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When Will It Be Enough?

I want to read enough, study enough so I can ace parenting. The more I research and give myself; the more Elise pushes back with her emotions. When she says, “Nobody loves me…will you still love me forever…will you be here in the morning,” it feels like failure. It feels like all the work I’ve done and knowledge I’ve gained on attachment and parenting isn’t working. I feel defeated, but I can’t give up. I think maybe the next ten times I say I love you and reassure her of my stability will be enough. But maybe she will come back with her concerns, and it will feel like failure again. I think the feeling of failure stems from the lack of control I feel.

I have been reading “Anatomy of the Soul,” by Curt Thompson and he has this to say:

“We have most valued knowing facts, knowing the ‘truth,’ and knowing that we are right…We have failed to see that this need to be right, to be rationally orderly and correct, subtly but effectively prevents us from the experience of being known, of loving, and being loved, which is the highest call of humanity…Knowing that we are absolutely right about a lot of things is very important to our survival and sense of well-being. That includes knowing or knowing things, about people. And about God. It is not hard to see why we are infatuated with knowing things in this way. It gives us the illusion that we are secure and in charge. We are no longer vulnerable. We believe we are safe, protected, and happy.”

I want to have gotten enough knowledge to handle every situation, to be in control. I want to manage Elise’s emotions in a way that is comfortable and not overwhelming for me – to have things under control, but it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, she just needs to cry every morning for the past 11 months because daddy went to work, and she misses him. Logically, this does not make sense to me; I mean he comes back everyday. So do I teach her shove her feelings aside because I don’t want to deal with them or do I help her? Obviously, I help her. It is exhausting.

Thompson goes on to say some things about emotion:

  1. Emotion is something that you regulate and that regulates you.
  2. Emotional states are not influenced or created in isolation.
  3. Emotion is not debatable.
  4. While categorical emotions are universal across time, cultures, and gender, primary emotion does not always present itself in the same way.

Or in my words,

  1. I have to pay attention to my emotions and what I’m feeling.
  2. What I’m feeling affects those around me (including Elise).
  3. If Elise has been sad everyday for the past 11 months, then she’s been sad. I can’t argue with her over that.
  4. Elise is not going to express her emotions the same way I would (though that would make things easier for me).

I am still working my way through “Anatomy of the Soul”, but it is helping me understand myself so that I can better relate and understand Elise. It is exhausting and hard work, but at the end day, I do want to tell her as many times as she needs that, “I love her; I love her forever; And that I will be here in the morning.”

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Try it Again

When we first learned about the Empowered to Connect concepts, Elise was eighteen months old. We still started implementing what we learned, and we are thankful that we had tools to help us through various conflicts. The tool that is helping us the most right now is “try it again.” We try everything again. At the first hint of correction, Elise will usually try to head you off by asking if she can try it again. Sometimes Elise even recreates scenarios days later so she can try it again and again and again. She loves it, and we do, too.

But sometimes, I find myself the one needing to try it again. Only, I’m not as quick as Elise to jump at a chance to redo. Usually, I’m chastising myself for losing my temper or patience again, instead of offering myself the same chance to try again at connecting with Elise – instead of modeling the behavior I want Elise to learn.

Do you let yourself try it again or only your kids? Do you give yourself grace and compassion too or only defeat and chastisement? Do you ask for forgiveness or only expect your children to?

Watch as Amy Monroe talks about learning and modeling how to repair.

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Adopt vs Adopt

Elise  does a lot that gets me thinking. She’s learning to recognize rhymes, but right now she just points out parts of words that are the same: upstairs/downstairs or inside/outside.  In this particular exchange, she focused on the word adopt.

Elise asks, “Remember you adopted me?”

ME: I do remember.

Elise, “And Mary adopted Jesus. That’s the same word adopt, adopt.”

ME: Who told you Mary adopted Jesus?

Elise, “God. I prayed to him and He said Mary and Joseph adopted Jesus. And then He died.”

Now, I am not interested in getting technical with her statement. It’s just an insight into an almost 4 year old’s mind. But isn’t it cool that she’s already identified herself with Jesus because of adoption? And isn’t cool that’s she right? Adopt and adopt – it is the same word. We adopted her into our family and God adopts us into his family.

Then just yesterday, we were walking around the mall and Elise asked, “Mom, when are you going to adopt Maggie?” I said, “I am not going to adopt Maggie because I gave birth to her.” She said, “You only adopted me?” Me, “Yes.” I only adopted Elise, but it only changed our lives forever. I’m so thankful for adoption

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Kisses From Katie

I recently read “Kisses from Katie,” by Katie Davis. On the cover it says a story of relentless love and redemption. Katie’s story is truly inspiring. It all started when she decided to move to Uganda after high school and delay her first year of college. Once there, she was willing to do anything and everything to help the people of Uganda which included taking in sick orphaned children and finding a home for them. (This is a gross paraphrase.) As she did this, she began to think about adoption, “Knowing what adoption would entail, I thought trying to accomplish it would be crazy. I found myself desperately praying that God would show me what to do. And that is when it happened.’”

As Katie began adding children to her family she wrestled with many adoption issues. She talks about building a relationship, so she could move from caregiver to Mom. She talks of wrestling with the hurt her children experienced and grieving for their loss. She talks about how each child’s “pain and trauma manifested in different ways and through different behaviors,” and she never questions whether she made the right choice. She also doesn’t say that it’s easy.

“I knew that one of God’s purposes in placing me here was to grow in me, through my children, this heart for adoption. In an effort to be real, I will tell you: It was hard…Adoption is wonderful and beautiful and the greatest blessing I have ever experienced. Adoption is also difficult and painful. Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption. It is the Gospel in my living room. And sometimes, it’s just hard…It’s hard to have your mom be a different color than you because inevitably people are going to ask you why…It’s hard when you have to make up your birthday. It’s hard when you can’t understand the concept of being a forever family yet, because your first family wasn’t forever.”

I don’t want to give away everything Katie says because she allows herself to be transparent and tell a beautiful story, her story. The way she talks about mistakes, struggles, and questions makes you forget she started this journey at 19. Much of Katie’s story is not adoption related, but as she works through different adoption related issues in her life, she’s not afraid to share the good and the bad, the triumphs and heartbreaks.

I’ll admit that I did do a general purging of my house after I finished reading her book. I mean you can’t read these sentences and not feel a little conviction, “I put value in things. These children, having no things, put value in God.” But don’t be scared to read the book for fear of being called to Uganda; read her book because she tells a story of God is working in her life, her children’s lives, and those around her.

http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

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Adoption in Prime Time

Sometimes after the children are asleep, I watch television, and I have noticed several adoption stories taking place on different networks and different shows. ABC has Modern Family and Grey’s Anatomy. NBC has Parenthood and now Smash. And, CBS has NCIS. Now, I am not endorsing any of these shows or suggesting you watch any of them; I just found it interesting how common an adoption story is becoming to Prime Time television.

While the most common adoption story playing out is international adoption, Parenthood has an adoptive family matched with a birth mother, and NCIS had a character find out as an adult that she was adopted. I am always intrigued to see how screenwriters are going to let the different elements of adoption play out. Scenes from different shows caught my attention. On Smash, a couple with a teenager is in the process of adopting from China. When the dad learns the shortest the wait could be is 2 years, he doesn’t want to move forward with the process anymore. The teenager overhears his parents talking and later says, “…She’s waiting for us to come and get her. What’s going to happen to her if we don’t go get her?”

Another scene that caught my eye was on Parenthood. After the birthmother gives birth to a baby boy, the nurses place the baby boy in the adoptive mother’s arms and the birthmother turns her face away in anguish. They ended the episode implying the birthmother might change her mind, but they didn’t really make that clear.

The last scene is from NCIS. Through a series of events one of the main characters discovered she’s adopted. As she wrestled with this discovery and revealed it to another character, she said, “It’s me. I’m adopted.”

In the above-mentioned scenes adoption affects more than just the adoptive parents. These particular scenes highlight the birthmother, the adopted child, and nuclear family members; adoption affects these people and many more. It will affect anyone that you do life with.

As my husband and I began our adoption process, we read a book called Adoption is a Family Affair. If you haven’t read this book, I would suggest it as a way to start thinking about how adoption is going to affect your family and friends. There might be scenarios you haven’t considered or aspects you may want to explain more or that you may want to keep confidential. Whatever your situation, it’s beneficial to think about your family and friends and how you can help educate them on the adoption process. You are going to want your family and friends to be supportive, so take some time to support them.

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Experiencing Different Textures

My oldest daughter has been in my home longer than she was in an orphanage in Vietnam. And sometimes it’s easy to convince myself that those 6 and ½ months in the orphanage didn’t have much of an effect on her, but I am often reminded that it did. As my youngest daughter, who is 8 months old, explores and crawls around our home, it triggers memories of Elise doing the same.

As my youngest crawls everywhere seamlessly transitioning from seasgrass rug to laminate flooring to carpet, a memory of Elise walking around the edge of the seagrass rug for several months comes to mind. As my youngest grabs Elise’s plush hand me down toys, it strikes me that Elise never played with that toy, but she did enjoy all things plastic. As my youngest, latches on to a lovey, a baby doll, or a stuffed purple monkey, I remember Elise not loving a stuffed animal until she was one. And since turning three in June, Elise now has many stuffed animals and a favorite blanket.

After many months, Elise learned to branch out from just plastic toys, and she stopped walking around the edge of our seagrass rug. Currently, she prefers cotton knit pants to jeans and will occasionally don a bathing suit in the winter, but that could just be three-year-old antics.

The way Elise coped with different textures is a part of sensory processing. Sensory processing is something adoptive parents should educate themselves about. Dr. Karyn Purvis talks about sensory processing in this video:

Understanding Sensory Processing from Tapestry on Vimeo.

This post also appeared on http://tapestryministry.org/blog

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Overreacting

I’m sure no other parent is guilty of overreacting. My daughter can be quite dramatic and sometimes the things she says are worrisome, “Momma my legs are sore because there’s blood all over.” There’s clearly not blood all over her legs. But what does she mean? I wanted to be thorough, so I talked to some friends who helped me rule out blood clots, remembered that her infant multi-vitamin had iron in it, and googled iron deficiencies. After all, she went through a battery of blood tests between 6 and 8 months and follow up tests at a year and 2 years to check for a specific kind of anemia. I decided she needed to add iron to her multi-vitamin since she used to take a multi-vitamin with iron as an infant.  Plus Google said her cranky attitude was a symptom of iron deficiency.  (Side note: She has been taking her multi-vitamin with iron for two weeks and her cranky attitude has not been miraculously cured.)

This is just an example of me trying to track down a logical explanation to something my daughter said. Sometimes she’s being dramatic, sometimes she’s avoiding clean up time, and sometimes there is an adoption related issue. Now, I don’t think every parent should overreact or overthink a situation like me, but if you do have questions about nutritionhttp://adoptionnutrition.org is a great resource. Tapestry blogged about the website in this blog post, “Focusing on Food and Nutrition.”

In my defense, iron deficiency is possible in children from Vietnam, but at the end of the day, I was just trying to grasp a reason as to why my daughter is so cranky and why she says there’s blood all over. I’m not sure I’ll ever know what she meant by that statement (or eradicate all her cranky attitudes), but at least she likes her new vitamins.

This post also appeared on http://tapestryministry.org/blog

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Fear

When we made our annual trip to Horn Creek Colorado this past August, I signed up for the high ropes course. I had tried things out like this in my teenage years, but I was not prepared to feel so scared.

As I was climbing up the pole to begin the course, I kept thinking why am I doing this? And then once I was up, my heart started pounding, but I didn’t want to give up. I had to sing “Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever praise you REPEAT And step by step you’ll lead me, and I will follow you all of my days,” just to get across the ropes from one platform to the next. I never looked down, and I just kept singing those words to myself over and over again. When I finally made it to the zipline and touched the ground again, I felt so relieved. I was immediately aware that my heart was still pounding; I was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted. I got some water, a snack, and took some deep breaths until I calmed my body back down, and then I rested.

I was with some families from Tapestry, so we joked about how we needed the some of the strategies we learned in Empowered to Connect to help us through the high ropes course. But the reality is, my body and mind went through a fear response and recovered from it because I knew how to recognize what my body needed. Some of our children can deal with fear responses everyday if not constantly. Their hearts can always be racing as they struggle to feel felt safety. I had never realized how taxing a condition of fear could be until I experienced it for about 20-30 minutes. Is it any wonder some of our kids can have epic meltdowns? If they feel scared or threatened by a situation, we have no idea how long their hearts and adrenaline have been pounding especially if your child is unaware of their need and doesn’t have the tools to help themselves.

Empowered to Connect has some videos made by Dr. Karyn Purvis. Listen to Dr. Purvis talk about impact of fear.

This post also appeared on http://tapestryministry.org/blog.

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Things Were Better Before You Came

I recently read “Things Were Better Before You Came.” It’s a memoir written by Doug Walker, an adoptee.

Doug always knew he was adopted; he says, “The knowledge of my adoption was an extremely significant factor contributing to my self-worth. I had never been given any reason to doubt my parents’ love for me because I believed had been chosen.” Then one day in a moment of frustration Doug’s mother said the words that became the title of this book, “Things were better before you came.” As Doug works through how this statement affected him, he reflects a lot on his relationship with his mother.

What I found most interesting was how Doug considered how his mother’s past affected her parenting. He says, “I am now also able to acknowledge how much pain she had endured and how …[it]… contributed to her struggles as a parent.” Doug’s story is a good reminder to us deal with our pasts so we can better connect with our children. This is something Dr. Purvis talks about in her book “The Connected Child,” and in this video Looking at Ourselves to Help Our Children Heal.

Looking at Ourselves to Help Our Children Heal from Tapestry on Vimeo.

For more from Dr. Karyn Purvis visit http://www.empoweredtoconnect.org

To learn more about Doug Walker’s book visit http://thingswerebetter.com and learn more about Doug visit The Fellowship of the Parks.

This post also appeared on http://tapestryministry.org/blog.

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Expectations

When you are around Tapestry, you hear the word expectations thrown around a lot. I think I’ve been pretty confident that my expectations are right on, no problems here. Until Elise started getting older and acquiring more language and things started getting interesting.

We adopted Elise when she was 6 months old, so I felt like we got her home as young as we could.  My husband and I split staying home with her for the first three months to make that initial attachment, and then we just showered her with as much attention and love as we could give.

When Elise was 18 months old we attended an Empowered to Connect training, so we could learn about parenting a child from a hard place. At that time, Elise was not doing any behaviors that were disrupting our family unit. She didn’t like to run errands after school even when I tried wearing her in a carrier. But that was an easy fix, my husband just took over the grocery shopping and saved my errands for the weekend while Elise and I got to reconnect from our time apart. During the training, we were told several times that the other parents wished they had learned about Empowered to Connect when their kids were younger instead of already in elementary school.  So again, I thought we will be fine since we know this stuff so much earlier than everyone else. And we were fine.

Now, when I reflect back on our oldest as a baby, sleep was always the most stressful thing for us. It would take an hour to hour and a half each night to get Elise to sleep. And when she woke up in the middle of the night, she usually woke up screaming. We stayed in her room or laid down with her until she fell asleep until she was about two and a half. So, it wasn’t terrible, but it was always met with some level of stress and work.

It’s only now having a newborn turned 5 month old in the house that I realize we missed a lot by not having Elise until she was 6 months old. It was pretty naïve of me to think that our daughter wouldn’t have any effects from living in an orphanage for 6 months. Our five month old, Maggie, knows who we are. She smiles when we come in a room; she babbles to us. She’s relaxed and at ease at bedtime, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, which is a stark contrast to how our oldest went to sleep. (Now you could explain this away as personality or something else, but I live with my children. And Elise tells me often she is scared when she is by herself.)

When we brought Elise home, she smiled some, but for the most part she was silent.  Two strangers came and took her from her familiar surroundings, and then we took her on a 16 hour airplane trip and brought her “home” to Plano, TX. (It’s her home now, but at the time, it was not home to her. Everything was foreign to her.) So, it’s no wonder she just stared at us with those big brown eyes, and it’s no wonder sleep was a stressful time for her. We didn’t know the tricks she had or had not learned, and we certainly didn’t have her in a familiar room. We always turned out the lights, but I have no idea how dark or warm or cold her room in at the orphanage was. So while we had the training and were prepared for the worst, when she seemed “fine” we didn’t make any extra efforts or exceptions until she started pushing back.

So in May of 2011 when we had Maggie, we turned Elise’s world upside down, and she didn’t know what each day was going to bring. Life became very unpredictable for Elise.  And the transition has been tough on everyone. We are now five months into being parents of two children, and we are still trying to get our 3 year old back to where she was before Maggie came. We don’t have severe issues, but we deal with our share of anxiety, fear, stress, and lack of sleep which seems to present itself as long periods of crying/screaming and renewed dislike for separation. We battled for four months until we remembered our Empowered to Connect training and started looking for ways we could support Eilse instead of giving in to frustration all the time. And as we have become more consistent and comfortable in our role as parents of two children, she has been able to relax and smile and laugh more. Now we are not perfect, we are currently working on getting our oldest more attuned to what her body is telling her and how she’s feeling, so she can recognize when she’s tired, hungry, or needs attention.

At the same time life became unpredictable, Elise started processing more of her story. We’ve read her lifebook several times, and she’s familiar with the words adoption and Vietnam. But she had never asked questions. Now she asks, “Was I in your tummy?” “Are you adopted?” “Where is my birthmom?” “Do my birthparents miss me?” I asked that last question back to her and her response was, “I think yes because I’m gone.” That’s true. She is gone from Vietnam. She was this cute little baby that had already suffered the loss of her birth family and then suffered more loss when she left her caretakers at the orphanage, and that’s sad. It makes me sad that she has to process those questions and that I don’t have all the answers for her. But she quickly moves on to bouncing around until she can hear the contents of her stomach sloshing around or something while I’m still stewing over her sadness.  In essence, it’s normal to her to think about those things; she doesn’t know any different. But I know it can be different, and it is different for our youngest daughter.

So I think, I dutifully attended all the trainings and read all the books, but I never really expected to deal with the issues everyone else was. I never expected it to be such hard work. Other adoptive families had major things going on in their families, and from our perspective, if we had any they were mild. But though they may be mild in their frequency, they feel major when you’re going through it.  And I have to deal with my perception of things and not project my feelings into what my oldest daughter is processing. When we have problems or normal adoption stuff (like the questions about birth parents), we have a way to address them because of Tapestry and Empowered to Connect. I can’t imagine where we would be with that – no where good.