Life Books

My little one is 7 and she's been asking the past couple of days to look at her book.  I'm a couple of years behind, but she wanted to see what she looked like when she was little and see what we did back then.  So, I pulled it out and we sat and looked at the pictures and I read what I had journaled to her.  We shared lots of giggles and "hey, I remember that."  She was a little surprised when she asked me how there was a book in the store about her for me to say that I made it for her.  That meant so much to her.  I told her that once they start back to school, I'm going to work on each child's book each week until I can get all caught up.  I've hated that I've been so far behind with sending out pictures, doing life/scrap books and all that.  My poor baby is 2 and she doesn't even have a book yet.   That's gotta change.  I used to love doing it when I had more time and then I did it digitally for awhile...and now I really want to go back to doing paper.  I'll probably keep them simple until I'm caught up and have more time to spend on each little layout/story and all that.  But, spending that time with her helped me to see just how very important those books are...to me and to them.  They like to see their story written down and in pictures.  We can help them by creating it for them and they get to see that it's something special just for them and it was made warmly by us to preserve those memories.

Destructive Behavior

It hasn't been a good day around here with my son.  He started out the morning being very agressive, wouldn't calm down, and was doing everything he could to push buttons.  I told my girls to ignore him and when they finally did, he didn't like it and socked one of them to get their attention.  It became a morning of just trying to dodge behaviors and keep them from getting hurt and so I told him he was going to have to go to his room.  He was just out of control and it didn't stop in his room either.  He screamed that we hated him, that he just wanted to be downstairs, that he didn't want to be in his room, that he was hungry (he had just eaten), that he had to go to the bathroom.  He's broken hangers in his room, but the biggest thing that happened today in his room was this.  This is hole #3.  He did it with his feet.  All because he's not getting his way.  He ran off from me last night when we were leaving neurofeedback therapy and starting kicking the pea gravel at me all because I told him that we were eating at home and we weren't going to Whataburger.  This is my kid that always has to be first or he retaliates, whenever he's hungry I'm supposed to just give it to him or he retaliates, he wants what he wants and he expects it or he retaliates.  The rules don't apply to him.  He does whatever he wants.  When I don't give in, he retaliates.  He retaliates a lot.  We've taken things away, given extra chores, put him in his room, losing out on priveleges, spankings (that's my last resort when nothing else has worked for multiple offenses)...it makes no difference.I have come very close to taking him to the children's hospital over the past couple of weeks.  However, we're still trying to see if neurofeedback is going to help him and he has an appt today and tomorrow to help gather that info and we see the psychiatrist on Thursday so I'm just trying to hang in there.  To say this day has been challenging is an understatement.  I wound up having to get my Father-in-Law to come over to help for a bit so I could regroup and I had another adult here in case he escalated further.  I hate days like this.  I hate the fact that he's only 6.  I hate the fact that he can't see that his actions have consequences...nope in his mind...this is just all my fault.  I hate to see that he is so full of anger.  I just wish he would learn to comply with rules and not hurt others.  He doesn't see how his behavior effects others at all.  No remorse for anybody that he hurts or anything that he damages.  He has to pay it back...yet he doesn't care enough to change the behavior.

Lord, help our children that struggle with destructive behavior to let go of their anger in a more positive way. Help us as parents to seek guidance from the Holy Spirit to know what to do in these instances too.  They can be so overwhelming at times.  Amen.

Anxiety

Sometimes I wonder if hearing from the birth family will ever quit causing anxiety for me. I understand that they didn't grow from my tummy and that the birth family will always be a part of them. I strongly get that.  We have a semi-open adoption with our kids birthparents. I do pictures on a blog with updates for them so that they can watch their children grow. We were going to allow visitation with the girls and their birthfamily. But due to some circumstances, we felt that wasn't in their best interests any longer. They haven't seen her in a couple of years. They don't ask to see her or anything and I've always told their birthmom that if they got older and they wanted to see her that I would help them to do that. I wound up having to change my cell phone number and all of that stuff as one of them was constantly calling or texting me all of the time and it was too stressful being in constant contact. So, I made the break and started doing everything on a blog format instead of by cell phones and e-mail. It was probably one of the best things that I ever did. It's given me the break that I needed so that I wasn't dreading every time my cell phone went off and I could open my email and not see a ton of emails wanting this or that multiple times a day. It gave us boundaries. Those are a good thing. :-) I still do the blog for her and she checks in sporadically. Sometimes I still feel anxiety about it. I understand that she just wants to see them grow and she wants to know how and what they're doing.  Sometimes I feel torn on wanting to be there for her too, but yet God has told me that my children are my priority.  I heard that message loud and clear.  I can't do both.  At least not right now.  Yet, why do I feel anxious when she requests things? I know why if I really think about it...I want to be so on top of things, that she doesn't have room to ask for things. How ridiculous is that? I know that a lot of times, I'm just waiting for her to check in before I do more...yet I'm the one that once she asks for more feels guilty for not already having it done for her. The blog doesn't define me as a parent, I know this. She will never see the true picture of what my house is like, what parenting all of my children is like, and I know that I do the best that I can...I just wish that hearing from them didn't cause anxiety sometimes like it does. God, give me the graces to talk with the birth family and to continue praying for them. Help me not to feel anxious about anything. For You say in Phillipians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Amen

The Power of Prayer

My kids have been regressing over the summer. It makes some pretty overwhelming moments in our house where all I know to do is pray. I spend a few minutes every morning covering my family in prayer. When the kids start misbehaving, I try not to get angry, and we've been praying together about the behavior. I pray out loud so that they can hear me praying as well when I need help. I want them to get the message that we can take every little thing to God and trust in HIM to take care of us. That He will provide for us and give us His gifts and His graces. And I want them to learn to see how God answers our prayers. We had a little incident this morning. My son is 6, but about a month or so ago, he regressed and we started having accidents again. He had them when my daughter was born, and then when we have overnight guests sometimes that is a trigger as well. You never know when the storm is going to hit. They always just used to happen at night, now they're happening in the day time too. I try not to make a big deal out of them...it's a control thing for him. I went up to get his clothes for him this morning to find wet clothes sitting in his closet. I immediately called him upstairs and asked him to join me in the closet. I asked him if he could tell me about his clothes. He immediately told me that he had an accident, but he didn't want us to know. I didn't get upset, I just prayed over him and then had him bring his clothes down to the laundry room. I want him to understand in the Power of Prayer and I think even if we just say short little prayers and ask for what we need and ask for help with certain behaviors that happen a lot, they will begin to see God working in their lives and in our family.

 Mark 11:24 So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

 Philippians 4:6-7 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Therapy

A lot of these kids need therapy to get them caught up developmentally. That was touched on in our foster care training, but the experience taught me a lot more than actually just hearing about it. Our son needed some phsyical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy. My girls did speech and occupational therapy too. My advice is to find a home health agency that will come to your home to do it weekly. The more they spend in therapy and have time to practice, the better they seem to do better with it. We started with a therapy company and they'd come out a couple of times a month and then we switched to a different agency that came out twice a week per therapy group and it seemed to help the kids a little better. Yes, it was hard to live around a therapy schedule for so long, but I just did it and we made it work. It helped that I really liked our therapists and that they became friends too. :-) After doing therapy for the last few years, we just got our last girl all graduated from therapy last week. Happy dance although it's bittersweet to say good-bye to the therapists too.

 We did some behavior therapy with them too over the past couple of years and it just wasn't working. I'm a Mom who doesn't stop looking for answers so we stopped doing the therapy and once we started counseling last year, she confirmed to me that the conventional behavior therapy classes just do not work on our kids. At the beginning of the year, we had gone to our counselor and I was venting about how I was just so frustrated with behaviors going on in our house. I didn't know if it was a case of "I can't" or "I won't" learn that things just aren't acceptable to do. She told me of a partner that she worked with that was a neuropsychologist that could do some brain mapping and give us some answers. There was a lot of answered prayer in that visit. He didn't take our insurance or the kids form of Medicaid that they have as their secondary insurance and so he tested them for free. Last week, we got the test results and it was very neat to see that he described our kids to a T just based on neurological data and he wasn't familiar with our kids like our attachment therapist is. The dr. listened to my concerns after he presented the results and he offered to take my kids and do neurofeedback therapy with them. The only thing is that we had to be committed to starting out with 3-4 visits a week until things got moving and then we could come in 1-2 times a week. Since I have a handle on the girls and my son seems to be escalating, we're going to start with my son. He said that there is a small percentage of the population that doesn't respond to therapy, so we are praying that he will respond. But, due to that, he's giving us the first 10 visits for free. I was concerned about paying out of pocket for treatment as again, he doesn't take our insurance. However, he told us that one of the things that impressed him was that we are strong advocates for our children, so he'd work with us on payment, he just wanted to help. So, we will start therapy this week or next. I'm SO excited.

Parents, we can't give up on advocating for our children and for trying to help them all we can. And if you find one person that doesn't seem all that in tune with trying to help your children, don't be afraid to look for answers somewhere else. There are people out there...I know they're not always easy to find...but don't give up. Keep praying and asking for guidance. :-)

 Lord, I lift up the parents that are trying to do all they can for their children, some may not know where to turn anymore, some of this may all be new to other parents too. Just give us all guidance to know where to look and provide us with doctors and therapists that are willing to listen to us and to help our children. Amen

The heart of adoption...

I've wanted a big family ever since I was a little girl. I didn't have a heart for adoption back then. God gave that to me just a few years ago. I hear so many people say that they could never adopt a child that wasn't their blood. Having 2 biological children and 3 adopted children, I can tell you that I love all of them. The fact that 3 of them don't share my DNA, means nothing to me. That bond between me and my children can't be broken. They grew in my heart and they continue to do so. :-)

 How did God grow my heart for adoption? My oldest daughter is my biological daughter. We had some help to conceive with her. When she was about 3, she began to ask questions about why her friends had sisters and brothers and she didn't. We had been unable to have another baby. We began to look into adoption. Domestic or international? Well, I didn't think at the time that I could handle giving the child back to their birthparents at that point so we began to look into international adoption.

 We chose to look into Guatemala first, God closed that door. After a little while, I started looking into China. We started putting that plan into place with how much money we were going to have by when and then changes started happening to the China program that was going to make us have to wait for a very long time. With our only daughter already in kindergarten at that point, we didn't want to wait much longer to add to our family. We felt like God was closing the door there too.

 One night, I couldn't sleep thinking about it all and I felt God calling me to look into adopting here. I looked into adoption agencies here in our state and found out about a foster care agency that was literally 5 minutes down the road. I contacted them and we went to an informational meeting about a week or so later. We decided to start the process and we went through our 6 weeks of training, all the paperwork, the background checks, and the references. We had to work a little harder than the rest of the couples we went through as we had also lived in 2 other states within the past few years and we needed background checks from them too. It was a little nervewracking with all that was needed, but we got through it. We made the decision though that any child that we were offered, we would take as a placement regardless of their race and as long as they were our daughter's age or younger as we wanted her to remain the oldest. We also determined that if any of them came up for adoption, that we would be their forever family.

 Shortly after we became licensed, we got our first placement. A 13 month old little boy, that we were just supposed to have short-term while his birthmom got some help that she needed. Well, we wound up adopting him right after his 3rd birthday. He's our very strong-willed, but very cute little boy. Parenting him is very intense to say the least. He's always kept me on my toes. He's teaching me a lot and all I know to do some days is to cover him in prayer. I often wonder if he's going to be a lawyer one day with how argumentative he can be and with his endless chatter. Being cute is his saving grace. ;-) He struggles with ADHD, sensory integration, oppositional defiance disorder, reactive attachment disorder (RAD), and post-traumatic stress disorder. A couple of years after we adopted him, our 2 girls came to live with us...they kept me on my toes a lot too until we found out that they both had ADHD. Once we started meds and their adoption happened, a lot of the behaviors settled down. I think they just needed to know that what we were telling them was the truth. The older sister has ADHD and some ODD, but the ODD mostly goes away when she is on the right dose of meds. The younger sister has ADHD, sensory integration, and some problems processing information.

 Right after we found out that we were given the chance of adopting the girls, I thought I had just been sick. God gave us an additional blessing. After 9 years of trying to have another baby, we were pregnant again with another baby girl. My son wasn't happy that it wasn't a little brother for him to play with, but we were all excited that she was coming. Due to some problems with high blood pressure and diabetes, she came 5 weeks early. She's now 2 years old and she brings all of us so much joy. She's really taught me a lot about attachment too and we are striving to cover our adopted kids with the dance of attachment to make sure that we meet their needs from the things that they missed out on in the years that we didn't have them.

 We fostered 8 children and adopted 3. I will never forget the 5 that we fostered and pray for them all of the time. Those good-byes were hard and I think they all took a little part of my heart with them when they left. I will share here about our struggles, our accomplishments, and different things that come up with our family in the hopes of being an encouragement to others.

 Lord, I pray for anyone that is reading here that is pondering adoption. I pray that they give You their hearts and let You work through them. You give the graces that we all need to handle whatever comes our way. Help them to see that you can parent a child even if they are not technically their blood. Help them to see that by caring for Your precious children, that the bond grows in their hearts for that child with time. Amen 

Verses on adoption...
 Ephesians 1:3-8 I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. I am a child of God; God is spiritually my Father. 

Romans 8:14,15 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."

The Pea Garden

I have felt God stirring in my heart lately. I wanted to write about adoption and this crazy journey that our family is currently going on. I wrote a few chapters of a book and then I felt God talking to me about blogging and developing an adoption community of faith and hope and love. I want to encourage others and be God's light. This parenting thing is a winding road full of so many emotions...sometimes I find myself wishing that I had a book of directions on how to help my adopted children through their walk with grieving their birth parents, knowing what to magically say to make it better...wondering why I can't seem to teach them right from wrong, dealing with many different therapies, all of that stuff. So, I thought I'd start writing here about different topics, praying for our children, praying for your children, what does the PEA have to do with it...we are Parents Embracing Adoption. This is the start of our very own pea garden. :-) I hope to be an encouragement to you.