It has been a while since I have blogged. It has been a loooong time, and a lot has happened. Here on facebook, I only post the positive things that have happened, as by law, I cannot go into details about the other issues that have surfaced since day one.
I will say however, that in the MAPP classes, when we were told of the things that some three year olds in the state system have done, we laughed. We thought they were exaggerating to see who was really ready for a child….now, we know better since dealing with our three year old.
In all honesty, when we first got the kids home, it was perfect….a true honeymoon period for the three year old, but the two year old was a tiny terrorist right out of the car! He came to us with a huge ringworm that had been untreated to the point that it was literally the size of a gauze bandage—which we had to use to cover it because he scratched it and got it infected with what we thought was staph.
I was exhausted trying to keep it from spreading to the rest of the household!
However, as the weeks and months have passed (a little over 2 months at this point), it appears that the two year old actually has typical behaviors, while the three year old has some behaviors that are questionable.
The two year old seems to want to be a part of the family, the three year old I think, is still thinking it over.
I spoke to a person from my MAPP class just the other day. She was envious that we got two toddlers, and insisted that she and her husband only wanted a child or children under the age of five. I doled out to her, what we have learned. Everyone wants the little ones, thinking the older kids are too broken, too damaged. However, what people do not understand, is that the little ones can be just as broken, and then some.
The problem is that with the older kids, they are able to verbalize their feelings. They can tell you, “gosh, when you did that, it made me think back to….” With the little ones, you don’t get that, you just get behaviors, and a sense of wondering what exactly just happened.
There are times, that I would actually rather have an older child. I would relish the child yelling and screaming what pisses them off….then at least we would know….with the little ones, you never know, and you may never know. You may never know exactly when their hearts fell off the shelf and got broken? Who broke them? How did they break them?
You may never know. The three year old saw a picture of his biological mother….he was not the same the rest of the day.
We have a team of help now: our social worker, their social worker, their court guardian, our counselor, their therapist. We are praying that with time, and therapy, we can put the pieces of our broken baby back together. We are praying that we can help him to heal.
As parents, it makes us feel helpless….it makes us feel rage. Rage because we are so mad at whomever broke him, we are mad at the people who hurt him. Helpless, because we do not know how to mend his broken heart and soul.
However, we are learning. We have learned that we can’t tell him we love him…think about it, you think whomever hurt him, didn’t use that word? We can’t also tell him we want to be a family…once again, what has family done to him in the past?
So every night, when we put them to bed, instead of saying, “I love you,” we tell them, “You are safe.” This seems to assuage them, this seems to speak to them on a deeper level.
I won’t lie…It continues to be a struggle daily. There are days when we feel we can’t go on. Days when we contemplate giving him back when it gets really bad. However, the truth is, we do love them both. We do want them to be our family.
All of this reminds me of that old song, “What becomes of the broken hearted?” Well, we just have to find a way to mend the pieces, make them whole, make them connected children, so that we can be a connected family. We have to put that broken heart, back together again.
