Captain Beautiful Mom

Yesterday was a rare quiet day. A day that showed how bone tired we all are. And Peanut said, "here Mom! I wrote you a story!" Then she giggled and ran away.

Once opon a time ther was a monster named Princess. She scard evreone but my wonderful mom her name is Captin beautiful mom. She alwes saves everone from the monster. People been screaming intil the superhero came. She tried to scar off the hunge monster but the monster just had a fit . Boom wack boom so mom thought and thought intill she said, "I know somthing!!" She went to the monster and said "why are you scaring thies people." The monster said "row!" That means I do not know. The super herow said, "you should not scary those people!" The very next day the monster got mad. She started to scare everone so mom came out and scared the monster away and the monster never came back. The end.

Needless to say, it was not what I had been expecting to read.

I'm relieved in the midst of this that Peanut sees me as her protector. Not to mention my superhero name is flattering. But I'm unnerved at her clarity that her sister, her older sister, the sister who should be guiding her and braiding her hair and whispering and giggling with her is someone she needs protection from.

I don't have one traumatized child anymore. I have a traumatized family.

In Retrospect

I've lost my ability to see ahead for Princess.

I used to be so in tune with her. I could see a trigger a mile away. But it got to the point where everything was a trigger; it was too overwhelming, and I started trying not to see them, just so it wasn't constant. And the past six months have been so filled with hurt. Princess's new-ish doctor evened out her meds, which is an amazing thing, but what's left in the wake is Princess, fully aware of the pain and fear she feels. And since she can't process it yet, guess where it goes? All over the rest of us.

It's been a hard, hard six months. And it's harder now that it has ever been. Her doctor says he's seen a lot of families give up at this point, saying that they preferred the miserable they were before to the miserable they are now. I know in my heart (and her doctor agrees), that if we can just get though it alive, it will be better, livable on the other side.

But right now. It's just hard.

We had a family wedding to travel to this past weekend. One of us thought Princess should go, and the other thought she should stay with a sitter. Both of us were experiencing, er, "feelings" from our vacation traveling. The one who thought she should stay caved, and the trip to the wedding was without incident. The wedding activities were without incident.

We let down our guard.

Sunday was Father's Day, but it wasn't really on our minds. Buddy and Peanut had left Saturday night to spend the week with Gramma and Grampa, so we gave Daddy his five-pound gummy bear and his turkey made from compost pile gleanings (complements of the Cuddle Bear) Saturday morning. We were two hours into to four hour drive when we decided against fried chicken in the park and for Joe's Crab Shack.

What Were We Thinking #1.

The first thing I didn't see was that the restaurant was (duh!) full of men. At least half looked like the type of man Princess is frightened of. The wait was about 30 minutes, and about 20 minutes in, Princess insisted she saw a boy who frightened her two years ago by lifting her skirt while the class was in line for the computer lab, resulting in the first total meltdown the school had seen from her. It was obviously not the same boy, but she staunchly and unreasonably insisted it was.

Right then is when we should have gotten out of there like bats out of the seventh circle of hell.

But I've lost my ability to see ahead.

We sat down, and Josh and I consulted the menu to see what would be the best way to order. Princess promptly chose the most expensive dinner of the children's menu consisting of fried food with a side of fried food with some fat as a garnish, and began telling us emphatically and repeatedly what she wanted. Thinking about her food issues and not seeing what was really going on, we showed her the (gigantic, delicious) meal we were going to order and share.

Princess began to throw a tantrum that looked exactly like a three-year-old who is not getting her way.

Which really torked me off.

Even though I knew somewhere in my head that that wasn't really what it was.

While we waited for the food, she kept looking over her shoulder. It's "normal" for Princess to be hypervigilant, especially about food, but this was more like a tic. I actually started to worry she was going to hurt her neck. And usually the presence of food of any type would have snapped her out of a food-related funk, but when the meal came, even though it was all things she likes, even though I went without some things so that she would feel like she had more, she threw her food around complaining about how disgusting it was.

And she just kept escalating. She hid under the table. She flung herself into the seat behind her. She whacked the poor man whose back was to the other side a few times. And she kept insisting, loudly, that she wasn't.

And still I didn't see it for what it really was.

Eventually there was no choice but to remove her from the restaurant. I dragged her out of the booth while she ramped up the volume and walked her outside, where she slapped me and complained loudly about having done nothing wrong and how mean and selfish Daddy is.

Happy Father's Day.

I sat in her seat with her while Josh tried to concentrate on driving safely while she screamed, kicked, pinched, and bit. I am now the proud owner of an incredibly ugly bruise on my behind and a spasm in my back so painful I have to have Josh slide me out of bed this morning.

She just couldn't do it. And I should have seen it.

When she finally got tired enough to cooperate with some breathing exercises and a drink of water, she began to sob about how sorry she was. And I believe her. But now I am physically and emotionally sore, and Josh is really pretty depressed, and neither of us have the reserves to meet her.

And we just have to push through.

Big Feelings, a Theraputic Moment, and More Big Feelings

We spent the day at the beach yesterday, which turned out to create a kind of buffer zone between the Cuddle Bear's disappearance and today. But I knew it would be coming.

The police.

I had the presence of mind when the police arrived to get down in front of Princess and say, "the police are NOT here to take anyone away. The police are here to help me find the Cuddle Bear." But still. A mob of uniformed police officers, a hysterical mother, well, see a pattern?

I was surprised at how well everyone held up yesterday. There was even a babysitter in the evening, and bedtime was still relatively calm. Peanut was the one to lose it first. She had bug bites, and she sobbed and scratched violently and screamed that she couldn't stop itching. I gave her all the medicine I could, and then Josh held her on the sofa with her MP3 in until she fell asleep.

Peanut woke up kicking this morning, crabby and rude to everyone. Slapping, name-calling, and tattling picked up between Princess and Peanut. Peanut escalated, and I ended up holding her while she screamed. I read once in an otherwise pretty useless book that if you guessed at your traumatized child's feelings you'd be right more often than you were wrong, so I took a stab. I said, "it was pretty scary having all those police officers here, wasn't it. It reminded you of other scary times with police officers." She vehemently denied it, but then mumbled,

"I only liked the German Shepherd. I'm only going to have German Shepherds and Chihuahuas when I grow up."

After that she calmed down. When she had sat calmly with me for five minutes, I suggested we work on that Big Feeling by drawing. She thought that was a great idea. Here is our collaboration:

After drawing the police officers* I suggested we draw ourselves and how we were feeling. I drew myself, and Peanut insisted I draw her in my lap. After the Cuddle Bear was found and I had held her squeezed the bejeebers out of her for a while, Josh took his turn. I had to hold somebody, so I grabbed Peanut (who was nearest) and squeezed her for a while. It's hard to see in the picture, but she had drawn a kind of /\/\/\/\/ mouth on herself, and actually articulated that she had felt crazy and scared. Then she skipped of on her merry little way, fully regulated.

Princess watched this entire process vigilantly. Something about watching Peanut successfully process this affected her, but I'm not sure exactly what. So Princess herself also had a giant rage, topping the charts and reminding me why "no neighbors" is a criteria for our house hunt. Four rages, in fact. So far. Although each one has decreased significantly in intensity. Thank goodness. After she had been calm for five minutes (each time), I said, "wow! That was a big feeling. I wonder what words you use when you tell me about it." And she'd start off on another one. Finally, she paced around the house (with me following six inches behind her) and asked me for things she knew she couldn't have. At first she mumbled everything except "mom?" so I could get away with just saying, "I'm right here." But then she started enunciating, so I had to switch to, "it's really hard to hear 'no.' I love you even when I have to say 'no.'" Eventually (a loooooong eventually), she went outside to jump on the trampoline, came in, and found a quiet space without me directing her to. Right now, she's successfully re-entered sibling relations.

Not that we're done, I imagine.

Sigh.





*No. I do not know why one is naked and endowed.

So You Want to be an Obstetrician?

When we picked Peanut up from Sunday School, we could not see her anywhere in the room. Bad sign #1. When her teacher called her and she appeared, both shoes were untied. Bad sign #2. Her teacher said, "she didn't want her shoes tied for some reason," and when she tried to tie them, Peanut ran away. Bad signs #3 and #4. Josh sat with her to wait for her to tie them while I retrieved the other children. They were still sitting in a corner when I came back. Bad sign #5.

I didn't witness it, but Josh reportedly dragged a screaming Peanut out of church to sit in the Suburban. Peanut is incredibly skilled at making a scene look and sound like she is being torn limb from limb by an abusive parent, so Josh was steaming when the other kids and I got to the car. Literally. Like I couldn't see in the car windows.

After a very loud drive home, I marched Peanut up to my room (Parent Tag Team). I informed her she would be paying the screams back minute-by-minute with peace and quiet, and she would be paying Josh back later for purposely making him look like a Bad Daddy at church. Then I held her so that, while not uncomfortable, she would be unable to punch me in the face. I held her facing inward, so that she'd be able to hear my heartbeat and my deep breathing. This left some of my anatomy exposed to baby teeth, but that part of me is small; I figured it would be hard for her to get a good grip.

While waiting for her to calm, I thought. I knew the problem wasn't Josh. I knew it wasn't her shoes. Something made her feel crazy; what was it? I was thinking through the scene, about that poor Sunday School teacher trying to bend down and tie Peanut's shoes when she was so obviously pregnant, and.....

Oh.

Peanut has a hard enough time when someone other than us or her time-proven teachers and sitters are in charge of her. But if that relative stranger is pregnant, look out. Pregnant women who are in charge of Peanut are a trigger. A bad one. A while back she made some highly disturbing threats to a pregnant sub that would have likely gotten her expelled if she were a couple of years older or in a different sort of school.

Once I realized this trend, it made sense. The Cuddle Bear was conceived when Peanut wasn't even a year old, so any pre-removal memory she has of her birth mom must be of her with a large belly bump. And by all reports, her birth mom did not exactly thoroughly care for her.

When I told Josh my theory on what went down, he said, "but she wants to be and obstetrician?"
Well, of course.

And obstetrician takes babies out.

Found a Peanut

My sweet Peanut. She has been on the move the past six months. It is pure pleasure to watch her grow and heal.

When Peanut began kindergarten this past fall, I was heartbroken. She has loved preschool, and all signs pointed to her being very very ready for kindergarten, even though it is all-day in our district and she would be starting at age 4. I should have been forewarned when she went into a depressive tail-spin when preschool ended for the summer. But of course I wasn't. Who ever is?

Kindergarten started. I had Peanut placed with the same teacher my older two had, an amazing, fabulistic woman equally magical will typically-functioning and special needs children alike. Who had her second knee surgery over the summer. Who had a LOT of follow-up appointments in the fall. It didn't take long to notice the pattern: substitute teacher=principal's office. The principal is just as wonderful, and Peanut is the type of child who charms the crap out of people, even when she's acting rotten. However. I started to wonder if I needed to pull her out after lunch. Maybe it was just too much for her little self. Then she tried it on her teacher. We knew she would, so no one was surprised. At least, not until I got to class. She looked possessed. Her sweater was half-off, her hair was standing on end, and she was running around the room tearing stuff off the walls. I had to carry her out of the school like a log while the principal handled the Cuddle Bear and the backpack. It took me and the principal both to stuff her into the Suburban while she slapped and scratched my face. Fun stuff.

A few days later, I found that she had felt ganged up on by some girls at school and I started to think, "this is happening when she doesn't feel safe." Not long after, she had a sub again. I got a call. Peanut had gone ballistic. The sub was very pregnant, and Peanut had kicked her and threatened to kill her baby with a knife. That was when I realized that subs in general make Peanut anxious she won't be cared for. This sub in particular was even more complicated.

Peanut was 20 months old when she and Princess were removed. Their birthmother left them with her sister and her sister's husband, who ran a flourishing meth lab when she went into labor with the Cuddle Bear. Birthmom stayed home alone with the Cuddle Bear for one week; then the Cuddle Bear was hospitalized for stomach surgery. No food was getting through to her digestive system, and she was down to four pounds. Then birthmom disappeared for three weeks while the Cuddle Bear healed up alone in the hospital. Meanwhile, my girls were living in a trailer mostly alone with an empty fridge. Princess and her five-year-old cousin cared for Peanut and her younger cousin. Their uncle frightened them, threatened them with a knife, and I suspect some other things, too. So. No parent or teacher=how do I know I'll be taken care of? And I can only imagine what the vision of a large pregnant woman did to her. So it would have been no surprise if I put it together earlier.

For a while I brought Peanut home early when I knew there would be a sub. I gave her some ideas for when she started to feel angry and worked them out ahead of time with another teacher. The real breakthrough, though, came with the "Worry Worm" exercise with Dr. S. Peanut was able to identify situations that make her anxious, rate her anger appropriately (right between "livid" and "homicidal maniac"), and implement a plan. And it worked! She's five, for pete's sake! I told her there are grown-ups who can't do that. She liked that one.

Now she can handle subs with barely a blink. She told me the other day, "I almost don't ever have fits anymore." Two nights ago I corrected her during our bedtime routine. Embarrassment usually makes her go nutso. I noticed she slowly covered her head with her blanket. As I moved my arm to put it around her (fully expecting her to jerk violently away), she leaned into me. Huge for an attaching child. I'm so proud of her. My heart is lightening.

Daddy Got Rolled

When my sweet Princess was just three, only a few months before she came into our care, she watched an armed throw-down between the Cuddle Bear's birth father and the police (who, incidentally, had been called by the girls' birth mother for domestic violence) that resulted in the bf handcuffed and taken to jail. That's what we know. Who knows what we don't know.

Saturday night we were retuning from a friend's house, and blue and red lights showed up behind us. Neither of us had any idea why Josh was being pulled over, and Josh said the fatal words, "did you put that registration in the car?"

So I search frantically for the registration that I had not put in the car while the officer tells Josh that he did not come to a complete stop at a stop sign (I know. I know. But that's beside the point). The officer goes to his car with Josh's license, and Josh and I decide to up the tension in the car by fighting about whose fault it technically is that the registration is not in the car. Josh swears he put it in my purse, and I swear he took it out and didn't put it back, but we won't discuss the finer points of that anymore, mostly because it's probably my fault. Somewhere during the arguing, I realize Princess sounds exactly like a frightened two-year-old. Instantly realizing what's going on in her head, I turn around as the officer is returning to the car. Because no one likes to have crazy conversations with their children in front of police, I condensed and quietly said,

"Princess. This is not Birth Mother's Police. Daddy is not going to jail."

Thankfully it was enough to stop the strange-sounding fussing. Thankfully the officer had only a short annoyed-sounding conversation with Josh before giving him the ticket and leaving.

The rest of the way home we discussed the many-varied aspects of police officers jobs, and the subtle nuances *cough* in the differences between why police come to Mommy and Daddy versus why police came to Birth Mother. Since this discussion has happened many, many, many, many, many times before, something about it worked. There hasn't been any fall-out. In fact, this week she has been much more regulated. And I am thankful.

It stinks when your child can't handle life, and life happens anyway.

PTSD Meets the Law

Tuesday a police officer stopped by. I opened the door before he rang the bell, and the exchange (regarding a tenant) took about four seconds. Three of the four children didn't even know he was there. Guess which child was in the kitchen with me? Yep, you guessed it: Princess. The one who spent her first three years watching people she knew fight with and be escorted out in handcuffs by police. So of course she assumed he had come to "take Daddy to jail." I told her that was not why he was there, I went through the whole "police are here to make sure grown-ups are following grown-up rules and behaving safely" spiel. No dice. She never mentioned another word about it, of course, and at first I foolishly thought she wasn't thinking about it.

Tuesday night she flooded her bed. This sort of thing tends to happen when a person is not using the toilet, which she wasn't. She didn't take care of it- likely thinking I wouldn't notice, so she had some laundry to do after school. She whined. She fussed. She pretended she didn't know how to do it. I didn't buy it, so she tantrumed. She missed dance class. Finally she decided she'd rather join us for my delicious moo shoo pork than enjoy a cheese sandwich alone.

Thursday afternoon the school called. I was told Princess came to the office because her tooth hurt. I asked what happened right BEFORE she said her tooth hurt. The secretary said, "well, I don't really know; there's a sub today." Ahhh. I asked to speak to Princess. "Hi Princess!" "Hi." "What would you like me to do for your tooth?" "I don't know." "Oh. Well, what do you think I WILL do for your tooth?" "I don't know." "Oh. Well, what would you like to do right now?" I want to go back to class." "Huh. So, you told your sub your tooth really really hurts, and you told the office your tooth really really hurts, and now you want to go back to class. " "Yes." "Uh, ok. I'll see you at home! I love you."

An hour later, Princesses language therapist called to tell me that Princess FLIPPED OUT because she left a shoe at home. Princess came home and told me what a wonderful day she had and how much she loved the sub. Hmmm.

Friday sounded like this: "whine whine whine fuss fuss (poke poke poke) fuss whine fuss."

See how much better it's getting!