PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

 

     Living with a person who has been diagnosed with PTSD is challenging. Living with a child who has been diagnosed with PTSD is heartbreaking.

  From an academic perspective of learning more about this mental health issue, helping a child through PTSD would probably bring more insight to the issue than perhaps working with an adult. Children are, after all, unfiltered versions of adults. Their reactions and the simplicity with which they are able to express themselves are often highly insightful.  From an emotion-filled and parent perspective, however, it is indescribably difficult. On a daily basis, as a family, we are dealing with a very hurt, very vulnerable and fragile child who became this way not by our doing. He is a helpless victim. He did not ask to be born into his circumstance. It is not his fault that his very sensitive nature has caused him to struggle so much more than his siblings, siblings who experienced the same trauma and witnessed the same events. It is difficult as parents for us to refrain from showing our own emotions (helplessness, sadness, anger—anger at the people who caused him such pain, not anger at him). We are certainly learning a lot—about him and about ourselves, his limits, our limits, his triggers, our own triggers.

   I am actually surprised that more people are not diagnosed with PTSD. As things unfold, and more information surfaces about my child’s history, I cannot help but begin to wonder how I would cope given the same circumstance. The strength that I see everyday as this little guy gets up and moves along in his life is inspiring. He is trying new things, learning about his emotions, and making extraordinary gains. We are not doing anything fantastically special with this boy day in and day out. We are only giving him what our own biological children, and most children take for granted. Love. Compassion. Physical and emotional safety. Routine. Food. Shelter. Security. 

   When we are in the middle of one of his triggered episodes--they happen only every 2 weeks or so now, reduced from the initial daily frequency--I must remind myself of how far he has come. For example, once he is calm, he can now use his words to explain what made ‘the feeling’ come. Months ago, we would have a three hour crying jag that alternated between extreme sadness to extreme anger that brought no understanding to what was the cause and left everyone feeling completely baffled, drained and helpless. We are beginning to be able to predict and prevent triggers. For example, when going somewhere new, we have learned to point out all the exit signs, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, fire staircases. If it is a seated event (play, hockey game etc) we make sure to be sitting on the aisle in case we need to make a quick departure. We talk through scenarios of what we would do should an earthquake/flood/fire/monsoon/hurricane strike. He has an extreme fear of disasters (natural and man made) and if we discuss how to deal with them (as opposed to minimizing them by saying everything is fine,  or brushing them away by saying these things won’t ever happen, as is our instinct as parents), we allow him to feel somewhat in control of his circumstance. Totally understandable for someone who had terrible things happen to him that were out entirely of his control. There are several ways that we have adapted to help him through his days. We have discovered that anxiety builds when the laundry gets behind, and the fresh clothes are stacked in the laundry room instead of in his drawers.  Totally understandable when you stop to think about it, as we now know that this triggers feelings of the old days when he had no clothes at all to wear. At first, I worked hard to keep his drawers stocked. Now, he helps me put his clothes away and I sense this gives him more of a sense of control over his belongings than if I just did it. I am helping him to own his present.  Another trigger that is unavoidable is the phone ringing. The ringing phone used to cause him to come running from wherever he is to say “It’s the cops. They are coming to take us away.” Now, he will continue to do whatever he is doing, but he will always refer to the police under his breathwhenever the phone rings. That one is getting better but it will resurface if it is a particularly anxious day.

   Learning about PTSD is an ongoing learning process.  For example, if I am going to visit the school for any reason, I am sure to tell him. One time, in the early days, I did not think to tell him. One of his classmates told him that he saw his mom in the hall. This triggered a full blown five hour episode consisting of crying, anger, screaming, sobbing, rocking, destroying things…followed by a repeat of all of the above actions. We finally were able to understand that when his classmate told him this, he had a flashback and thought I was his biological mother and that she was coming to get him. Upon speaking with his teacher, we learned that he was absolutely fine all day at school. This meant that he held it in all day only to release once he was home and felt safe. I get exhausted and emotionally drained just remembering this particular incident and putting myself in his shoes as he made his way through his school day with this in his heart. I cannot imagine living through it as he did.

  We have learned that when an episode is brewing, or has suddenly appeared for a seemingly unknown reason, we must stop what we are doing and deal with it. Difficult to do as it often surfaces at the worst times….trying to get out the door, while dinner is cooking, while another sibling is getting helped with homework, at an amusement park, or a family gathering. I have created my own coping mechanism by likening his triggered events to having a child who is sick, or has a chronic issue. When you think about it, if a child suddenly vomits, we don’t get stressed at the child…we stop what we are doing and deal with it with love, concern, sympathy and compassion. One of my children had a year of having inexplicable seizures. These seizures were always unpredictable and we always stopped what we were doing to deal with it with love, concern, sympathy and compassion. Once I was able to rationalize his bouts of  extremely difficult and sometimes destructive behaviour, that I admit initially struggling with quite a bit, I was in a much better place emotionally to stop what I was doing and deal with it, with love, concern, sympathy and compassion.

    The bright side of all of this is that he is not his history. His history does not own him; he owns his history, just as he owns his present and future. PTSD manifests differently in each person who has it. In our case, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and our son is a reminder of the resiliency of children and the simple power of love, structure and safety.

Winning the Lottery

    I have always told my kids that if I were to win the lottery, the first thing I would do is go back to school. They think I am crazy, of course. Who in their right mind would go BACK to school once they no longer HAVE to?  I did not win the cash lottery, but I am back at school…sort of.
      For me, post secondary education had always been just out of reach. I did not attend university straight out of high school. I did the applications, got the acceptance letters. I even had a dorm room and a roommate assigned to me. However, it was not to be for me, at that time. Although I have some regrets about not getting school out of the way as a young person, I know that things work out as they should. I am well aware that the stars would not have aligned as they did for me had I gone. I wouldn’t have had all of my life experiences that led me to marriage, family and the great life that is mine. So, I went about life, busily raising five boys five and under…and when my youngest child entered grade one, I entered first year university. His first day of big boy school was my first day of grown up school.  I felt very fortunate and life was good. After all, my ‘job’ was to read great literature, discuss it at length, and then write about it.  I felt stimulated and validated. Fast forward a decade or so through various job gains and losses. Our home changed, pets came and went and our boys grew up. Just like they say “The days are long but the years are short”. Again, life moved along, and we found ourselves back raising a brood of young children, this time, they are children who desperately need a full time parent at home each day…someone home to send them off in the morning, and someone home to greet them at the end of each school day, at least for a year or two, maybe more. When we made the decision to adopt four young children, we also made the decision to dedicate one of us (me) to being the rock that they needed to make them feel secure and safe in their new life.  I didn’t win a cash lottery, but I definitely won the life lottery. So, here I am, true to my word, freshly at home with life lottery winnings. What to do, what to do. Go back to school, of course! Online learning. An amazing evolutionary tool. Get a degree from the comfort of your own home. Last time around it was a major in English Lit and a minor in Women’s Studies. Relevant for my life at the time…I loved literature, hence the English major. I grew up surrounded by brothers and I was raising five sons who by golly gum were going to be raised with feminist principles if it was the last thing I did, hence the Women’s Studies focus. My poor boys. They have many a story to share about mom’s highly attuned feminism outlook and the effect it had upon them during their formative years.
     This time around, it will be a diploma in Addiction Studies, possibly followed by a Family Counselling Certificate. Relevant for my life now, as my fostering experiences often cause me to wish I understood more about the primary reasons that children come into care, and I have encountered addiction issues within my own social circle. Looking back upon my childhood, I see things in retrospect that were there and that contributed to my own development and attitudes. I have taken mini ‘addictions 101’ workshops that touch upon the many multi- layered issues surrounding addictions. These workshops have stirred up some uncomfortable feelings about the world around me, past and present, and caused me to examine my own relationship with alcohol. For me, discomfort is often a sign of my needing to learn more so, it seems like a good fit for my current stage of life. Who knows how this lottery will turn out.

 

 

Sunday Dinner

     Sunday dinner at our house begins long before we are all gathered around the scuffed old pine table. Sunday dinner begins with Sunday mornings. Just like Lionel says, ‘Easy like Sunday Morning” I love Sundays. For me, Sundays honour past memories, create the present and form future history.

   Sunday dinner feels like payback for all of life’s hard stuff. It’s when all of my young roosters come home…some with their special people, some on their own. It’s when all the tough stuff that’s happened over the years can be brought out and revisited with laughter, tenderness and even tension. It’s when a young voice (out of the mouths of babes) can pipe up with the questions…. “Did you get a job yet? When are you getting married? Wow, your hair is long/short/pink/ purple/messy/nice. Where’s your girlfriend? Did you hear the latest about Stephen Harper/Rob Ford/Whoever-is-in-the-news? Why are you sad today? Did you kiss yet? When did you get that big dent on your car?” …those questions and situations that everyone may have been avoiding, the questions that create a moment of discomfort, then erase the tension and allow us to heave a sigh of relief and move on to the business of sharing food. Sunday dinner allows for a decompression of the week’s stresses. The starving students get stuffed. The childhood stories get pulled out and new memories get made. Politics abound, kids get root beer and grown ups get wine. And there’s always, always a special dessert or two. All the years of cooking a roast beef when they were young and didn’t notice, have finally resulted in the goal being attained…the ultimate plan…cook a Sunday dinner and they will come. And come they do.

   Although my own mother died before I had children of my own, she is with me every Sunday. She’s with me as I peel the potatoes, as I guide the table setting and teach the fancy napkin folding. She’s with me as I sip wine and cook and as I remember her sipping her ever-present gin and tonic while cooking. She’s there as I listen to Sunday afternoon CBC while remembering her belting out the tunes alongside Frank Sinatra on the oldies station. How she loved Frank Sinatra. The memory of her scrunched up face as she hand whipped the eggs for the lemon meringue pie makes me laugh as I make my own lemon pie (with a mixer). I remember the time that a jokester brother (or maybe it was a friend—there were always extra faces around our Sunday dinner table) swapped the sugar with salt resulting in the worst lemon pie ever. Somehow she didn’t even get angry at the ruined dessert.

   Every Sunday, after the faded, mismatched coffee tables were rubbed with Pledge, fresh towels put out in the bathroom and carpets vacuumed, as the roast roasted, and after the pots and pots of potatoes were peeled, we sat and played gin rummy together. Sunday afternoons as we shuffled the cards were the backdrop for our mother daughter conversations. Under normal circumstances, these conversations would make my normally animated and easy going mother very uncomfortable. But with a drink in one hand, a pair of pairs in the other hand, she could talk. My mother had a way of talking to me and making points with the fewest of words and the subtlest planting of the smallest seed. For example, my mother, acknowledging my adolescence was marked by the simple phrase. “You will be starting your period soon. There are supplies in the back of my closet when you need them”. (Yes, feminine hygiene products were to be kept hidden and out of sight).There. We just successfully navigated the birds and the bees.  I have great admiration for how my mother handled my first serious boyfriend years later, who was clearly a bad boy (every girl needs to have had at least one bad boy in her life). She held her tongue but when the time was right, she got out her garden hoe to sow the seeds. “Do you ever go on dates? Like, to the movies?” We didn’t. “Did you do something nice for your birthday?” We didn’t. Did _______ like your new haircut? He didn’t notice. He didn’t last much longer after I started noticing that he never noticed anything. She said so much without ever saying a word. Admirable trait in a mother. A trait I try hard to emulate, but always forget and end up using too many words.

    Sunday dinners mean a lot to me, and I hope to my kids as well. Sunday dinners are filled with warm memories as I think about my own childhood Sunday dinners, as I watch my older children reminisce about their childhood antics while the younger ones listen with wide eyes and baited breath.  I am filled with pride as I look around the table at the amazing assortment of children and young adults who come together each week because they want to, not because they have to. They arrive and they bring the important people in their lives to join into our family, and slowly, my memories get tangled up alongside theirs.

    

Adoption Video Short

Here is a little video that I created for our far away family who haven't yet met our new additions.  Please excuse the amateur quality.

Playing with a Bully

Playing with a Bully Pillow time is a longed for period of time on any given day. However, there are two drawbacks to pillow time for me. The first is that I almost fear going to bed because I love it so much, but it inevitably means that I will have to get up in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and my busy days….yet I am not and have never been a morning person. I am married to a leap-out-of-bed-no-snooze-button-required kind of guy. I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier than necessary just so I can hit the snooze button several times. It is safe to say that I am not at my sunny best first thing in the morning. Before getting out of bed each morning I find my inner voice negotiating many things…such as, What is worse…getting the dogs outside now before they pee, or having the extra time in bed but having to clean up the pee. I will then feel badly all day (and give even more fuel to the bedtime bully who you will soon meet—read below) for denying the dog’s dignity for my own selfish reasons. Or, I know I swore I would wash my hair today, but hey, I have a hat that I could keep on all day. These are my silly, humorous, lazy- ass reasons for not liking bedtime. The second reason that I dread bedtime is somewhat darker. Bedtime has become the time of day for me when ‘Critical Mom’ has been rearing her ugly head. Critical Mom has darkness to her…a darkness that she brings to my heart while whispering ‘anxiety disorder’ in my ear. She erodes my confidence and self-worth. She is not always anxiety-provoking; the odd time she’ll boost me up, makes me feel like supermom and a role model to all. When that happens, bedtime is bliss, life is sweet and I feel in control of my life. Most times, Critical Mom is the mom in me who comes out and wants to play almost every night. She is not a nice friend. As I lay with my head on the pillow, her presence seeps out. She often tries to come out earlier; I can often feel her knocking at my mind’s door… when I am brushing my teeth, washing my face, putting the last load of laundry into the wash. I can often push her away if she arrives before bedtime. It is when I am in bed that I am trapped. Out she comes, knocking on all my doors and windows, begging us all to come out and play. “C’mon, Guilty Mom,” she calls, “You were active today. Let’s play! Oh, you know you want to join in, Tired Mom. Don’t even bother calling on Happy Mom, Doting Mom, Patient Mom, Awesome Mom or Crafty Mom today, they are no fun. They will put Anxious Mom right to sleep with their soothing, ego-building antics and we won’t see any of the fun moms for awhile! We want to play for a long time tonight, so let’s go get Short-Tempered Mom and Busy Mom to come out. I heard that Frozen-Pizza-for-Dinner Mom and Skip Bath Tonight Mom are up for some fun too. Did you meet Secret-Chocolate-Eating-Mom and Wine-on-a-Tuesday Mom? They are sure to induce guilt and feelings of self-loathing. That’ll keep her in the game, wide awake with heart palpitations into the wee hours!” I have a love/hate relationship with Critique Mom. I truly do. I hate her because she causes my heart to skip a beat, my blood pressure to rise and my much loved sleep to remain elusive. She causes me to examine all of my actions and reactions. She makes me go outside of myself and analyze one of my greatest sources of pride…my abilities as a mother. She brings me down and makes me angry at myself. Many of these ‘hate’ reasons are also my love reasons. Without Critique Mom, I wouldn’t strive to do better the next day. I wouldn’t walk a mile in my children’s shoes. I wouldn’t revisit my sometimes sharp tone through sensitive little ears. I wouldn’t proactively come up with strategies to make myself feel better, so I can be better. She is both the monkey on my back and the cheerleader in my court. Critique Mom often gets the best of me, despite my best intentions. She can be easily foiled and put away simply by my being a perfect, awesome, smiley and loving mother in every circumstance, at every moment. Of course, that is not realistic, or even human. I know this on a rational level. Heck, I even know that most of the time, I’m a damn good parent, despite my flaws. What I need to learn is a way to manipulate Critique Mom. I need to pull her out on my own terms to keep myself in line. I also need to dance with her when I deserve to be happy and positive, and tell her to *&$% off when I’ve had a bad day. It’s all about control....the control she has over me, and my control over her. She can be a bully, but as they say, keep your enemies close. For now, she continues to take up space in my mind rent-free. I am working hard on controlling her, but at this point, she seems to have the upper hand, both in my mind and on my pillow.

Our Kind of Crazy

Parenting…Second Time Around I live in a strange world. It is a world of dichotomies. My world involves Tosh.0 on one television set, while Phineas and Ferb are up to their crazy adventures on another. My home is a land of juice boxes on the front porch and red beer pong cups on the back porch. The flowerbeds host stained popsicle sticks alongside a soggy cigarette butt (that I know doesn’t belong to me, my husband or the mailman).My driveway lays waste to pink bicycles with training wheels lined up beside assorted cool cars and rusty trucks being worked on by young mechanics. We have teen foragers in the kitchen crunching cereal at 3 am, with cereal again at 7 am for the school aged bunch. Together with my husband Chris, we have embarked on what we like to call Parenting…Second Time Around. (Insert dark music here) Our children’s ages are as follows: 8, 9, 10, 12,18,19,19, 23, and 24. The twenty four year old does not live at home, so at the moment we only have eight children. (Only?) For a period of time there were only seven, but one boomeranged back home after a summer of adventures (we’d rather not talk about it). Five of our children are biological, and four of our children are adopted. I don’t think I mentioned that we are also foster parents, and we have recently begun fostering babies aged zero to two. I know what you are thinking…but, like our son’s summer of (mis) adventures, we are not going to go there either. Living this kind of crazy has its upsides. For instance, a discussion between us and he-who-shall-not-be-named over the use of a car (we said no), normally may have been filled with angry tones, a possible expletive concluded with a slammed door or a dramatic exit. Instead, the denied car-borrower walked into the next room, where a loving seven year old sister approached him, said hi and hugged him. The tension immediately disappeared, followed by a hug back and a sigh. Situation-diverted. Another upside? Where else would you find a nineteen year old sitting in the living room, somehow finding himself watching a Barbie movie, and yelling into the kitchen, “Should they be watching this? It seems inappropriate.” A future concerned dad is born. Parenting second time around must involve patience, energy and humour. In many ways it is easier…we are more experienced and laid back. We’ve navigated many a parent/teacher interview and know our way around every childhood illness possible. In other ways, it can be challenging…we have to work hard to avoid the ‘been there, done that’ mindset. Yes, we’ve already had the puppies, kittens, pet birds, hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles and lizards. But they haven’t. Yes, we’ve been to the ocean, amusement park and road trips across Canada. But they haven’t. We are discovering that doing the same activities through a different lens keeps us young, although we have definitely earned our pillows at the end of a day. Parenting second time around is not for the weak-of-heart, but I highly recommend it. I get to hang out with cool young parents. It gives me an excuse to keep coaching, help in classrooms and Brownie lead. It forces me to get out of the house when I normally might have stayed in to watch another rerun of Modern Family with glass of wine in hand. Parenting second time around ensures that I at least feel that I've earned that post homework/bath/story/bedtime glass of wine followed by my desperately needed pillow time.

Child File / Recipe File

We have all received that phone call whereby a child has been described to us over the phone. We know that the person on the other end has likely never met the child, and that they are reading from a file. Imagine if you are holding that file, having never met the child and trying to imagine who he/she truly is. Imagine you are holding a recipe file for a loaf of bread, having never seen a loaf of bread before, and trying to imagine what a loaf of bread truly is. We know a loaf of bread is the sum of flour, yeast, eggs, sugar. The order of mixing the ingredients and the quality of the ingredients used (nature) are important. The utensils used, what type of oven it is cooked in and the very person mixing the dough (nurture) also have a great impact on the final result. If we have never laid eyes on a loaf of bread before, or felt it, smelled it, tasted it, we will still have no idea what bread will be from reading the recipe. We know a child is the sum of personality, strengths, weaknesses (nature). The environment, past experiences and an uncertain future are all mixed in as well (nurture). If we have never laid eyes on this child, met their eyes, taken in their ‘self”, experienced their strengths and weaknesses, felt their pain, their sadness, their anger, we will have no idea who this child is from reading the file. When we have made the decision to head to the kitchen to bake a loaf of bread (no bread machine here!) we find the one-dimensional recipe and jump in. We know making bread can be a multi-step; complicated undertaking that may or may not work out. Yet we’ve decided to give it a go and try our best. We are not afraid of that ingredient we have never seen before. If it works out, that is great, we’ve learned something about ourselves, and if things do not work out, we might go back and re-think a step or change our method. The same can be said for fostering. We’ve made the decision to do it, and when we are given the one-dimensional file, we jump in. There are no guarantees with anything, and that one-dimensional file does not give us the true essence of who will arrive in front of us. I think if I was given myself a file about me, I might not want to take myself on. Who in their right mind would voluntarily take on a person like me who has been known to be sad sometimes (depressed?), and angry (hostile?) at other times? I am someone who will admit to hoarding chocolate and Oreo cookies from others and privately indulging. I am a person who can be lazy at times, (lethargic?) and crazy-busy (hyperactive?) at other times. I have been known to avoid all exterior interactions when engrossed in a good book (anti-social?) These are labels that could be recorded in my file. However, I am told that I can also be fiercely loyal, loving, generous and kind. I like to think of myself as a generally good person. These last attributes would only become known once you get to know me and once I am in your life. You’ve made the decision to try to bake bread, so get in the kitchen and give it your best effort. Try not to be intimidated by the bread recipe file or the CAS child file. Try not to imagine the finished product until it is in front of you. Look past the ingredients and look at the potential before dismissing the file as too challenging or too intimidating. You really will not know until you’ve looked past the file to the child in front of you.