Thought I'd recap one of our fairly "heavy" days of attachment related challenges. A lot of you ask how our conversations play out. If you don't find this interesting or helpful, you will be bailing out rather quickly. It did not involve any rages or bodily fluids or cussing, but it's a long one, friends. Prepare yourself for typo's and rambling.
Today was thick, thick, THICK with sit-down discussions. Okay, so the whole week has been. I mean, we did tell our children we're moving in less than a month. I expected everyone to be on edge. I expected them to all start beating the crap out of one another, set the house on fire, sneak into my room at night and knock my teeth out with a hammer ... so I can be pleasantly surprised when it's not that bad.
I'll just lay it out to give you an idea. Remember, my attachment challenged kids are 12 and 9, one has graduated from attachment therapy and the other has seven months under her belt. We've been doing die-hard therapeutic parenting for 15 months. Adjust your radars accordingly.
Somewhere around 8:20 am, Rocky comes bouncing through the room (literally - I took note of his extreme happiness). He was already dressed. "Good morning, Mom!" Told him breakfast was on the table, all the fixin's for his toast, etc., etc.
About two minutes later he pops his head into the living room. "Mom, how long do I heat up the butter?"
"Rocky, how long do you always heat up the butter?"
Scrunches up nose, "Umm ... 15 seconds?"
"Honey, put the butter down and come in here to talk."
Now, to most people, this seems like a very NOT big deal. Yet, I know my son intimately. He softens up the butter to make it easier to spread about five times a week. It is always in the same dish. It is always heated up for 23 seconds. It's what we do around here. OH, and then there is the whole Mr. Happy Skippity Do-Dah that greeted me.
It was a set-up.
"So, what was that all about?"
Hem-haw. Hem-haw. Huffing. Puffing. Kept repeating the question. I keep things very simplified when we are working through these questions and talking about feelings. He stated he was in a bad mood when he woke up. "Hmmm ... well you greeted me with a smile and hop in your step. Was that a set-up?" Yes, it was. Okay, so why did he play dumb with the butter.
When I say I keep things simple, I mean SIMPLE! We approach one question at a time. We break-down the behaviors based on the feelings behind them. Our kids are masters at chasing rabbits, changing the subject and getting us verbally distracted. I stick with one question. Sometimes, when we finally get to the heart of it, I will actually write it down to help keep me focused with all the dodging. "Yes, you have said that already. See, it's right here on my paper. Of course, then there are the other 400 times you just kept repeating it."
I always remember that their tricks make them feel safe. When you call them out on things like the happy set-up and the butter Dumb Game, they feel like you have stripped them naked and told them to dance on fire. I say things like, "Let's talk again about how safe you are, how loved you are." That is when I do chase a rabbit. "Are you safe here? How do you know? Tell me about Dad. What about me? What are your favorite things about your sister?"
I break up the big talks with lots of reminders as to the truths in their lives: they are safe and they are loved.
So, after a good 45 minutes of working through feelings and having lots of breaks to talk about the great things in our lives, and help him re-regulate his brain and find his smile ... this was the breakdown:
He woke up with a plan to act very happy and then find a way to act dumb. Hopefully I would fall for it. Internally, this would make him feel very powerful. He felt completely out of control, because the day before we had a sit-down and discussed how he gets uncomfortable around his Dad, especially when he has been out of town (Rocky is the "man of the house" and then Dad returns). We "rewinded" to let him tell us about other times in his life when he felt powerless. Who were the men or boys who have bullied him? Etc., Etc.
Yes, the butter thing was from the day before. This is how our sweet kids have to live. When they feel vulnerable, they cannot stop thinking about it until they find a way to feel they have regained some amount of control.
I then cleared the coffee table and used random objects to tell Rocky the Nancy Thomas story about the boy and the frozen lake. Of course, I told it very visually, and in a way which would help him understand why we put such a priority on some things. We had a great discussion, and I was able to share how this story also helps Dad and I better understand him, as well.
We finished up just before 9:30 am. He was smiling, regulated and the butter was plenty soft at that point. :)
Still with me?
Several little controlling things with Mar. I would have her come over to the sofa and stay until she felt strong enough to hop back into what everyone was doing. This has worked well for her over the last few days. Just by saying it out loud, it will no longer help her in a positive way, and I'll need to switch it up. Ah well.
It was about 100 degrees today. Mar had on jeans. She had waited too long to do her laundry, so there were no shorts. In the car, as we were driving to pick up Dad for lunch, she started to bemoan "having" to wear the jeans. "Hmmm ... that's interesting. Why is it again that you must wear those jeans today." She was not feeling to strong in that moment. Said something about needing to wear them so she could "get them out of the way," as if she is forced to wear everything in her closet before she can start over a new rotation or something. It was quite whopper, I must say. That gal thinks on her feet.
Anywho, with some Christine humor (translation: "Our mom thinks she's funny, but she's just embarrassing"), I helped her rewind that story and try it again, with some actual reality. She found me neither funny nor embarrassing. She was able to pull it back together, though, with some pizza.
There was some back-and-forth between she and her younger sister. This has been building for a few days, so I decided to make it easy and put them on restriction from talking to one another for the rest of the day. In the car on the way home, little sister was hoping Mar would be in a mischievous mood and try to whisper with her. Mar, instead, was in a rat-out-little-sister mood. Sucked for little sister.
This did, however, beautifully separate out my one child who is too young to go to the pool alone. Decided to let the older four spend two hours swimming sans Mom. Knew Mar would have the hardest time. Talked through it. She really wanted to try, and was verbalizing the things which would tempt her to be a toot misbehave. She and her big sister made a plan, in case she found herself stressed. We decided to give it a go. The worst that could happen would be Mar wigging out, and one of the other kids calling me to come get her. She had three other sets of eyes around her, and she does well with family, because she knows that we all know what to expect.
So, there was really only one mishap at the pool. It did, however, cross a line into one of our house rules. Mar is not allowed to play, unsupervised, with any children younger than her, and no boys - whatsoever (except for her brothers, who also happily rat-her-out if she gets out of line). She spent most of her formative years in an orphanage. We are having to reteach her appropriate behavior and social interactions. She chose to splash a boy and girl sitting on the side of the pool. Then, when Mac called her on it, she swore it was just because of the way she swims. :)
Well, the second I got my little report from big sister, and was told she splashed "two strangers," I knew one of them was a boy. Took a sit-down of very simplistic questions and lots of reminders and safety and love before she chose to get to the heart of it. This is a very painful subject for her lately. She is starting to feel some remorse for her bullying and lack of self-control - thus the tough boundaries and restrictions. Even though we talked it through, it was just too much for her.
And many people may think, "What's the big deal?" Oh, how I wish it wasn't. How I wish she already had a solid foundation socially and emotionally. She doesn't. We have to build it. We have backed up to "ground zero" and just slowly reintroduce certain situations as she heals. Our talk ended with Mar smiling, but I knew she wasn't regulated. Her arms were stiff. She was still fairly robotic. Yet, with her, she's just not well enough to move as deeply into her feelings, as her brother is. She needed a break.
"Mom, would you like me to start the dryer for you?"
"Sure, honey." I knew this was a set-up. It was so painfully obvious. It was RIGHT after our talk. I just let it play out. Sure enough. She set the timer wrong and barely caught the door latch, so it stopped running after about three minutes. I walked into the kitchen and just lifted my eyebrows. She got huffy fast! "WHAT? I started the dryer! WHAT?" Funny. I didn't say a word about the dryer. heh. heh. Yet, what she needed in that moment was to cool down. I asked her to go out on the back porch and take some deep breaths - not to come back in until she felt a little bit better.
Took her about five minutes. We had a lot to talk through, so I had us sit down in a way where I would be a bit lower than her. She is allowing herself to talk about some new things, so I'm trying to respect this fresh pain. I did something I've been holding onto for a bit. Walked her through this song (we have it on a really old CD in the car, but she never knew the words):
We would pause with every phrase and talk about it. Would look up words in the dictionary she didn't know. Oh my cow, was this a good experience for her. I wish you could have all crawled inside my head and witnessed it with me. She still holds onto the lie that she is "bad." She does believe there is a God, but she feels like God is probably mad at her or ashamed of her ... disappointed. A little nugget which might be helpful to some of your kids.
OKAY - so this ended about 4:30 pm. The boys had been reading an Archie comic and giggling like girls. The other two gals were trying to sell some of their artwork to kids in the neighborhood (really - and it worked - Mac made 75 cents). Life doesn't stop for therapeutic parenting. If someone else needs me, we take a quick break - whatever. It's just who we are and what we do. When something comes up, we stop, drop and roll-with-it right then if at all possible.
Husband comes home after 5 pm. He recaps his day. I recap mine. Sooooo, around 6 pm he tells me to get my butt in the bath so he can reheat leftovers for the kids. I happily oblige.
When I re-emerge, he smiles at me and says, "Rocky is waiting for me at the kitchen table." Hmmmm ... guess who tried to play dumb with Dad, having mom so beautifully out of the way? Had it worked, then it would have fed that lie which says, "You are still not safe and you must gain back control." The Rockster has some favorite little games (like addicts have a drug of choice, I think our kids have some games of choice). Just two weeks ago we started working on this particular favorite. He will use poor grammar on purpose. Again - one of those things that sounds like no big deal to the average reader. Yet, it is his way of getting an adult to believe he doesn't necessarily know the correct thing to say. This helps him feel like he has the upper hand, because he was able to doop a grown-up. Dad asked, "So, what's going on?" Rocky replied, "Good."
One of his ABSOLUTE favorite things. We've let this go for 15 months. Just hit on it recently. So, he was really, really hoping to pull it over on Dad.
Not so much. This convo when much more quickly, because he and I had already had the discussion earlier in the day. Dad and I were able to be quite the comedians as we worked our way through it. It all came back around to us knowing the truth about how he feels intimidated by Dad. We gave him some phrases to give him more control when he feels threatened by dad's voice. Sometimes it is when he is using a firm correcting voice, and sometimes it's just when Rocky is feeling extremely vulnerable. Either way, we practiced saying, "Dad, could you change your voice?" Role played some possible scenarios. Of course, Dad changed his voice to all sorts of high-pitched concoctions. Silliness rules.
Then all the kids - except Presh, who had continued to be her very delightful self all day - went out with Dad to set off the last of the fireworks. Just as the last one was going off, Andy-Roon started yelping. Mar, in her "fright" was smashing into her brother. Dad called it. She started to fuss. He said, "Just head on inside. It's almost bedtime anyway." I was able to enjoy the robot walk into her bedroom. Dad made a joke once he was inside, though, and she lightened right up. Probably just wanted to make sure no one had forgotten about her.
Who knows? She may do something tomorrow to pay Dad back for it.
So, there ya' go ... a typical Thursday, bathed in the stress of an upcoming move.
