It really was a great birthday for M.  She got to spend the night in San Francisco with her best friend, go to the zoo, and have a party with a lot of people who love her.

But the day before the party, I saw this anxiety start to develop.  And I’m pretty sure it was because her sister was going to be there.

M loves her sister. And, she hates her sister.  Sounds like normal siblings so far, except in this case, big sister was adopted by another family, a family who rejected M. And, M’s memories of E really aren’t that great – they involve E getting M in trouble for stuff she didn’t do, breaking her toys, and I’m guessing a bunch of other stuff that M can’t articulate yet.

So M was nervous.  Nervous that E would break her presents.  Nervous that she wouldn’t recognize E.  At least, that’s what she said.  But I’m guessing the stress had more to do with the unresolved grief about not living with her sister anymore.

What was especially interesting was E’s response. She adores her little brother and sister, she really does.  But this was the first time that she saw them in their new world, surrounded by a lot of people who love them – and who don’t know her at all.  Suddenly, she wasn’t the heroic older sister riding in to entertain them – she was just another loved one in their life.  At one point, I found her off by herself, because she just didn’t know how to handle it.

I assume I did the right thing in inviting E – though maybe I should have had the siblings have their own seperate celebration.  Or not.  Maybe it was good for E to see that life goes on without her.  Maybe it was good for M to see E while surround by lots of love.  I don’t know.  I guess there’s really no right answer here.

But I hate that my baby girl’s birthday was tinged in grief.  But for families who have adopted older kids, our celebrations are often tinged in grief. That’s our reality, and we’ll just have to learn to manage it.

“I don’t belong in this family.”

This, from L, as he was hiding himself in the sofa (after having just been caught stealing candy).

It didn’t help that a few minutes later, after his mood had recovered a bit, he attempted to play with M and N, and they wouldn’t make room for him.

“See?!??”  he cried.

He may have been going for a dramatic moment, or he may have truly felt that way right then, we’ll never know.  And its almost impossible to know how to respond.  Of course, your first response is “but of course you do”, but if he’s really feeling left out, he’s not going to believe me.  “Don’t be silly” is appropriate if he’s going for the drama, but a slap in the face if he’s really feeling that way.

If I could go back in time to last night, I’d say this:

“L, you are my son, forever.  You are M and N’s brother, forever.  You are the one who will keep M and N together as you grow older.  You are the one who shows the most love and kindness consistently.  You are the one who best represents what our family stands for.  You’re not just a part of this family – you are its center, its very heart.”

Oh when will they invent time travel…

A year ago, our M and L’s lives were being turned upside down – and they didn’t know it yet.

The decision had been made by their foster parents and their adoption agency that their foster parents were NOT going to adopt them – yet M and L still thought they were already in their “forever family”.

The decision had been made for M and L to move to our home – but M and L had no idea who we were.

The therapist was planning to tell them the bad news – they thought they were just going to therapy.

Their sister thought they would be together forever – she didn’t know she was about to see them only a few times a year.

The 21st is our “gotcha day”.  In many fost-adopt families, this is a happy day.  The kids have been waiting in placement, waiting for their forever family.  And when they move into their new house – even though there’s still a ton of issues to work out – there is a sense that they are finally “home”.

Not in our family.  In our situation, M and L had 24 hours notice they were moving (there’s a lot of good reasons for that, too lengthy to discuss here).  Can you imagine what that was like for them?  Going from thinking they were “home” to being told they were getting a new family?  Imagine if that happened to you, right now.  Seriously, try to  imagine a social worker telling you that your current family just isn’t working out, and tomorrow, you’re getting a new one.  As crazy as that situation would be, at least as adults, we have learned ways of coping.  Now imagine you’re 5 and 6 – how do you cope with this sudden change?

One year ago, M and L’s lives were turned upside down.  And as much as I love them, as much as I thank God daily that I get to be their mom, I must never forget what they went through to become my kids.

Oy.  Its 9am, and I’m exhausted.  Why?  Because our daughter, M, had another of her morning meltdowns.

I’ve said this before, but please don’t confuse a meltdown with your standard temper tantrum.  M woke up crying.  She drooled.  She screamed.  She refused to get dressed for school, and when we tried to put her clothes on her ourselves, she kicked them off.  This went on for a full hour.  I ended up taking her to school without her having had any breakfast, or brushing her teeth.

And she’s had 4 of these in the last 7 school days.

So here’s the question – do we push her to get ready (after all, my husband and I do have to go to work, and she does have to go to school), or do we let the meltdown run its course.  Thing is, I don’t know how long that course is!  Would she go on forever?  And does she need the reality check of being forced to get ready?

And another question – how do we force her to get ready?  Clearly, we can’t dress her when she’s like this.  I don’t want to spank her – and even if we did, I don’t think that would help.  Do we take toys away?  Do we give her a consequence when she gets home from school, or is that too far away from the time of the incident?

Do we do the reverse, and basically bribe her to get ready (with nickels, treats, toys, other rewards?).  Yes, its bribery, but is it more important to snap her out of the meltdown, or be “right”?  If we bribe her for getting ready, do we do the same with her brother?

I know, its our crazy season, so I should expect more of these, but still, there’s GOT to be a way to manage them better.

Its not uncommon in families that have adopted older kids to have a time of the year where all the crazy behaviors return or are exacerbated. It tends to coincide with either the times they have experienced the most negative transitions, or when they experienced the greatest trauma.  And unfortunately, its fairly common for that season to be right around the Christmas Holidays (when families are the most stressed).

Just last week, M and L began making some unexpected choices.  M was stealing stuff from school and day care.  L was getting into the pantry and stealing food (including our diet food, which is kinda nasty) – the amazing thing about this is that I still can’t figure out when he was doing this, as we keep the pantry locked most of the time.  M was telling incredibly complex lies – L started lying too, but couldn’t keep it up, so would fold under questioning much more quickly.  And L has been melting down much more frequently, usually over food related stuff.  Finally, we got an email from L’s teacher saying she’s noticed some changes.

Put it all together – the fact that BOTH of them are having a rough time, at the same time – and I think we’ve found our crazy season – the middle of November.  Makes sense.  Three of their moves happened in October and November.  And who knows what else they may have experienced at this time of year before they even entered the system.

Now, our job is to figure out how to help them get through this crazy season.  Stay tuned.

I’ve told you before how M is grieving the loss of her sister E.  But at the risk of sounding completely insensitive, I think she’s beginning to use this grief to her advantage.

More and more, she’s using “missing E” as a rationale for meltdowns, general pissyness, and not going to bed.  But more and more, J and I are thinking its really just an excuse for bad behavior – its not what’s really going on in her 6 year old head.

Thing is, there probably are a whole bunch of other things she’s struggling with – friends, school, recovery from her past – so I don’t want to shut her down completely.  I want to encourage conversation, and help her process these feelings.  But when she starts with “E”, its hard to move away from that subject on to something else.

How do you help a 6 year old correctly identify the source of her emotional pain?

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  My husband had his gallbladder removed yesterday (outpatient surgery, which means I’m playing nursemaid at home).  In an effort to make things as easy as possible around here, I asked a friend to take the dog (aka Cosmo) home with her for 24 hours – one less yippy little mouth to contend with, I figured.

What I didn’t count on was the reaction of the kids to the temporary loss of their dog.  M spent most of the night talking about missing Cosmo, then fell apart crying when she went to bed.   I’m thinking M is tired of missing those she loves, like her sister, and now her dog.

Would I do it again?  I think so.  Hopefully, tonight, when Cosmo comes home, M will see that those she loves DO come back, and stay in her life.

Today, out of the blue, M started spiraling into the angry zone.  This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn how to handle.  Her behavior is so completely irrational, so reason (my favorite tool) is not an option.  And when she gets like this, she’s not ABOUT to crawl into your lap for comfort.  So what’s a mom to do?

I’ve found the only thing that “works” (whatever THAT means) is to go into her room, lie on her bed (while she’s huddled under her comforter on the floor), be quiet, and wait to see what direction she’s going to take.  If there’s no move from her, then all I can do is tell her I love her, and leave.  It kills me, but that’s the only option.

But today, she was verbal.  She was able to start listing the things that were making her angry.  And I had to fight every instinct I had to try and make her feel better – all I could do was listen.

When she slowed down, I briefly mentioned things that had happened to me at her age that were similar.  Her response?  “So what?  What else?”.  She didn’t want to seem interested, but she was.

Nothing was resolved today.  I don’t know if any progress was made in her healing.  But for a few minutes, I was able to come into her anger, and show her I could survive it.  Maybe, if she can see that, she’ll learn that she can survive it to.

On Wednesday, our adoption will be finalized.  And the excitement is palpable.  But…

With that, comes a whole mess of feelings that aren’t exactly what you’d call “celebratory”.  L is testing us, to see if we’ll really follow through.  And when we do, if we’ll really be good parents, or parents who hurt him again.  M is afraid she’ll never see her sister again.  N is wondering if he can really be a big brother to two kids who make him a little (or a lot) crazy.

Then there’s all the stress related to family coming for the court date, and the party we’re throwing on Saturday.

So while we’re very happy, and relieved, we’re also having to manage some less than happy emotions.

Just a few minutes ago, N said “who’s crying?”  I didn’t hear anything over the TV, but as soon as I walked down the hall, I heard M sobbing.

Let me say, before I had kids, I never knew such helplessness as when I now hear the sound of my daughter crying.

Anyway, as I went into her room, she said “I don’t get to see E!” (her sister, who was adopted by another family).

Now, its a whole ‘nother blog post – or two, or three – to explain why the kids were separated.  But they were, and that’s a part of the reality we have to contend with every day.

What was MORE notable was that M told me what was bothering her – she’s rarely done that.  Its been hard for her to trust her pain to yet another family.  But she did.  And we talked through it.  And I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations like it.

I can hardly imagine the pain my poor girl has had to deal with in her life – but to add to it, the separation from her sister?  Its insane!  It makes me so mad, and so frustrated.  Because just to turn things on their head again – it might actually be for the best that they’re not together.  Something about how kids who have been through trauma together actually tend to continue harming each other instead of supporting each other.  And yet, how do you explain that to a 6 year old?