Vomit.

  It’s a very regular part of our life around here.

And as soon as I think that I’m over it and that it will stop bothering me, it gets to me again, grosses me out, makes me frustrated and irritated, and the smell….oh the smell.

 

Bella is a puker.

 

If she feels anxious about anything : Puke.

If she feels hungry: Puke.

If she has a meal in front of her that she doesn’t want to eat: Puke.

Doesn’t want to take her meds: Puke.

 

That’s a lot of vomit.  Usually all over my car.

 

At this point, I’m out of ideas.

What I can tell you, is that this is a control issue stemming mostly from the trauma she has endured in the past (read: yesterday, and every day previous.).

I know that most of this is subconscious, a reaction from the primitive brain, which with Bella, apparently goes something like: Flight, Fight, Freeze, or Puke!

But I also know that there are absolutely times when she wants to exhibit control, and in order to do that, she convinces herself that she NEEDS to puke, and what do you know, all of a sudden her lunch is on the table!

At home, she eats whatever she wants, whenever she wants and it is all junk food.  The only things I’ve heard her say are served at home are ramen noodles, cheetoes, pepsi, frosted flakes, and bologna. 

 

 

So, do any of you foster parents have pukers?  Please? 

 

 

I’ve tried every way I can figure to give her control over her foods while still maintaining a healthy diet for her (which is even more important due to her illness).  I always give her choices, making sure there are things that she likes, or has at least stomached before. 

But without fail, I give her a choice (thinking I’m helping with the control issue), she chooses what she wants, I put it in front of her, and she refuses to eat it.  I don’t think it’s healthy for either of us to let her change her mind four times before she’ll actually eat something.  But 99% of the time that I am firm on her eating something, she just pukes it up.

 

Rock?  Hard Place?  Anyone?

 

It’s so hard not to get frustrated.  Especially times when I know she has sat there and convinced herself that the next bite will make her puke.  I try to be compassionate, but seriously, we’ve puked three times today and can’t manage to get to a trash can or toilet. (this is a bad day.)

 

We have good days and bad days.  She’s had a yogurt voluntarily every day for the last three days, and this morning at breakfast it made her puke.  (More accurately: she made herself puke due to the yogurt.)

 

 

Ugh.  Tell me you have tips?

A listening heart.

As parents, we really try our best not to parent behaviors, but to parent hearts.  No matter the background of a child, their behaviors spill out of their little hearts that are broken, trying to navigate through this life.  Life in a world that is as broken as their hearts, broken but not beyond repair.  Broken in selfishness, broken in greed, broken in anger.  The first signs that this is not our home, this is not where we belong.

 

When our kids are struggling to share, or to be kind, or to be loving, we talk to them about what their hearts are saying.

A selfish heart says ‘mine, mine, mine’ but a generous heart says ‘here, you have a turn.’     You get the idea.

 

At night we pray with them before bed – we pray about how our day went, give thanks for our blessings, and pray for our friends.

 

The last couple days have been hard.  Pull-my-hair out frustrating.  Behaviors from the back and forth of visits are in hyperdrive.

 

As I started to pray with Bella last night, I didn’t even know where to start, what to say.  I was physically and emotionally exhausted.  So I just started out really honest.

“God, some days we have a lot of trouble listening.  We just don’t have listening hearts.”

 

As the words came out of my mouth, mostly intended for the kind of day that Bella had just had, my prayer hit my heart.

 

I had a lot of trouble listening.  I didn’t have a listening heart.

All I could hear all day was our struggles, when God was speaking to me something completely different.

 

This tantrum, this is your opportunity to love her.  Go.  Love her.  Do it well.

Your little two year old that is so stubbornly (frustratingly) strong willed?  She will do great things someday because she doesn’t. give. up.

The mess that you see when you look at your house?  There is beauty in it.  It is the sign of a day full of life.  It is the beauty of having my children under your roof.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times (he chuckles), slow. down.

But I didn’t hear these things in the moment, because I was focused on how my children just weren’t listening.

The irony.

Some days I think God just shakes his head at me.  Out of love, of course.

 

For all the times I pray that my children would have listening hearts, I pray the same for myself.

Behavior Modification.

  We started some short term in-home therapy with Bella today.  I requested it because the transitions back and forth from 3-4 days with Mom and Dad to 3-4 days with us has seriously been kicking her four year old butt – along with ours in the process.  So mostly I wanted a therapist who could come in and decompress with her – someone, besides us, who can talk to her about everything that is going on.

  So her therapist came.  She is very nice, very to the point, and easy to talk to.  I’m just not sure that our mindsets and parenting theories are necessarily in sync.  We talked about what we’ve been seeing in between visits, the ridiculousness that is bed time, and we went over background info.

 

  Essentially what I heard was this:

 

• Stop worrying so much over the emotional impact of the way you parent her.
• Her behaviors are primarily attention seeking.
• You are not being strict enough.

 

  I told her that at bedtime, sometimes we go on two hours of her crying for her Mommy, needing her back rubbed, talking through what her parents are probably doing, and talking about how much longer it is until her next visit.  I told her this in an effort to explain the deep emotional impact that the transitions back and forth are having on her.

  I was told that this bedtime routine is simply her trying to get attention, and that she’s figured out that if she cries that I will stay in there (some nights, this is true, I will admit that.).  I need to do our bedtime routine, leave, ignore her cries, and in three days it will stop.

 

A.K.A. : Behavior Modification.

 

But seriously, she’s four.  She’s away from her family.  She is going back and forth between completely different environments, expectations, and structures.  What I hear from that advice is : Ignore that she is hurting in ways she doesn’t understand, and then she’ll stop telling you.

This is not a solution. 

I honestly don’t think it’s possible for a four year old to go through that, and then have behaviors that are not derived from the pain of their circumstance.  Sure, some of her behaviors are attention seeking : because she needs attention.

What happened to fulfilling the cycle of need?

 

  I know there are probably a lot of people this therapist sees that just want the behaviors to stop.  Sometimes, in the thick of it, that’s what I want too.

  But really what I want is to know how I can best love her and support her emotionally through the behaviors.

 

  I guess I’m just disappointed.  I’ve tried really hard to develop our parenting practices in therapeutic ways, and it makes me bristle to hear advice from a therapist that does not take into account the hurt that her little heart is carrying.

  I also know that therapeutic parenting is often in pretty strong discord with many accepted parenting techniques.  But I’m not here to get pats on the back for turning my traumatized children’s behavior around over night – I’m here to comfort the hurt that causes it.

 

  So where do we go when our therapists are telling us that we should just treat the behaviors as if these children have had everything they ever needed and more?  I don’t know, but I do know that I can’t wait  to get to    This Conference. 

Because there is a reason that foster and adoptive parents struggle with behaviors more than other parents, and it’s not because we’re all incapable of being consistent.

 

(P.S. If you need book or video resources on therapeutic parenting and you’re at a loss, please e-mail me – I am happy to send you some!  It will make you feel less crazy, and help you understand where all this behavior is coming from!)

Empowered to Connect.

  As we are having a really, very terribly trauma induced day, it reminded me that I wanted to post about a conference that Brian and I are headed to in February.

 

  I have said this around 50 times before (my husband accuses me of exaggerating.  I say, I’m just really getting my point across.) but if you foster or have adopted I sincerely recommend the book The Connected Child, by Karyn Purvis.  It is so easy to read, gives some really helpful, applicable ideas, and gives a well rounded idea of why in the world your child is acting that way. 

You know what way I’m talking about.  The way that makes you think, am I just really losing my mind as a parent?  What in the world am I doing wrong?  How is it even possible for me to address this without escalating this out of this world???

It’s my go to book because I can read it without feeling like I need a medical dictionary and the DSM V on hand.

 

 

Anyway.

 

Karen Purvis and a couple (Amy and Michael Monroe) from Irving Bible Church teamed up and wrote a Bible study that goes along with The Connected Child called Created To Connect.  This is also very helpful.  It breaks down the info even more, and connects it to the worldview of a follower of Christ. 

 

So.

 

This is all a part of an organization called Empowered to Connect.  (Confused yet?)  It is led by Karyn Purvis and Amy and Michael Monroe and is full of great resources for those parenting kids from hard places.

 

Empowered to Connect is having a conference in February at Irving Bible Church, co-sponsored by Show Hope (Stephen Curtis Chapman’s adoption foundation).  Here’s the description:

 

Empowered To Connect, together with Show Hope, hosts the Empowered To Connect Conference — a two-day conference designed to help adoptive and foster parents, ministry leaders and professionals better understand how to connect with “children from hard places” in order to help them heal and become all that God desires for them to be.

The conference features Dr. Karyn Purvis together with Michael & Amy Monroe, and is ideal for adoptive and foster parents, those considering adoption or foster care and those who are serving and supporting others, including social workers, agency professionals, church staff and ministry leaders, counselors, therapists and others involved in adoption and foster care.

The next Empowered To Connect Conference will be on February 17-18, 2012, in Dallas, Texas at Irving Bible Church. Registration for the Dallas conference is now open! Visit www.etcconference.org for more details and to register online.

 

So, just wanted to put that out there.  We’re driving a long way to get there, but we are so looking forward to being poured into.  To be educated and supported in working with these kids.  I’m feeling so drained today from the behaviors, and I cannot wait!

A song almost heard.

I had to repost this.  It is beautiful and so painfully true.

Reading this brings me hope and refreshment in this journey that God has us on.  I love where she points out that we asked for this (!) and that it is the most beautiful gift we could be given.

 

This was written by a blogger named Tonia.  You won’t regret going to her blog.  It is her thoughts on her adoption experience – but oh so applicable to the fostering experience as well.  In reality, applicable to anyone living their life in hopes of being counted worthy of true suffering for The Gospel.

 

It’d been a few years since we’d seen each other and we laughed and smiled over the changes, exclaimed over the now-tall young men and women we’d once held as babes in each others’ arms. I lamented the rushing years and the grey in my hair. She told of the new business, a trip to the Grand Canyon, a son in college. “And how’s Bryan doing?” I asked, looking around for the boy I’d seen only in Christmas pictures, his blond hair and impish smile making him an uncanny fit with his adoptive family. My own adopted son, born with the same drug and alcohol-affects as Bryan, stood tall in the background, hands shoved deep in his pockets, grinning quietly at the flow of memories and old jokes that was running between the gathered kids. My friend’s eyes grew pained and her face changed. “He’s not…here…anymore,” she whispered.

Sadness crept through my body as I waited for her explanation. “People don’t know,” she said. “They don’t know what it’s like.” I nodded quietly and listened as her story unfolded, a familiar tragedy of behavioral issues, fear, and anguish that led to a desperate decision to salvage the family by sending Bryan to live elsewhere. “We failed,” she said, a plea for understanding lying naked in the words.

I understood too well. As young couples we’d shared our dreams about living the gospel through adoption. These friends had rejoiced when we’d brought our son home and stood with us when the first shockwaves of reality hit. Eventually they’d moved away, begun their own adoption, and our family had continued the wild careen down the road called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders. I knew what my friend was talking about. The landscape of our family history is littered with shattered expectations, lies, abuses, humiliations, therapists, hospitals, social workers, and painful acceptance. When my husband and I took our measure against the happy, easy families around us we too felt like failures.

I went home that day aching with the reality of undeserved pain. I used to think that suffering came to other people – fiery preachers in strange lands, broken old sinners with ancient debts to pay - not to people who opened their hearts to the orphan. The stories swirled in my mind of families who’d dared to love the least of these and been worn down by the ceaseless, thankless reality of disability and brokenness. It was tempting to be angry at the unfairness - and yet I’d learned through my own trials that there was another way to understand the suffering.

You see, each of us had wanted to live the gospel…and God had answered our prayers.

The gospel life is an invitation to come and die. It is first of all a story of brokenness. Before the beautiful redemption there is misunderstanding, rejection, loneliness, disappointment, frustration, and betrayal leading to a painful, bloody death. There is sorrow, burial and mourning.

Yet somehow, though we prayed to be like Christ, we were surprised when the pain came to us. We were surprised when the gospel story was repeated in our homes, in our hearts, in the children we thought to rescue.

When we look at scripture we see that even the apostles had to learn this truth. Beaten, arrested, thrown in prison, their dreams of greatness crushed, their reputations tarnished, their missions disrupted, they opened their mouths and sang in praise. Eventually they understood that of all people they were blessed…for they had been counted worthy to suffer with Christ.

What my friend needed to know is that her troubles are not the marks of failure, but of Christ-following. Christ’s love leads us into places that no one else wants to go, where the stench and the mess and the heartache push out the well-dressed and the well-behaved. She and her family have been invited into the mysterious blessing: to suffer with the reality of sin just as Christ suffered. To those on the outside it carries the taint of scandal - because this kind of love suffers alongside the liar, the abuser, the thief on the cross. It brings the foul-mouthed, rule-breaking, rage-riddled, impulse-driven, broken-hearted, least of these, right into our homes. This love works and tries and believes when everyone else has given up and slipped back into something more comfortable. It aches and bleeds, it is misunderstood and rejected and lonely.

And if we will surrender to it, this love teaches us to sing and to rejoice as the blessed of God.

A few days after the talk with my friend I stood silently in our living room as my husband shook hands with a policeman. “Thanks for coming,” he said as he quietly showed the officer out. Our teenage son, sprawled in a chair in the living room, managed a disinterested look which only made me feel more tense. He wasn’t in trouble this time, only a witness, but his wrong place, wrong time, wrong friends choices were an embarrassment to me anyway. Once the patrol car was safely down the driveway I felt the exhaustion come like a wave.

I fought the temptation to tell my son how I felt about his choices, to punish him with my anger and frustration, but I was silent. In a rare moment of clarity I felt my gaze go beyond the moment, beyond the disappointment of right now to a wider view. There in front of me sat a boy who carried his birth mother’s sins in his brain and body. I could see the future stretching out before us and all the labels he would likely wear: throwaway kid, failure, loser, screw-up. It pierced me through. And while I was looking at that future I could see another reality, higher and truer. There, I could see that the boy in front of me unknowingly bore the gospel of a suffering Savior into our home, daily allowing us to become acquainted with His grief. For just a moment I could see God’s purpose shaping us, His compassion inviting us to come learn to love like the crucified God. It was only a moment, enough vision to lend grace as I bent down and kissed my son’s head, told him to go on up to bed, but it lingers as blessing, snatches of a song almost heard and understood, drifting in front of me and pulling me onward.

“Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ. Then, whether I come and see you again or only hear about you, I will know that you are standing together with one spirit and one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the Good News. Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself. For you have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him.” Phil. 1:27-29

Is that a light at the end of the tunnel? Oh, no, that’s the end of my rope I’m seeing.

Ok, so, the boys behavior continues to snowball.

In the last 24 hours I have heard:

• I don’t have to!  It’s my choice and I can do what I want!
• You’re such a liar Maggie!  You’re such a liar!
• B*$#&.  (Yes, that’s the B word.  Don’t appreciate that at all.)
• Shoes bouncing off walls and our bunk bed breaking.
• I hate living here!
• I hate you!
• Slamming doors.  over. and over. and over.
• Whatever Maggie, I’m not even listening to you!  (really?  I couldn’t tell.)

I won’t go on – you get my drift.  Once about 5:00 hits our house is filled with the lovely sounds of defiance.  Just. straight. defiance.

They are angry about not being with their mom.  They are sad.  They have never had any supervision or authority figure at home.  I’m fairly sure that they have picked up on the fact that mom does not seem to be making progress.

This all comes together to make two very angry, very confused, very defiant little boys.

 

We have behavior charts for them – clearly listing consequences for specific behaviors, with positive reinforcement for progress and good days.  We have tried to be consistent with discipline.  As of today they will no longer receive allowance just because.  They will get stickers for good behavior, and each sticker will be redeemable for .25.  We do not raise our voices, we never so much as touch their shoulder during discipline. 

We are Love and Logic – ing our hearts out.

We are Shepherding our Children’s Hearts.

We are Connected Parenting.

But I can only be called a ‘B’ so many times before my eyes pop out of my head and roll around on the floor.  Just lookin’ for a little respect.  (Cue Aretha Franklin – I’m singing along.) It is true they have only been here for a month, but none of this seems effective.

We are running out of tools.

Suggestions are welcome.  Actually I may kiss you if you leave a good idea.

 

Foster parents give me your wisdom!!!!

 

Update: Just got a call and mom won’t be at the visit tonight.  This should make for a fun weekend.

Good Book.

I haven’t even completely finished this book.  But I love it.  It is full of practical advice, and wisdom on understanding and addressing behaviors.  It covers some pretty basic stuff – which is always beneficial and serves to remind us of the tools we already have to work through the issues facing these kids.  It also covers issues in different ways than I have read in other books – also very helpful.

Anyway – wanted to share this resource.  I’ll add it to my resources list up top for sure.

 

Ending on a Positive Note.

So all the posts this week have kinda been downers.  I promise to end this one on a positive note.  Maybe a picture of a cute kitten or something else smile inducing.

The truth is, this has been a rough week.  And I’m not here to make foster parenting look easy – I’m here to show that it’s hard and brings challenges, but that it is doable and completely worth it.  No one signs up to be a foster parent thinking it’s all going to be roses and I love you’s (although I’ve received both during our time as foster parents, so all hope is not lost!).  Someone I was talking to, or possibly reading the blog of {let’s hear it for modern communication} was telling me their thoughts on the difficulty of fostering.  I think it was my friend Katherine. 

It is hard.  And there are struggles.  And there are tears.

But doesn’t every child deserve to be loved enough and cared for enough that someone finds them worth tears?

 

And that’s also the example Christ gave us.  He loved us even though it hurt.  He found us worth tears, agony even.  He took us as His own when it wasn’t required of Him because he loves us.  And he is going to stick out the good times and the rough times with us until we find ourselves home.

 

So.  Given the opportunity to love these kids through the hurt, I will (try, and surely fail sometimes) to count it all joy, count it all joy, count it all joy.  (Any Adventure in Odyssey fans out there?)

I have been leaning so heavily on these verses this week:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be made mature and complete, not lacking anything.  If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

                           James 1:2-5

and of course this one:

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

                          James 1:19-20

 

And, on a positive note, I am SO thankful that:

• The boys had a really great morning this morning.  No yelling, no smarting off, no throwing fits, no complete breakdowns in communication.
• Brian and I had time yesterday to sit down and create a behavior chart for each of the boys, and I am so looking forward to see it’s fruit.
• Sylvia is such a happy baby.  She brings me joy every time I look at her, hear her sweet voice, or have to comfort her.  Thank you Lord for my sweet baby girl.
• The boys (finally!) have a visit with their mom tonight.  Here’s to hoping it goes well.  Here’s to naively hoping it might improve their behavior instead of degrade it. {I can hope, can’t I?}
• And, drum roll please,      the caseworker finally called me!!!  For the first time in the three weeks the boys have been with us, I was able to ask questions, and get answers.  Amen! 

Nothing much more smiling inducing than that!

(I mean, all biases aside.  But not really.)