Mother dreams...

We drove the 2 hour round trip to NiNi's therapist for her last appointment on the books.  For the short term anyway.  We circled up and prayed at the end.  This caused so much gratitude and emotion to well up inside me that I nearly hugged our therapist.  Her treatment ended almost to the day that we embarked on this journey a year ago.  Except a year ago we had a different therapist.  One who worked on "parental attachment techniques" while the parents sat down the hall reading a National Geographic magazine.  Seemed a little counter-intuitive to me too.  And then we found Rick.  Was really quite miraculous the way that we found him (and I don't throw that word around a lot).  But NiNi is not "healed."  We understand her about 150% better than we did a year ago.  We know how to manage her behavior most of them time. But she is not healed.  Still, Chris and I unanimously agree that going to therapy (and in the process radically changing the way we parent) was one of the best decisions we've ever made. And I am super grateful for a few individuals (mom and mother-in-law included) whose support quite literally made this year bearable. But changing the way we parent has also been one of the loneliest decisions.  Everyone's an expert when it comes to parenting advice, and we've heard input that has spanned the gamut. Some of it extremely helpful and some of it not so much.  I think that most people (ourselves included) seem to operate under the assumption that once a traumatized child is in a loving home for a period of time, that somehow the hurts just go away. Even those in the adoption community want so badly to believe this.  Don't we all want to believe that the love we shower on our child will change them, melt them, soothe them.  But somehow it did not work that way for us (and I don't think we are alone in that).  Because you can't fill up a love tank until you figure out how to pry the lid off. And in some cases kids don't show signs of old trauma wounds and grief until their brains are mature enough to process them.  It's called delayed grief and it's all over the child psychology literature.  Now we operate under the assumption that a whole lot of our kids' behavior is likely related the their  trauma.  You would have a hard time convincing me that severe emotional and physical neglect for the first 18 months of a baby's life (when their brains are developing at hyper-speed) does not have lasting effects on a child.  Let alone effects that last more than a year or two.  People do not have bad hearts.  I believe they love us and our kids very much.   And don't we all tend to give advice from our own world view, based on what worked for us.  But still we hear it..."You'll spoil that baby!"  "That one's gonna need medication for sure!"  "She's just too shy"  Strangely, all advice I might have dolled out, back when all I had was a well adjusted biological child. Going against the grain to do what you feel is best for your child still takes a certain amount of courage (and there are mothers much more courageous than I.) I should have a label for "sleep disturbance"on this blog becuase I have written that many posts about the fact that Ethan does not sleep.  For reasons we will probably never know, sleeping and night time was/is a very scary time. Heart racing, sweating, blood curdling scream time. We decided to deal with this by, well, meeting his need for comfort and security. At first he would sleep only against my body. Gradually he has become more secure. Some of the time he now falls asleep in his own bed while we sit in a chair nearby.  I will say that after nearly a year of co-sleeping (in some form or another) we hit a tiny break through. Today as I was putting him down for a nap, he said to me, "I not scared mama." I still tear up at the significace of this. Wow.  Need-meeting really does produce a less "needy," more secure kid.  I am not saying we have a corner on parenting adopted children. Far from it. We still throw our hands up just as much as the next person.  And, please, still offer us advice that is sensitive to our kids' histories. I think that more this post is about making a decision to not parent out of fear. A tall order. What if they never get into college?  Never have a satisfying career?  Never marry?   But I've realized that, more than scholarships and soccer stars, I want them to be "relationship" people.  This is my new and improved "mother's dream" for them.  That they would feel compassion (we are just now seeing this develop with NiNi and she is almost 7 years old), feel safe with another human being and that safety lead to vulnerability, connect with their father and I and ultimately with God, enjoy the people in their "present" without constantly reliving their past, delight in delighting others.  A life that is void of those things is a very scary proposition. So yeah, I guess "spoiled" is a consequence we are willing to accept.  Having a kid who doesn't know how to receive or give love is not.  Just feeling hopeful today that we are headed in the right direction.