Enough about L.  Now its M’s turn for some drama!

M has REALLY been doing well.  She’s fully attached to me, and is finally becoming a daddy’s girl as well.  She has lots of friends, and is doing great in school.  She’s taking pride in how “responsible” she’s becoming, keeping her room clean, doing her chores, etc.  She’s like a walking poster child for older child adoption and fost-adopt.

But recently, she’s been struggling.  For the past week or so, at some point in the late afternoon/evening, she just falls apart, for no apparent reason.  Oh, she says there’s a reason, but we’re pretty sure its a cover for whatever the real issue is.

Why the sudden change?  Well, we moved.  Which in and of itself would have been enough to trigger issues for ANY former foster kid.  Because in her world, every move has meant getting a new mom and dad. But we expected there to be issues with that, and thought we were managing that process as best we could.

Then, to top it off, school ended a week later.  M LOVES school.  And that’s the transition we didn’t plan for.  Suddenly, she went from having a very structured day, to going to all day day care (which is on her school’s campus, but still…), and coming home to a “strange” house.

All we can do at this point is hold her and comfort her, and tell her a new story.  Right now, she’s telling herself the story that change is bad, nothing good comes of it, that if she doesn’t see her friends every day that means she doesn’t have any, etc.  We need to tell a different story, that change happens and is hard, but not horrible, that her friends must miss her a lot, etc.

But mostly, I suspect she just needs time.  Shoot, I’M still adjusting to the new house, so I can only imagine what its like for a six year old.

And is it wrong that I secretly enjoy these times, because she lets me comfort her and hold her and kiss her all up? Maybe that’s slightly crazy on my part, but you know, you gotta be at least a little crazy to do this job!