As I stated in Reflections, Part One, I would like to go more in depth regarding some of the issues that the children were facing when they were initially removed from their home and placed with us, and then when they were removed from foster care and placed back with us again. As you can probably imagine, the events leading up to the removal, and indeed, the removal itself, was very traumatic for them, as it would be for anyone. One of the children later described it as a "death", the same feeling one experiences at the passing of a loved one. All of their memories, their family, indeed, their entire lives seemed snatched away from them. When the events that precipitated their removal took place, nearly all the children were asleep. When they woke up, they did so to sirens, policemen, neighbors and a CPS worker. They were all told to pack a few changes of clothes quickly, and just like that, without even a chance to ask why, they were hurried out the door and to a safer environment. That, of course, is not to say that the rushing and the hurried preparations were uncalled for. They certainly were, but for a very young child, such an event is very, very traumatic. They were given no opportunity to ask questions, and they felt afraid to ask the ones that were forming in their young, confused minds. All they knew for certain was that their lives had been turned upside down. Everyone felt it, from the oldest down to the four week old infant.
One thing that I heard over and over again was, "Well . . . at least the baby will be too young to remember any of it, so it probably won't hurt her like it will the older ones." There was a time when this sort of logic would have made some sense to me, but I now know better. Almost immediately, Camrie began having colic. She cried incessantly, many times even though she was being held. She refused to take naps, and she did not sleep through the night until she was four months old. She consistently fell behind in the "milestones" that doctors check and record during check-ups. When I began having severe pregnancy complications, I was hospitalized permanently (until Lexy was delivered), and the children went into foster care. Camrie was five months old at that time, and still had neither smiled nor laughed. When we got them back about one year later, she had several psychological issues, including an obsession with women's body parts, an obsession with putting her fingers in people's mouths, an obsession with eating non-food items, and a refusal to speak. In addition to all this, she suffered from extreme fear, and resisted bonding with me. It took about two full years before something clicked in her mind, and she began to behave normally. Today, she is nearly five years old and is a very happy, healthy child. She still suffers from a few minor quirks, but they are very small and insignificant compared to what they used to be.
Savannah had some serious issues too, but they mostly all related to her extreme fear of being left alone. When they first came to us, she walked everywhere with her shoes in her hand and cried when we made her put them down. She screamed, and I mean screamed, each time anyone walked in the direction of the door, clearly terrified of being left behind. Most disturbing of all were her very frequent night terrors. At least 4 times a week, she would wake the entire house with her screaming, and we'd find her tucked away into one corner of the room. It typically took a few moments to calm her down. During those moments, she recognized no one and seemed to hear nothing we said. Any attempts to hold her or pick her up resulted in her hitting and kicking to get away. When at last
she started to "come out of it", the first thing she always said was, "Why am I here? I want to go home." She was two years old. When they came back to us the second time, the night terrors were gone, but her fear was as alive as ever. She would begin trembling if I even just looked at her, and would frequently start crying when I called her by name. The crying wore off within the first month or two, but the trembling never fully went away. To this day, she trembles violently when she has done something wrong and we have to discuss it, and when she's learning how to do something, such as tying her shoelaces, and makes a mistake. We've had many, many discussions about it, and there have been countless reassurances made, but the trembling is just something she has not yet been able to overcome.
Lizzy was the trouble child when they first came to us. She was the thoughtless, careless bully of the bunch. Over the years, we've had many chances to discuss these things, and I have come to realize that her behaviors were her way of trying desperately to gain control of a situation in which she had none. Today, she does not remember many of the things she said and did to the other children, and she cries if anyone mentions the way she used to behave. We do not ever talk about it anymore; there is no need. She is completely a night-and-day-different child than she was then. I discuss this now in an attempt to help any parent who is currently dealing with a similar situation to understand that they are not alone, for it is that feeling of utter isolation that makes a situation such as this so difficult to endure. For those four months that the children initially stayed with us, Lizzy's behavior was horrendous. I constantly received calls from the school, saying that she "fell asleep" in class and refused to wake up. She often refused to respect the teacher and the other students. She stole things from other children's backpacks, and in fact, frequently "stole" things from others in our family, hiding them under her pillow or in her book bag. She was six years old, but she had all the cunning of a twenty-six year old sociopath. She constantly manipulated the others to do what she wanted them to do, often times telling the younger children that if they did not comply, she would call "the people" to come take them away from their families. She lied without remorse, cried only if she thought it would get her something, and intentionally tried to make the other children miserable. When she was placed in foster care, these behaviors caused such problems that her doctor prescribed a very powerful anti-psychotic medication for her - in fact, when I researched that medication, it plainly stated that it was not recommended for use in children. The first thing I did when they came back was find a different doctor for her and begin the process of weaning her off of that medication, which took four weeks.
Although things never got as bad as they were before, she did still exhibit some of her old behaviors, especially the lying and the bitterness. I was committed to helping her overcome these issues, and I distinctly remember the day the bitterness broke. She and my biological daughter, Mercy, who is 3 months older than Lizzy, had been having some sort of disagreement. I spoke to both of them privately about it, but when I was speaking to Lizzy, she began to cry, and finally, out of frustration said, "Well, I'm trying really hard to be just like Mercy but it doesn't work!!" I felt that "Aha!" moment as I realized I had found the key to her bitterness. I asked her why she wanted to be just like Mercy, and the answer confirmed everything: "Because I already know that's what you want from me!" She looked so angry, so defiant, but so hurt. I gently said, "Lizzy, I already have one Mercy. I don't need another one. I want you to be you. It's ok for you to like different things than Mercy does, to wear different things than she does, and to do different things than she does. I need you to just be Lizzy. I want you to be different than Mercy." I watched something inside her break down, and her attitude was seriously different from that day on. Several months later, we were discussing it, and she told me, "I hated myself, because I knew I was always doing bad things. That's why I couldn't stand Mercy, because all she did was remind me of how bad I really was. And I always wished that she would get in trouble so that I wouldn't look so bad." Perhaps I was too busy or too preoccupied to truly understand, although it seems so obvious to me now. Three years later, she is a very truthful, very intelligent, and very compassionate girl of 11, and she and I share a very special bond which I would not trade for anything.
Daniel was a different story altogether. He was very quiet, almost apathetic. It did not matter if things were falling apart or if we had just experienced a miracle - his facial expression almost never changed. He rarely looked angry, and he rarely looked happy. He was just there, biding his time until he would be going home. Most of his issues, oddly enough, seemed to stem from his academic issues. He was very far behind, and he was told there was little hope of him catching up. This negativity overflowed into every other area of his young life; he was always too afraid to try anything challenging. He resisted challenges like the positive end of a magnet opposes a negative end. He would say and do anything to get out of it. Unfortunately, at that time, trying to talk to him about it was futile. He merely nodded nonchalantly, and then went off into his own world. When they came back to us a year later, he was still expecting to go back to his biological parents and was absolutely devastated when he at last realized that it was not to be. Shortly after this realization, he began having flashbacks of the abuse that he had witnessed and endured while living with his biological family. This resulted in him having an unhealthy obsession with Jymmi. He needed to be with her constantly, cried when he had to sleep in a separate room from her, got upset when he had to go play with the other children, began to say that he wanted to be just like her, and in fact, began to take her authority over mine. Jymmi had been the person who mostly took care of him when he was younger, so I understood this natural reaching out that he was doing. It was a long and unpleasant task to get him to realize that what he was doing was unhealthy. He refused, at first, to believe that there was anything wrong with it. We had many discussions, and eventually I began to see a change in him, although it would be nearly two and a half years before he would completely relinquish his dependency on her. When we discussed it again recently, I asked him what had helped him change. He said that he had always thought, "Jymmi was the only one who took care of me". But he had come to realize that there were many people who had cared for him and loved him. He had been only wanting to recognize Jymmi because he was afraid to let go, since she was the only attachment to his old home that he had left. But eventually, he realized he did not need that attachment anymore, and was able to let go of his dependency. Today, his closest sibling is his younger brother Nick, who absolutely loves and adores him.
Although Jymmi's story is facinating, I will not share it here. I feel that it would be too much an invasion of her privacy, as she was much older than the others and suffered from issues of a more sensitive nature. Perhaps in time, she may be comfortable enough to allow a candid discussion, and at that time, I will share her journey through the time that she was with us.
In my next blog, I will discuss my perspectives, both then and now, and how I dealt with all the turmoil and confusion as we all tried to adjust to this enormous change.
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