New ebook and new workshop series…
My new ebook has only been available a few hours and I am already receiving queries about whether I will be doing workshops on this topic. Yes, I will be available to give half day and full day recovery workshops on this topic. Contact me by email at brendamccreight@gmail.com if you are interested in booking me for one. If you want to buy a copy – it is available as a download at Smashwords.
Have your best day possible.
Recovery From Hazardous Parenting…
Check out my newest e book – I hope it helps you! You can get it here.
Have your best day possible.
Pondering things…
I’ve been busy the last few days – away and not much time at home. It’s funny to go away because even one day changes my perspective. It seems like it gives me an opportunity to stand back and take a look at myself and the about my parenting that I could do differently, more effectively, and just plain better. It doesn’t always mean that when I return I will actually implement any changes, but at least I become aware of opportunities for change. I wish I could do better when I return, I wish I could have the energy and attention and will to be the better parent that I would like to be. And, when I get to thinking like that I also wonder if my kids ever have those same kind of thoughts. Do they ever, when they’re away at hockey camp, or church camp, or whatever, stop to think of what they would like to do better? I don’t mean what they might like to do to make me happier with their behaviours (dream on eh), but I know that they don’t like the issues and problems and struggles that come their way because of the fasd, adhd, ocd etc.
I have actually asked them that question and the response was a blank stare – however, I don’t take that at surface value – I think at times they do wish for less struggle and more agreement. I know when one of our now young adults joined the family at age 10, he was so disappointed that his bad habits came with him. He truly thought that once he was adopted he would stop stealing and lying, and he was angry at us for not fixing that part of him and he was angry at himself for staying trapped by his negative behaviours. Of course, all of that anger and disappointment led to even worse behaviours.
I have to acknowledge that if being a better behaved parent is so totally challenging to me – then it must be even more so difficult for my kids to do better (especially when that isn’t their conscious goal). I guess that part of coping with life is understanding that we are all just doing the best we can at the moment – even when, to others, that best looks like the worst that could possibly be. Oh well, no wise answers from me today – or any other day.
Have your best day possible.
Last night on tv I watched a documentary called Return To Sender. It’s about the adoption of a young girl and her brother from Romania in 1991. The mother was a widow with 8 children, and one who recently died. The family lived in extreme poverty and the mother, seeking a better life for her children, basically gave away her youngest, a toddler, to one Canadian family; and, an older daughter, looked about 7 or 8, to a Canadian doctor and his family. Five months after the placement, the Canadian doctor and his wife put the little girl on a plane, by herself, and sent her back to Romania. Her Canadian citizenship hadn’t been finalized but she had lost her Romanian citizenship – this meant she couldn’t go to school for free (meaning she was forced to remain uneducated and unable to work) and it gave the same lack of status to her daughter who was born years later. The documentary covered her trip back to North America where she met with her younger brother and his adoptive family, and where she confronted her adoptive father, who, naturally, wanted nothing to do with her and said he sent her back to Romania because she hated him and his wife. The wife now lives in Italy with her 5 other children and he lives in the US.
Well, what can you say about that?! I understand that the whole Romanian adoption rush in the early 90′s resulted in some horrible placements, but really, most of us wouldn’t let a child of her age fly alone across the province, let alone back to a country where no one was expecting her and where she had no future and no hope. The adoptive father of her little brother had become quite attached to the young girl while they were still in Romania doing the adoption, and had tried to keep in touch with the doctor and his wife – he stated he and his wife would have adopted her if he had known there were problems in the other home – but the other parents didn’t even try to get help, or seek alternatives.
I don’t blame people who can’t continue with a placement – but I do blame people who do a dump and run of such a young person. These people had completed the adoption, so they had both legal and financial obligations to this child. Instead, they chose to abandon her and condemn her to poverty. It’s my understanding that at least 200 children were *returned* to Romania. Well, I was an adoption professional way back then too, and I recall how overwhelmed parents were by the poorly understood needs of the Romanian adoptees – but I also know that help was available – maybe nothing could have or should have, saved that placement, but there were people who could have given the family some direction on how to disrupt in a legal and decent manner – and since the man was a doctor, he would have had access to many services. Oh well, I know you share my anger at this situation.
It also makes me wonder how a child could just disappear like that and no one seemed to notice or care. During her return trip to Canada, the young woman went to see her former teacher and the teacher wondered how she herself failed to question what happened to the child when she failed to return to school and no transcripts were asked for. Weren’t there extended family members who questioned this? Friends, neighbours? Someone who called have alerted child protection authorities? Back in Romania, the mother of the child tried desperately to get her daughter some kind of legal status, including going to the Canadian consulate in Romania, but as a poor and ill woman she was unable to do anything. And, Canada, to my shame, said “not our problem” and wouldn’t even let her see officials or respond to her letters till the cameras got involved.
Here’s the update from the CBC site: ”In February 2005 after the documentary premiered, Alexandra took legal action against the government of Canada, and her adoptive parents.
The government of Canada granted Alexandra and her now 2 children Canadian citizenship, and she returned to Canada with them in June 2009.
A settlement was reached with the adoptive parents in 2010. In May 2005, Alexandra’s adoptive mother launched legal action against the CBC and the producer of the documentary.
Return to Sender was not aired while the case was before the courts. In 2011, the lawsuit was dismissed on consent, without costs. CBC can now broadcast the documentary again unchanged.”
This incredible young woman has been helped by the people who made the documentary and is getting on with her life – Canada finally gave her citizenship and she was able to persevere and fight for herself and her child and she has returned to live in Canada. I wonder how many other children are still stuck in the legal limbo that these situations created? We can’t even say that it wouldn’t happen today given the case a couple of years ago when an American woman did a return to sender with her Russian son. Clearly, legal and moral obligations mean nothing to some. The question is, how does that get missed, or perhaps found, in home studies? I’m sure the home studies of these parents looked great – what was missed? what was covered?
I used to do home studies a couple of times a year because I felt they kept me in touch the whole cycle, not just the end of the process. I’ve also undergone many home studies as we added to our family. And, I wrote a training manual for one large jurisdiction on how to do home studies. Still, I stay clear of them now because they just feel like too much responsibility – I love trying to *fix* a placement, but I hate the thought of creating one and missing something vital and being the reason a child is placed with an offender or with a return to sender type of family. Good thing there are those of you who are challenged and fulfilled by home studies. But, not me, not anymore.
Hey, have your best day possible and please check out my other sites if you are in the mood.
Here’s thing I miss about our acreage – the chickens! Weird eh.. I never expected that although I am an animal lover, I hadn’t really thought I’d formed an attachment to the chickens – they certainly hadn’t formed any attachment to me. Yet, they were the best entertainment in my life- I loved watching them run around and chat and think their tiny little chicken thoughts. I now live in the burbs which allow 4 chickens per household. I might do something about that just to have them back in my life. However, our long time caregiver and housesitter is moving away this summer and it won’t be as easy to get a new housesitter who will tend chickens .
Speaking of which – having our caregiver/housesitter leave is going to be devastating for our family. This wonderful woman came into our lives when we had 7 littles (5 of our own and two grandchildren) all under the age of 5 years —- 3 in diapers, plus several older children and teens who were acting out and one who had mental illness and was violent. As our need of our lessened, she enrolled in university and recently graduated and so she is now going to be off to get her Master’s degree in social work in another town. Even though we didn’t need her help full time, she baby sat for us every Friday night and she did our house/teen sitting when we went camping for 6 weeks each summer or for whatever else we needed. She’s such a huge part of our family I know that her loss will create some big ripples in our home. She’ll be great at what she does in life and I wish her the best – but my oh my, what will we do without her?
Funny the way loss comes at you, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t equate missing my chickens with the way I will be missing my caregiver/friend. Still, I know that to my children, the losses just keep coming and even though none are traumatic or dramatic anymore, each new loss weaves its way into the old grief pattern and they have to feel it all so very deeply. At least now, their losses are the kind that come with life – people move away, people die, people drift out of one’s life – there isn’t any way to avoid any of that. I try to help them adjust and accept that just as there is loss, there is also someone or something new to enter their lives – the new people don’t replace those who leave, but they create their own space and become part of what we need at the time.
Mmmm….. I hope as I explain this to my littles, I do some listening to myself and start watching for some new people to enter my life as I say good bye to this person. Maybe the universe will present some chickens to us.
Have your best day possible.
This article talks about how stress shrinks the brain. When I read it, I had an image of my brain looking like a walnut - small and hard – no plasticity left in it at all after all the years of stress from Hazardous Parenting. My reverie was interrupted by the after school arrival of one of my littles who is now in her first year of high school. She has always had a tendency to rage on occasion – it never bothered us though because she doesn’t swear or break things or harm people or animals – she doesn’t even dent a wall let alone kick one in. However, as she enters these high hormonal years and adjusts to high school she has started daily raging. I guess she manages the stress all day and then it explodes when she gets to the safety of home.
We are working out some strategies to manage this and I’m sure we’ll have it more or less under control in a week or two. My concern, however, is that while she’s raging she’s under even more stress than she places the rest of us. So, what about her brain? It’s already been assaulted by pre-natal exposure to drugs and alcohol followed by post birth trauma caused by neglect. Then, she was stuck with severe adhd (and I mean really, really severe). So, I need to start considering what to do about the ongoing damage caused by the stress she places herself, and her younger sibs, under during her rages. This is going to be a poser.
Party Boy is in another training program. Hopefully this will lead to a job – he’s done some other training programs that led nowhere and left him feeling defeated but this has some real hope attached to it.
The rest of the family is bumping along – quite happily and noisily. We have a couple of weeks of breaks in hockey tournaments so it’s just regular practices and games. Maybe I can even spend some weekend time getting the storage in our basement organized – wow – I guess this is what life is like when you don’t have to stand guard all the time.
Have your best day possible.
I really think I should be writing a hockey blog instead of an adoptive parent blog. I mean, really, another out of town hockey tournament this weekend has half the family gone leaving the other half (me) still trying to clean up after our basement flood earlier this week. As the hockey kids get older, they have more and more ice time so I’d better get used to it and just be grateful that they can participate in these activities.
For a nice non-hockey activity, this coming week #12 and I are going to a workshop on planting edible flowers, herbs, and vegetables in flower gardens. We have a whole new way of gardening to learn now that we no longer have our acreage. I want to make the best possible use of the small gardens we now have - I can’t wait to see how my new garden will look in the spring.
It’s also so very nice to have these ordinary concerns in my life these days. My adult kids have various issues in their lives, as all adults do – life just happens – but they are the problems of life – not the problems of mental illness or fasd or ……… except, I am still totally worried about Jason and his alcoholism – there isn’t any happy ending to this unless he gets into detox which he was ready to do in November but then he got blocked from that and it’s been downhill since then. Prayer is all I have to offer him at this time, the rest is his path.
Hey, have your best day possible.
The blame game…
I know that I’ve made mistakes as a parent. Why shouldn’t I? I make mistakes in every other area of my life and so why should parenting be excluded? Parenting, as you know so well, is very hard to do. There’s no time off and it’s a constant learning curve – and for folks like you and me who raise children with challenges – the learning is intense and difficult to access and it’s quite a bit of trial and error, with everyone looking in at your fishbowl life and feeling free to comment. The thing that irks me is that as some of my children grow and gain independence they look back on their lives and, like everyone else in the world, don’t hold back their comments on my parenting. Really!!
It’s not that I don’t think they have the right to do that. I do. I also think it’s important for them to examine their lives and gain some understanding on how they got to wherever they are. Still, I could use a little less blame for the stuff that isn’t my fault and a little forgiveness for the stuff that is. I know that it took me till my 40′s to finally get it that much of what I blamed on my own parents was totally my fault and that even the little they could have done better was done pretty well given their skills and the cultural parenting norms of those times. As well, for the stuff that isn’t my fault, I can’t exactly say – “Well, you were just damned difficult to raise so quit blaming me and instead blame your _______(fill in the blank with a:birth parents b: fasd c: adhd d: ocd e: unspecified mental illness f: 14 pre adoption foster placements g: damaged neurobiology….. etc) !” After all, I was just trying to fix and manage what all that caused”. Nope, I can’t say that.
Does this mean that I’ll have to wait till my kids are in their 40′s before they gain enough perspective to understand and forgive and stop blaming? I’ll be dead by the time some of them get to that age. Uugghhh. I don’t want, need, or expect gratitude. I don’t want, need, or expect understanding. I just get tired of undeserved blame. I wonder if any pre-adoption training programs will ever include a section on how to handle it when your child turns 18, or 19, or 25 and starts the blame game. Don’t think so.
Oh well, have your best day possible and please check out my other blogs if you have the time and the inclination.
Happy New Year…
Another year almost over – the older I get the faster they go by – some years I’m happy to have them over and done with – other years I would like to go a little slower.
I’m looking forward to2012 my new classes in technical writing – courses that are way beyond my comfort zone and will stretch my neurons this way and that. As part of my course content I have to learn to write manuals – so I think I’ll put together some of my workshops into an ebook manual and see if they will be useful to others in that format. I’m also taking some more neurobiology courses next month – I can’t stay away from that stuff – anyway, I’ll hopefully put that into some kind of etraining format as well.
Funny thing – we called #7 on Christmas day – he lives in another town and we never get to see him. He’s always been very tied to us, despite his violence and rages and destructive tendencies – so we thought he’d like to connect with the family on this occasion. Well, he later complained to #5 that our call cost him too many minutes on his phone. Really, some things just don’t change in function, only in format. Okay, no calls in the future – I’ll just text him my best wishes.
Fun times tonight – dinner out, then family joining us at midnight to make noise. Then off to bed because my late night party days are loooonnnggg over.
Hey friends, have your best day possible and best wishes for the New Year.
Choosing my battles – and choosing to not battle at all…
We’ve returned home after a few days away at #11′s hockey tournament. The remainder of the week will be spent at # 13′s hockey tournament – I love my kids but I’m getting a bit tired of freezing my ample behind in hockey rinks. We have two more tournaments in January so no breaks in the near future. I want to make it clear that I’m whining -not complaining – I’m so happy to see my younger kids taking advantage of all the opportunities that we can offer.
Here’s a thing I’m no longer battling about – one of my boomerang young adults is not cleaning up after himself. Dirty dishes left on the stove and in the sink, jackets and shoes wherever they land. I can tell you that in the past I would have been snarling about this but not this time. Why? Well, I still don’t like it – but things are going so well between us now that I just don’t think it’s worth it. I would rather just complain behind his back and let it go otherwise. The relationship we have is so much more important than the dishes. I know too that part of my ability to let it go is because before it would have been one more thing on top of rotten attitude and hateful behaviours – but those days seem to be over – now he brings a very positive attitude and treats me in a loving and respectful way – so I’ll clean up after him and do my part to keep the relationship as positive as possible.
I’m still worried sick about Jason and that’s a battle I will hang on to – his drinking is so far out of control and I can’t imagine what it’s doing to his children to live like this. His partner is a good mom and she doesn’t leave the kids alone with him so they are protected – but they see his drinking and we all know what that does to little ones. The powerlessness that I, as the parent of an adult, experience regarding his addiction is so ugly and terrifying. He has a heart condition too so drinking can kill him in many different ways. He is also a good son to me and we have a good relationship but I”m going to be setting some stronger boundaries with him and I’ll be very overt about his need to get into detox and rehab.
Well, time to get ready for another hockey game. Have your
Choosing my battles = my inner warrior!
best day possible.