3 Months HOME, and progress report :-)

I can really hardly believe I just typed "3 months HOME" some days it seems like just yesterday I typed that we were on our way to BRING LOVELY HOME, and other days it seems she has been here her whole life! I have been feeling really urgent to blog again recently to let you know the progress we are making,but then finding the time and the brain power to put thoughts together in a way that expresses what I want to, well that's another story. To say we are tired is quite an understatement :-) But, I am really happy to say it is a good tired, a very good tired. We have come such a long way in this last 3 months it is kind of mind blowing! SO I want to share with you a little of what that has looked like, but this might get long......so, read it when you can and thanks for letting me share. If you have been watching the journey after Homecoming you read that the transition for Lovely and Micah especially was not a very pretty one. I will not go over that again but if you want you can look at the last couple of posts and read about it. So, many people have been asking since I posted what the "real" picture was looking like "what are you doing about it" and I thought I should tell you a little about that and also about how the changes we have made as well as the super important one TIME have brought progress and much peace and unity back to our home. Before I write more, I wanna make sure you understand: I/we are NOT experts! We do not have all the answers, and we still have a LOT to learn! We do have a Great and patient Father who sustains our whole family, and over 26 years of parenting experience (all adopted children) and have had almost 20 children of all ages and medical and emotional/behavioral needs live in our home as "family" for all different lengths of time, so I guess that gives us a little courage to write. One HUGE thing we had to remind ourselves as soon as we took a deep breath and realized things were spiraling downhill was that we had to take a super deep breath and stop trying harder, but try DIFFERENTLY! AND, we needed to ask for help asap! This is something that is hard for all of us seasoned and "professional parents" to admit, that we don't have all the skills, and info and knowledge we need to parent any child God brings us. BUT it is true! And the faster we admit that and seek help the better it will be for that particular child and the whole family unit. For us that was to talk to our Dr asap, and to review counsel we had been given by a Child Psychologist who is also a friend of our family. WHY? Well, for us we felt that we would deal quickly and urgently with any issues our child was having physically and we should treat these other concerns just as seriously. So, that was step one. And I have to say that just talking to someone that was not in the middle of it with us and had less emotion involved was super good for us. Next, we went into what we call "survival mode" as a family. Meaning, we looked at all we were doing as a family that was "extra" and trimmed as much of that back as possible to be able to completely focus on healing within our home. Realizing that this is for a season, and you only have one chance of getting it right in the first weeks of a child being in your home and it will impact that child for the rest of their life. So, after the Dr gave us her input and put some names to the issues for us we went straight to the books we have and those who have written on these subjects online,and wrote to a couple seasoned and well trusted adoptive Mama's, made ourselves vulnerable and asked for help, and read and read and researched AND it was so good! Then, we put a new plan into action. I will not go into all that I think we were doing wrong, that's a little too vulnerable in this public setting....but I will tell you the changes we made and the impact those changes had. Probably the absolute biggest change we made was to simply make a vow that we would NOT over-react and NOT take the behaviors and actions personally! Wow! That's a HARD ONE!!! When a child enters your home with a completely different way of handling their stress,loss and anger and uses those survival skills on you or young child-----I tell you what, you want to over-react! BUT, for us, we found it accomplishes nothing expect to escalate the moment of crisis. So, all of us: Papa, Mama, Big brother and even Grandma who cares for the "twins" frequently had to agree to not over-react, even when someone was getting bit,hit, pinched, etc. We use the same words over and over and over, 3 simple words "That's not OK" and that's it. There is no yelling, no rushing the child to time-out, no long lecture she probably does not understand more then half of, NO physical discipline of any kind....just those 3 words "that's not OK" said firmly, but not meanly or in anger. (if you want to know more about to spank or not to spank and our practice/policy on that you can ask and I will share, just to much for here.....I will just say we are a no physical discipline family for several reasons and do not regret making that choice for our family) If we are dealing with raging, also called tantrums but MUCH bigger and louder and lasting much longer the new approach was what is called Time-IN rather then Time-Out. For us that looks something like this:with the parent remaining extremely calm and in a quiet voice we say, "I hear you are really upset, come spend some time with Mama/Papa" and she/he comes (sometimes with our assistance of calmly taking them by the hand and helping them) and takes a hold of the apron if I am cooking (which has been one of the worst times of raging ) or puts their hand in our jacket pocket or grabs onto the bottom of our shirt and follows us with whatever we are doing. We do not talk at that point except to say every 30 seconds or so "Done now" and the child let's us know in no uncertain terms "NO!" and the screaming fit continues, or "Uh-Huh" and then we hug and squeeze, wipe the tears and she/he runs and plays. Gotta tell you, I was skeptical, really skeptical! BUT it is working! The biggest reason for Time-IN as opposed to Time-Out for us and for an adopted child who has just come from an Orphanage setting(or a foster child coming from much trauma and or abuse) was Time-Out is more about being alone, being separated from the family,trying to "work out your feelings." But being alone "trying to work out your feelings" when you have not ever been given the skills to work through them and are a child that has lived through loss, grief, separation, and not knowing who or what she can trust brought out complete fear and a complete sense of panic...........both things we are trying to eliminate not add to. We realized that when a small infant is placed in our home and is dealing with their own issues that cause screaming, raging, we put them in the sling, or Baby K-Tan and carry them close to us for as long as they need! (sometime nearly all of the 24 hrs in a day and for months and months!) We do NOT remove them from us! To me it's the very same idea. I can tell you when we first started this several weeks ago the screaming rage kept on going for a LONG time even while Timing-In and that is/was hard! But thanks be to Jesus we have seen healing and peace, calmness and stability come to this precious little heart and while before we talked about how many rages we had in a day we now talk about how many we have had this week! HUGE progress in a very short time! Another large thing that I realized was that the biggest time of raging and fits was when we were having unstructured time......free play. The fighting and then the violence was absolutely the worst during those times. So, we decided to makes life more "structured" to help avoid those times, and to also add to the stability and routine to show there are things that are always or most always going to happen that she can look forward to. Lovely LOVES school and was in class part of the day during the week while she was in Haiti so we set up a little schedule kinda like Home Pre-school and she and Micah both LOVE it! And I love the peace and calm it has brought back to our home :-) Having routines that she knows are going to happen has helped so much for Lovely's stability and security! So much so that both of them great me in the morning asking "what's today? Is it hike day/story-time day/gym day/school day?" They know what to expect and that takes much of the fear of the unknown away~wow, such a simple thing that made such a large impact. We also realized that while Micah was used to babies coming to our home for a time, he was NOT used to another child coming AND staying! So the new structure and schedule slowly put in place also has helped him come to terms with the new normal that is now our life now that Lovey is home. And they both love picking big brother Elijah up from school and telling him what their adventure for that day was, especially when it was the day they got to go to the Cookie Store after Story Time and brought cookies home for Elijah and Papa too!

OK, this has gotten way longer than I had planned and if you are not reading any more I do not blame you! Have to end with one sweet and precious change the Father has given us with the "twins"......So you know they have had their time of each just wishing the other one would go back where they came from but recently we have heard such great things as: "Help me sister, help me!" or "Micah come with me!" But the funnest change happened when we decided it was time we could move Lovely's crib out of our room and into the Nursery with Micah. We waited until they were both excited about the idea and not spending most of the day trying to eliminate each other :-) The very first night they both slept all night through without waking up at all! Wow , and within a day or two instead of waking up to the sounds in the monitor being crying or yelling for us we woke up to the sounds of two toddlers chatting happily with each other in a mix of English and Creole! Too cute. And then yesterday.........we woke to the same sounds and when Jim went in to get them up......Micah had crossed the room and was in Lovely's crib with her and they were playing just like happy little twins! Ahhhhhhh!!! Don't get me wrong, I still wear my referee shirt a great deal of the time, and many days by the time Jim gets home I am ready to just crawl into bed, but God is faithful as always and we've COME A LONG WAYS IN 3 MONTHS! Thanks for sticking with us and still praying~it's working! Shell and family p.s. one additional thought for those of you still reading who are adopting parents, I totally believe we would not be anywhere near the progress that has taken place had Jim not worked so very hard to learn Creole and teach us so he could communicate so well with Lovely! So, I guess the point is if you are still waiting to bring your child home the #1 piece of advice I can give you is learn as much of the language as you possibly can quickly, especially everyday kind of phrases and such. I know it helped the frustration that Lovely had so much that at least one person here actually understood her when she talked! No judgement here please, just a really strong suggestion :-)