Unlike our other two, he didn’t respond to cause-effect discipline or intuitively learn anything.  We still have to remind him to eat one bite at a time lest he shovel his entire plate into his mouth and then gag it all up…at every meal.  This fall, I set out on a intense quest to figure this kid out.  I’m an information hog by nature, and I wanted to make sure I knew as much as I could that would possible help us to raise Ty successfully. 

So I read, read, read, and read some more.  In fact, I’m still reading.  I have found some common threads throughout the resources I’ve come across and started to come to terms with re-learning some of our parenting techniques.

Here are some things that Ty’s up against that may or may not be due to being a micropreemie and/or being adopted after 4 other placements.  Either way, they are certainly compounded by those things…

1. ADHD–I have no formal dianosis but we are 99.9% sure that these four letters describe our son.  Lest you be skeptical, I fully agree that this is WAY over diagnosed (don’t get me started), but I fully believe, now that we have a Ty, that this is a bonified brain/neurological disorder.  And Ty has it.
2. Sensory Integration/Processing Disorder (SPD)–My jury’s still out on which of the three types most effects Ty, but he shows the majority of the symptoms in these diagnostic lists.  The more I read about this, the more I can’t imagine not being able to process the world properly or how frutrating it must be and the more I’m convinced this plays into Ty’s struggles.  These symptoms are all common in ADD kids.
3. Explosiveness–I cried after reading the first couple chapters of the The Explosive Child.  So few had nailed our child the way this book had. Okay, I cried during a lot of the books.  It’s just strangely reassuring to know that there are other kids like Ty and/or that other parents have struggled the way we have. 
4. Impulsiveness–Part of the reason cause/effect discipline does not work on Ty is that he’s doing whatever he’s not supposed to be doing long before he processes what the consequences could be.

Here are some hopefully helpful things if you can remotely relate to parenting a child like Ty…

1. Diet–While some physicians may swear there are not food sensitivities outside of physiological allergies, I know a lot of parents who beg to differ.  I’ve heard of kids having behavioral reactions to everything from gluten to rice to corn derivatives.  I wish I knew more about this or how to diagnose it without pure trial and error.  We’ve also started supplementing Ty with fish oil and probiotics.  I didn’t notice a huge difference so the jury’s out on whether we’ll continue once this supply runs out.
2. Connecting the physical to the neurological–The most fascinating books I’ve read are how holes in physical development impact neurological development and learning.  It’s a recurring theme all around me lately.  The infant/toddler play actions most of us take for granted (i.e., crawling, peek-a-boo, bubbles, baths, jumping, sand, etc.) can be detrimental if eliminated or skipped.  The things our brains learn through those types of play lay the ground work for being able to learn and regulated ourselves emotionally.
   Enter Exhibit A.  This is what Ty produced in September.  It represents his attention span as well as his lack of attention to detail.
   We started doing activities out of Growing an In-Sync Child in an attempt to start filling in missing developmental gaps in his foundation.  Two weeks later, he sat down with a similar coloring page and VOILA!  The improvement was not due to wrote lecturing about and practicing of drawing in the lines, but activities like pouring water in the tub across his midline and popping bubbles.
   
3. Explicitness–It’s like having an Amelia Bedelia.  There is no intuition or sense of allegorical language.  Everything is literal.  No, “Cut it out!”  It has to be, “Ty, please do not make siren noises.  Please use words or be quiet.”
4. Physical and eye contact–Not only does physical and eye contact provide a springboard for bonding, it’s required for kids who are ADD or have trouble processing sensory input.  Your child might not be ignoring you, he may actually not hear you if there’s any other kind of noise in the area.  Touching to get his attention and requiring him to look you in the eye insures you are heard and processed.  Of course, if your child is impulsive, it feels like being heard doesn’t seem to matter anyway…
5. Accomodations–I’m starting to be convinced that some kids with ADD and SPD need certain kinds of stimulation like others need sleep.  Ty is one of those kids that needs the feeling of deep joint impact if he has any hope of concentrating or sitting still.  Periodically the kid needs to go flying through the air and land…hard…on the ground.  Seriously we started letting him jump down 4 or 5 steps about five times before preschool and his constant wiggliness during circle has greatly improved.  We had to let go of our rule that jumping like that was unaccpetable due to safety reasons.  We’ve found that Ty needs it more than we need to protect him, and he happens to be like a cat…7 lives and always lands on his feet.  Volume of speech? Still working on that one.  But we have found that he needs an appropriate, QUIET outlet of energy at all times.  Wikki Stix have been a great tool for him.
6. Calm/Relax–I know this particularly relates to kids who have been through trauma but some kids seem to be addicted to adrenaline and other stress hormones.  Apparently coming off of them can feel like falling.  Kids are strangely intuitive enough to sense this and figure out which activities create stress, thus releasing more addictive hormones.  Ty tends to operate at this constant high stress, intense level.  You can watch him visibly struggle when required to do activities that are supposed to be calming.  We are working on helping him to be able to feel comfortable at a relaxed state.

Lest you think by reading this post, that we have Ty figured out and we’re all hunky dory…

When he gets up every morning, I take a deep breath and prepare to enter a battlefield.  I am way Type A if you haven’t figured that out, and he way pushes my buttons.  We’re all exhausted and frustrated (including him), and we all yell way too much.  However, God is gracious everyday and gives us glimpses of this really cute kid with a great imagination and fabulous sense of humor which is why we continue to fight to help him grow into his full potential.  Here’s to his 6th year…

Happy 5th Birthday Ty!

P.S.  Here are some resources I highly recommend…

On paper, Ty’s almost 5. 

There’s one camp that see him as 5 and expect him to act that way.  They lay out how he should be acting based on his age, find the things he can’t do, and have him practice doing them until he gets them.  I used to fall in that camp.  I guess, on some days, I still do.  It was (and is) driving the Type A in me crazy.  Mostly because it’s a road that does not seem to produce progress…just the feeling of needing to bang your head against a wall.

Honestly, it’s an easy camp in which to set up a tent.  Because Ty is in speech therapy, CC, and preschool with kids his age, it’s easy to compare their skills.

The other camp consistently makes excuses for him because he’s not just “all boy” but he’s a micro-preemie and was adopted only 2 1/2 years ago.  That camp thinks he’s adorable and will eventually just catch up.

That camp seems a little too much like a pity party to me and is all fine and well unless you have to live with him everyday.  Additonally, in some ways, we’ve been expecting him to just catch up for 2 1/2 years now, and, frankly, it’s not working for me.

I’m pretty sure sanity and reality are some camp in between.  I never in a million years thought we’d still be struggling to “figure him out” after 2 1/2 years home.  On the plus side, he has come a long way, and I’ve learned more about reactive attachment disorder, parenting an explosive child, ADHD, sensory integration disorder, and early childhood development than I ever dreamed of.  Honestly, I’d never heard of some of those things before Ty.

I’m still processing all the ideas that you were kind enough to share after this post, but I’m hoping to have something that makes sense to share soon.

But for now, I leave you with this:  Focus on the best way to meet your child’s developmental needs where he is and think not of his biological age.

I’m off to tape my own advice on my dashboard, bathroom mirror, computer desk, and wherever else I frequently find myself.

Oops, almost forgot an adoption update.  Our home study is finished!  That’s high on our Thanksgiving list this year for sure.  We’re hoping to have our dossier on its way to Ethiopia by Christmas.  Stay tuned…

Again, since each agency and country is different, your interview will probably look a little bit different but this is how ours went today.

Our social worker did a quick walk through of our house.  It wasn’t very detailed because our county requires separate health and fire inspections which we already turned in.  She did double check for smoke and CO detectors.

She asked the kids to draw a picture of them doing something with their prospective new sibling(s).  PJ drew all of us plus 2 (or 3) kids in Van-Go.  Mia drew us celebrating with balloons, and Ty just drew Mia.  Along the way, she asked each of the kids how they felt about adoption and if they would prefer a sister or brother.

As for Patrick and I, she asked

• why we wanted to adopt
• what our strengths and weaknesses were as parents as a couple
• what our expectations were for after the kids were home
• what our education plan was
• how they adjusted to the last adoption
• how our families, friends, and church community responded to our adoption news
• what our support network looked like
• if we kept weapons, drugs, and/or fire arms
• what our biggest parenting challenge has been so far
• how we felt about birth order (since we said we would be open to disrupting ours)
• how we respond to unexpected changes in life

For whatever reason, I was a little nervous about our visit (even though we’ve been through it before) but I shouldn’t have been!

For our purposes, I’m going to define the key words like this:

Strong-willed: Thrives on conflict.  Has difficulty obeying right away…ever.  Always fights to be “right.”

From a hard place: A child who was abuses/neglected, had a stressful prenatal or birth experience, has had multiple primary caregivers.  These children have deep-seeded insecurities that are often communicated through acting out and whose brains do not process high-level, cause-effect discipline in a way that it modifies their behavior.  In fact, traditional discipline may exacerbate negative behavior.

If you can identify with these terms, what has worked or is working for you?  Books, techniques, websites, forums, therapies? 

Ready, set, comment!

If you bake out all the collagen from a bone, and tap it with a mallet, it shatters.

The Pilgrims built rectangular houses out of lumber.

The Wampanoags built dome-shaped houses with large pieces of bark as walls.

In the midst of keeping up with schooling, we’ve been finishing the last of our paper chase.  We were assigned a home study social worker today which means we’re finally moving forward!  We have more physical to turn in and then some dossier paperwork to complete.

In case you’re wondering, we’re still having physicals corrected AGAIN for our home study.  I’d rather not talk about it.

Homeschooling.  There’s a happier subject.  At least today.  We’re doing really well despite a false start, a family vacation, and house guests. 

Surprisingly, I’m really not any more annoyed at my kids than I was before we started homeschooling.  I admit I was a LOT dreading all this together time.  I’m a mama who happily welcomes in September purely because it means the start of school.

The key to togetherness success?  Plenty of planning.  I firmly believe parents would enjoy their kids more (and be less annoyed) if they knew what to do with them.  I notice that I like my kids a lot less when I don’t have a plan.  Now when they ask, “What should we do?”  I have an answer.

The homeschooling mindset has kind of revolutionized my relationship with my kids…or at least PJ.  Let me explain.  I’m a teacher by nature.  I love acquiring knowledge and want my children to as well. Pretty much everything in our life turns into a teachable moment with some sort of trivia or expanded explanation.  This was all fine and well until full-day school entered our lives.  Then, PJ figured school was school and the rest of life was video games.  Teachable moments outside of school were not appreciated so much.  With homeschooling, the expectation is that anything can be a teachable moment because he sees my job as teacher…not just nagging mom.  Another benefit?  My control-freakish nature is satisfied.*

*Let it be noted that I do not condone homeschooling purely for the sake of satisfying said control-freakish side.  Actually, I think it’s a pretty awful, put-yourself-on-the-path-to-destruction idea.

I love that I don’t have to wake my kids up if they need extra sleep.  Even today which was a CC day, I had a kid still asleep at 8:15 and that was ok.  So far, we never have to be out early than 8:45AM which is great compared to our 8AM sharp daily routine last year.

I don’t love lugging 3 kids to run errands all the time but that’s what Amazon Prime is for.

I love that my kids will associate learning with songs, activities, experiments, games, and projects instead of endless piles of paperwork.

I don’t love having to deal with Ty while schooling but I love that he’s doing well at preschool (so glad we committed to that this year!).

I love watching them learn.  Not loving teaching reading to Mia.  PJ (who taught himself how to read when he turned 5) sure did spoil us!

Wow.  That was a random post.  Any questions for us?  I’ll probably continue the interuptive mode next Saturday and answer them

• Autobiography for each parent
• Birth/Death certificates for all household members
• Marriage certificates and divorce decrees
• Verification of employment
• Most recent copy of 1040 tax form (pages 1 and 2)
• Reference letters (usually 3 or 4)
• Guardianship statement (states who will receive custody if something happens to you)
• Financial statement
• Recent pay stubs
• Home sanitation survey (inspection by health department)
• Complete driving record
• Home fire inspection
• Medical reports for all adults and children living in home
• FBI and state police clearances
• Child abuse and child support clearances

To date, we are about 80% of the way through this list.  The end is near!

The biggest difference has been faith.  Our current agency is much more faith-oriented than our first agency and it makes all the difference in the world to know that our agency staff is on the same page as us from a faith perspective.  I’m so thankful for the AWAA staff workers we’ve gotten to know through Welcoming Angels and now our adoption.

For more things to think about when choosing an agency, check out the list at Grafted Families.

You’d think since we’ve adopted before that we wouldn’t be daunted by our second paper chase, right? Wrong.

Korea’s process is drastically different than most other international programs because the family does not adopt in-country.  Instead the trip is pretty much to just gain custody of the child.  I guess, the U.S. agency actually gains custody even though the child is placed with the family.  In any event, the family officially adopts in a U.S. court and after a minimum of 6 months.  All this to say there is no dossier in Korean adoptions.

Ethiopia is more like what I understand the process to be in countries such as China and Russia.  The family must submit a dossier to the country and that country’s court makes the final decision about whether to place a child with that family.  For reasons you can probably imagine, all (or most) documents in a dossier have to notarized on a local level and then certified at a state level and again on a national level by the State Department.  That means we even have to find a notary to go with us to witness our physician signing off on our medical form.  Since we have 4 adults in the house, this can get pretty tricky and time consuming!

Until a couple weeks ago I had no idea you could hire mobile notaries…Google it.  For documents that don’t require a mobile notary, check your bank.  Ours notarizes documents for customers free of charge.  Also, our agency recommends that the notary’s commission does not expire for at least 2 years at time of notarization.

Road #2: The president of the non-profit with which we are heavily involved returned from Ethiopia in February with a huge burden to minister to a Jewish community with a Messianic Rabbi in the heart of Addis. Grafted Families/ICARE will Lord-willing play an active part in supporting his community (especially in their care for their orphans and widows).

Road #3: Welcoming Angels’ pilot program was with kids from Ethiopia.  As event and donation coordinator, we had a lot of interaction time with all the kids and they stole our hearts!

With all the Ethiopia buzz in the air, we were feeling pretty certain that our next adoption would be from Ethiopia.  Our interactions with AWAA during Welcoming Angels gave us lots of opportunities to get to know their staff and their philosophy.  We knew an Ethiopian adoption through AWAA was probably in our future but we weren’t sure when.  Then we went to Summit and felt God’s calling to continue to walk outside of our comfort zone as we sought to care for orphans around the world.  We came away with lots of ministry ideas but also a specific personal calling.

Then, Patrick said something along the lines of “Let’s see what it would take to bring a sibling group home from Ethiopia.” 

And our second adoption journey began. 

To date we have submitted our pre-app, our application, and received our acceptance into AWAA’s Ethiopia program.

All updates will be filed under Adoption Updates if you want to follow along.

We’ll also post an adoption timeline on the right all the way at the bottom.