We may be settling down just a bit ...

First - THANK YOU EVERYONE for the prayers and kind thoughts. It makes a difference for me. When the days are especially hard I look at the kind thoughts. This has been the hardest thing for me and I doubly appreciate everyone while I am being such a sad sack about it all. Now onto the important stuff. :)

Don't get me wrong, we still have drama and trauma but things seem better for Sasha. I spent all of last week in his class and he has seriously relaxed. He still will have nothing to do with the other children but they plugged him into a computer program that is teaching him English and he is now much better around the other kids. He is no longer scared of the children in his class which I find to be a godsend. And his hyper-awareness switch seems to be flipped "off." Much better. Of course he still does not respect anyone who does not speak Russian so there are still uphill opportunities in each day.

I just made Sasha a sandwich and he told me he feels safe. Of course, being the tough mom, I keep buttering the bread and say nothing. (In my heart I sing for joy (!!!)). And then he launches into the dances they do in P.E. class. He will not do them in school but the music really speaks to him so I think he is trying them out in his safe home.

So there are two things I have learned. The first is more general - As for that rocking thing most orphanage children do at bedtime - music seems to help. Often I have heard Sasha sing to himself at some point in the rocking process so I thought I would try and see if I could redirect that self-soothing behavior. Sure enough, it worked. Of course I got Sasha all involved in the process of buying a cd player and the lullaby cds. Simply put, I let Sasha have control of it so it became something of value to him. And then we play one cd when he goes to bed. It totally works. Gone are the hours and hours of drama around bedtime.

The second thing I have learned is that Sasha has been told he is stupid so he is afraid to try anything. The first time I heard him say stupid (in English!) I totally freaked out. When I talked to him I found out that is what the kids in Russia told him. Given his hard palate was closed so late (he is a cleft child), his speech is still pretty garbled which probably led to what I imagine to be pretty extreme teasing about not speaking clearly. Maybe all institutionalized children are told they are stupid but I hope not. I think hearing that word in his head has made the transition to school all the more difficult. One nice thing is that his English pronunciation is way clearer than his Russian pronouncation probably because he is learning English post-surgery.

One thing I wish though - I wish they had told me anything about his days. We are building new ways to go through the day but if I knew what he expected every morning when he woke up it would be way easier. For him and for me.