November 6, 2011

Before breakfast I found Muad sitting on the step stool in the bathroom looking at her Bible. It was really cute.

Shortly after breakfast, however, we had to run after one of the girls who took off down the sidewalk and around the corner. And we had to do that a second time later in the day. We tried to play it cool, like it wasn’t that big of a deal but inside I was freaking out a bit. We went to the park shortly after the first incident and walking home from the park a very important quote from Dr. Purvis popped into my head (thank you Lord!):

“Sad children look mad and scared children look crazy.”

We have one very scared girl in our family. Her behavior would best be described as “crazy.” Yesterday we were reminded of the issue of fear and now that we identified it, I see it all day long. Theraplay explains fear in children with complex trauma this way:

“As trauma becomes chronic, the child’s neurophysiology organizes into trauma pathways. The brain becomes “fear-driven . . .” conditioned to fire up and react reflexively at the slightest hint of the past trauma. It becomes overfocused on nonverbal signals of safety or threat. The trigger – a stimulus that generates in the amygdala an implicit body memory of the sensations of the trauma – sets off an unprocessed, right-brain reaction that others perceive as an irrational overreaction . . . The brain is hijacked into an automatic, unconscious reaction to a present stimulus that has some similarity to the original trauma. Survival behavior kicks in and brain signals go to the muscles for fighting or fleeing or, if escape is impossible, for shutting down and freezing.”

As a side note, disconnection = flight, fight or freeze. These are coping mechanisms for not being connected and having to learn to survive on your own. Most kids will have a primary coping mechanism but some will show evidence of all three at times. And even I know that when I feel disconnected from Jason or someone else I am close to, my response is to shut down and freeze . . . so we all do this do a degree . . . I just haven’t had to shutdown to SURVIVE trauma that I experienced.

“Irrational overreaction” (i.e. crazy behavior) is what we see all day long from one of our girls. I know the tool to use to address her fear is to help her feel SAFE (emotional or felt safety) while building trust. Another big piece of helping her feel safe is to allow her feel a sense of control (another thing that sounds “bad” in parenting other kids). Trauma = a lack of control = scared. Giving her choices allows her to feel some sense of control, which reduces anxiety. Already today giving her choices has been very helpful. There were a number of times that she was at the door wanting to get out (not to run away, but just go out for lack of something to do or to possibly to flee a situation that was uncomfortable) and I went to her, looked her in the eyes (we are working on eye contact) and asked, “do you want to play a game or play with your doll?” or “do you want to help me with dishes or help me with laundry?” Even if what I was offering her wasn’t a “fun” task, she still did one of them. Being given some level of control over what comes next greatly reduced her anxiety and allowed her to step back inline and function better. GIVING CHOICES is amazing! In fact a lot of my day today was spent trying to quickly come up with two choices I could give her (and the others, too). I know this will continue to be the case.

Dr. Purvis talks a lot about the fear-driven brain as well. She says that often kids have been fearful for so long that they don’t know that they are fearful. I know that I have read a lot about fear, but other than giving choices, I need to do some more digging to find out what else we can do to increase her feeling of safety in our home and family . . .without using English. J I am asking God to please show us how to do this.

I changed up the schedule on the bulletin board to only include only the four meal cards (breakfast, snack, lunch & dinner). I think the other was too overwhelming for them. This way when they ask to do something, I can say “yes,” you can do that or have that, but after lunch or after dinner. This helped a number of times today. One example is that one of the girls wanted to go drive (I don’t know exactly what she wants other than to leave the house and go in the van). I was planning to take the girls to Target to find a game (or something they wanted to do) but not until after lunch. It was about 11:00 when she asked so I said, “Yes, we can do that” but took her over to the schedule and showed her the space after “lunch.” She got a big smile and was happy and I gave her two high fives. Yay! Another time one of the girls asked to eat a peanut butter sandwich and I said (while moving us over to the board), Yes, you can and pointed to when she could have it. Each time I expected push-back, but it is so cool how saying yes - even if they have to wait or need to put it in their pocket, etc. – works. My natural reaction is to say, “No, you can’t have it now, but you can have it later,” but this defeats the purpose of building trust. Just say yes, and figure out a way to tell them or show them that they can hold it or do it later, etc.

However not a minute after my YAY experience with one of the girls , Isaiah was upset about something and she (doing what I’m sure she did in Africa) took him, put him in the bathroom and shut the door. Oh boy! The girls treat him pretty badly and they don’t like that I baby him and comfort him when he is upset. I have learned this is part of their culture so it is a fine line knowing how to deal with it right now. We had a little struggle for a while later because she wanted to treat him how she has been taught to treat him and I was trying to tell her that I am the mom. This topic is on my list for the next time we go visit Rachel who speaks Lingala. After that, although I thought the “driving” question had been handled she asked me probably ten more times if we could go. At least the new schedule is a good start.

We took the kids to the school park in the afternoon (thank you, Jesus, for more great weather) and it has enough swings for all four kids. Taking the kids swinging is my favorite thing right now. First, swinging guarantees smiles and laughter from ALL FOUR KIDS, AT THE SAME TIME. Second, the girls have learned to say, “help please mom” or “push please,” and they say it every time they want a push (which is very often). It sounds so simple, but this is a great way for us to give them YESES and build up their trust banks. It is so awesome because they are able to use their words to ask me to meet a need and then I can easily say yes and meet that need. Hallelujah! That is how you connect and bond. This is why English is so important . . . so they can communicate their needs and we can meet them. For this reason, I purposely held off from teaching them how to use their legs to swing themselves. J

Today was the hardest day so far, but having written that all out, it is encouraging to me to see that we had some small victories.

And God provided some very sweet encouragement for me tonight at the end of the day when I checked my Facebook messages (which I had forgot about). A friend I know who has adopted several kids had sent me two messages that said a couple things I really needed to hear:

1. "Every action you do on their behalf communicates love to them." Sometimes I feel like can only see the ways I am not connecting with them.

2. (In regard to the girls going to school soon) There is something about having a family to return home to at the end of the school day that does A LOT for connections.

Others of you have sent encouraging words in different ways and I am grateful.