And then not so calm - Yet I am from a family who adopts!

My chickadee went to day treatment on Monday and went to the ER Monday night.   They gave him different drugs and he slept through Tuesday, missed an appointment with his private psychologist and day treatment.  I so hate the drugs.  He went to day treatment today but he was so stressed out about it even before getting there but trying to cope.  He tries so hard.  I am so scared for him and my heart weeps as I watch him try to sneak peeks into the cubbyholes to make sure there are not monsters lurking.  I turn and walk away when all I want to do is sit in the corner of the room all day and keep him safe.   

It was a hard day on the staff.  At the end of the day the entire classroom staff came to tell me what happened.  His treatment coordinator finally called me back but she is at a loss too.

I actually am not looking to them to "solve this issue."  I think they are feeling stress because they are supposed to be the experts but are at a loss.  At least today they let me know that the day was tough.  Given that information I adjusted my parenting techniques, took him to a speech therapist appointment and no calls to 911. 

My sweetie is one scared little boy.  I know because I am the keeper of his memories.  When he stopped speaking Russian, he "forgot."  I remember for him now what he told me in the beginning.  The memories that I keep safe for him would shock even the most hardened person.  A tour in hell would be a cake walk in comparison.  

 When the bullying resurrected all his ghosts, they came back with a vengeance.  He struggles.  But he is fighting, the best way he can.  And he is trying because I am right there with him.  Even when he cannot endure the fear anymore and strikes out, I am there.  Without me, he would not be alive today.  Certainly not in the “before he came home life.”  

Alex so wants to be normal.   Alex wants to be that boy that comes home to a normal life. He does come home to normal life.  He wants the shadows and monsters gone.  I wish they would go away but I know that he will need to learn how to live with them.  With time that will happen.

So we remain what I call a cleft palate family.  Alex still makes me donate to the Smile Train every month.  Rebuilding the faces of my children, and other stuff like rebuilding throats, etc., remain the focus of us all.  Alex's lack of calmness is because he was targeted as a disfigured cleft palate child in America.  We all draw strength from one another because we are a family of clefts.  My kids think I was a cleft child even though I was not.  They think that because everyone tells us we all look alike. 

We are like any other family and we do not really look that much alike.  What we look like is a family.  A mother with a son.  A daughter with a mother.  A brother taking care of his sister.  Other family members intersecting as families do.  Love amongst us makes us all look alike.  It is our love for one another that makes us look alike.  We all so love one another.

I am the third, maybe fourth, generation in my family who became a parent who chose to build a family through adoption.  I am a bio child but I was surrounded all my life with the threads of my family that was built through adoption.  God chose my path to my children and I am blessed. 

I know what it means to parent an adopted child. I have seen it all the days of my life.   I remember the comments at family gatherings.  I remember my role models that navigated the choppy waters of what it means to be a parent through adoption. 

I feel lucky to join the ranks of others in my family who chose this path.  Two of those people, my father and my brother, are some of the best people I have ever known. 

So today maybe was not the calmest day for my chickadee but it was another sucessful day for the family.  It was the stuff that makes memories - the good kind.  God blesses us all.