My Little Sun Shine

I do have to say there is a bright side to my weekend, even though I have spent much of it in pain and feeling like puking. After all the worrying about adding Chuck's daughter, Sally, to our family, and the frustration of such a big change, it seems to be coming together now. Her behavior has changed dramatically since she first came. There are less fits. At her re-evaluation last week they told Chuck she is a whole different child, and agreed to begin weaning her of the anti-psychotic medication she's been on. We are finally getting some help from behavioral health professionals here in the house, and she has gotten in to a pre-K program to help her get ready for school. But the best feeling of all is that she seems to be really bonding with us as a family, and really happy to be here. My daughter is visiting her father this weekend and while we all miss her (Sally included) it has given me some time to really focus on Sally and talk to her. We have gone to lunch with Chuck, colored, watched movies, gone to visit friends and all the while we talk. (She is QUITE a talker tee hee) I use this time to ask her about her mother and how she feels being away from her. We chat about her visiting her mother's family soon and how she feels about seeing them then coming back here. About how many times she has moved in her four years, and how she didn't like that. I tell her over and over how we are a family and this is her home. How we will make sure sh has her own bed and room. How we will keep her safe and how we will be her family until she is big enough to have her own family. We talk about about not getting our own way, and working as a family, and how disappointments can be hard. She seems to understand me. I try hard to understand her. The way we relate to each other makes me feel good. The way I am able to calm her down when she throws a fit, and the way she holds on to me tighter when she is scared, makes me feel like I am good at taking care of her, like I am making a difference for her. She is (next to my little girl of course) the sweetest damn thing I have ever met, and I want her to have the love, self confidence, family, and life she deserves. More, and more I feel like I, like we, can give her that.

Do Kids Come With a Reset Button?

http://mybin.wordpress.com/nature-vs-nurture-series/

Due to the living situation of Chuck's daughter, and her current diagnoses of behavioral and mental disorders, in addition to her mother and brother's mental health disorders, we have been talking quite a bit about nurture vs nature in our house recently. What elements of one's personality are innate and unchangeable, and what are coping mechanisms that stem from our environment? Of those, what can be changed by a change of environment, and what becomes innate after time? For example, it is widely believed that conditions like depression and anxiety are highly hereditary traits, but if you are depressed or anxious your in child will pick up on those emotions, your reactions, and learn from you as a role model. So by the time a child is old enough to display symptoms of either disorder, how do you determine what is a learned behavior and what is something intrinsic? Are the issues this little girl has, something she does TRULY need to be medicated for, or with a more stable, consistent, and nurturing environment, can we change her reactions, and behaviors over time? I tend to believe that your have certain traits that you are born with, and even more that are learned. In conjunction with that, you LEARN how to deal with your inherited thought processes and behaviors. For example, my anxiety, maybe inherited or learned, however, through out the years I have learned different coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety. My initial coping skills where not very health, or helpful for that matter. They involved crying, fit throwing, screaming. Then as I got old they involved more self destructive behaviors, but after some help from counselors I was able to relearn new coping skills that were healthier. Now I practice yoga, draw, blog, do some deep breathing. I still have the anxiety but I have learned to control it.

Chuck believes similarly, but he also believes that if you are traumatized or have a behavioral or mental health issue come up during brain development and you are not taught healthy coping mechanisms, that your brain will, in a sense rewire its self. Therefore something that was once learned becomes ingrained, and permanent. So a child who is not able to develop a health sleep pattern as an infant, my have permanent developmental issues and long-term sleep pattern issues. Bringing to question can you "reset" these behaviors over time, or must you simply teach your child a to cope with this? These are questions we are now studying deeply as we try to create the best atmosphere for this young girl to learn grow and develop in. How do we best help her? What does she need from the adults around her to heal and become a strong individual? How do we reduce the use of medications, and replace them with cognitive behavioral techniques? How many of her issues came from an unstable environment, a lack of guidance, a lack of attention, and how many will remain with her for a life time? What therapies will best help her? Cogitative? Play? Art? Developmental? We are prepared to try them all if we need to. Any advice is appreciated, and I will continue to share what we learn on our journey.

Unexpected

So yesterday the call came, The call we have been both dreading and hoping for. Child services was at Chuck's ex's apartment and called to say that he needed to come get his daughter or she would go to into foster care. Her mother was going to "take care of some of her problems." and her half brother has enough psychological issues at less than 10 years of age, that he has been hospitalized three times now. So with as little as 1 hours warning, I have a new 4 year old (almost) step-daughter living with me. I have been joking that we are a Maxwell House family (instant) but inside I am scared to death. My new daughter is on Seriquil and receives in home therapy from the state. It has been speculated that she is on the autism spectrum. Though her father and I suspect that the issues were more environmental than developmental. We are currently making arrangements to get her re-evaluated. I really want to change her life for the better, but I am worried that we won't be able to. We are in the process of turning the play room into her first room, and getting her first bed. For 2 years now she has slept, with her mother, on a mattress on the living room floor, or on a couch. Her whole little world has been flipped on its head, and yet she is amazingly happy, and calm about it. My daughter too has been amazingly accepting and resilient in this situation, granted it is only day 2, but still. Chuck and I have been freaking out! Of course, that is our jobs as parents. Which, I guess, is why MY mother is freaking out. She is being less than supportive about the whole situation. She is scared about how Chuck's daughter, and her unstable mother, may affect my daughter. Of course I am too, but I have thought all of that through already. As I stated in my I Am OK With My Elephant post, I AM capable of taking care of myself and my daughter. I am able to deal with difficult situations. I am strong, I am smart, and I have depression. I am treated and I am not afraid to ask for help. In fact, both Chuck and I have been overwhelmed by the out pouring of support and help that my friends have offered since journey started a few weeks ago. My counselor has been instrumental in helping me keep my head together and even helped Chuck look for a new counselor for himself. My friends have called and messaged me to make sure we are ok. One friend gave me a whole pep-talk about how this was my chance to change this little girl's life and make a real difference. He told me how he thought I was a great mom and how this little girl REALLY needs people to love her right now. My cousin has been helping me negotiate the world of kids on the spectrum, and all the agencies that can help us. Another friend gave us a bed, and is lending us some clothes. My co-worker's mother wants to make both girls a quilt for their rooms. It is truly touching, and it gives me hope that we will be truly be able to make lemonade, for us and for this little girl. After all it is not her fault that all of this has happened. She deserves someone to do right by her. She deserves to be some one's priority. She deserves some stability, and some unconditional love. I hope we can do that for her. 

It's Not Fair

The on going situation with Chuck's child has me thinking more, and more about parenting, and what is best for a child. Chuck and I really want another baby, but we know life is just too hectic right now. Then all this started with his daughter, and we started talking about the very real possibility of her coming to live with us, depending on what Child Services turned up. So that meant two kids in our house, one who was going to need quite a bit of extra attention, therapy, and some additional developmental help due to the environment she had been in, and one who has been an only child for 6 years, and is VERY used to being the center of everyone's attention. Could we handle more than that? And would it be fair to the kids? Then I start to think about the situation Chuck's daughter is in currently, and I think "OMG that poor little girl. Anything would be better." Again, I begin to revisit where that line is between, sick, and too sick to parent. If she didn't have clean close, didn't have new toys, didn't have her own bed, but was loved, cherished, and cared for, would that matter? Well, she's not. She has never had her own bed. She has never had a toy that her brother didn't destroy. She is on so many behavior meds that she physically appears drugged much of the time. She is receiving more help from the state than most children her age, and is still behind. It is SO unfair to me. I try to understand that her mother is sick, and doesn't understand what she is doing to her child, but I also think of that child and how she has no choice here. I am a firm believer that our children do not ask to be brought into the world, that is a choice WE make, and as such, we owe them everything, and they owe us nothing. We are responsible for their ENTIRE well being. We need to teach them, mold them, educate them so that they can be responsible adults. If there is something we can not do for them, to fulfill their basic. human. needs. WE are responsible for getting help. This mother is not getting help. In fact she is using the systems put in place to help her to her advantage. Using her children's issues (issues I feel she helped creat) to get extra money, extra help watching the kids. Then turning around and getting herself new tattoos and a $500 dog. Yet there is nothing, NOTHING I can do about any of it. I am NOT this poor little girl's mother. I am NOT technically Chuck's wife. I am nothing in this situation. I have no influence, no control. All I can do is sit by and wait. It makes me angry and frustrated. The whole situation seems unfair to me, unfair for Chuck, unfair, for me, unfair for the mom, and especially unfair for Chuck's little girl.

Then on the flip side, I have a friend who is great with kids. She and her husband love being around children. They have been together for about 14 years, and make a good living. Still they don't have their own child. They have chosen not to have a child of their own. My friend has a major genetic physical disability. Her husband has a major mental health diagnosis. So they decided that it would not be right to have a child who could easily be in a large amount of physical and mental pain, aside from the the logistics of how does one who is unable to care for themselves, care for a baby. I know this is heart breaking to them. She often jokes that if her sister were ever to get pregnant by mistake, that she would gladly raise the child. She wants so badly to be a mother, and is loving enough, and has a strong enough maternal instinct to know that it wouldn't be right to put a child through that type of a life. I think the fact that she would even consider that makes her more suited to motherhood than other women who have children might ever be.

The more Chuck and I talk about having our own child the more I begin to examine what is fair, really? I feel like I am a good mother, Chuck is a great dad, but would our mental problems multiply into one hugely disturbed child? Ok I know that is probably an exaggeration, but I do worry. Every parent wants their child to have a better life than what they have, even if your life isn't so bad. We all want the best for our child. So if you know you have a chronic condition, of any type, that could cause your child to suffer, is it fair to have a child. Looking at Chuck and I, our offspring would be almost guaranteed to have depression and anxiety issues. Also, possibly ADD. What if we produce a child that is too scared to leave the house, or is depressive and suicidal? No one wants to think of their child living that type of life. Am I worrying too much? Again where is that line? And why is it so unfair? Why can I not go get that little girl and take care of her? It makes me question or world, God, fate all the big stuff. What is the point of a suffering child? How is that ok in anyone's eyes? The world feels off balance to me right now, and I want to set it right, tip the scales, but I don't know how.

What to do Once the Elephant is Seen

Dealing with your own metal illness is a challenge, but dealing with someone else is even harder, especially when it is severe and it affects your child. What if to make things even MORE complicated you are no longer involved with the metally ill person? Where do the rights of the sick person end and the rights of the child begin? This is a question mental rights and family advocates, child services, and Chuck and I try to negotiate regularly. Over the last week it is a question that seems to have taken over or lives. We have know that Chuck's ex has several major mental health diagnosises, and we have had increasing concern for his daughter and the way they live. However, we believed his ex was being treated and getting help fr om the state in dealiing with their daughter. So we felt there was a safety net in place for them both. This week learned things have taken a major turn for the worse. We wonder what is best for everyone involved. Is someone with as severe a mental illness able to take care of a child? How much damage has been done already and how do you help a young child overcome something so dramatic as dealing with a sick parent? Can you explain to a mother who has little concept of the world outside her own deeply confused mind what danger she might be putting her child in? What is the affect of introducing a child who has been in such an unstable enviornment have on an already established family that has other children in the home? How do you coparent with someone who seems to be so removed from reality, possibly pathological? How do you keep you family safe from the toxic affects of the other person's illness? Living a considerable distance from the child and her mother how do we determine how much danger she is in? How sick her mother truly is? Or do we trust an overloaded child services case manager to determine that? I can't answer ANY of these questions, but I know they have been spinning in a continual loop in my head for the last week. I suspect they will continue to spin for weeks to come.