We have been lucky that the boy did not develop my tendency toward night terrors. Since we are not biologically related that doesn’t come as a surprise. I’m very thankful that we have only had two instances of inexplicable middle of the night screaming. I’m also lucky that I have not had one in about 6 years. Being an adult with night terrors freaks your spouse the hell out.
Only recently has the boy been saying that he’s been having bad dreams. He wakes up in the morning and tells us that he had a bad dream. We’ve also been told that the reason he rocks is to keep the bad dreams away. He says that if he stops rocking he will have bad dreams. My poor baby. There are some days that we’ll be in the bathroom fixing his hair and he’ll say, “mommy! I didn’t have any bad dreams last night.” That’s fantastic baby. ”It’s because I didn’t stop rocking.” *heart breaks*
Like I’ve mentioned time and time again, the boy does not get out of his bed. I’ve explained to him that if he gets scared he can come get in the bed with me. I want him to feel safe and know that we will be there for him. Faith is a difficult concept for him to grasp.
Last night we had a breakthrough… at 4:50 a.m.
I was sound asleep when the trusty husband sat up and I could hear him say, “Oleg.” That will wake a person up. It was the boy crawling into bed with us. He had a bad dream. I tucked him under the covers and held him tight. I told him it was ok and that it was just a bad dream and that mommy was there. He let me hold him for a very long time. He wasn’t crying, but I could tell that he was scared.
I asked him if he wanted to go back to his bed and he said, “no.” I gave him a pillow and said he could stay in our bed, but that we all needed to go back to sleep. He wasn’t too fond of the pillow I gave him and kept trying to pillow hog ours. Then the cat got in the bed and laid on my legs. So basically from 4:50 this morning until I kicked the boy out* at 7:00 I “slept” on 1/10th of my bed. And you know… I don’t mind one bit.
—————————-
*not being mean, but the alarm had gone off, Derek had gotten in the shower and the boy was laughing at the other cat. He needed to go.
I was watching TV the other day and I saw an ad for something that made me want to yell at the box. It was for a “system” that teaches your baby how to “read.” They showed 1-3 year olds reading words off of flash cards clearly. So what’s wrong with that?
ONLY EVERYTHING!
As I watched the ad further they explained how it worked. Your baby watches the TV! they show a word, say the word and then a picture or action of the word. It is memorizing the words.
Here is my issue with it.
They are not teaching children the fundamentals of reading. No phonics, no context. Just rote memorization.
What happens when that child comes up with a word that wasn’t on the flash cards? Or better yet… what happens when that child is asked to explain what they just read?
Why do parents feel the need to force their children into this? What happened to teach them when they are ready? Is it for party tricks? What gives.
This may sound rather hypocritical since we’ve been working with the boy on reading for almost a year now. The difference is that we are working on phonics and we waited until he showed signs of readiness. We didn’t do it just for shits and giggles.
So what do you think. Teach your child to read that early for fun or wait until they are ready? And what is the best method for teaching them?
My poor baby is sick. I can count on one hand the number of times the boy has been to the doctor due to illness. The answer would be 3 (including today). The boy never gets sick. Seriously. He has thrown up twice (neither time resulted in a doctor visit), taken to the emergency room for a scary high temperature, and had a super nasty cold/flu the spring after he came home. He’s had very minor colds along the way, but nothing that has remotely put him out of commission. I knew something had to be up when he asked to go see Dr. Hautala “to get the germs out of his throat.”
He’s had this yucky sounding cough for over 2 weeks now. For the longest time we went with the theory that it was just seasonal allergies. The pollen count is high and he’s had sniffles in the Spring in the past. We figured that it all just caught up with him at night resulting in the hacking cough in the morning.
Monday he woke up with a stuffy nose and last week the trusty husband mentioned something about the boy asking “what?” all of the time. On any given day the child could hear a pin drop on the other end of the house. He’s also not one to tune us out very much.
As the week went on I was having to repeat myself 3 and 4 times with each sentence. I would get progressively louder each time I called his name. Heck, I was even resorting to sign language again. It all came to a head yesterday morning when, from the bathroom, I called, “Oleg, what time is it?” No response. Louder, “Oleg, what time is it?” No response. Now really yelling, “OLEG, WHAT TIME IS IT?” It was only then did he come down to the bathroom. I asked him as he was standing 3 feet from me what time it was and he still couldn’t hear me. I screamed at him, “WHAAAT TIIIME IIIIS IIIT?” Oh, hold on let me check… runs to look at the clock. ”8:45,” he yells back. ”ok, thanks baby.” ”8:45,” he yells again. “OOOH KAAAY,” I yell back.
The past week has been like living in an old folks home. The TV is really loud and we are constantly yelling at each other. I bit the bullet and called the doctor yesterday. Turns out the boy has a respiratory infection and the congestion with a combination of seasonal allergies is causing the pressure in his ears resulting in the hearing loss. The doc hooked us up with some medicine and all should be right with the world soon.
So what does this all have to do with being a post institutionalized child? I’m not sure if it does or not. What I do know is that the boy never complains when something is wrong. I attribute that to two years of not being allowed to complain about anything, or even when he did no one listened. It makes me wonder if those times when he’s super crabby if there isn’t something physically wrong with him. Of course he won’t even complain when he’s worried about something nor will he get out of the bed when he has a bad dream.
There is so much that is ingrained in our children from those institutional settings that we can’t even comprehend. The best I can do is be there for him and keep reminding him that it is ok to tell me when something is wrong. I won’t be mad and I can help fix it.
This up and down roller coaster is apropos for a Russian adoption and those of us who have been there and done that know all too well how that feels. Sadly, there are a whole contingent of those in the process currently who have their head in the sand and think it won’t happen to them. I have news for you honey… it will happen to you and if you think otherwise it will happen to you 10 fold. How can I be so cocky and say that? How mean, right? I can say that because that was me. I thought I had done my research. I thought I knew exactly what could go wrong and that if I was better prepared than those people that had bad stuff happen to them that I would come out unscathed. So how did that work out for me? Um, yeah. You can see for yourself here and here. There are many other posts about how our adoption process could went horribly wrong, but you can hunt for those yourself. In addition there are aftereffects of the adoption that weren’t as pleasant as originally anticipated. My shins still wince when the boy is flailing about.
That being said, I, like many post-adoptive parents, can offer a unique perspective on what it takes to go through the Russian adoption process.
Earlier today the Russian adoption roller coaster reared its ugly head with some news reporting on a stoppage of the process. Then later in the day that was retracted and there is no stoppage. Supposedly, the US is sending a “high level” delegation to Russia to talk to the Russians about a bilateral treaty for international adoption. I’m not exactly sure who these “high level” delegates are, but I can assure you they are not the right people. The only people who are remotely qualified to discuss improvements to the Russian adoption system are those of us who have been there.
I don’t recall any US government officials calling me to ask my opinion about how things should change. Had the done so I would have told them to give us training. Send down an ultimatum that requires pre-adoption classes. Then, work together to define the curriculum for the class. Let us know what life will be like and have it taught by families who have been there. Some social worker who learns about it from a book doesn’t know jack shit. The only people who know what it is like to live with a post institutionalized child are the ones who have been repeatedly kicked in the shins by their child.
And another thing, the Russians need to pull their heads out and admit that not all children in the orphanage system are healthy and if you tell us they are healthy that is not the whole truth. Institutionalization is not healthy for any child. Because of that life it causes long term damage to children. The damage doesn’t come from the adoption itself, but rather the treatment prior to the adoption. Give us the real story on our children. We will be better parents for it. You may want to put on airs and let us think that that all the children are perfect, but that just isn’t the truth.
Allow us more time with our children prior to leaving the orphanage. If you are going to have a 10 day waiting period mandate it across the board, but allow us to have our children in the hotel/orphanage so we can have at least a little bit of bonding time prior to the major changes the family will go through. Allow us to see our children in the orphanage more than 4 hours before making a decision and having to leave them and go back home. And that is another thing. This two trip process is a killer. I’m not saying the Kazakhstan process is any better with the bonding period and the 10 day, but the more time we can spend with our children the better.
Once we get home give us more training. Help us find families in our area who have adopted children. Again, the only one who knows what we are going through are those who have been there.
Give us the best tools possible to succeed as parents. The majority of those who adopt do so because they so badly want to be parents. Honestly, who goes into something thinking, let’s see if I can fail at this.
What do you think? What would you suggest to make the process more successful?
You know me. I’m a big children’s welfare advocate. So why do I choose now to keep my mouth shut about something that is so near and dear to my heart? While the whole of the world is up in arms about the Tory Ann Hansen (links to the google search for her name rather than any one single article) case I’ve been decidedly quiet. Part of the reason is because I have elected to not become involved. Most of me is numb over the whole thing. I’ve yet to pull my head out of the sand and read or participate in forum discussions about the whole thing. My knowledge of the situation is only what I’ve heard on the television news. I know, that is bad. Truth is, I’m not currently in the process of a Russian adoption so it doesn’t directly effect me. My charitable organization is not in the business of Russian adoption so it does not effect that. What it does do is make me want to hold my son and not let go.
I’ve been there.
I’ve been on the waiting end of someone elses fuck up. If you will recall a one Peggy Sue Hilt (also a google link). That case broke 2 weeks after we got home from meeting Alexander. That case is what snowballed our Russian adoption process into a giant 2 year nightmare. It wasn’t the main factor, but right up at the top. So for every parent waiting for their child… I’ve been there. I know exactly how you feel.
Here is what I do know or don’t understand. I don’t understand how a human being can do that to a child. It doesn’t matter if you’ve attached to this child or not. You do not send a child on an airplane across the world into the unknown. I would have trouble doing that with my high school graduate going off to college let alone a small child. I also know that what I see coming from the Russian government is probably not all that it is cracked up to be. I watched a segment on GMA yesterday morning where they interviewed a child welfare government official and they claim there is nothing mentally wrong with this child. This may be the case, however as a parent to a post institutionalized child… there is something wrong. A person can not come out of that environment unscathed. I’ve been there. I don’t understand why this woman does not man up and either admit that she was wrong or attempt to defend her actions (as horribly wrong as they are).
There are many unanswered questions about the whole thing. My heart breaks for the little boy and the families waiting for their children. As for my feelings for Tory Ann Hansen… I have none. I hope the outrage from those families waiting is punishment. I hope she realizes that she stood in front of a judge and swore to protect that little boy until the world ended and she just threw him away like a piece of trash. No child is trash.
I have much more to say on the matter, but for now I’m going to go hold my son. The son that I love so dearly. The son that I would walk over fire and die for. My son… from Russia.
