Lessons Learned from An Adoptive Mom - #1

My fanatical solid belief in the principles of connected parenting continues to grow each time I witness them in action.  Sometimes these days I suffer from short-term memory loss and after a few “good days” forget the power of connected parenting when a child is disregulated.  Yesterday I had a slap in the face refresher course!

My sweet AS (adopted son), age 8 and adopted at 6 years old, was scheduled for a pre-op appointment with his ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor).  Everything was rolling along perfectly… lulling me into not even thinking about what kind of trauma this might cause for my kiddo.  Mind you, this is a child who has had multiple medical trauma in his short eight years not to mention abandonment, institutionalized living in a 3^rd world orphanage and adoption into a family that looked, smelled, sounded, acted different from anyone he had ever encountered before.  AND I am a mom who has been a proponent of TBRI© (Trust BasedRelational Intervention©) for the past year and ½ and really should know better by now.

We drove to the appointment, walked into the office, checked in… all without any sign of anything out of the ordinary (ordinary for a neurotypical child, anyway).  He started to play alongside a little 3-year-old boy with a large wooden box that had several tactile activities.  He suddenly grasped the top of one of the bars on the box and started shaking it roughly. 

I leaned over to him and reminded him to be “gentle and kind” especially when playing with other children and that shaking the box might scare the other child or make it difficult for him to play.  He took one look at me, turned back to the box, reached out and shook the box even more vehemently. 

At this point I wasn’t sure where we were going with this so I pulled him up into the chair against me, leaned down and started doing some digging… “Are you angry?”, “Is there something else you want to do?”  as well as come boundary setting… “I can’t let you play by the box when you aren’t being safe.  Is there something else you’d like to do?” 

He got angrier and angrier… even to the point of starting to growl at me.  I started trying our regulation tricks.  “Sounds like your motor is running pretty high right now.  Want to come out in the hallway with mom and jump around for a few minutes?”  “I’ve got an idea!  Let’s blow invisible bubbles!”  Instead he stood and starting blowing raspberries directly into my face. 

I got down at eye level and told him I was going to have him sit next to me while we talked about our rules.  Sometimes we can circumvent a melt down by talking about our three rules:

o Respect

o Stick Together

o No Hurts

He immediately started snarling the exact opposite of each rule.  Then he pulled his fist back as if getting ready to punch me.  By this time everyone and their mothers had their eyes glued to our little corner of the waiting room.  I gently pulled his hand down with mine and just held it.  I took a couple of deep breaths trying to figure out what to do next.  In that brief moment, he pulled away and smacked me in the face.  I put my arms around him, picked him up and started out the door as he screamed.  I put him down and walked him to end of the hallway which was somewhat secluded but visible to anyone walking in the hall.  I retried asking if he was angry, repeating our rules, talking about being safe but clearly we were past that point.

Suddenly a question popped into my head.  Don’t ask me why I hadn’t thought of it but I’m pretty sure it was a supernatural prompting because at this point I was working to keep my own person from lashing out self regulated.

“Are you nervous?”

He just glared at me.

“Are you scared to see the doctor?”

“NO!”

I tried again.

“Are you maybe a little nervous?  Because, you know what?  There aren’t any shots or blood or anything today.  The doctor is just going to make sure you’re ready for surgery next week.  That’s all.”

He just tensed and glared.

The words just started coming out and I honestly do not know where they came from.  Maybe hours of Karyn Purvis videos or chapter after chapter of Heather Forbes material or Facebook post after Facebook post from other parents.

“Let me tell you a story.”

He did not look impressed.

“Once there was a little purple boy named Lilu (his Chinese name and now his middle name) who lived in a castle in China.”

“That’s me.”

“It is?  How do you know?”

“Because I have purple eyes (this is a joke I use when I’m trying to get eye contact from him)”.

“Hmmm… might be.  Well, Purple Lilu had a doctor appointment and he was very nervous.  He thought there were going to be shots and needles and didn’t want to go so his engine started running really high.  His mommy thought maybe he was angry.  But the good news was that Lilu’s mommy was going to be next to him the whole time at the doctor.  No matter what.”

Ok.  I think I may have started to lose him when I made up that last plot twist.  Too soon?

Grasping for straws,  “ SUDDENLY, Lilu saw a green horse with long lovely yellow hair running toward the castle.”

Muscles still tense.  No glare.

“The horse ran right up to him and asked Lilu what grade he was in.  Lilu said, ‘2^nd grade!’ very proudly.  The green horse with the yellow hair laughed and said, ‘I don’t believe that!  You’re not a 2^nd grader!’”

I’m glimpsing a tiny flicker of interest in this green horse.

Lord, help me.  “Lilu said, ‘yes, I am!  I just finished 1^st grade and now I’m in 2^nd!”  The green horse said, “Ok… prove it!”  (And this is where suddenly I saw Dan Siegel’s Whole Brain Child speeding through my mind! Engage another part of his brain!!!! A-ha!)  “Count backwards from 10!” The horse challenged.  So Lilu started counting, ’10… 5…’

“NO!  10…9!!!”

I glanced up at him with a surprised look on my face. 

“What?  Really?  Ok… you better help Lilu here.”

Together we started counting backward from 10 and with each number I saw his body relax a little bit more until at 1 his engine was no longer running high.

I continued, afraid to break the magic moment.

“’Oh yeah?” said the green horse.  ‘Well, I’m in 2^nd grade too!!!’  Lilu looked at the horse and then started laughing hysterically.  ‘You silly!  Horses don’t go to school!”

My little guy bursts out laughing.  This was it.  This was the break through moment.

We sat talking about stories for a minute and then I asked him if he was ready to go back into the waiting room.  We went back in and I pulled him up on my lap and held him close and said I was sorry for not realizing that he was nervous.  He snuggled up to me until they called his name at which point he jumped up and practically ran into the exam room.

The doctor came in and the first thing he asked my son was how he was doing.

My little looked right up at him and said, “Well, at first I was really nervous.  But now I’m ok.”

Connected Parenting for the win!

*Epilogue:  To avoid the risk of sounding like a permissive parent I think it’s important to add that once we left the office and were by ourselves we talked about how to tell mommy he was nervous instead of using angry things and hurts to tell me and then we walked through apologizing for hurting mommy and not showing respect to me or the people in the waiting room and different words to say instead.