Jennie and I talk after every session about what the kids have shared so I was a little baffled when all the kids were afraid to share anything with me in the room. Each of them had to go through the process of telling me the stuff about what had happened to them, and some of the bad things they had done, so that they could hear me say that I still loved them.

It is so wild to me that they would think that I didn’t know those things about them, but there was real value in them telling me so I could assure them that I still loved them, despite their baggage and behaviors. The longer I am an adoptive dad, the more I understand just how many parallels there are to God’s adoption of me. Love, forgiveness, and confession make a lot more sense seeing them from a Dad’s perspective.

On the day our kids adoptions are finalized we have a big party welcoming the kids to the family officially. Its kind of like a wedding ceremony for us. We gather family and friends, make promises to the kids, pray for them and give them meaningful gifts.

One of the gifts is a ring. We explain that the ring is a symbol of the promise we are making to be their parents forever. We buy the rings a little big so the kids can grow into them and have given them the option to wear them on a necklace. We fully expect they’ll keep them in a drawer. Actually, our first two lost their rings rather quickly. But our newest…the one that works so hard to express his hatred…has never had it off since his adoption day. That is quite a feat considering it is too big for him. He has to work consiously to keep it squeezed in between his fingers to keep it from flying off.

I find it ironic that while he is spending so much time trying to push us away and prove that we’ll abandon him, he his literally hanging on so tightly to the promise that we’ll never leave him.

Perhaps the biggest reason I haven’t been blogging, however, comes down to one thing.  I feel extremely compelled to write a book.  It seems strange to even say it, because I have never aspired to be a writer.  I simply feel that God is asking me to write something for mothers of wounded kids, because there is nothing out there just for them.  When I was struggling the most, I searched high and low for something that would help me make sense of all of the emotions and issues I had to deal with on an ongoing basis.  I found nothing.  Sure, there were lots of books out there on techniques to use in parenting the wounded child, but there wasn’t anything that I could find to help me understand what I was going through.  I never want any mom out there to feel as alone as I did then.  So, in my “spare” time, I am working on a collection of thoughts and processes that I have gone through in trying to understand my own reactions to wounded kids and the daily abuse that they give out.  I want to share my own feelings and issues I have faced in parenting my kids, so that others will know that they are not alone.  I am working on collecting stories from our experience, as well as the experiences of others.  I am collecting wisdom from our own learning curve in the middle of being in the trenches, as well as the wisdom I have gained from others.  Through this book, I hope to help moms in the trenches understand their situation better and find hope to stay in the battle.

I also hope to help those outside of the trenches to understand the mother of a child with RAD much better.  Because I found myself in an unusual situation in life, I have found myself doing a lot of educating of friends and family to help them understand my situation, reactions, feelings, and struggles.  This takes a lot of time and energy, which, when parenting wounded kids, can be sparce at best.  I want to provide a resource to other families, so that they can help their family members and close friends understand what they are going through.

Here is where you come in.  I would love to include stories from other families, as well as the insight and wisdom you have gained on how to make it through these murky waters called parenting wounded kids.  I’d also love it if others wanted to submit blog posts, so that we can continue to make this website a place where we can help encourage one another and to know we are not alone.  Either way, I would love for you to write and submit your stories, feelings, insights, so that all of the amazing moms out there in the trenches can know that they are not alone.  I want this book to be a place where honesty and openness help to bridge the gap and show us we are more alike than we realize and that what we feel and experience in these situations is normal.  

Also, Lynn is working on getting an entire blog system set up for anyone interested.  You will be able to post your blogs in a way that makes them as public or as private as you’d like, meaning that you could post your blog entries for anyone to see, or for only family and friends of your choosing to see.  It will be like an online support group, where we can all post how our days are going and be able to encourage one another and pray for one another.  I’m extremely excited about this addition.  Look for information about it sometime this summer!

I have been doing a bit of research on the effects of writing on healing, and research shows that simply the act of writing out our deepest feelings, secrets, and circumstances can bring amazing results in terms of our own emotional and physical health.  I firmly believe that this project could be extremely therapeutic to all of us, as well as helpful to those who read it.

I want to inspire you to share your story.  The joys.  The sorrows.  The lessons learned in the midst of it all.  You have a story to be heard, and countless others can benefit from sharing it.  Even if it’s just a story about one incident, a small victory, or a big defeat.  What is your biggest struggle in parenting a wounded child?  What has been your biggest roadblock, or perspective change that had to happen in order to be able to love your child unconditionally?  What have you done to help yourself stay sane in the middle of complete insanity?  What are your secret fears in being a mom to a wounded child?  What are your dreams and hopes?  Your struggles?

Let’s continue to provide a place where our openness and honesty can help others know they are not alone, as well as to help others understand what we go through in our attempt to help wounded children heal.

More and more, I realize how important having contact with other moms of hurt children can be for those of us on this journey.  Who else can understand our pain, joys, fears, and overall feelings?  This mom and I were discussing how abnormal we sometimes feel around those who don’t have wounded kids.  While others discuss their last pedicure or how well their child is doing in school, we’re dealing with urine, poop, and sex.  It can sometimes feel like we live in an entirely different world than everyone else.  And that can be isolating!

Having contact with others going through what you are going through can be so important.  We need to know that we are not alone, that what we feel is normal, and to feel like others care and know us.  For this reason, we have our once a month Forever Homes support group meetings.  While our vision is to have one in every city, right now the extent of the meetings has been only in the Tri Cities of WA state.  It has been incredibly exciting, though, to watch this group of people develop into a true community of people who care about each other and provide support to one another.  Such a blessing!  These moms have become my friends and cheerleaders. They are precious to me, and I am incredibly thankful for them!

We have also begun to have a time for just the moms to get together, because we all started to feel like once a month was NOT enough!!  (By the way, if you are interested in this get-together and live in the Tri-Cities, it will be this coming Thursday – June 11 – at 6:00 PM, in the banquet room at Round Table Pizza on Leslie Road in Richland – We’d love for you to join us!)  We moms need each other for encouragement, laughter, and hope.

For those of you who do not have a support group in your area, please do not give up hope.  You are not alone.  I know that you are very busy with your own wounded child, but I’d like to challenge you to the possibility of starting a support group in your area.  You will be able to meet other families going through what you are going through, and you can be there for one another.  

There’s just something about being understood that fills up our soul.  I think that’s the way God made us….to need to have connections that goe beyond the surface.  To be known, understood, and loved.  And sometimes that feels harder when you’re parenting wounded kids.  Not that many people really know what you’re going through. That’s why we need to stay connected to those who do.

Until Sunday.  I don’t know what it was about the service, but it touched me.  I suppose part of it had to do with the youth band playing with such passion, and it reminded me of a time when I felt passionate about God and life.  Another part was the sermon.  Well delivered, yes.  But, more than that – it was the topic that got my attention.  With garbage strewn all over the stage and the lights darkened, the pastor talked about how we gradually allow garbage into our lives and suddenly we find ourselves in darkness.  Now, previously I would have heard a sermon like that and would have associated the garbage with doing things that are bad for you, like going out and partying, doing drugs, etc.  But, God spoke directly to my heart.  The garbage in my life?  Bitterness, hurt, unforgiveness, self-pity.  Granted, those things can be understandable in the situation.  It’s not easy living in a toilet, with pee all around you.  Or having to watch your very own puppy at every second, so that no one hurts it.  Things like that become difficult to deal with.  

But God showed me something about the way I handle those things.  I tend to allow just a little bit of hurt to remain.  After all….after so many purposeful jabs, one is bound to feel hurt, right?  So, I kept a little bit of hurt as some sick, twisted badge of honor.  Look at what I’ve endured! 

Then, I allow myself the privilege of keeping back just a little bit of unforgiveness.  After all….most people would find it difficult to forgive such horrendous acts done against them?  Who wouldn’t find it difficult to forgive a child who wiped their hiney on your sheets, or smeared poop in your bathroom?  Who wouldn’t get frustrated at constant sneakiness, triangulation, manipulation, and plain old meanness?  So, I justified it all.

Until….I knew on Sunday that my backpack looked much like that stage.  Full of garbage.  I didn’t realize what I had been doing, until I felt so heavy that I struggled so much to even pick up my emotional backpack.  I wanted to run away.

God made it clear to me that morning, “You have been running away emotionally.  You need to either completely run away (from everything and everyone – and from My plan), or get yourself back in the game.”  I knew.  My kids weren’t going to change.  That’s just where they are at.  My husband….I love him dearly, but there are times he just won’t understand what I’m going through.  And that’s not going to change.  Men and women are different, and being the mother of wounded kids can be a much different experience than being a father of wounded kids….although both roles can be difficult.  No, it was clear.  Despite the fact that all I wanted to do was to whine to God and make Him change my circumstances, the only one in the scenario I could change right then was me.  And I needed to.  This isn’t how I want to live.

So, I wish I could tell you that when I came home the angels sang and that I was behaving like Mary Poppins toward my children.  But, I did come back a new woman, with a new attitude.  I can’t change anyone but me.  And I need to live the way that I know I should live.  Following God into the depths of human depravity, using His incredible love and mercy to heal what man cannot even begin to touch – the human heart and soul – will not be an easy task.  It’s easy, in the middle of it, to find ourselves elbow deep in muck.  And that’s not fun.  But, God never intended for us to be comfortable – He did, however, say that He would go with us and give us what we needed.  I just need to ask Him more for His mercy, joy (“the joy of the Lord is my strength,” Nehemiah 8:10), as well as His eyes to see my situation as He does.  I am learning.  Hopefully I get better and better at this whole following God thing.  

I knew, however, that the day would not be a happy one for the other two kids.  While sibling rivalry and jealousy abound in “normal” families, one child having anything good can create WWIII in any home with wounded children.  Mom, of course, still tends to be the target of their rage, even though the “evil perpetrator” of their distress is a sibling.  This sibling, of course, will also be a target; however, the jealous child just wants anyone to pay for the fact that they don’t have what the other child has.

Knowing this would be a hard day, I let my third son know that I knew he’d really want tomake everyone pay for his poor “misfortune.”  I tried to ask him some challenging questions, hoping to get him to think about how his own choices contributed to the situation.  We went through all of the choices his brother had made to get to the place where he could make such a large purchase.  The choices included doing his chores, saving the money, and saving up his birthday money for the purchase.  I began to ask him at each point if he, too, had been able to make those same choices along the way.  I asked, given his own choices, why it should be his brother’s problem that he hasn’t worked for an Ipod Touch.  Or why it should be mine.  Of course, he was able to say the right things, but I knew that in his heart the fact that he didn’t have an Ipod was completely the fault of everyone else.  Maybe someday that idea of personal responsibility will kick in.  

I find that children with Reactive Attachment Disorder have a difficult time taking personal responsibility for anything they do.  Regardless of their actions, any consequences basically become the fault of anyone and everyone around them.  This particular child pretty much refuses to do chores in the time given to do them (he still must do them later, but he does not get paid to do them at the later time).  He knows he won’t get paid for the chore by doing it this way, but his desire to be in control outweighs his desire for having money to spend.  This complete desire for control keeps him away from what he really wants; however, his choices still, somehow, become the problem of everyone else instead of him.  He becomes irate when the other two kids receive their allowance and he is left with nothing.

At one point, our therapist had the kids on a point system.  Now, normal star charts don’t really work with wounded children, but this point system was designed to show the kids how their choices added up to either earn privileges or not.  The therapist also used it to point out areas that the kids really struggled with or ways that they sabotaged their own fun.  Two of my kiddos did great with this system, and, no matter what items were placed on the point system, they worked hard to earn positive things.  This particular child, however, worked extra hard to make sure he did NOT earn the points needed to be on the higher level.  

After several weeks of this, I noticed his anger when he was unable to participate in what the other kids could, simply because he hadn’t earned that privilege.  So I asked him about his anger.  He looked at me, and as seriously as he could, explained that despite what he had done, I could still choose to allow him to participate.  In his mind, his behavior should have no connection with him receiving any kind of negative consequence.

This same child purposefully made life very difficult for his teacher and classmates in his regular education classes.  After some time of this, he was unable to participate any longer and had to be pulled out.  His anger went through the roof!!  He did not understand why he should have to do one on one tutoring, despite the fact that he had chosen, time after time, to refuse to participate in the classroom activities and actually worked hard to create chaos in his classroom.  Before this, he’d become angry when he was unable to participate in special events, simply because he had proven that he could not handle them.  In his mind, he should have been able to do anything he wanted and still participate in everything that the other kids did. 

My personal opinion as to why wounded kids fail to take personal responsibility for their actions has to do with attachment.  Children who have not developed an attachment to another human being lack a conscience, because it develops in the context of bonding with another human being – in the middle of relationship.  Because they lack a conscience, they have no sense of personal responsibility and a concept that their behavior creates either positive or negative consequences.  (Many times, in children who have been neglected or abandoned, they did not get a consistent response to their cries for help as infants.  Sometimes when they cried, someone slapped them. Other times, someone gave them a bottle with curdled milk.  Other times, their cries of hunger were completely ignored.  It makes sense, then, that they have no concept of their behavior having any affect on the outcomes.)

So, how do we help them develop this?  Natural consequences, delivered with lots of empathy, help them to become more angry at themselves, rather than you, for their choices.  In those situations where natural consequences are not appropriate, we give other consequences, still delivered with empathy.  And, especially for those extreme kids, we sometimes suspend those consequences, so that they aren’t able to sabotage things.  It takes time, but eventually they get the idea that they failed to learn as young children…that their behaviors have an effect on the outcomes.  Our hope is that they learn to take personal responsibility….eventually.

Something our therapist told me really stuck out.  She said, point blank, “You are getting way too predictable.”  Bottom line – I NEED to mix it up more!  I know this relates to my post yesterday, but it is such an important point that I want to look at this in a slightly different angle.

Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder will sabotage and try to ruin any good thing when they know it’s coming.  They will also work hard to get into trouble if that happens every time they mess up.  Again….parenting these kids does not follow the normal, or typical, parenting techniques.  Sometimes when our child acts up, we need to send them to their room.  Sometimes they need a “time-in,” where they sit right by your side the whole time.  Sometimes they need to do chores to pay back for the family energy they’ve taken.  And sometimes, we just need to pull them into our arms and say, “Wow!  You are having a rough day.  You must really need my love today!”  

This becomes tiring, because we must stay ahead of the child.  I feel as though I am constantly making decisions as to the best way to handle a given situation.  Doing the “time out” thing every time becomes easy.  And, in “normal” parenting, it can be very effective to do things consistently.  With our children, we have to be full of surprises, so that they don’t know what’s coming.  According to our therapist, sometimes we have to act more crazy than them!  These kids find it much harder to know how to tick you off when they can’t seem to get the same response from you every time.  Wounded kids don’t know what to do with it.

When I’m on top of my game, I can work hard to come across just as insane as they are.  And, trust me, it really does help!  A senseless question can be met with uproarious laughter or a smirk and a quick hug.  Non-stop chatter can be met with making more noise and being louder than what they are doing.  A temper tantrum can be met with an even bigger one coming from the place they least expect it….mom.  (Try to imagine yourself throwing a big one on the floor…with your child, who has now stopped their temper tantrum, looking at you -completely wide-eyed!  Try it…it might actually feel pretty good to get out all of those feelings you have pent up inside!)  These unexpected responses keep them out of equilibrium and don’t allow them the opportunity to create as much chaos.  The crazier their behavior becomes, the more unexpected your response can be!  They do the behaviors, hoping to push you away.  When that doesn’t happen, they are thrown off.

So, I guess as crazy as I feel sometimes, I am just not being crazy enough.  So, here’s the word for today: Planned insanity!  Try it.  You may like it!

With RAD children, many times their consequences must go the opposite way from how we naturally think.  The norm says, “you made a bad choice; therefore, you need a time out.”  Sometimes with RAD kids, we must give them “time-ins,” where they are right by our side, instead of the usual time-out.  A consequence for a bad choice one time might be a natural, Love-and-Logic sort of consequence one time, and the next it might be cuddle time with mom.  It helps when they don’t know what the consequence will be each and every time.

Why?  We have to keep them on their toes.  We have to keep them wondering.  If they know what the consequence will be, many times they will sabotage anything good for themselves on purpose, because they don’t believe that they deserve anything good.  Then, they never find a way out of their negative cycle of relating and thinking.  Sure, they have to earn privileges.  But, in the middle of negative behavior, sometimes we have to give them what they least expect and least deserve.  It breaks through their walls of defense.

This need to switch things up all the time makes therapeutic parenting very difficult for me personally.  First of all, you always have to be thinking and staying one step ahead of the child.  You can’t just stick with your normal, do-it-all-the-time consequence.  You find yourself always evaluating what way each situation should be handled.  Also, therapeutic parenting requires staying in a place of giving mercy and forgiveness.  Sure, it’s easy when a kid makes poor choices to automatically give a negative consequence.  It makes sense.  Depending on what the child does, sometimes it make us feel better knowing they had to pay for their choice.  It doesn’t make as much sense to sometimes give what looks like a positive consequence for negative behavior.  Plus, much of the time their behavior makes us mad personally.  So, sometimes I find myself wanting to go for the automatic negative consequence, simply because I want to see them pay back for what they’ve done.  Sometimes we want to scream out, “But she didn’t deserve that!!”  It throws off our sense of justice to parent therapeutically.

So many times, I know what I need to do in order to help my child heal.  I struggle to give them those things, because of my own anger and sense of justice.  I want them to pay for what they did or how they purposefully try to hurt those around them.  That makes sense.  The level of extreme mercy we must give our children goes against what my brain says is right.

I fully believe that, as therapeutic parents, we will have more opportunity to understand God’s unconditional and overwhelming love much more than our “normal” parental counterparts.  God reaches down and pulls us out of our muck, despite how terribly we treat Him.  We push Him away.  He continually pursues us.  We spit in His face.  He continues giving us good things, despite the fact that we don’t make good choices.  His love doesn’t wait until we “get our act together.”  He loves us just as we are, and He loves us too much to let us stay there.  Isn’t that how we have to look at things with our wounded child?

Romans 2:4 “Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’ kindness leads you toward repentance?”

Usually, the source of our false allegations (at least the ones we know about) have been our third son.  When he first moved in with us, our son would purposefully refuse to eat dinner and then go to school the next day declaring, “My parents don’t feed me!!”  He would also neglect to wear the nice, new clothes we had just purchased him and opt for the most ratted looking outfit he could find, sneaking out with it on before we realized it.  Then, he’d work hard to look like a poor little foster boy and attempt to get others to feel sorry for this poor little boy whose foster parents didn’t care.  Refusing to wear a coat that morning, he’d look up into the teacher’s eyes and somehow make it sound like we wouldn’t allow him to have a coat that day.  Yes….good times, good times.

Luckily, as far as we know, most of the people he would tell these tales to were those who knew him well and knew about his wonderful, budding acting career.  One teacher, however, began to believe his lies and started to create quite a mess for us.  I began to get completely exhausted from the nasty phone calls from this woman and began to insist for changes in his schooling program.  It didn’t take long for us to work with those who knew us well to get him pulled out of that teacher’s program and he began to do much better in the program where the teachers knew and ignored the games he tried to pull on them.

I have heard of families whose stories did not end so happily, and my heart breaks for them.  I can’t even imagine the heartache they must have endured to be falsely accused and to have ignorant adults automatically believe a very wounded child.  Devastating!

Our son, this same boy, just a few weeks ago, began limping one day to ensure that the bus drivers thought that his dad had run over his leg that morning.  By the time I picked him up from school, it had blossomed into a full-leg drag that made Igore look like an Olympic athlete.  Of course, as soon as I told him to “knock it off and walk normally,” his leg miraculously healed and he was able to walk normally again.  Sigh.

But this time our false allegation came from an unusual source.  My daughter.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I know that the “evil witch” stories abound when she is talking with her friends.  And, to her credit, she knew better than to talk to an intelligent adult, who would have seen through her story right away.  But her story definitely showed where she was at.

We had our Forever Homes cookout last night.  Had a blast, by the way!  This group of parents have to be the most amazing group of people I know.  Loving, amazing people, who have a heart for kids.  My peeps!

Anyway, we get a call from one of the parents afterward.  Evidently, my dear, sweet daughter had told one of the other kids in the group that I slap her across the face every time I’m mad with her.  Mind you…I’ve never touched a hair on the girl’s head.  But, according to her, I slap her face when I’m mad.

How did we handle it?  Well, after getting over the initial shock of hearing this declaration, my husband decided that it was way too dangerous for her to be near her angry, out of control mother, who might just fly off the handle and slap the poor, innocent child at any moment.  So, he did what any good, loving father would do.  He protected her by sending her to her room, declaring with a chuckle that he loved her too much to risk her getting slapped that evening.  Of course, she wasn’t too happy about that, but really….we do care about her safety!

Later that evening, we told her that we knew she had lied to her friend (she denied saying anything, of course) because she was angry with me.  (I, of course, have not been giving her “any” attention and have been so rude as to go on a few outings with friends this week….the nerve!)  Admittedly, her entire goal was to pay me back for not giving her what she felt she needed (aka: non-stop attention).  I had also been a bit crabby that weekend, which hadn’t helped her anger at all.  I hope, however, in the future she learns a better way to deal with her anger.

Luckily in this scenario, too, we had a wise adult hearing the accusations and dealing with the situation appropriately.  She let us know what our child was saying and told her daughter what the truth about the situation was.  Dealing with false allegations doesn’t always go so smoothly, though, and can be incredibly difficult.  We know of a family who ended up having to hire a lawyer to deal with a counselor believing a child’s fantasy/lies.  Unfortunately, this issue comes with the territory of working with wounded kids.

Before even dealing with false allegations, I would highly recommend developing a good relationship with your child’s school and any other adults working with your child.  Without the school knowing us, our parenting style, etc., we would have been in big trouble once he started crying wolf.  Luckily, we had already spoken with the teacher, the school psychologist, and principal.  They knew our discipline methods, how we handled food issues, and also what our son’s primary triangulation techniques were.  We also had a good working relationship with his social worker.  She knew exactly what happened in our home, so that when he tried telling lies she knew what the truth was.  While I know that not everyone has a trusted social worker who can help them navigate these murky waters, this can be a huge help.

If you have a child prone to tall tales about your meanness and cruelty to him or her, I would highly recommend making friends with those adults in the child’s life.  I have heard of some moms who introduce themselves at the police stations and explained their child’s issues (especially if the child has Reactive Attachment Disorder, like our kids), just in case there was ever any question about something happening at their home.  Taking a few precautions can help your child in the long run, because it will prevent a well-meaning adult from making them more sick by believing their lies.  After all, our whole goal is to help our children heal.  Being able to turn others against mom or dad doesn’t help them heal.

One thing she said really stuck out to me.  She said, “Sometimes it’s so easy to focus so much on the labels that we forget that these are just kids underneath all of those issues.”  So true.  So many times, we look at our children through the filters of Reactive Attachment Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Autism, Bi-Polar, etc, that we forget that underneath it all there’s a child.  Granted…..a hurting, scared, angry child, but a child nonetheless.

I am praying God to give me His perspective on my kids this week.  One of those perspectives, I’m sure, has to be…this is a child.  A precious child whom God loves.  Underneath all of the anger, hurt, and awful, mean, ugly behaviors….there’s a kid down there.  Wanting, but not knowing how, to get out and play.  Too scared to.  Too traumatized.  But wanting to.

So often we forget that.  And, I think that because the behaviors usually don’t match up with the age, we assume that they are just working hard to be manipulative.  Many times, when I talk with moms of very young children, the similarities of behaviors and thought processes will be uncanny.  Because of the abuse and neglect, most of our kids emotionally are very young.  While it’s hard to remember, I’m trying to picture a little three year old sitting there in the car, asking me a question he already knows the answer to simply because he did not get his way earlier.  Not easy to do in the heat of the moment, but sometimes it helps shape my response.

The moms who do well with wounded children have developed ways of thinking that don’t follow the norm.  They see beyond what presents itself to the deeper reality.  They see beyond the annoying behaviors, to the red flags begging for help.  They have learned not to take the bizarre behaviors personally, and know that the better they do at their job the more those behaviors may come out for a while.  I want to be that mom.  I know I’m not there yet.  I keep letting myself get to this place of exhaustion, getting completely annoyed with the ongoing jabs and purposeful behavior.  I find myself in need of new perspective.  Don’t we all!?