I have a cold…
I have a cold so I am even more self centered than usual – I almost never get sick, but when I do, I get really sick and I feel very, very sorry for myself. I didn’t start the day with any symptoms, they came on me rapidly starting about noon yesterday when I had a full schedule of new clients so I couldn’t exactly cancel and go home.
Anyway, I was really thankful at the end of my long and late day to get home andfind #7 here cleaning the kitchen. What was interesting was that he noticed that I was sick right away – you really couldn’t miss it – coughing, sneezing, a kleenex glued to my nose, constant whining and complaining - and he was amazed that I had stayed at work. In his mind, any reason to not work is valid. I explained that a) I only make money when I work – there is no sick pay in private practice and b) I had new clients who had waited quite a while, most of the summer in fact, to see me, so I had a responsibility to be there.
He said “I thought since you are your own boss, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to.” I said, “It isn’t always about wanting to work, it’s about always wanting to live up to my responsibilities and commitments to others.” That was quite a revelation to him. Of course, I don’t know why he didn’t notice my work ethic for the last 18 years! but, this was apparently a light bulb moment for him, so maybe it will help him when he finally lands another job.
I realized that while I’m whining away about Young Adults, most of mine are doing okay at the moment. #5 isn’t working, which is a value’s issue for me, but she is living independently and making a life for herself, and she is a sweetheart, so I should just shut up about her. #6, after being fired and evicted yet again, now has two part time jobs and a new apartment, so I should shut up about him too. Only #7 is failing to tread water, but he’s applied for a bunch of jobs, and he’s apparently not suicidal this week, so I’ll wait and see what happens.
In the meantime, I will go on sneezing and coughing and feeling ever so sorry for myself.
No end in sight…
Lately a lot of talk has been going on in adoption circles about the problems that arise in trying to launch young adults who have fasd and the rest of the alphabet. It ain’t easy, is it folks. Nobody talks about this in the pre-adoption trainings that we all attend – no one says that there is really no end in sight for those of us who have hung on through the troubled and turbulent growing up years with the hope that at least when we are elderly, our by then adult children will be on their own.
It makes me laugh when I think of all the times my YA’s told me, in their teens, that as soon as they hit the magic age of 18 they were going to be gone, gone, gone, never to darken my door step again. Well, they aren’t gone, and that’s good, I don’t want them out of my life, but I would like them out of my wallet and out of my daily worry routine. Instead, their problems only become larger and more life inhibiting and they require huge amounts of my time as well. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t resent this – these are my children and I love them and of course I want to help them – I just wish I had realized this years earlier because then I would have made some different decisions along the way – decisions that would have allotted me the time they need now without taking it away from the rest of the family. I’m very fortunate that my youngest 5 have a great deal of capacity and can, for the most part and with only a few rages, ride along as we rescue and coddle and help the YA’s.
Tomorrow, #7 will be evicted, no place to go, and I won’t let him move home like I have always let my other YA’s due to his chronic use of drugs in my house (I tolerate a lot, but I won’t have my house smelling like pot and my younger kids inhaling second hand pot smoke!!!!), and so where will he go? No job? No home? No hope? He hasn’t called us to ask about helping get his stuff out of his residence so will it end up on the street? It doesn’t bode well. My stomach is in a knot = and I still have the daily life of full time work, laundry, shopping for school clothes and school supplies for the other 7, getting New Daughter registered into school, trying to get Party Boy to get started on his life etc.
Like most other problems in my life – I don’t have any answers for this – I guess I’ll wait and see what happens and what he needs from me in this crisis that I can provide. I hope it’s more than a ride to the homeless shelter!
Born that way…
I’m no good at knowing what I’m watching on tv because I tend to just channel surf till something catches my attention. The other night, the show that caught me was about, of course, the neuroscience and neurobiology of psychopaths and sociopaths. The show highlighted a leading neurobiologist researcher who had studied the frontal lobes of countless murderers and found they had a very different brain – lots of action missing in the pre-frontal orbital cortex – an area I’ve been studying a lot in my course with Daniel Seigel. So, then the researcher scanned his brain and the brains of his wife and children. Lo and behold, his brain was the same as the murderers, while the rest of his family’s were fine.
This researcher is a Cornell – as in Cornell University- so he comes from a genetic line that is well documented in history – and so he took a look at his ancestors. He found that many of his illustrious ancestors (including Lizzy Borden) had been murderers, so he assumes this brain anomonaly runs in his family therefore, some evidence for the “born that way” or “nature” argument. However, he also noted that the murderers whose brains he’d studied in the prisons had come from horrible childhoods and chaotic families. He, however, had been raised by loving parents in a safe community with many positive opportunities handed to him in life. Therefore, he went to the “nurture” side of the argument.
He also said that he felt he could have been an awful person, he has always known he had a “dark side” as he called it, but that he never had any reason to dwell in that part of himself. His wife and adult children all described him as a very loving and affectionate and caring man. Interesting stuff. He was nurtured from conception onward, and he turned out great. That sure isn’t the history of so many of our childen, is it.
Many of ours have also come from a genetic background of violence, likely with the same brain issues in the frontal area – but they didn’t get any nurturing or care either pre-natal or post-natal, and by the time we adopt them, many more experiences of rage and victimization and loss and fear have further damaged those vulnerable areas of the brain – so sometimes what we offer is enough to build new neural pathways, but sometimes it isn’t.
Well, I lack any wise insight into this, but it was an interesting show and if I ever figure out what it was I’ll let you know.
What a load of crap…
I was reading an internet news thingy about a server in a restaurant in New Orleans who refused to serve a 7 months pregnant woman alcohol. The response to that was, to me, astounding. Several women’s rights organizations responded that the mother to be was denied her right to make her own decision about consuming alcohol because a non pregnant woman has the right to drink.
Well, give me a break. Why is this even up for discussion? I’m all for my rights as a woman and a human, but I get so sick of this garbage when it comes to fasd. People even absurdly compared this with preventing a pregnant woman from driving a car. Oh really – do fetuses whose mommy drove while pregnant grow up to be individuals who can’t learn? who can’t behave? who can’t hold a job? who can’t parent their own children? who can’t maintain a safe and healthy relationship? – I don’t think so.
I also hate it when people compared this to a woman’s right to an abortion – well, how on earth does anyone see anything similar in this? We’re talking about women who are continuing with their pregnancy – who have made a choice to carry and birth a child. It’s got nothing to do with a woman’s reproductive rights – it has to do with deciding when your responsibility to your child begins – it has to do with the right of a fetus to retain his developing brain cells and his right to grow into a fully functioning child and adult.
And, where are these *rights* of people to use alcohol written anyway? I know there are laws about who can’t drink, such as minors and Lindsey Lohan. But I don’t know of any laws that say that anyone has to drink. And let’s be clear, I love my glass of wine or so as much as anyone. I often feel the *call* of a nice Chardonnay – especially at Greek restaurants – there is nothing better than Greek food and wine together in my estimation – but let’s face it, a drink is just a drink – it has no benefit to anyone – it isn’t nourishment and it costs a lot. And if you have a human life growing inside of you, it’s down right dangerous.
Well, I’m preaching to the choir here – we are all raising children whose bmoms exercised their rights to drink while pregnant. And don’t you hate that crap about “Oh well, those women drank too much, a little won’t harm the fetus”. Really, and who are these people to decide which of the developing brain cells that fetus can afford to lose? Oh my goodness, I know I need to stop and shut up – this is one area where I’m pretty sure you feel the same as me.
So, I think I’ll go and have a glass of wine now – I don’t *need* one, I’m not even in the mood and I’m not eating Greek food, but since it seems it’s my right as a woman to drink, I guess I better – isn’t that the logic here?
Tightrope walking…
So here I am, trying to balance on the emotional tightrope that is part and parcel of being the parent of a young adult with mental health issues. If you recall, #7 was in his own apartment (asked to leave our home due to chronic pot smoking in his bedroom and walking around like stoned zombie the rest of the time) and working full time at a job he liked. But, a combo of anorexia and pot smoking left him unhealthy enough to complete a full shift so he’s unemployed and wanting to come camping with us instead of looking for a job. He has only a few days left to earn enough to pay his rent next month but #5 found him a job that would earn the $, he just won’t do it. Instead, he keeps calling us and asking to come camping. He says he’s having “emotional problems” and needs a rest.
Well, there is nothing restful about being with the family. And, I know he’s having emotional problems – he’s lonely, he can’t make friends, he’s stoned all the time, he has an eating disorder and depression. I want to help him, I’m so afraid he’ll kill himself. Yet, there is the problem of enabling, and there is the problem of smoking dope in *my area*. I have, like the rest of you, let go of so many of my values and beliefs and rules, I have almost none left – but getting drunk or stoned in my house (or campsite) is one I won’t let go of. Hanging out with the rest of us when you are so impaired you can’t put a sentence together is another thing I won’t tolerate – and, there is also the problem that he’s crabby and irritable and someone is likely to get hurt if he’s around us for more than a few hours and it certainly won’t do him any good to end up in jail for assault.
We have held the line and told him he has to work at the job that his sister found for him, or be actively looking for another, and, he has to contact mental health for his eating disorder and depression….those are our conditions for getting any help from us. Are we doing the right thing? I don’t know. I love him – I always have – my impulse is to bring him home and make him better…but I can’t – life just doesn’t work that way.
So, I walk around with worry hanging onto my soul every minute of every day. Just like all the years we were actively raising him. I’m very good at this tightrope.
Sanity…or something like that…within sight…
Only 3 more days of camping and only 2 weeks till school starts. I can’t wait!!! This summer seems to have gone on forever. I feel so petty and shallow for complaining about the privilege of having vacations and being able to spend time with my family – but by the end of my tenth week with them without any distractions and very few other people around, I really have nothing left of myself but the shallow and petty parts.
On the other hand, I’m also aware, in some dark, dim back recess of my mind, that these summers bond us very tightly and are part of what hold us together when the busy-ness of the school year strikes again. So, in a few weeks, when we’re back in our routine, I’ll look back on this and be thankful, but at the moment, I’m just counting the moments.
Speaking of moments, I had a weird one with the Mood Swing Queen this week when she was home for a day from her role as a cabin leader at church camp. She has been gone most of the summer, and as you know, she and I don’t exactly mesh well – we argue and set each other off all the time – but we had to acknowledge that we are missing each other. We were both surprised about that but had to admit to the truth of it. She is going into grade 12 this year and I expect this will be a busy year for her so there won’t be much together time coming up – we’ll have to make the most of it and who knows, maybe we’ll drive each other nuts enough again that it won’t be a problem to see each other only in passing!!
Well, off to the laundry – it never takes a vacation.
Some relief…
Well, #7 went for his medical test results today and was told that he does not have anything fatal – but he has been referred to mental health and to a nutritionist. Of course, they still have no idea of the extent of his pot smoking, and since he’s legally an adult I can’t just run in and usurp the appointment to tell the dr everything I think is relevant. I also can’t do anything to make him seek a mental health professional nor can I make him see a nutritionist. So, things may not change for him —-unless of course he wants them to.
Tomorrow afternoon New Daughter arrives for good. She must be terrified but as of last night she was still going ahead with the plans. The Littles are very excited as are my older grandchildren – it’s nice to see the family support for this adoption. This whole process has really made me realize how kind hearted and generous my kids are, including the adults and young adults. I’m a bit worried about our first week as we are still camping, and I can’t think how boring it will be for her. Even if we go home early, it will still be boring because she doesn’t know anyone her age other than the Mood Swing Queen (who is off at church camp working as a cabin leader) and Party Boy – and thankfully New Daughter doesn’t share his interests, and school doesn’t start for a month so there won’t be any opportunity for her to meet anyone. I go nuts with my Littles around all the time, so I will have great sympathy if she starts to crawl the walls!!
My ebooks aren’t going to be ready when I thought they would be – the formatting is a real pain – tedious and complicated – it was easier to just get an agent and let it all sail off into the publishing world and have them do all the work. Oh well, I’ve decided on this route for a lot of reasons so I’ll continue – maybe it will get easier as I go along.
Worry, worry, worry…and a prideful fall…
My mom always said that she had a mental worry bucket, and if she had a problem she would worry about it till the bucket was full and then move on. I’ve used that very successfully in my own life and it’s helped me to let go or move on when necessary. However, with adult kids who have fasd, add, ocd, and all that stuff, it just doesn’t end – sometimes it seems that everyday brings a new worry. I get so many emails and calls from exhausted parents who say “If we can just make it till he’s 19, we’ll be off the hook and we’ll be okay”. Well folks, no you won’t.
Unfortunately, fasd, add, etc don’t magically disappear at the age of majority – they just bring in more complications such as a) how do you get a job with limited education and fewer skills? b) how do you keep an apartment when you can’t learn to budget or when you can’t say “no” to the crowd who show up to party every night? c) how do you pick a decent, safe partner when your self esteem is lower than low? I could go on, but I won’t.
Today’s worry is still about #7 whose health problems are getting scarier by the day. How did it get to the point where I’m hoping its *only* anorexia and pot addiction? And, then there’s my having to choke on the info that my sweet #5, who has managed to get herself on welfare, is now taking #7 to social services so he can get welfare too since he has lost his job due to his health. They seem to have decided that welfare is great – solves all those nasty problems of having to look for work. Actually, I guess I’m okay with #7 getting welfare at the moment because he really is too sick to work – however, I had planned to pay his rent and food till he either gets better or we have a plan to deal with whatever is wrong with him. I never, ever, thought one of my children would be on welfare – my goodness, I guess these two didn’t get as many of my values as I’d thought. Clearly, they think that welfare is a better alternative than me. True, I wouldn’t pay rent for #5 because although she is a sweetheart and someone I am, in most areas of her life, very proud of, the fact is she is able to work but as far as I know, other than working for me on my property she isn’t looking for a job. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why she’s convinced #7 he should take welfare instead of momfare. Just another of those things for me to ponder.
Well, always another notch I can be taken down, another worry I can put into my bucket…and another day to get on with.
“Why did you pick me?”
I was speaking by phone with New Daughter tonight and she said how afraid she is of this adoption. She arrives for good in 6 days – what a risk this is for her. She has 17 years of experience with rejection and broken promises, and no experience at all with commitment and hanging in there. I can’t imagine what it must feel like. I’m very proud of her though because I know that this is a far greater risk for her than it is for us.
She said that she’ll be perfect for us so we’ll never make her leave. Well, I told her that she can’t be perfect- that we will just work through the issues as they come up. I also told her that if I was the type to make kids leave – there is a line up ahead of her that could go, at least at the moment. None of my others are perfect and more importantly, I can’t be perfect so I don’t expect that from my kids.
Here’s a good example of my lack of perfection – last night I had a great opportunity to practice what I preach with Little #13 who was raging while we had company. I chose to respond by just getting mad and dealing with the situation with consequences instead of what I know works (mirror neurons and oxytocin). Ah well, there will be other rages for which I can pull it together and do the right thing. I wonder if New Daughter will be able to forgive me when I can’t be perfect for her?
When I was at NACAC I happened to meet a young woman, age 19, who was also adopted at age 17. It hasn’t been an easy road for her or her parents, but they have stuck together and from my brief conversation with her father, I know there is love and some real joy in this life they have constructed together.
For both of these girls (okay, young women, but really, at my age, anyone under 35 is a girl) - the big question is ”Why did you pick me?” What a totally dreadful question -why would anyone have to ask why others would want to be their parent? Why can’t they be asserting “Of course you chose me!” How terrible it is that life makes young people question why anyone would want to love them! My other 14 children are not without issues, and they are not without their grudges toward me, but at least they don’t ask “Why me?” when it comes to accepting the love that is offered by others.
You know, we all talk and write and carry on about raising our children, but really, once they reach “independence” I find it much harder as a parent. At least while their still growing up I have a more immediate form of input, however useless I find it at times. But, once they are 19 (legal age where I live) and more or less on their own, the worries really begin.
Right now, my biggest worry is #7. He’s lost his job due to poor health. I think the health issue is a combo of anorexia and pot smoking but of course we have taken him to the dr. and are awaiting the results of blood tests. He’s lonely and he has a verbally abusive room mate, but he’s stoned a lot and we won’t let anyone come to our when they are clearly under the influence – a red eyed zombie isn’t the most pleasant of house guests! Today he asked to come over and hang out, but we had to say no because for a variety of reasons we just can’t get to where he is geographically to pick him up. So, now I’ll spend the day doing what I have to do with that major worry (is he too stoned to function? is he suicidal?) wrapped around me like an invisible cloak.
Today I think that light at the end of the tunnel may indeed be a train.