reversal of the pattern, see C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine novels.

Economic themes. A major plot driver in the book is the recent legalization of debt slavery. This is not the same thing as the kind of slavery we had in America, but it's still incredibly brutal. Debt slavery had a huge impact on the culture and economy of the Roman Empire so there's a lot of little-known, interesting history for Morgan to draw from. The intersection of morality and economy is obviously going to be a major theme. It reminds me of Steven Saylor's historical detective fiction, the Gordianus the Finder series, before they deteriorated.

Not underestimating the intelligence and imagination of the reader. Most fantasy books are geared for a lazier reader than science fiction. They'll begin with a map, a list of characters and maybe even a glossary. In more serious science fiction, authors don't do this... they throw out the unfamiliar names and terms and let the reader put them together on their own. There are many exceptions, of course. For example, in one of the Titan-Wizard-Demon books, John Varley included a detailed glossary of neo-centaur reproduction that's just mind-boggling in its bizarreness, but a lot of fun to read. The glossary wasn't even all that necessary to the plot! I'm not totally against the relying-on-glossaries approach, but the way Morgan does it -- throwing out names and terms and religions and leaving it up to the reader to imagine the context -- results in a world that seems richer, if more confusing.

Bad Stuff:

The pacing seems a bit off. I'm 3/4 of the way through the book and things are just starting to heat up. The book has a non-standard structure: it's set nine years after a major battle that changed the world and affected all three characters. A lot of the setup involves reminiscence about the event. We're getting present-day exposition through flashbacks. However, the links between present day and past action are taking a long time to coalesce. This book is planned as part of a trilogy, so I guess I'll be doing a lot of waiting.

The sex. I hate Richard K. Morgan's sex scenes, and they're not any better in this fantasy book than they are in his science fiction. They're too long, and the body fluids are described in way too much detail. I'm more fond of the Tanith Lee approach to writing weird supernatural sex: focus on the atmosphere, include just one or two highly charged details. Morgan's sex scenes are just not sexy to me, in fact they make me want to put the book down and go wash my hands.

Cursing. I think he's relying on the word "f**k" a bit too much. I don't mind that it's there, I just would have liked to see a bit more variety.

I may update this post within a couple days, after I've had time to finish the book.

Visit Coming Up

Sunny's bio grandma is coming to visit at this end of this month. We invited her to stay with us, she initially accepted, but she's changed her mind and decided to stay in a hotel. This is fine with us. On the other hand, I'm worried that she said she's never left her home state before, but she's planning on driving all the way to Atlanta because she's scared of flying. I wouldn't do that by myself. I'd fly or take the bus. I know my tolerance for continuous periods of driving and it's not that high.

A lot of the things she says make me feel rather nervous and embarrassed. She's very Catholic, and will tell me I've been sent by heaven, for example. I think the visit is going to be great for her, and great for Sunny, but I'm not looking forward to it personally.

Not knowing her at all, I used to resent her greatly. Then my attitude changed a lot. I accepted the fact that I will never know, and Sunny will never know, the whole picture of why she couldn't take care of him, and I let go of resentment based on that. She has her version, other people have theirs. Judging her only on the contact we've had since Sunny has been placed with us, I cannot blame her or feel any ill will towards her. She loves her grandchildren very much.

Placing our relationship in context... on a scale of Non-Elective Relative Likability, with 1 being my insufferable, manipulative uncle and 10 being my mother, I'd give her a 6. I'd have given my uncle a zero, but I upgraded him after I met my cousins' step-grandfather at a family graduation. This man slipped me some passive-aggressive racist insults within 60 seconds of meeting me for the first time. The reason I hadn't met him before is that he'd been exiled from my cousins' family for a decade because he told my male cousin to "stop acting like a fag". My cousin was eight years old at the time. Shortly after the graduation, Step-grandfather went off to the border to try and shoot some Mexicans with the Minutemen. My cousins' grandmother died a few years ago, which is sad; her death also means there is absolutely no reason for anyone I know to ever contact him again, which is awesome.

Any time I think "Oh boy, I wish I wasn't having this awkward conversation with this certain relative" I'll remember that guy, because in comparison, everyone else is a wonderful joy to talk with.

Anyway, I once had a nice talk with her about different personalities, when I mentioned that I want to put Sunny in an acting class when he gets older. She talked about how dramatic she is, how she loved acting classes when she was a girl, and how dramatic her daughter was too! It'll be good for Sunny to see that quality reflected in a relative.

I suppose one difficulty in talking with her is the imbalance of power. I have the power, she doesn't. She's always thanking me for allowing her to have contact. She told me that she gave up a baby for adoption at birth, into a closed adoption, and that's obviously had a huge impact on her. It's sad to think that Sunny has another relative out there that he will almost certainly never know.

I've told her before that she can call us anytime, but she says that would be presumptuous, so she always waits for me to call her.

I hope that we'll eventually get into an extended family relationship where she feels more secure and doesn't have to keep apologizing and being thankful all the time. But I can't force her into a frame that she doesn't want to fit in order to satisfy my own needs. She prefers what she's used to... she's older than me and it doesn't feel right to tell her what she should or shouldn't believe.

Intersections

Race
Adoption
Infertility
Parenting

The main reason for my month-long blog absence is that I'm trying to figure out where to speak from the intersections.

Take adoption and infertility, for example. I'm doing things backwards, adopting before infertility treatments. There's no social pattern for doing so. There's a lot of positive stuff focused on "moving past infertility" into adoption. There's also a lot of negative stuff focused on how the framing of adoption as a second choice hurts and commodifies adoptees. By switching the order of the choices, and talking about it, am I already situated inside a noble frame, or a villainous frame? It depends on the reader, of course. I'm a very independent person, but I'm also somewhat affected by my projections of what other people might think about me. If I wasn't, I'd be a robot.

So I say to myself, "if I talk about infertility treatments, does that mean that other people will think that I'm not satisfied with Sunny because he's adopted, and when I have a "REAL" child, I'd ignore Sunny? Will they think that Sunny will be hurt?" I don't think that's the case. Of course, Sunny was adopted as an older child and he's already very familiar with the concept of a blended family -- foster, adopted, bio -- all living together.

I don't feel like a hero or a villain. I do feel guilty in one area... the best choice for Sunny would probably be to adopt another child around his age or slightly older. He loves playing with other kids so much. But he also gets along well with younger kids, and I think he'd still be happier as an older brother than an only child. Neither Guy nor myself can face entering the process again for the short-term future. It was so grueling. In comparison, infertility treatment is a walk in the park. It's had its low points... about three weeks ago, very low indeed. But it just doesn't shake and batter me the way that waiting to matched with Sunny did. Besides, we're already in a semi-agonizing waiting period for BB. That goes under "Parenting"... if I do get lucky soon, and BB comes to live with us, we'll be raising two children under the age of two at the same time. I think we're up for it, but realistically, it would be pretty challenging for a while.

I don't blog much about my infertility treatments. It's too personal. I'm OK talking about some very deep emotions on this blog, but talking about my body just feels weird. I probably have a fair number of readers who know a lot about infertility already, though! I will say, I'm staying on a very hormone-light road. In fact, I left my first RE because they kept on ramping the injectables up.

Also, I've probably internalized a lot of negative stereotypes about women dealing with infertility. We're supposed to be selfish, narcissistic and hypersensitive. I should try to explore this more, because those stereotypes are based on nasty misogynist stuff. But whenever I start, I bump into the fact that "infertility solidarity" can have disturbing consequences.

Here's one example. I hold a heretical position in infertility circles... I'm against anonymous donation of sperm and eggs, because I believe children have a right to their genetic heritage, and medical and state institutions should not be allowed to deny children that right. I think anonymous egg and sperm donation should be a topic held open for debate. In infertility communities, it's not. I've run across posts where mothers (who are anonymous, of course, like me) say very frankly that they're not even going to tell their children about the egg or sperm donation. I keep my mouth shut about my belief, although I've tried to hint at it in gentle ways. I wish I was braver about it, but I just don't have the energy for a full-scale fight on that front.

Here's another example where I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Someone on one board told a stupid racist Asian joke. I didn't even say anything about it initially. Yes, I'm a race blogger and I ignored an Asian joke, I've done it before and I'll do it again, because Asian jokes are EVERYWHERE and I can't invest my time in complaining about all of them. Someone else did object, very mildly, and then the defense came up... "well, we're infertile, so as a member of an oppressed group it's OK to blow off steam by making this joke..." At that point, I had to pop in... "AHEM so there aren't any infertile Asian women? Your argument denies my existence and is highly offensive!" At which point someone else who claimed to be Asian then claimed not to be offended (these cowardly excusers make it so hard for the rest of us) , then I rolled up my sleeves and it snowballed from there.

The idea that infertility communities are "safe spaces" is pretty much a joke for me. They're more like minefields. It also bothers me that negative coping is often encouraged by these communities, mainly, the constant accounts of freaking out and collapsing in psychic agony when a friend tells you they're pregnant. Call me a heartless bitch, but I find this very disturbing, and infantilizing, and I don't think it should be encouraged with choruses of "me too!" and "it's OK to feel that way!" In what other areas of life is this acceptable? If you lose your legs in an accident, is it OK for you to freak out whenever you see someone walking? If your mother dies, is it OK to feel constant bitter envy that your husband's mother is still living? Expressing pain, yes; collapsing and blaming other people, no. I guess this goes back to my hatred of the word "triggering". Even when we're discussing clinical PTSD, the person suffering PTSD ideally has a goal of working through PTSD. The shellshocked soldier wants to get to the point where they can just wince a little when they hear a car backfiring... not throw themselves on the ground, or demand that all cars stop backfiring. I think these women would advance farther and ultimately experience less suffering if they treated themselves with a communal mixture of sympathy AND honesty .

Then, I think, am I being a hypocrite... support for me, but not for thee? Ahh, it's so complicated. Maybe I really am a heartless bitch. I'm currently taking a break from infertility AND adoption communities.

I'm in a privileged position to be able to do so. Parenting, on the other hand, isn't something I can ever take a break from anymore. And I'm having a difficult time blogging about how parenting intersects with race. Again, there's no frame that fits my stories, and I also feel sort of inadequate. I don't have many teaching moments with Sunny about race. He overhears adult family conversations about race, but he doesn't fully understand, and in fact he gets a bit bored. He's just not interested in hearing complicated stuff about institutional racism and I'm not interested in teaching him anything before he's really ready for it.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is that the concept of "black/African-American" is especially difficult for him to comprehend. He has a sense that people with his medium skin tone are like him, but light-skinned black people (like the across-the-street neighbor kid) and dark-skinned black people (like the next-door neighbors) are different. And in a child's literal imagination, of course they're different!

I want him to grow into a positive sense of black solidarity... that is, the idea that black people 1) face a set of common problems 2) should support each other in facing those problems 3) while realizing their common strengths 4) but not minimizing their diversity. This isn't an easy lesson. Colorism is a major negative force against the formation of this solidarity. Since his peer group is mostly African-American, I worry about him picking up colorist messages... it's something I have absolute zero background in dealing with.

Most stuff about race and parenting deals with reinforcing the self-confidence of minority children in predominantly white environments. I have an overlapping but different set of concerns.

He asked me last week, "Am I black?" My answer sucked. I talked a lot about who his mothers and fathers were and what other people saw him as... I basically said "Yes, maybe, sort of, it's complicated."

I just don't want him to feel forced into any identity before he's ready. It was only last year that he kept telling me his bio father was white. In fact, he'd been confusing his mother's brother with his father. And then he would ask me if his mother was black.

So I don't want to force him into establishing an identity right now, but I also want him to develop a sense of solidarity, and I don't see these two goals fitting together very well at the moment. At least we've gone a long way towards establishing that race and identity are safe to talk about.

On the bright side of blogging, I've embarked on a major, ambitious blogging project at Racialicious: a series called "The Surface of Buddhism" (introduction and Part One here). I don't talk about my religion much. I don't even talk about it with friends and family. Yet again, I don't have a frame. I'm trying to draw one and fill it in at the same time.

More on My Cousin - Venting Frustration

My cousin had a brief period a few months ago where she had to go back into the mental facility for a few days, but other than that, she's been living in a stable situation at my mother's house in a nice basement bedroom suite. Every few months her condition strikes or she has some sort of crisis (like this one in November) but nothing as terrible as the initial episode that cost her job and any hope of a normal life for the short-term future.

I still feel sad we're not closer, but I don't see that changing soon. I quickly stopped giving her financial advice because it ended up contributing to her insecurity. She'd get excited about it, then wouldn't follow up and would feel really embarrassed. I would give advice if she asked again, but otherwise I never bring up finances. I don't give her any advice at all, with the exception of reinforcing the simple point that my mother and her therapist and every other person in her life repeat again and again: "PLEASE DON'T TALK TO YOUR DAD".

If I was giving her more advice, I'd tell her to stop going to so many Al-Anon meetings. She goes every day, often multiple times a day. Most of her friends are from Al-Anon, and all the others are from the institution support groups. I feel like there's a time when you need to stop substituting support groups for real living.

I don't have anything against the Alcoholics Anonymous approach or Al-Anon (for those who don't know the distinction, Al-Anon is for friends and families of alcoholics) and in fact I know some other family members who really need to go back to AA and stick with it. But like any other group, it's possible to have unhealthy group dynamics, and I think her Al-Anon group has some weird and almost cultlike aspects. It demands an insane amount of her time. I think she should be using this time on disability checks to explore how to form a new life for herself. She could be taking a few noncredit classes, and doing some volunteer work to build up a resume for a potential future career that she can work around her disability. She could be finding constructive low-demand, low-stress activities and hobbies, healing while preparing, going to meetings not more than once a day... instead, the Al-Anon acts like a cocoon. She's immersed in an environment where she can't focus on herself because she keeps getting dragged into other people's drama. She wakes up, goes to therapy or a support group meeting, hangs out with friends from her support group, goes to Al-Anon meetings, then goes out to dinner with friends from Al-Anon, then goes to sleep. And this has pretty much been her entire life for a year. I don't see her more than once a week... and I'm at my mother's house all the time.

The worst thing I heard about Al-Anon is how my cousin's mother praised it. "I've been going to Al-Anon for twenty years. I go almost every day. I wouldn't get by without it!" Great... so it's enabled her to stay a completely ineffectual woman who cheerfully stands by the side of her alcoholic husband and fails, for decades, at the job of protecting her children from his verbal and emotional abuse. I thought Al-Anon was designed to stop codependency, not provide an excuse for it. I hate to think my cousin is following in her footsteps. She's not an addict, yet almost all of her friends are people struggling with addictions. It's like she's addicted to addiction.

Anyway, I don't say that. In a low-key way, I try to suggest things we can do together, like go see a movie. So far it hasn't worked... because she always has a meeting to go to. We're two relatives that love each other, but I know she finds it hard to be around me because I make her insecure.

Something happened recently that will probably damage our relationship even further. She's had two serious car crashes, one in which her car was totaled (her dad got her a new one). She really shouldn't be driving at all because of all the medication she's on. Her license would have been taken away if not for some bureaucratic glitches. I have never said anything judgemental about these crashes or her driving, though. I know driving is very important for her to stay independent and go to her meetings and so on. But I did mention to my mom that it wouldn't be a good idea for her to drive Sunny anywhere.

She asked my mother if she thought that I thought it would be OK to drive Sunny to the zoo or the museum. My mother said that I would love her to spend a day with Sunny, but that she doubted I would want her driving him anywhere.

I wish she had let it go at that. But she didn't. A few days ago, she called me up and asked me directly. I said I was sorry, that I knew it was embarrassing, but I didn't think it was a good idea. She said "is it always going to be that way?" I felt so terrible. I said, "No, absolutely not, I just don't think it's a good idea... now." I told her that Guy could drop off Sunny at an outing with her, and then pick Sunny back up again, or he could go with along with the two of them... there were a lot of options.

She must have known she'd be disappointed. Or maybe not... maybe she actually imagined that someone who's been in two serious recent car crashes for unknown reasons could still be thought of as a trustworthy driver.

I think that's part of her problem. She can't compromise. It's all or nothing. She's either a princess or the worst person in the world. I don't mean that as an insult. It's a tendency she's aware of and she's mentioned trying to work on it during therapy. She thinks she might even have Borderline Personality Disorder in addition to her other diagnosis.

Sometimes her sense of entitlement is just amazing... I think part of her feels like she really deserves an upper-class white Southern pseudo-aristocratic yacht-owning lifestyle, e.g. she should not have to compromise by doing things like taking public transportation.

It makes me sad, but it doesn't make me angry. She had a lot of material advantages but massive emotional handicaps. I feel privileged in many ways. I had to work since I was 15, at very non-glamorous jobs, but I never doubted that my parents loved me, or doubted my ability to be independent. In fact, every time I talk to her, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells because I don't want to rub it in her face everything I have that she doesn't.

It's going to take a long time for her to get better, but I'm desperately hoping she can make it. In the meantime she has a free place to stay. My mother would like her to move out, but only if it's into a stable situation. Moving in with other people who are barely out of the halfway house doesn't count. She's had a couple of those opportunities crop up, but she's been wise enough not to take them. She's a codependent friend, but that's better than being a codependent girlfriend (she hasn't gotten sucked into a dysfunctional relationship). I wish she would make better choices, but at least her choices are sort of bad, but not truly horrible.

ETA: I found a great personal narrative that includes some of the concerns I have about my cousin's involvement with her group.

From SoozinTX at Open Salon:
Why I Quit Al-Anon Yet Still Recommend it to Others

[...]

I know from experience the idea of growing past attending a particular 12-Step program is anathema, if not downright treason, to the majority of members at the meetings I attended. I heard all the dogma of which theglasscharacter speaks, often delivered by sponsors and group members as if it were holy writ. I know the talk says there are no authorities in 12-step programs. Yet I can tell ya from walking the walk there are those who think they run the groups and make the rules. In their own unconscious sickness, these “rulers” use their power abusively in the act of helping others who show up at meetings in a weakened emotional state. These people can and do garner a powerful amount of peer pressure around them from those who are their followers. This creates an experience of organizational enmeshment & cult-like conformity that can quickly outlive its usefulness to those who are truly growing in the program. I now know that all meeting groups are not this way, but I sure didn’t know that in my first few years of recovery.

I had a “black-belt” Al-Anon sponsor who had rules you had to follow if you wanted to be her sponsoree. And I mean had to, if you wanted her to sponsor you. I conformed for 2 years because for awhile, I needed the sanity & structure provided by those meetings & that sponsor like I needed air. I was afraid I would completely lose it one, day, throw an angry fit, and either shoot the alcoholic man I was married to or myself . And I was stone-cold sober! That’s the insanity of being on the other side of the bottle and thinking you ought to be able to do something about the person who is abusing alcohol.

I learned many excellent coping skills & life philosophy skills in Al-Anon that I still use today. I received incredible support from the members as I went through my divorce process. I learned how to let go of my intense anger and worry. I learned how to have friends and be a supportive friend. Then as I began to branch out, make more decisions for myself, and seek out other forms of personal growth, my sponsor “fired” me. I was not following her stringent rules by daring to cut back to attending only 1-2 meetings per week. I wanted to (gasp!) pursue some other personal development opportunities.

[...]

My wish for newcomers is they truly take what they can use and leave the rest. No, really, leave it, as in walk away from it, with no guilt or shame, when the whole process no longer serves your highest spiritual growth. And let those who are uncomfortable with your chosen path deal with their own discomfort. It’s not your job to make them feel comfortable with your path. It’s your job to be fully present on your own path. Any discomfort others are experiencing is a lesson in tolerance and judgment for them.

ETA x2: One thing I just realized after typing all this up is that my cousin is a lot like Sunny in that they're both highly socially skilled AND terrified of being alone with themselves. I've been lonely in life too, but I don't have that same magnitude of terror.

Sometimes I worry how I'm going to relate to Sunny when he gets older, and the ways in which his personality differs radically from mine become more apparent. He has strengths I've never had and weaknesses I've never had. So it's good practice to understand how my adult relatives think differently from me, and how that affects our relationships.

Police Complaint

I have just not been feeling very inspired about personal blogging lately. I'll get back into it soon, I promise... this is the latest occurrence I've felt inspired to write about. It just happened today. I'm still steamed!

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Email sent to Burrell Ellis, CEO of Dekalb County:

Hello,

I was driving down North Decatur Road (on the stretch where it crosses under I-285) this Sunday afternoon when I noticed a turtle crossing the road. There weren't a lot of cars on the road, so I decided to stop and help the turtle before it got run over.

I turned around, drove back to where the turtle was, stopped my car, put on the hazard lights and quickly stepped out. I was planning on taking the turtle to the other side of the road and then jumping back in my car. Just when I stepped out of my car, a police car happened to come up behind me, and turned on the siren... I pointed to the turtle I was picking up. The police officer screamed at me "GET THE FRIG OFF THE ROAD" over his loudspeaker. I put down the turtle a couple feet away on the side of the road and got back in my car. I was too scared of the police officer to actually take the turtle to the other side of the road, so the turtle probably tried to cross again later and got run over.

I was really upset by the officer's rudeness. I understand that given the terrible crime problems that Dekalb County faces, the fate of a turtle is not very important. However, a police officer with such a short temper that the sight of a car stopped for a turtle causes him to freak out and curse... this kind of behavior is very unprofessional and ineffective. I understand you have done a lot of work to fix up the police department mess that Vernon Jones and Terrell Bolton left. I just hope that future police training will also include lessons on how not to alienate the people they are supposed to protect. Thank you for considering my perspective.

Regards,
____

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Edited to Add: I just drove to work today along that same stretch. I kept my eye out for a horrible bloody stain on the road, but didn't see anything. So I guess the turtle made it!

Literary Groaner

Here's a funny conversation we had on vacation that shows how much Sunny likes to play with words.

We were trying to coax him to write longer sentences in his travel journal than "I like the museum" or "I went on the train". Sunny was arguing for shorter sentences and was getting pretty frustrated.

"But I want to write 'I like the museum'! Why can't you let me write 'I like the museum'?"

"We already explained, it's more interesting for people to read longer sentences. Why don't you use just ONE adjective about something you liked at the museum? Pick an adjective, and then we'll give you a tip for how to use it in the sentence. Besides, you already used 'I like the museum' yesterday."

"But I want to write 'I like the museum'! Why can't you let me write 'I like the museum'?"

Guy: sighing. "I guess we don't have a Balzac on our hands."

Me: "Don't be so pessimistic. Maybe we have a Hemingway instead."

Sunny: "Or a Milky Way!"

I'm a Legal Mom, and Other Updates

Our adoption finally went through last month. Yes, I'm way behind on the news. Sunny is our legal son!

I'd like to report that some pre-adoption behavior cleared up, but things are pretty much the same. I don't think the adoption ceremony meant that much to him. In the future, it's going to end up figuring a lot more in his thoughts, but he'd already accepted us as his permanent parents a while back.

We happened to draw the oldest, palest, gloomiest judge in Atlanta. He said some nice words, but also gave an odd speech about how hard it was to make a success of yourself in this cold cruel world even if you came from a family with two biological parents and no troubles. My mother cried. I videotaped everything. Sunny loved getting to dress up and shake hands with the judge. It's a striking picture... Sunny in his sharp black dress pants and black dress shirt, the judge in his long black robes.

We have to wait a while for the amended birth certificate, and then get a new social security number. The amended birth certificate is a terrible practice and the source of needless injustice for adoptees. It won't harm Sunny, in practical terms (I have several copies of his Original Birth Certificate, which doesn't list his father's name, and he knows quite well who his biological mother was) but I wish it wasn't the common practice.

In practical terms, now that he's officially adopted we can:

• Allow our friends the neighbors to drive him to the pool or to the movies
• Have a babysitter without making them get a drug test, a physical and fingerprinting
• Sublet our basement suite or use it for charitable purposes like hosting
• Go on trips without getting permission first
• Get him a passport so he can visit Japan or Mexico with us
• If anything horrible happens to us, he won't be taken right back into the foster care system

Another thing we are now allowed to do, which we weren't before, is spank him. And this was something we did try, on the advice of our therapist. It's embarrassing to blog it. But I thought it was worth a try. Her argument was that it shouldn't reactivate trauma for him because we know he wasn't ever physically abused. And it would help him internalize that hitting people is wrong. We tried it several times -- three swats on the butt -- when he went into a violent rage and lashed out. At first, it worked. It completely stopped a rage that would normally last 15-20 minutes and made him enter the remorseful crying stage right away, instead of at the very end when he was exhausted from being held down.

Then spanking stopped working. It just didn't affect him at all anymore. The rages -- two or three times a week, 15-30 minutes in duration -- were unaltered. The last time we spanked, he yelled that he wished he was bigger, because then he would spank dad back... "WITH A PADDLE!". We might have gotten another favorable "short-circuit the rage" effect if we'd stepped up the physical punishment beyond three mild swats, but that's something we had agreed way beforehand we wouldn't do. One try, and then we'd move on. But I can see that's how parental abuse gets started. A little works, but then it stops working. So try a little more... and I don't want to go there.

I don't have much experience with physical punishment. My father used to whack me on the top of the head when I was a kid (and tried to do it into my teens, actually) but it never had the effect he wanted.

Scratch that technique off the list. No more spanking, ever.

We're starting to see a new therapist. I don't want to discount our old one, and we'll continue seeing her irregularly. She's given us some great advice in the past. She's a mature African-American woman with a ton of experience who is incredibly insightful when it comes to a lot of stuff, but we're going to try someone totally opposite: a young white guy who lists foster care experience and has a PsyD instead of an LCSW. We'll see how that works. I'm also setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist (a new one, not the icky stupid one) in August to discuss medication.

One technique we're going to start soon, suggested by a friend of my mother's, is audio/video feedback. This means recording the bad language and hitting he uses during a rage and showing him later, when he's calm.

I'm a bit skeptical about the neurofeedback treatment. It doesn't seem to have altered his rage frequency in any way. But the one thing I do believe it has helped with is his sleeping. Since he started neurofeedback, he hasn't woken us up at 4AM anymore, liked he used to do about once a week. And that's really huge once you start thinking about it. It improves our quality of life and mental state tremendously.

He used to have frequent nightmares about a man chasing him with a chainsaw trying to cut his foot off, but he rarely reports those anymore, and I ask him every morning. I'm sure he still has nightmares, they're just not as strong or frequent, and he's learned to put himself back to sleep after waking up to one.

His foster mom said he used to wake up the whole house at 5AM on Saturday morning, just running out in the hall and screaming and screaming until he made sure all 10+ family members were awake.

I'm not sure if we're going to continue with the full course of neurofeedback, and my high hopes for it have adjusted somewhat. Still, I think the sleep improvement was worth it.

We're arranging a visit with his bio grandma in a few months. She'll be driving over and staying with us for several days. I think this will be a good chance for them to bond a bit more and talk about his maternal family.

She sends us pictures of BB every Wednesday, which is when she has visitation. And BB is doing well, but it's gotten so depressing for me to even look at the pictures. Is this my son, or not? He's going to be walking soon. He's going to be a year old soon and I wasn't there for hardly any of it. It's not important to him that I love him now. It will be in the future, whatever happens, but not now.

In happier news, although it hit a stifling 96 degrees this weekend, Sunny was having the time of his life at the water park. He loves the water so much. He spent almost all this weekend having aquatic fun. The last four days have all been fit-free, and if he makes it to seven he knows he's getting a nice bonus from his sticker chart.

Edited to Add: I reread this post and realized how negative it all is. I should have just done a separate "We did the adoption ceremony and it's great we're officially legally a family." If I put up a picture of the event, you'd see we're all smiling, even the gloomy judge.

Family History, National History

We spent our family vacation in Washington DC. It was awfully nice. I already know the area fairly well from the time I spent long ago as an au pair working for a family in the Maryland suburbs.

One day, we drove all the way down to Jamestown and its historical museum. I loved the exhibits, which covered the culture of 1) the English settlers 2) Powhatan Native Americans and 3) Angolans of dubious status (perhaps slaves, perhaps indentured) who all once lived in or near Jamestown. One exhibit covered a fascinating bit of history that I never knew before: the colonization efforts were based on a pattern already established... in Ireland. The goal was establish an ethnic enclave while extracting wealth from the natives (Irish cattle-herders/Powhatan farmer-hunters) using a combination of trade and force, then send money back to England.

We watched a museum movie which showed that life in Jamestown was pretty much hell on earth for the first English settlers. During one famine, some people dug their own graves, laid down in them and just waited to die. Jamestown wasn't very successful, which was why the Pilgrims are usually thought of as the first real settlement colony for the United States.

One of my ancestors on my mother's side was a Jamestown settler. His name was William Farrar, and he came over in 1618 from Lincolnshire. That's one of the main reasons I'm interested in Jamestown (although I'm not a full-fledged genealogy person).

Sunny had a vacation journal in which he had to write five sentences for every day. He liked the museum, and the ship we saw in neighboring Yorktown, but also wrote that hearing about all the Indians killed in Jamestown made him sad.

Sunny's favorite museum, of course, was the National Air and Space Museum. There are plenty of cool things to touch and pull and push and climb... it's a wonderland for a kid his age.

We took a tour through the WWII Pacific room. I looked for an exhibit on Japanese soldiers, but all they had was a single one on kamikaze pilots. I don't really blame the museum, since there weren't many exhibits on German soldiers in the other hall, either. But I do wish the Japanese could have been represented by something other than kamikaze pilots. I didn't draw it to Sunny's attention. Too complicated.

I did point to a picture of a Japanese battleship and explain that Ojiichan's father died when American fighter planes sunk his battleship. Because Ojiichan's father, my grandfather, died and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, we never got to meet him. I said that the Japanese were on the wrong side in the war and the Americans were on the right side, so it's a good thing we Americans won, but it was still a very sad thing that Ojiichan's father had to die like that.

Sunny said, "If I was around back then, I would save Ojiichan's father!" What a sweet boy.

Later on, we had dinner with my Guy's colleague who lives in DC. This was the first time I'd ever met her, although she and Guy have been friends for a while. She's a Japanese-American woman one generation older than me. I told her about what Sunny had said in the WWII Pacific exhibit, and she remarked, "My father was probably trying to sink your grandfather's battleship." She explained that in WWII her family had all their property seized in California and were taken to an internment camp, and from there her father volunteered, and ended up in the Pacific translating Japanese communications for American military intelligence.

Some people can't afford to be bitter and angry about the past. We have to remember, but we also have to move on. I thought of grief and letting go, and our strange relationship to WWII, when I read this recent article about the aftershocks of a war that's even further away in time.

Sunny said that he didn't understand hardly anything Guy's friend had just explained. I told him it was all very complicated history, but he would understand more when he got older.

Break Explanation - and Legacy of Shame!

This is the longest break I've ever taken on this blog! But there's no emergency or anything. Well, we did try and take Sunny off his medication, but the attempt failed horribly, so we're going to try again later this summer, and if that doesn't work, hold it off for another year.

Other than that, I've just been extremely busy. I'll be on vacation next week though.

And I did break my blogging hiatus just last night, in a rather incendiary way: David Carradine's Legacy of Shame is up at Racialicious and APA for Progress as well.

Global Day of Action...

... for Troy Davis. Please follow the link to sign a petition.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - USA Online Action Center
Support Clemency for Troy Davis
Take Action On This Issue

Troy Davis faces execution for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia, despite a strong claim of innocence. 7 out of 9 witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles has voted to deny clemency, yet Governor Perdue can still exercise leadership to ensure that his death sentence is commuted. Please urge him to demonstrate respect for fairness and justice by supporting clemency for Troy Davis.

Update and Link

We have a lot of stuff going on this week, but I'm too tired to blog it! Sunny's behavior got really bad, then got better again. My health has not been great, either... I have a nasty sore throat right now.

I should mention that I had another guest post on Racialicious called "Geishas and Whores". It's a deeper exploration of an issue I've already touched on in the early days of this blog. The title turned out to be less controversial than the editor and I predicted. I guess I did a good job of explaining my word choices within the body of the piece. Commenters have already added a lot of interesting discussion.

Missing Mothers

I had a very nice day today.

Guy took Sunny out to the country to see his mother (Grandma) and her husband (Pawpaw). By the way, I'm not allowed to use the word "stepfather" because Pawpaw is actually a few years younger than Guy. This is a rule Guy always insists on, although I've never seen an age exclusion clause in any dictionary under the word "stepfather". Pawpaw has a shed in back of Grandma's house with a Harley-Davidson and a four-wheeler/ATV, which he let Sunny ride with him... yikes. Pawpaw isn't very mature and I think he only just barely counts as adult supervision. Sunny definitely had a lot of fun, though.

Meanwhile, I had a quiet day with my own mother. We went to a Korean restaurant on Buford Highway for brunch. I bought her a sewing machine for Mother's Day and we did some sewing together at her house, then I took a long nap, which I really needed. We talked a little bit about her mother, my own Nana, who died of emphysema 15 years ago.

Later on, we came back home, and Sunny spent most of the rest of the day playing outside with his friends. His behavior recently has been great. He hasn't had any violent fits or name-calling for almost two weeks now. He's given me several little presents for Mother's Day... what a sweetheart.

We talked to Sunny's foster mom in the morning. She has two new placements, a newborn baby girl and a 10-year-old girl. BB is doing very well and has been working on his crawling technique. Right now he can only crawl to the right, not the left, so if he crawls around the edge of the playpen and hits an obstacle, he yells until someone comes along and moves him back to the right spot so he can start again.

I did feel a little sad that he's growing up so fast. Even if he's placed with us soon, I won't get to carry him around for very long. Just a little sad though... it's a weird kind of limbo, but I'm used to it and I don't dwell on it much.

I steeled myself for the most difficult part of the day, which is talking to Sunny's bio grandma. It's just that she often says things that I don't feel confident about responding to. For example, every time we talk, she tells me how Sunny's mother's last wish is that we would adopt BB. Since we talk to her every one to two weeks I've heard this a lot, and every time I say a few sympathetic words, but really, it's hard to know what to say.

She told me that her day had been very rough... until she talked to Sunny, and then she felt much better.

Her own mother, Sunny's great-grandmother, has dementia and emphysema, and it looks like she's stopped eating and is going to die soon. I know what that's going to be like because that's how my own grandmother went. It's a hard way. Her brother lives close by, but it's going to be her job to handle the end. That sounds awfully familiar. It's so often that the men in a family don't have the strength when it really counts. I hate to be bitter, I've just seen and heard it happen way too many times.

She told me she made a wreath this morning and went to her daughter's grave and sat and talked to her for a long time.

She hasn't been sleeping well because of the stress. She says she won't take any medication, but when she feels really down, she talks to the parish priest.

We did have some lighter moments during the call. She told me all about the kinds of vegetables Sunny's mom would and wouldn't eat, and we compared them to Sunny's own vegetable ranking. She told me how her children always hated to crawl and how they liked to spend only a few weeks crawling before they started walking and running.

Like I posted yesterday, I feel very privileged today. I also feel aware of all the missing mothers and all those missing their mothers.

Sentimental about Mother's Day

Sunny has a secret plan for Mother's Day. Plan formulation has been ongoing for several days now. He'll go over to Guy, whisper in Guy's ear, then turn to me and say "DID YOU HEAR THAT, MOM?" "No." "GOOD, IT'S A SECRET!"

Guy let me in on it. Sunny wants to get me a caramel apple for Mother's Day.

I feel really privileged and really sentimental to have someone who loves me like that.

Just this morning we were talking about one of the neighborhood kids. His family situation is a bit fuzzy, but he's not living with his mother. Sunny got confused about the details and said "He must have been really shy when he met his parents, like I was shy when I met you." I explained that his friend wasn't adopted, so he never had a time when he met totally new parents.

It reminded me of the day we first met.

Outside his foster mom's house, I took a deep breath. Guy seemed to be doing a lot better than I was. It took me about half a minute to pull myself together after I got out of the car.

Then the social worker led us in. We met his foster mom. We moved deeper into the house, toward a sofa in the den. Perched anxiously on the sofa was a little boy with huge brown eyes. He looked so fragile, so vulnerable, almost like a fawn. As soon as he saw us, he said "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!"

It's impossible for me to imagine just how important that moment was for him, how much courage it took...

The Power of Triracial Mystification

Guy says he can't wait for me to blog about this, so here it goes.

The other day we had someone in the house trying to repair our washing machine. He was an elderly white man with one of those verra verra gentle Jawja accents. As usual, Sunny was in and out of the house playing with his friends.

At one point, his friends burst in and collected him to go outside and ride scooters.

As he was walking out, the repairman looked at Guy, and then looked at me, increasingly more mystified.

"Excuse me, but I'm wondering... those kids... they're black... and you're Chinese... and you're Caucasian..."

Me: "I'm not Chinese, I'm half-Japanese and half-white."

"I thought you were Chinese."

Me: "I'm not."

Guy, in a cheery voice: "Well I'm 100% white!"

"Your kids... they're black... and you're... and he's..."

I finally soothed his mental anguish by communicating that two of the three kids were neighbors, and that Sunny was adopted. He was quite relieved, and immediately launched into a rambling anecdote about a couple from his church who were both white but their kids they had adopted were both black. Then he made his awkward exit.

I'm used to being called Chinese. As long as people accept my correction gracefully, I don't get angry. I reserve getting angry for those occasions when people actually ARGUE WITH ME after I correct them.

Surprisingly enough, this is the first time I have had to answer awkward questions about race when it comes to Sunny. I think a lot of people assume he's my biological son, or else they're just way too polite to ask questions like "Is he adopted or did you cheat on your husband with Tiger Woods or something?" Guy also doesn't really get a lot of questions. A Japanese-American woman he met in a doctor's lobby ended up quizzing him once, but that was understandable, since Sunny had been telling her about his ojiichan.

Sunny is going to get a lot of questions as he grows up, but I'm not that worried about him. He seems less vulnerable than most kids because of his unique combination of self-confidence, extroversion and stubbornness. He's the kind of kid that's always telling jokes and bossing other kids around too much and in general taking things too far... but who is still incredibly popular because he's so dynamic and fun to be around. Kids are always knocking at our door asking to play with Sunny, even though all of them are actually older than he is.

It reminds me of an anecdote an adoptive parent couple told us during training. The father was black, the mother was white and they had adopted two black sons. Their very different personalities led to very different responses when classmates asked them, "why is your momma white?" One would say, "Because God made her that way" and the other would say, "Because she IS!" I'm more of the introverted type who wants to communicate the reason. Sunny is the type who doesn't have that priority, it just is what it is, and if you have a problem with that, well then... hey look over there, it's something shiny! Watch me do a backflip!

I think we'll all have it pretty easy until Sunny hits the teenage years and starts having a racial identity crisis, but I've got a good therapist on speed dial for then.