Chapter 4 Moving On

Books, LOVE them, and I love Eric Carle.  So who do I think of with new children?  What books to read!  One was my Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear child.  He got a copy read to him each night, with a white teddy bear for his own, and Dale got a copy of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, with a brown teddy bear for his own.  It made perfect sense to introduce them to the literary world with a matched set of books just as they were a matched set of boys!

We read a lot, children often in Mom 's bed, or in their own beds.  Baths with bubbles made bath time fun and getting ready for bedtime a joy.  Coming home from school was always fun, with games of bubbles on the back deck, and swinging or sliding on the huge slide in the back yard.  (see blog  Minor Construction?)  Days were full with therapy sessions, speech for Dale, psychotherapy for the family to deal with adjustment and attachment issues, school, and doctor's visits.

It seemed like we always had someone going to the doctor for ear infections or colds.  When new children enter the family they bring their set of illnesses, and until those are absorbed into the family everyone gets ill for a while.

I call it the family "germs".  Once we washed with the same detergent, used the same hand soap, and we all have gotten used to the family germs.  We go to court so everyone has the name Berns and then we also have the Berns Germs.


Attachment is a funny thing.  After all you do start off as strangers with the older child, and may need to be careful touching an older child.  You may automatically hold or touch your own baby, ask an older child permission.  Gain trust where there may never have been trust is something you need to carefully build.
Ken was having problems. He did not trust at all, and was not attaching to anyone in our family.  He was attached to older brother and Dale.  Nothing would help, and he would tantrum when told to do something or refused a toy he wanted.  It was a huge problem, but he was small, and I decided to read everything about it to make him succeed as an adult.  One of the jobs of a parent is to get the child to trust you,so they will let you guide them at an older age.  It is step one to parenting.  Reading, bathing, feeding, buying clothes, taking care of sick children gives you the authority to say, "Please don't quit school until you get your degree."  If a child just lives in your hotel, and sees you as the paid help, replaceable by a waitress they can tip, they will not follow that trusted guide, since they care less what you say.  I  know that with the work done building trust with a child,  they will be able to build intimate relationships with a partner.  In the case of a boy, it would be with his wife.  I realized that was very important for all the boys I was adopting. 

While my boys went to school  or played, I read books, and here are some of them:
Attachment Theory, Bowlby
Can This child be Saved?, Foster W. Cline and Cathy Helding
Adopting the Hurt Child, Gregory Keck


I followed the logic not reacting too much about anything a child would do, and then figuring out what to do later, after I had thought about it, or talked about it with Jim, the therapist, or other adoptive moms.

Mothers of Unique Daughters and Sons was SO important to me.  This support group  got together once a month, at Uno's in Clifton, and talked about anything, and everything, that most moms would never think of discussing.  MUDS was there so that we could support each other in the journey of working toward normalizing our unique families.  Many of us had sibling groups, trans racial families, and culturally diverse families.  We were all used to stares when we went places.  We laughed about comments such as "Are they all "YOURS"?"  when of course, an adopted child is as much a part of the family as a birth child!  We discussed school issues, medical problems, and whatever behaviors or parenting issues were at the forefront for the moment.  It was a blessing to have a chance to share information and worries with a safe welcoming group of mothers.

We went on vacation as a family to the Adirondacks to stay in our pine cabin in the woods, pulling our Boston Whaler packed full, the van full with six kids.   Jim was quite a Dad, taking kids boating and fishing, and teaching kids all about pounding nails and taking care of the unfinished cabin, even sweeping off the roof.
Jim and I have really different ideas about what kids should learn.  He was excited to teach the 6 and 7 year olds all the skills at an early age.  I saw how he was teaching them to light the camp fire using a blow torch.  "Jim, is that really a good idea?"  I asked, thinking about the little thought that those boys had about what they were doing.  "Oh, yes," Jim answered, "They need to learn all about Men's Tools as young in life as possible."  I was okay with hammers and pliers.  But a BLOW TORCH?   Soon after I am fixing supper, and smell a strange burning odor, so I follow my nose to the boys' area, where I find Dale working on starting the 2x4 wall on fire.  When asked "What were you doing?"  he answered, "I wanted to see if it would catch on fire."  It was well blackened, but luckily did not burn, neither did the surrounding sheets or blankets!
We discovered that Dale was a wonderful fisherman, and would sit for hours patiently waiting for a fish to bite.  He could see through the water, and knew when to strike, and would always bring fish home, even when no one else did.  On trips he would find lines and hooks and catch them when we stopped for rest stops.  Once we stopped, he caught a fish with his bare hands.  He immediately caught fish, whenever we went near a body of water.  Some things are just in your being, and fishing and how fish think was in his soul.  He was artistic, and could draw fish with their natural surroundings.  It was interesting that his strength was in an activity where words were unnecessary.  He had  heightened vision, and could see through the water, felt the fish bite, but needed no words.  I worried he sat still so long and said nothing for so many hours that  he sought no interactions with other children or adults.
Ken was always moving and talking, planning battles and trading Pokemon cards.  He would become obsessed with Ninja Turtles, or Karate, or whatever the fad, and talk about it until Dale would tell him to "Please stop!"  His stories would go on and on, about fighting, weapons and heroes. When he moved from Turtles to Pokemon, and we had to learn all the names and the evolution of the creatures, he would know them all, and Ash would battle them to win.  We needed to hear all the trials and combats, and what was happening.  The information was incredible overload.  I was impressed how one person could remember it all.  It did concern me that he was always closer to his cards, his imaginary friends than we were, his present family.  He did not talk about us, or seem at all interested about us.

And so life moved on, and I worked steadily trying to meld children's daily needs with the flow of family life.