Endless referrals

I have a list of at least 10 people I have been referred to in order to find mental health care for C. Every person I call says they can’t help and refers me to someone else. The list grows and grows. So does my frustration. 

I am starting to feel hopeless about all of this. My thought today was that by the time I find someone who does work with preschoolers, C will be old enough to not need a preschool-specific clinician. 

Meanwhile, the bedtime antics grow worse every night. Tonight John is sitting in our guest bedroom with C in the pack and play. I can hear him screaming and am trying not to panic about all of it. I feel like I have no answer to this problem. And no one else does either. Is it just going to get worse each night forever and ever until we end up just driving around in circles to make C fall asleep like he’s an infant?

I feel like a broken record here, which is why I haven’t been writing much lately. Also, I broke our recently purchased computer by spilling water on it in the midst of bedtime bullshit. The hard drive instantly corroded, apparently, and even the specialty data retrieval place couldn’t help. I had to redo a bunch of my schoolwork and we lost three months of pictures. A three months that happened to include C’s adoption, baptism, and fourth birthday. I will get some replacement photos from family, but there are videos and other shots I know are gone forever. It hurts my heart. And it means I have to type my complaining posts on my phone or iPad, which is annoying too. 

Stepping forward, stepping back

There’s a dance we do in this house, and I suspect the same dance is done in foster and adoptive houses across the country. Every time we make some progress, a few steps forward, we turn back around and go backward a few steps. Sometimes things feel fruitless.

The last few weeks have been some of the backsliding kind. The return from vacation seemed to be the trigger–or at least it serves as a line of demarcation in my mind. Before vacation came the sweet days I often wrote about here. C was making connections, figuring out his family, naming all of us and our roles in his world. He was loving and proud, claiming us and allowing us to claim him.

Now comes regression. Coming back from Florida, C became more prickly. He was angry. Nothing was quite right and he let us know. There were still moments of calm and love and a few snuggles. He still played with E, laughed, worked hard at his therapies, but things seemed to carry an extra charge. In the middle of a hard evening, with C upstairs railing in bed at the injustice of bedtime, I remember saying to John, “Remember all the spitting in the beginning? At least we’re over the spitting.”

Foolish Mama. Of course we’re back in the spitting phase now. I admit it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. He doesn’t do it over each and every stressor in life, like he used to (or maybe things that were stressful a year ago–like someone coming to visit–just aren’t as stressful anymore), but it’s still a frequent reminder that C carries a lot of anger inside his little body.

The other regression we’ve seen is in C’s sleep. He’s back to spending a few hours awake in bed. Sometimes he’s happy but awake, lying up there quietly chatting, singing, playing. Sometimes, like last night, he seems scared and sad. He was calling out for me, saying he wanted to come downstairs, begging me to stay with him. On the worst nights, he stays up until 10:00 or 10:30 and then is an angry, miserable wreck the next day. Last night he was only up until 8:30 or so.

The days come and go quickly. Some are better than others. At points, I honestly feel like I’m carting around a wild animal. The tantrums and spitting and crashing into furniture and throwing toys–it all feels uncontrollable some days. And then, some days, C will beg me for snuggles and seems content to sit in my lap for hours. The best we can do, I guess, is to ride out the backward steps, trusting that forward progress is sure to come again soon. Or maybe, we need to change our perspective. Maybe the backward steps are a necessary part of the forward progress.

Time In

Just a quick post to say, time in seems to really be working. C tells us regularly that he needs a time in. He still gets them on occasion as a behavior correction method, too, but more often he says, “Need time in,” when he starts to get upset and we go from there. All around, it’s been a lot more pleasant of an experience. There is far less thrashing and screeching and pinching and scratching (though still some). He also asked this morning to ride in the Ergo on my back while I made lunches after breakfast. That was a first. It seems like us clarifying for him that he could ask to be held, get a hug, have a snuggle, get a “time in” whenever he needs one has sunk in with him and he’s able to identify what he needs and what would feel good to him. Of course, this all could change tomorrow and I’ll be laughing at myself for thinking I understand a three-year-old, but for now, I’m running with the positivity!

Let the screaming commence

It has been a rough few days in here. I am sick. Horrible sore throat on Monday, feeling slightly better on Tuesday, full head and chest on Wednesday, full-blown laryngitis and a chest cold today. Ugh. E now has a fever and is feeling crummy. C must be feeling crummy for the way he’s been acting the last few days. We had a surprisingly smooth reentry after John’s last work trip (which usually means tantrums and punishing Daddy with crazy behavior upon his return), so maybe we’re paying for it now, a week or so later? It’s hard to say. Whatever it is, it’s exhausting.

C’s eating has gone to crap (as in, he eats pretty much nothing except yogurt and applesauce and plain bread again). He threw fit after fit after fit this morning over every possible thing. He invented things to be mad about. He apparently threw a 20-minute tantrum at school because they wouldn’t let him throw himself off the slide headfirst (kneeling at the top and falling forward–I’m going to have to side with the teachers on that decision, bud, sorry). He also threw a fit about being done with lunch. And in the car on the way home he took his water cup and methodically filled his mouth with water, then spit it out down his front over and over until the entire cup was empty. Eyeing me the entire time, as far as I could tell from glances in the mirror. (I left him in his wet clothes, supposedly to let him live with the natural consequences, but he was oblivious). At breakfast he purposefully tipped out his full cup of milk (we have been working on “big boy” cups instead of sippy cups) while looking right at me and so was returned to sippies for the time being; so at dinner when he got his sippy of milk he tried to rip the lid off and then chucked the cup. I gave him one more chance with it (after he’d finished his yogurt, was relatively calm, and asked for the cup), and he promptly did the same thing. He spent the rest of dinner screaming in his chair, trying to tip it over backwards in anger. He was absolutely enraged, clenched fists and red face and everything. And me with no voice and E with a fever…..it was a wonderfully pleasant meal, as you can imagine.

It’s only a phase, right? It has to get better? We seem to go in waves of good and bad days. We’ll have a good stretch and then pay for it with a week of complete insantiy. We’re asking him to do a LOT right now, with all the super shoe wearing and new muscle using and chewing work and everything else. He has been staying up chatting quietly to himself in his crib for a few hours some nights here and there. Napping is always erratic. I’m sure he’s exhausted. And he likely has a touch of some form of this illness going around. If only I could take an actual pill that gave me patience. Wouldn’t that be helpful?

Frustrations

There is some hold-up with C’s transition to our local support agency that is supposed to be providing his speech, OT, and PT services. Remember how I was all ready to fight for him come January? Well, it’s now February and I really don’t have a lot of hope that he will see any services any time soon. The next court date is in early March. I really hope we don’t have to wait until then and a possible TPR decision in order to actually get this kid what he needs. It’s ridiculous. From my understanding, the hold-up is that the birth parents will not give permission for his records from his previous agency to be sent to the new agency. They can’t provide services without that permission. I am seriously considering driving him down to his previous region so someone can see him. He’s finally getting his muscle relaxant medication consistently, but the only way it will be helpful is with PT. The more he is up trying to walk, the tighter his leg muscles get, according to his previous OT. In the meantime, I am trying to make as many phone calls as I can about this to get it sorted out. So far, to no avail–though I have left a lot of messages.

Another frustration is the stomach flu. Or norovirus. Or whatever it is. It has hit our home, but mostly hit C the hardest. The poor guy is just miserable. And, frankly, he is working at making everyone else miserable too. I think part of his current frustration and frustrated behavior is just from feeling crummy, but part of it, too, might be some signal of the end of the honeymoon period. We’ll see how things go in the next few weeks before we can really decide, but he has definitely ramped up his tantrums in the last few days. He now bites (or tries to) when he doesn’t get his way. John’s shoulder, my pants, the carpet, books, toys, the edge of the stairs or a door. I was home with him on Friday and he woke up after about 45 minutes during his nap and was in this strange rage. I thought he was still sleeping, actually, maybe having a night terror, because he looked so out of it. He had only made a few small crying noises over the monitor, but when I went up to his room his face was tear-stained and he was sitting kind of sideways and funny in the crib. I picked him up and he arched and fought me. I set him down on the floor and he turned over on his stomach and bit the carpet and screamed. It was a little terrifying, I will admit. But he came out of it rather quickly, too. I picked him up after just a brief moment on the floor when I saw how mad he was. He calmed down fairly easily after some rocking and gentle talking, then snuggled against me and quieted down. I ended up taking him downstairs and rocking him for the rest of nap time and he fell back asleep in my arms.

John and I are both taking a continuing education class on attachment right now for our foster license recertification. The readings so far have been like holding up a mirror to our little guy and the struggles he is facing and will face. It’s sobering, but also feels like exactly the knowledge we need right now, as we enter into territory that might be a little more scary than where we have been. All in all, I may be painting too bleak a picture with this post. C is still a shining little light. I still see ten times more smiles and giggles a day than I do tears or tantrums. It’s just that it’s also easier to see his frustrations and sadness and confusion breaking through to the surface now.