My Dream of Having Kids

When I imagined starting a family, I'd replaced biological kids with adoptive kids.  That was it.  In my head we did all the things any family would do, fought, loved, had dinner, played soccer.  My family was my family.  We'd play board games and go camping, have holidays with my family.
 

The real me knew it was a bit more complicated then this.  In the state I lived in there are training and class requirements to adopt children, there was also the reading I did, and the "what type of children are you interested in" form.  This is a form my partner at the time and I spent a lot of heartache and time over.  You had a long list of physical, mental and emotional problems a child could have and checked off the ones that you were willing/not willing to consider.
 

For instance, I thought I could handle a child who was blind or deaf or had a birth defect, but not one who needed continuous serious medical care.  It was important to be honest.  Which was hard, as I've said before- rarely do assholes want to adopt.  You fill out this form trying to be honest yet feeling every "no" as a rejection to a potential child.
 

It's been 6 years since I filled out that form, and I still remember many of the "nos".  Hepatitis was a no, since I didn't feel like we would be careful enough to ensure the safety of ourselves and our potential other children (we wanted to adopt more then one).  HIV/AIDS was a no for the same reason, although this felt like a betrayal to my community.  Spina Bifida was a no since we weren't sure we were prepared to handle the sort of care needed.  Even now, these are hard to admit.  Each and every one of these children deserves a loving home.  It was important, the social worker told us, however to be as honest as you could about what you can handle and can't.
 

Another 'no' was Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), for some reason (I don't remember now) this one was called out as a non-starter to us at the time.  The other mental illness neither one of us were willing to take on was Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), from the stories we'd read these were the kids that were really, really challenging.
 

I laugh now.  The truth is the hardest part about adopting kids was realigning my dream about what having a family and being a parent would be like and what it actually was.  Neither of my kids had much interest in soccer- we spent one season watching a dandelion picker.  Reading to my children every night did not instill in them the love of reading I'd hoped it would, at least not yet.  We've only attempted to camp a couple times, which were an exhausted practice in my stubbornness to 'have a good time', and don't get me started about board games, that will be blog post in and of it's self.
 

I imagine all parents have this.  Biologically created families come home with these bundles of joy who puke and poop non-stop.  In the genetic jackpot there are certainly families who have children with a variety of challenges.  Bio-families don't get to fill out a checklist of 'nos'.  
 

I spent the first two to three years as a parent realigning my image of what I thought my family would/should be to what it was.  It's not like I had this iron image of my kids and their personalities.  I expected them to be different then me, to like cheerleading and olives, to be into dolls and gymnastics.  I was waiting for them to be unexpectedly awesome in ways I never imagined (which has happened).
 

The surprise, and struggle, isn't from my kid not liking soccer.  It's because I realized early on that I could never be their coach.  I couldn't be a significant teacher.  My role was parent, and that role for them was so damaged from their early life that I simply couldn't be anything else.  I tried to be coach, teacher, therapist, mentor, and every single time our damaged relationship of parent got in the way.  I wanted to tackle my child's problems reading head on and ended up running straight into a brick wall as my child confused my reading help with parental disapproval.  I tried to be an assistant coach and ended up completely embarrassed as my kid continuously and blatantly sassed me in front of the team as she might at home, to melt down when I cracked down on her in front of the team.  I have spent so much time caring for these children, setting boundaries and rules and structure, and being the parent that they need.  I've had to come to grips that their most significant academic, physical, and social leaps will happen because someone else, a teacher, coach or friend, connected to them on a level I can't.  My job is parent, to prepare the earth for planting.  To lay the foundation and safety to allow the growth.  Or at least that's been my role and is my role in the foreseeable future. 

How to cope:
 

I remind myself that I'm not in this for me, I'm in it for them.  I need to be the person in their life that they need right now.  Some day, in the very distant future, I'll have grandkids and will be their soccer coach.
 

What also helps is remembering that biological families don't always get what they expect either.  This is something everyone has to go through to some extent, as with many things with my kids it's a normal behavior/thought/moment taken to a more extreme level then most folks experience.

Christmas Spirit

So I wanted to share a quick "proud of my kids" moment.  My wife and I try to help out a family or two over the holiday.  On lazy years this is grabbing a couple items off a "need" tree at a local charity, or helping one of the "neediest" families in the area.  There is a family I've helped for years, and we always send them a package.
 

This year has been a year of struggle for many people I know.  I feel very fortunate for, financially, how we've fared.  It's one of my values that I have an obligation to help my fellow humanity.  So, we broached the topic to the kids...
 

Moms: Alright, you know how we help someone out every year?  Well there's this lady at my work.
 

kids: Lady X (obviously not her name), with the three kids?
 

Moms: Um... no, actually Lady Y with her two kids.
 

kids: Can we help them both?
 

It was one of those moments where you realize that some of your values did actually sink in.  The kids went through their toys and stuff and donated some to the kids in need.  In fact, our eldest (the one who gives us the most trouble at the moment) asked if she could donate half of her xmas money (she gets a bit between her adoptive and biological families) to help out these families.
 

Both of us cried and the kids thought we were crazy.

Get used to being an Asshole

When I think about a group of folks who are willing to take in children who do not have homes, the first character trait I think of is not "asshole".  In fact, I'd say the exact opposite.  However the truth of the matter is that for RAD kids, you will be painted as an asshole to almost everyone... and (maybe it's my naïve that finds this surprising) most folks will believe them.
 

Everything is always a BIG DEAL.  In my previous post I mentioned ice cream and braids.  These are a big deal.  Like not, I'm going to be jealous and cry big deals.  Like I'm going to put a giant hole in your wall BIG DEALS.  This extends out to almost every facet of your life.  Everything is worth arguing about.  It's not about the thing, the privilege, the rule... it's about who's in charge.  There is never an opportunity to challenge "who's in charge" that goes untested.  Here's the thing- it doesn't necessarily get better.  What the books, the pre-adoptive 'training', the sub-par medical and psychological professionals trying to help you don't tell you (and sometimes don't realize) is that either a) your child is just going to be like this for the rest of their life with you and/or b) the steps you'd need to take as a parent to get your child to a different place are beyond your ability.  What this feels like, coming from your kid, the visceral feeling is "you are an asshole mom" in a 100 different ways, daily (sometimes hourly, or minutely).

I once read a book aimed at RAD parents that summed up their solution to dealing with RAD kids as: quit your job and have one parent devote their life to the child- no other children, no pets, no nannies... just 1:1 parent/child-ing for 4-8 years.  Let's think about that for a moment.  For how many people is this a realistic choice?
 

Most parents, who survive the first year- there are many that don't, end up developing a rigid, structured world for their child.  We create RULES that govern everything from when TV can be watched to how phones can be used to when desert can be expected and how quickly it is expected to buckle your seat belt in the car.  This won't prevent the arguments over the actions expected.  But it will give you something to point at... when you catch the kid in a lie, or dole out a consequence.  It also mitigates the "But I didn't know" arguments. (Funny aside... did you know that it's impossible to tell that giving your teacher the bird will get you suspended until you try it?  "I didn't know...").
 

Here's the other side to being an asshole.  Not only will your child tell you such, but most of the adults who see you interact with your child will think (and say so) too.  I'm talking about Aunt Tamika, who only sees you once a year... your own Mother who can't understand where you learned to treat children that way... the woman at the grocery store who doesn't get why you tell your kid if they ask for gum one more time there's no TV this weekend.  We'll have further discussion on the isolation you experience, but for now I just want to make the point that you will really, really feel like you may in fact be an asshole.

How to cope:

This one is hard for me.  One of the things that helps the most is to realize it's not me.  I do this by reading other blogs, talking to other parents who are struggling with their children's mental health, and generally ignoring all the 'how to parent' books that offered seemingly easy solutions (that one took me a while). 

There's also this need to develop a thick skin without becoming insensitive and numb.  There's this painful period where your family and friends from your previous un-kid life get weeded out.  You can't exist in a bubble, but you've got to be careful about who gets invited in- whose opinion you care about.

Trying to Find Reason

Lately life has been pretty hellish.  One of the reasons we started the blog was to share our experience as a way to find meaning in some of the most recent events.  Life in our family is a constant struggle, a constant battle of wills, it's simply exhausting.  There are, however, moments and spans of time that are uniquely worse then the normal trudge.  We're in one of those moments now.
 

This fall my child was hospitalized for the 4th time for mental health issues.  As a parent you try to find meaning.  Did this time period coincide with a historical traumatic event in my child's past?  When she was taken from her birth family?  Moved to a different foster family?  Had a violent moment with some caregiver?  Hospitalized before? 

You spend the time wracking your brain for a reason.  Modern psychotherapy is built on reason and logic.  If we can logic out an individual's response and emotion we can unravel it and treat the cause.  This strategy may be entirely effective with many people (though in my experience, it seems unlikely).
 

There's a two prong problem that we've encountered when trying to reason out the whys:

1)  My child has undergone so much early life trauma that it's nearly impossible to untangle one or even a couple historical events that produce the behavior you see today.  Approaching her with cause and effect psychotherapy is a practice in futility.

2)  Half the time the responses you're getting are based on a manipulative version of the truth.  Are we sitting at the hospital today because my child is truly suicidal?  Or is it because her sister got ice cream when she lost dessert privileges?  As a parent, I can't think about this too closely.  A child threatening suicide is something you take very seriously.  There is a foot size hole in the wall because my youngest child who mastered the art of braiding hair didn't want to braid my oldest's hair that morning.  There is no hair braiding childhood trauma incident.  There is no ice cream trauma.  This is the deep seated need to control everyone in her sphere, and she's smart and doesn't play by the rules.
 

So something I want to include in this blog is not just a laundry list of struggles, but the solutions and coping mechanisms we've found as parents that help us get up in the morning.  Sometimes it's hard to see, when you're in it, how to survive - much less how to thrive.  So look for these at the end of each post.

How do I get through this?
 

Not sure I've figured out how to thrive in these moments, but surviving is definitely possible.  Something that helps me the most is remembering that this is a moment.  It may be a week, a month, six months, but it will pass.  My kid can hit the self-destruct button on her life (jump up and down on it for weeks, even) but this doesn't mean that I have to hit it on my life.  She will grow up, she will exhaust herself from all the jumping on her button, we will all survive.  Cultivate patience and an appreciation of time.

Purpose

I'm not an expert in parenting, adoption, or Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).  In fact many days, my only success seems to be that at the end of the day my cat still snuggles up to me to sleep.  Parenting is a tough gig, no doubt.  Parenting an adopted RAD kid is the most exhausting, terrifying slog of my life so far.  Notice I didn't say something like "rewarding" or "hopeful" or "loving".  I'm sure I'll use this blog to talk about good days, but today... let's be honest.  I'm starting this blog to talk about the bad days, about surviving and sacrificing.

I did a quick search online for RAD blogs.  Most of the ones I found were out of date (the last post being a couple years old- which means either the kids won or they eventually grow up) and none of them were queer (feel free to educate me).  I wonder about this.  I know there's queer parents out there whether lesbian, gay, trans or just plain queer.  I know we all adopt, because frankly biology, for us, takes a lot of work.  I also know we struggle, because anyone working with trauma-kids struggle (plus... Rosie O'Donnel).

I'm writing this blog to show we exist.  In the era of Marriage Equality, when queer families are fighting for their existence and their right to be visible, there is significant pressure to be successful.  The media will latch on to any "failed" or "failing" queer families and tout them as proof that we shouldn't exist.  The truth is queer or straight, we all struggle.  My friends of perfectly biologically produced opposite-sex traditional christian families struggle.  Only producing blogs and rhetoric from queer parenting land that are full of unicorns and smiling kids, of dad's adopting 15 kids, no sweat... these are necessary fairy tales as we build our landscape.  I'm not here to be the horribly written 40s lesbian pulp fiction about the sorority girl who tries out being a lesbian and decides to throw herself off the rooftop in shame.  I'm here to show you that I struggle, I survive, I thrive.  My kids will or they won't.  What I do know is that I will give them everything I can.

Intersection, privilege, and assimilation.  I'm white, middle class, and hold a college degree.  The first has always been true, the second has not, and the last I'm still paying off.  I'm also fairly young, am currently able bodied, and live in the first world.  I'm a butch, genderqueer, lesbian, as is my wife, and I adopted two kids from the fostercare system who were of an age that they were unlikely to be adopted.  I've been a parent for five years now, and have struggled and fought, and I'm tired of being isolated.  In my community we've locked ourselves in closets, imposed assimilated ideals on ourselves, and let silence dominate what should be healthy dialog.  So let's see where this blog takes us.