Out of Sync

What is normal behavior?  What makes most of the people that we interact with everyday behave "appropriately"?  How does one gauge appropriate behavior anyway?  By what means are we to measure how a child should interact with the world around them.

I am one that believes that we way over diagnose these days.  Every behavior has a "disorder" assigned to it.  There is ADD, ADHD, RAD, ODD, DBD and a plethora of other acronyms for behavior issues in children.  It's as if there is a specific name assigned to the behavior, it can be fixed. Although I do believe that some children are extreme exceptions and do need medications and therapy to help them balance their emotions, not nearly as many as are treated every year in America.

Some children don't fit into a specific acronym and so they are assigned several even though they don't really meet all of  the criteria for any of them.  We treat a little here and a little there and hope that the outcome will be a calm, happy child that will sit still for hours in a desk at school and behave according to the TEA guidelines for school age children.  That these children will be medicated enough to forget what has happened to them and with a simple pill will know how to automatically respond appropriately to the world around them.

What about those children that have experienced extreme trauma in their lives and  I think  there are many, many more than we know.  How are they to deal with "normal" life when "normal" to them is violence, anger, drugs, abuse, yelling, screaming, profanity and neglect.  Why wouldn't they act like animals when all of their lives the adults acted like animals?  No pill can fix this.

I have learned so much in the past year about what is normal.  My sheltered life of comfort, love and blessings is NOT normal.  I am so guarded and protected from the lives that millions of children have been born into and think is the only life available to them.

Foster children are thrust out of a life that they have become accustomed to and into a life of chaos.  It's seems so odd to me that MY home would seem chaotic to a foster child but it truly does.  Our newest foster son came in to my home and has been frantic ever since.  A stay at home mom, that made him meals, helped him dress, wanted to read stories and tuck him in at night actually scared him a bit.  He asked me repeatedly what I was doing.  Why I was helping him.  Why did I want to read him a story.  Why did I sit on the couch by him and watch a movie.  Why I wanted to help him get dressed.  This little boy actually experienced pain when I rubbed his back or arms.  He had never been stimulated like this and so he thought I was hurting him.  It's so sad to me.  

My expectations were of a child that would welcome the love and support that my family gave him.  That he would see how we were there for him.  That we were patient,caring and loving and that he would look at us and say "Thank you for all of this.  I have been missing this all of my life."  But in reality he is skeptical of us.  He is disconnected and confused.  He is defiant and angry at us.  WE ARE NOT NORMAL TO HIM.  

One night, for example, I was helping him out of the tub.  He slipped a little and it scared him.  I picked him up and wrapped him in a towel.  I held him like a baby until he stopped crying.  Trying to make him smile I said " You are like my baby".  He immediately sat up and glared a very angry look at me and said, " I am NOT your baby!!  I am my mommy's baby!"  He jumped out of my lap and began putting his own clothes on.  At first I was hurt but as I watched this little 3 year old struggle to put his own jammies on I realized that he was "Out of Sync".  He desperately needed his "normal" button reset.  I was not his mommy.  His mommy would never do what I just did for him.  I was not loving him, I was a threat.   He loves his mom although she has horribly mistreated and neglected him, he desperately  loves her. I can not comprehend this.  He does not have a desire for me to replace her. All of my efforts to be a loving mother figure for him mean nothing to him right now.  He wants HIS mother.   Not that I want to replace her at all but I desperately want him to see how a mother is supposed to love her children.  He doesn't know what that even looks like.  So his response is anger and defiance.

We are working hard to reassure him that we are not trying to replace the life he has known.  We are trying to show him how to respond differently to the world around him.  Life does not have to be full of anger, rage and violence.  We are trying to show him that they way to respond to others is out of kindness and patience but this will be a very slow process for him.  He is trying so hard though.  He always asks if he is doing the right thing and saying the right thing.  He really just doesn't know.

The way he reacts to a hug is to scratch.  The way he responds to sitting close to someone is to bite.  He  grabs things he wants out of your hand and screams at you until you get what he wants.  He thinks that aggression is the only way to get what you want.  There is no please or thank you in his world.  It's just give it to me now or you will get hurt.   Such a sad outlook to life but we are working hard to reset his normal.  

It has been suggested to me by a therapist to start doing exercises with him from the book "The Out of Sync" child.  These exercises are to help with sensory issues due to lack of stimulation.  They seem so silly while doing them but they are supposed to help him react appropriately to stimuli.  From birth, most babies are held and rubbed and rocked.  We as moms think we are doing this for us because it makes us feel good but in reality it is essential to a child's development.  God gave us a "mothering" instinct in order for our children to bond to people, learn empathy and gentleness.  It's so amazing how intricately God has formed our need for relationship and touch.  And in turn so tragic how we as humans destroy that.

I am not sure how long it will take for Little "L" to respond to the world around him "appropriately".  Maybe never.... All we can do is love him as long as he is with us and hope that his life is touched in a positive way.

God has a plan for him, that is the only thing I know for sure....