Showing posts with label Adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adoption. Show all posts

Monday, August 11, 2014

Thank You Brooks and Dunn

Stick Boy's first day with us.
When you have an adopted child the questions about how they were born isn't always easy.  Our family is complicated.  My oldest daughter’s birth mom’s grandparents are wonderful grandparents for all of my kids and I hugely appreciate that, we have been able to have a wonderful relationship with all the family.  At family gatherings with Oldest Daughters birth mom we just refer to her as an aunt for the rest of the kids.  We have a Facebook relationship with Stick Boy’s siblings that all live in different states. 

Today Stick Boy was very insistent asking me about his birth father.  This is hard.  His birth mother was a failure of the foster care system and after being bounced like a yo-yo between foster homes and her mother she ran away as a young teen to live off of the streets.  Stick Boy is the youngest of her children all were born drug exposed.  Stick Boys birth mom is blond, and so by looking at Stick Boy we know his birth father is of African ancestry.  When we got Stick Boy we didn't even know that much, we would play guessing games on his race; Mexican, Filipino, African American, Pacific Islander, and Native American, and seal were all regularly discussed. 
Stick Boy's adoption day.

Today Stick Boy didn't ask me generally about “dads” or his birth mom or meeting his birth siblings. Today his question was about HIS birth father - why did he leave his birth mom, why don’t we know who he is? Today I had to let my son know that all babies don’t come into the world after a mom and dad meet and fall in love and get married and then have a baby.  Today I let him know that sometimes people have sex and babies without being in love.  I could see his mind working.

Then Brooks and Dunn’s song, “She Used to be Mine” came on the radio.  Stick Boy looked at me and said “That’s the opposite of this song.”  Yes!  “I feel sorry for my mom then” and it was over.  For now with Brooks and Dunn’s help I have answered his questions.  

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Mental Illness


Our family is a family that suffers with Mental Illness.  We met our beautiful 11 year old daughter when she was 4 ½, she had been through a lot in those few years.  It was very clear that my daughter would have a lot of needs from the beginning.  Like a lot of adoptive parents we believed that love, consistency, counseling, care, and more love would heal our daughter.  We were wrong.  Mental illness in children is so hard to treat.  Finding a Dr. willing to work with children younger than 13 is difficult our area has waiting lists.  We have been lucky, our daughter has responded well to medications and is doing so much better than she was 2 years ago.  We are lucky, so many of our friends are not so lucky.  Mental illness like any chronic illness affects not just the person but the whole family. 

When we decided to get sheep and cattle we had to consider how our daughter would respond to the extra animals to care for and extra demands on her parents’ time.  Could we handle the extra chores and meet our daughter’s needs when she has a break down?  She was doing amazingly well and we decided to go for it.  So far it has been an amazing experience.  Our Pre-Teen Daughter and Stick Boy are seeing responses to their actions from the sheep and cattle.  It is on a much larger scale than the cats and dog give them.  When the sheep do not respond like we expect them to while we are herding them and Pre-Teen starts screaming at them the sheep run then we have to calm ourselves down, and calmly gather the sheep it may take an extra half an hour but the sheep need to be kept safe.  We are learning to calm down faster and not always scream our frustration.  We are trying to get the new cattle used to us and Pre-Teen gets mad that Hope, the young heifer, is very skittish and wants to run from her.  Hope seems to feel her frustration and the more rushed Pre-Teen is the further Hope runs from her.  We are learning patience.  Mostly we are learning our actions have bigger consequences than just our little world. 
Counseling, medication, and the new ranching lifestyle all are to be improving our daughter’s life.  
We are blessed.