Three year since the twins joined the family – how’s it going?

Thank G-d, ds9 is home after a five day hospitalization, and is doing great. We have a long list of followup tests and visits, and I’ve spent hours since he came home working on moving those things forward.

Thanks to one of the appointments being at a different hospital, I’ve learned that hospitals need to have a copy of the foreign passport in order to treat someone who isn’t an Israeli citizen. That would have been extremely valuable information to have had prior to now (the hospital he was at didn’t ask for it), but at least now I know and have gotten hold of a copy of this critical document.

Life doesn’t slow down, so after ds8 stayed home from school yesterday so I could take him for an ADHD evaluation, today I’ll be taking dd8 to a different medical appointment.

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This week marks three weeks since the twins came to us!

When I said yes to their placement with us, I prayed that I wasn’t making a mistake by taking on something that was beyond our capacity. They were two deeply wounded children who were developmentally lagging their peers by years in every area, with a number of problematic issues. I said ‘yes’ to their placement with us because I felt G-d was asking us to do this (the social worker approached me about it, we hadn’t applied or requested another placement) and I wanted to be aligned with His will for us.

It’s been quite a journey.

The kids have stretched me in many ways, beyond my comfort zone. I was a patient parent before but my capacity and tolerance have grown quite a bit. Sometimes I look at myself as if through someone else’s eyes, and marvel at how even tempered I am in so many situations that previously triggered a feeling of strong reactivity. That took a lot of work and practice on my part to develop that.

Ds8 was an eighteen month old in a six year old body when he came. He had no capacity for thought, for comprehension, just mindless activity, driven by fear and impulse. An evaluation done prior to coming to us showed a very low IQ. There was so much destruction, thousands and thousands of shekels of damages. And then there were all of his strange and repellant behaviors.

He is no longer constantly destroying things. He likes to explore and see how things work, so sometimes things break as a result. Often, actually. But it’s not usually mindless, endless destruction. He went from being extraordinarily guarded and fearful (here he was on his first day with us dressed up as the Princess Monster), to being very open and trusting with me.

Thanks to the extended period that he was home due to the war, we got a break from the ongoing verbal and physical aggression and challenging behaviors he takes on when he’s in school. This period gave me a deeper view beyond the trama behaviors, into the person he actually is. The behaviors requiring constant supervision and management concealed this to a large degree.

Now we have a young boy in our home who is curious, reflective and insightful, who is surprisingly able to describe his emotions. He has good eye contact, relaxed and fluid body movements, and has deep love for me that he expresses naturally and without hesitation (“I love you, my sweetest Mommy in the world”). He is overflowing with love and smothers our dog daily with kisses.

As he continues to release so many of these behaviors and developmentally open up, he’s become a really sweet and lovable child. Looking at this sensitive soul, I’ve more deeply understood how wounding his previous life was for him, that caused him to develop so many behavioral defenses as protection.

There are still a lot of challenges. To me and those who know how he was, he’s a different child completely that the scared overgrown toddler who walked into this house three years ago. To those who don’t understand how far he’s come, they would only see how hard it is still. Two friends who had him at their homes for less than ten minutes without me there, both said they can’t understand how I do it, since he’s in nonstop motion and needs constant supervision. But he’s made so much progress. He’s really a great kid!

Now about dd8. She, too, was much younger than her biological age of 5 3/4 when she came, more like a three year old.

When I heard about the twins, I intellectually considered what would benefit ds and then did it, but for dd, there was an instinctive understanding of her needs. This made parenting her easier for me, though my husband and teen sons found the constant emotional outbursts exhausting.

When she came, she obsessively tried to attach to anyone who came into her circuit to feel safe, that someone would take care of her. This kind of behavior was very unhealthy and dangerous, and I worked very hard on creating boundaries with everyone else, and creating attachment with us, her family.

Through everything I did, my intent was to reassure her that she would have everything she needed, and that I would be here.

She doesn’t love all of the choices I make, but she trusts that she’ll be taken care of. She’s mostly cheerful and agreeable through the day, and often bursts out singing. She has so much joy inside of her. She spontaneously embraces me and tells me how much she loves me, not in the claustrophobic and desperate way she used to try to attach, but from the overflowing inside of her.

Dd8’s therapist recently told me that her emotional progress is astounding. This is the same therapist we’ve used from the beginning, so she’s been with her for 2.5 years. I asked her what was surprising, and she emphatically told me, it’s very uncommon to see a child move through emotional stages so quickly, that many older children haven’t reached this point even after many more yeas of therapy. In her words, “She is simply flying!”

She’s friendly, helpful, kind and generally a pleasure to have around. The ADHD makes it hard for her academically, but at home I’m able to channel her energies effectively.

Is it all easy, every day, all day? No, it’s not. (Parenting never is, for any child!) It’s a lot of work, and I continue to dig into myself to access more emotional reserves. I’m summing up three years and it might look simple and rosy. It’s definitely very gratifying to see how well they’re doing. But I don’t want to look like there’s a magic dust that I sprinkled on them, and voila! – healthy, happy kids.

If there was a magic formula, it would look like this: lots of unconditional love and appreciation, staying calm, and strong and consistent boundaries and expectations.

Avivah