Maddie loves to dance, and she loves to dress up. Add the two together, plus a little Doors on the stereo and she is a happy girl!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Our Normal
It struck me today that "our normal" is so skewed in some ways from what a lot of families understand as normal. We always keep a container or two of Cheerios upstairs because that is the only "upstairs snack" allowed, and Maddie always wants to eat a little before falling asleep. To us, this is completely normal. She woke up hungry every night for almost the first 2 hears home. She never could eat enough to keep her tummy full all night, and so she had middle of the night bottles much much later than most kids. That has long since stopped thanks to various tactics we used (most successfully it was protein powder in her night time bottle to keep her tummy full), but she also likely spent much of those first 9 1/2 months in the orphanage NOT getting food if she was hungry at night. Babies in orphanages don't eat on demand, they eat on the set schedule. You'll eat when the other 39 babies are eating, not a minute sooner, not a minute later.
So in our house, having a snack before bed is not an argument. It's just a fact of who our child is and how her beginnings have helped to shaped her.
So today when Violet woke up from nap, I went upstairs to get her. We changed her diaper and as we walked out of the girls room, she wandered into ours. She wanted up on the bed and when I lifted her up there, she pointed at the container of cheerios. There was one on the bed so I handed her that and said "let's go get a snack". But...as I picked her up, I left the container on the bed. And that is when our "normal" popped right up. Violet's reaction to not getting the cheerios is what many people might think of as "spoiled rotten child not getting her way." Screaming, thrashing, trying to grab for the container, trying to escape from my arms... But It's not even close to that. For her, it is sheer and utter terror. You can hear it in her cries, you can see it in the look of horror on her face. For her, us walking away from that food means there is NO FOOD for her. Now now anyway. And who knows when she will get it. But we understand this- it's our "normal"- so I talk calmly to her as I carry the writhing child down the stairs, and I set her down and put together a snack of cheese and pears as quickly as I can, handing her the first piece of cheese as soon as it's cut. Instantly she is calm and happy and understands, "snack is coming, there is food." And order is restored in her world. She finishes snack, announces (with sign language) "all done" and off we go to play. Until the next familar feeling moment of terror swipes on by, when we do this dance all over again.
Right now, this is just a part of life with a child who has spent her whole life so far living in an orphanage. At some point, it will be a memory.
So in our house, having a snack before bed is not an argument. It's just a fact of who our child is and how her beginnings have helped to shaped her.
So today when Violet woke up from nap, I went upstairs to get her. We changed her diaper and as we walked out of the girls room, she wandered into ours. She wanted up on the bed and when I lifted her up there, she pointed at the container of cheerios. There was one on the bed so I handed her that and said "let's go get a snack". But...as I picked her up, I left the container on the bed. And that is when our "normal" popped right up. Violet's reaction to not getting the cheerios is what many people might think of as "spoiled rotten child not getting her way." Screaming, thrashing, trying to grab for the container, trying to escape from my arms... But It's not even close to that. For her, it is sheer and utter terror. You can hear it in her cries, you can see it in the look of horror on her face. For her, us walking away from that food means there is NO FOOD for her. Now now anyway. And who knows when she will get it. But we understand this- it's our "normal"- so I talk calmly to her as I carry the writhing child down the stairs, and I set her down and put together a snack of cheese and pears as quickly as I can, handing her the first piece of cheese as soon as it's cut. Instantly she is calm and happy and understands, "snack is coming, there is food." And order is restored in her world. She finishes snack, announces (with sign language) "all done" and off we go to play. Until the next familar feeling moment of terror swipes on by, when we do this dance all over again.
Right now, this is just a part of life with a child who has spent her whole life so far living in an orphanage. At some point, it will be a memory.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Hunger Strike
It finally happened. Our girl who eats everything has waged an all out hunger strike. She has stated, in adorable little girl who still cannot speak english babble, that she is D-O-N-E done with this american food. 4 weeks is quite enough thank you, now bring on the fried rice. Oh, a few cheerios are okay. And definitely those oranges. But don't you try to make me eat one bit of potato, fish, or anything else unless it has been shipped straight from China.
This started maybe 4 days ago, and I think it was the 2 year molars coming in that started it...but the pain seems to have subsided and now she has no interest in most of the foods we place in front of her. On Monday, when she would not eat a single thing at dinner, I gave up and pulled some white rice out of the fridge. This she gobbled with amazing speed. Okay, got it. You miss the rice. Noted. We'll make sure and have more of it. I had been giving her congee almost every day for at least 1 meal, but not as much in the last week.
On Tuesday, when she protested & didn't want any of the dinner we had, I pulled the rice out again. This time, it failed. She did not want any of it. She had eaten some food that day, so she wasn't starving, but she basically did not really eat any dinner. By this time we had cut the oranges down to just 1 in the morning because she decided she wanted only to eat oranges, bananas and rice crackers and nothing more.
On Wednesday, I said, no way- you must eat. She and I took a little trip to the Chinese bakery down the street and Mama won the Thursday round of competative eating with a red bean bun and a bbq pork bun. Score 1 Mama.
Today, I got out the big guns. Mama's homemade Pork dumplings. No girl can resist them. And I was right- she at them, but she only ate 2 1/2 dumplings. Still, it was enough for Mama to jump around and make a big deal out of it and reward her with an orange. I don't know if she made the connection, but hopefully she did. We'll see how she does with Salmon and potatoes tonight....
Speaking of oranges- she somehow has determined that "Juzi" (orange) and "Bizi" (nose) are the same word- so when we say "Juzi?" she points to her nose, and this means she wants an orange.. Or, she will come up to us and point to her nose, and this means she wants an orange. Very very cute....
This started maybe 4 days ago, and I think it was the 2 year molars coming in that started it...but the pain seems to have subsided and now she has no interest in most of the foods we place in front of her. On Monday, when she would not eat a single thing at dinner, I gave up and pulled some white rice out of the fridge. This she gobbled with amazing speed. Okay, got it. You miss the rice. Noted. We'll make sure and have more of it. I had been giving her congee almost every day for at least 1 meal, but not as much in the last week.
On Tuesday, when she protested & didn't want any of the dinner we had, I pulled the rice out again. This time, it failed. She did not want any of it. She had eaten some food that day, so she wasn't starving, but she basically did not really eat any dinner. By this time we had cut the oranges down to just 1 in the morning because she decided she wanted only to eat oranges, bananas and rice crackers and nothing more.
On Wednesday, I said, no way- you must eat. She and I took a little trip to the Chinese bakery down the street and Mama won the Thursday round of competative eating with a red bean bun and a bbq pork bun. Score 1 Mama.
Today, I got out the big guns. Mama's homemade Pork dumplings. No girl can resist them. And I was right- she at them, but she only ate 2 1/2 dumplings. Still, it was enough for Mama to jump around and make a big deal out of it and reward her with an orange. I don't know if she made the connection, but hopefully she did. We'll see how she does with Salmon and potatoes tonight....
Speaking of oranges- she somehow has determined that "Juzi" (orange) and "Bizi" (nose) are the same word- so when we say "Juzi?" she points to her nose, and this means she wants an orange.. Or, she will come up to us and point to her nose, and this means she wants an orange. Very very cute....
Friday, December 02, 2011
Mixed Maturities
There is a thing in international adoption (and probably in domestic as well) that children experience called "mixed maturities". Hopefully I can accurately describe it.
It comes about when children simultaneously learn to fend for themselves at a very young age and remain helpless because they cannot really actually fend for themselves. Emotionally, they feel they are "boss" or the "leader", but in reality they are not because seriously, a 22 month old or a 36 month old or an 18 month old really cannot meet their own physical, emotional and developmental needs.
We had Violet assessed with the early childhood intervention people yesterday, and this mixed maturity became somewhat more evident through the testing. I thought the testing was actually very interesting. It is something we had voluntarily found and requested. Maddie came home at 10 months old. We felt fairly confident that she was ahead in some things and behind in others for a 22 month old (Violet that is), but given that we only had Maddie to compare to, and we really couldn't recall exactly what Maddie WAS doing at 22 months. So I took Violet to the evaluation yesterday morning. They had a translator, which I can now see what good and bad-more on that later. They asked me many questions, and after a bit said, "yes, we will evaluate her." This was surprising because I assumed the fact that we had an appointment meant for sure they would evaluate her. Guess not. So they started the tests- many more questions for me, some play activities for Violet. There was one woman to test for speech and one for physical, social and emotional development.
After they finished up all the questions (And by the way, it was HARD to answer some of them! They asked so many questions, I wish I had a preview of the questions beforehand so I could think about "okay- does she do this or not?)- so after the questions they did the scoring and then we reviewed the results.
On the physical, Social & Emotional development we saw a definite mixed bag. Some areas like motor skills (fine and gross) were both above the level for her age- I think she was somewhere around 110% or 115% or something like that, although that was considered in normal range. It makes sense- she was with older kids in her orphanage, not really any other babies except one very young one who probably didn't get out of his stroller or crib much due to his heart issue.
However, her social skills were at the bottom most level of "normal"- coming in at 85%. Again- totally expected since she was basically the only healthy baby in an orphanage with almost a dozen older mentally handicapped children.
Her speech came in all over the board. In fact, the woman evaluating her said she would not even give a score, because it would come in falsely low, and some of it was simply due to language not coming in yet. On the one hand, the evaluator kept asking more questions relating to pretty advanced skills because she kept being able to do those things (like 2-3 year old level), but then there would be a couple that were 1 1/2 year old level or 1 year old level that she could not do or was not doing. So she really was all over the board on that. Basically the results told us nothing different than what we expected- she is doing great, and has some catch up to do.
At the end of going through the results, they said "she does not qualify for services" and I had to sign a paper saying I understood she does not qualify for services. I was so surprised at the wording because to me, "does not qualify for services" sounds like a very negative aspect. Actually, I thought, that's great- she is at a high enough level in all of these that if we keep doing what we are doing, that will be fine! GREAT! Maybe that's just the more optimistic way of looking at it, but it seemed strange to phrase it as "okay, we need to let you know, she does not qualify for services...." Okay by me. We were happy to learn that our little one is not too behind on some things, and ahead on other things.
Now, the good and the bad about having the translator there. First off, John- the translator- was a very sweet and kind middle aged Chinese man. Very grandfatherly. Very nice. The two evaluators were both very very nice. If I could find a place to review them and let their managers know how fantastic and wonderful they were, I would do it in a heartbeat. Seriously, they were all just so very very nice!
After we had been there a few minutes, Violet got down on the floor (I was sitting at a table with one of the evaluators) and the other evaluator and John got down on the floor with Violet. The other evaluator was having her do some play tests (hiding a ball under a cup and asking her to find it) and John was translating. She did it a few times and suddenly just got super scared and came running to me crying. She cuddled in my lap and just buried her face in my chest and would not look at them. Her little heart was beating FAST- she was scared but I could not figure out why- nothing had happened, I had been right there just 3 feet away sitting at the table. It took her awhile to loosen up again to look at them, but she would not get down on the floor with them again. She was weepy and easily crying all the rest of the day. Nap was tough, bedtime was long. Finally about an hour into bedtime (and still waiting for her to go to sleep) it hit me- Gotchya Day.
On Gotchya day, the director brought Violet into the room where we were (just us in there with the notary and our guide) and brought her right to us. We 3 were playing on the floor with her and the director went to the end of the room and sat at a table with the notary and filled out papers. Then an hour later, the director left, and Violet's life turned upside down as she figured out she wasn't going back to the orphanage. Now here we were, yesterday, in an office, with me bringing her in, two strangers sitting on the floor trying to play and engage her and me sitting at a table with another stranger. Similarities much? Uh-yeah. A little too much. No wonder she was so scared. She must have just realized how familiar that felt and realized that last time that scenario happened, her life changed. Poor girl.
Today was MUCH better- a lot less weepy, a lot more of the girl we have been seeing.
Back to mixed maturities...
On the one hand- Violet will use a spoon and try to feed herself. She can usually get it into her mouth if I hand her a loaded spoon, but she has not worked out the scooping action. That's somewhat age appropriate. But then when she is done, if we are not on it, she will fling the dish or spoon or whatever. Usually, we are faster than she is, but not always. In the orphanage, kids don't get seconds or thirds of whatever they want. There is not likely much opportunity for them to say "I'm all done, I don't need the rest of this food." They get their dish, they eat it, the dish is taken away. And this process is more than likely a very fast process, because older kids will take younger kids food if they are not fast enough. The very concept that she can keep eating is a very new thing to Violet. So when she does get full, she is confused as to how to handle it. Thus, she throws the dish- which is developmentally, something that much younger children (maybe 10-12 month olds) do.
She is getting very good at imitating us- we did patty cake for the first time a week ago and she loves it. She is just learning "peek a boo" (yes they play peek a boo in China, but it was new to her) and doing it very much like a 1 year old child would do it. However she is learning signs with astonishing speed. She knows if she wants to eat to sign "more" or "eat". Today we have been working on the sign for "help" and she is already doing it. She learned the sign for "please" the other day when she discovered candy canes, although that is a fairly difficult concept to understand, so she doesn't really know when to use it yet. Thank you is another one like that, and although I use it with her, I don't think she really understands the concept since it's a sign you use AFTER she got what she was needing or wanting. It's time for Mama to get a few more signing times DVD's from the library and learn a few more signs!
Maddie continues to be a star with her. The only thing Violet seems to love more than Bananas (we've been going through 3 a day with her) is clementine oranges (I think we've been going through 4-5 a day on those...). I keep them in a bowl on the table so they are easy to get to after the girls finish dinner or if they need a snack. The other day Violet saw them and did not want to eat the cereal she had been eating for breakfast. I was trying to tell her, first cereal, then orange using a combination of words and charades. Maddie came over with some cereal on a spoon, gave it to Violet who happily opened her mouth for her sister, ate the cereal and smiled. So then I gave her a segment of orange. Then I was able to give her a bite of cereal and we went back and forth like this. I had been trying to coax a bite of cereal out of her for probably almost 8 minutes before Maddie tried, and it worked on her first try! My big girl to the rescue! Violet adores her sister and will do nearly anything her sister asks of her- including apparently, delaying the gratification of that ever desired orange.
Another adoption concept that was new to me just in the last year is "Family Age". There is differentiation between Chronological age, developmental age, and Family Age. The chronological age is obviously based on birthdate. Violet is 22 months old chronologically.
The Developmental age is where they are developmentally- as I said above, for Violet, this ranges between much lower than her age, her actual age, and older than her age. Various parts of her development are at different ages.
Family Age is the length of time they have been in a family, and relates to all of those skills that being in a family entails. So Violet's family age is about 1 month. So overall she is between 1 month old and maybe 28 months old. Crazy huh? Yep.
Think about all of the skills it takes to be in a family- the things you know but you don't consciously think about:
The temperature in the house will remain steady
Meals will be served at regular times
Families love each other
Parents provide for their children
You MAY have more food if you are hungry
You don't have to eat fast so that other kids won't steal your food
Someone will hold you if you cry
You will have warm clothes to wear
Your clothes will not be stolen by another kid
You have toys to play with
Your toys will not be stolen by another kid
If you get sick, someone will rock you
If you get hurt, you can cry and someone will do something to help you
If there is a cracker on the table and you leave the room, it will still be there when you get back.
You don't have to push another child away to get the attention of the person in Charge (the parent)- there is room for more than one Child in a parent's heart
If a parent gets angry, they still love you all the time
If you do something wrong, it's a momentary injustice and it doesn't mean your life will change
And so many more. Violet is barely beginning to understand these. It will probably be several months before she understands most of these. But we are helping her to learn them. Our child is 22 months old Chronologically. These are big changes for her. Imagine how a child adopted at 6 or 7 learns all of these things...
It comes about when children simultaneously learn to fend for themselves at a very young age and remain helpless because they cannot really actually fend for themselves. Emotionally, they feel they are "boss" or the "leader", but in reality they are not because seriously, a 22 month old or a 36 month old or an 18 month old really cannot meet their own physical, emotional and developmental needs.
We had Violet assessed with the early childhood intervention people yesterday, and this mixed maturity became somewhat more evident through the testing. I thought the testing was actually very interesting. It is something we had voluntarily found and requested. Maddie came home at 10 months old. We felt fairly confident that she was ahead in some things and behind in others for a 22 month old (Violet that is), but given that we only had Maddie to compare to, and we really couldn't recall exactly what Maddie WAS doing at 22 months. So I took Violet to the evaluation yesterday morning. They had a translator, which I can now see what good and bad-more on that later. They asked me many questions, and after a bit said, "yes, we will evaluate her." This was surprising because I assumed the fact that we had an appointment meant for sure they would evaluate her. Guess not. So they started the tests- many more questions for me, some play activities for Violet. There was one woman to test for speech and one for physical, social and emotional development.
After they finished up all the questions (And by the way, it was HARD to answer some of them! They asked so many questions, I wish I had a preview of the questions beforehand so I could think about "okay- does she do this or not?)- so after the questions they did the scoring and then we reviewed the results.
On the physical, Social & Emotional development we saw a definite mixed bag. Some areas like motor skills (fine and gross) were both above the level for her age- I think she was somewhere around 110% or 115% or something like that, although that was considered in normal range. It makes sense- she was with older kids in her orphanage, not really any other babies except one very young one who probably didn't get out of his stroller or crib much due to his heart issue.
However, her social skills were at the bottom most level of "normal"- coming in at 85%. Again- totally expected since she was basically the only healthy baby in an orphanage with almost a dozen older mentally handicapped children.
Her speech came in all over the board. In fact, the woman evaluating her said she would not even give a score, because it would come in falsely low, and some of it was simply due to language not coming in yet. On the one hand, the evaluator kept asking more questions relating to pretty advanced skills because she kept being able to do those things (like 2-3 year old level), but then there would be a couple that were 1 1/2 year old level or 1 year old level that she could not do or was not doing. So she really was all over the board on that. Basically the results told us nothing different than what we expected- she is doing great, and has some catch up to do.
At the end of going through the results, they said "she does not qualify for services" and I had to sign a paper saying I understood she does not qualify for services. I was so surprised at the wording because to me, "does not qualify for services" sounds like a very negative aspect. Actually, I thought, that's great- she is at a high enough level in all of these that if we keep doing what we are doing, that will be fine! GREAT! Maybe that's just the more optimistic way of looking at it, but it seemed strange to phrase it as "okay, we need to let you know, she does not qualify for services...." Okay by me. We were happy to learn that our little one is not too behind on some things, and ahead on other things.
Now, the good and the bad about having the translator there. First off, John- the translator- was a very sweet and kind middle aged Chinese man. Very grandfatherly. Very nice. The two evaluators were both very very nice. If I could find a place to review them and let their managers know how fantastic and wonderful they were, I would do it in a heartbeat. Seriously, they were all just so very very nice!
After we had been there a few minutes, Violet got down on the floor (I was sitting at a table with one of the evaluators) and the other evaluator and John got down on the floor with Violet. The other evaluator was having her do some play tests (hiding a ball under a cup and asking her to find it) and John was translating. She did it a few times and suddenly just got super scared and came running to me crying. She cuddled in my lap and just buried her face in my chest and would not look at them. Her little heart was beating FAST- she was scared but I could not figure out why- nothing had happened, I had been right there just 3 feet away sitting at the table. It took her awhile to loosen up again to look at them, but she would not get down on the floor with them again. She was weepy and easily crying all the rest of the day. Nap was tough, bedtime was long. Finally about an hour into bedtime (and still waiting for her to go to sleep) it hit me- Gotchya Day.
On Gotchya day, the director brought Violet into the room where we were (just us in there with the notary and our guide) and brought her right to us. We 3 were playing on the floor with her and the director went to the end of the room and sat at a table with the notary and filled out papers. Then an hour later, the director left, and Violet's life turned upside down as she figured out she wasn't going back to the orphanage. Now here we were, yesterday, in an office, with me bringing her in, two strangers sitting on the floor trying to play and engage her and me sitting at a table with another stranger. Similarities much? Uh-yeah. A little too much. No wonder she was so scared. She must have just realized how familiar that felt and realized that last time that scenario happened, her life changed. Poor girl.
Today was MUCH better- a lot less weepy, a lot more of the girl we have been seeing.
Back to mixed maturities...
On the one hand- Violet will use a spoon and try to feed herself. She can usually get it into her mouth if I hand her a loaded spoon, but she has not worked out the scooping action. That's somewhat age appropriate. But then when she is done, if we are not on it, she will fling the dish or spoon or whatever. Usually, we are faster than she is, but not always. In the orphanage, kids don't get seconds or thirds of whatever they want. There is not likely much opportunity for them to say "I'm all done, I don't need the rest of this food." They get their dish, they eat it, the dish is taken away. And this process is more than likely a very fast process, because older kids will take younger kids food if they are not fast enough. The very concept that she can keep eating is a very new thing to Violet. So when she does get full, she is confused as to how to handle it. Thus, she throws the dish- which is developmentally, something that much younger children (maybe 10-12 month olds) do.
She is getting very good at imitating us- we did patty cake for the first time a week ago and she loves it. She is just learning "peek a boo" (yes they play peek a boo in China, but it was new to her) and doing it very much like a 1 year old child would do it. However she is learning signs with astonishing speed. She knows if she wants to eat to sign "more" or "eat". Today we have been working on the sign for "help" and she is already doing it. She learned the sign for "please" the other day when she discovered candy canes, although that is a fairly difficult concept to understand, so she doesn't really know when to use it yet. Thank you is another one like that, and although I use it with her, I don't think she really understands the concept since it's a sign you use AFTER she got what she was needing or wanting. It's time for Mama to get a few more signing times DVD's from the library and learn a few more signs!
Maddie continues to be a star with her. The only thing Violet seems to love more than Bananas (we've been going through 3 a day with her) is clementine oranges (I think we've been going through 4-5 a day on those...). I keep them in a bowl on the table so they are easy to get to after the girls finish dinner or if they need a snack. The other day Violet saw them and did not want to eat the cereal she had been eating for breakfast. I was trying to tell her, first cereal, then orange using a combination of words and charades. Maddie came over with some cereal on a spoon, gave it to Violet who happily opened her mouth for her sister, ate the cereal and smiled. So then I gave her a segment of orange. Then I was able to give her a bite of cereal and we went back and forth like this. I had been trying to coax a bite of cereal out of her for probably almost 8 minutes before Maddie tried, and it worked on her first try! My big girl to the rescue! Violet adores her sister and will do nearly anything her sister asks of her- including apparently, delaying the gratification of that ever desired orange.
Another adoption concept that was new to me just in the last year is "Family Age". There is differentiation between Chronological age, developmental age, and Family Age. The chronological age is obviously based on birthdate. Violet is 22 months old chronologically.
The Developmental age is where they are developmentally- as I said above, for Violet, this ranges between much lower than her age, her actual age, and older than her age. Various parts of her development are at different ages.
Family Age is the length of time they have been in a family, and relates to all of those skills that being in a family entails. So Violet's family age is about 1 month. So overall she is between 1 month old and maybe 28 months old. Crazy huh? Yep.
Think about all of the skills it takes to be in a family- the things you know but you don't consciously think about:
The temperature in the house will remain steady
Meals will be served at regular times
Families love each other
Parents provide for their children
You MAY have more food if you are hungry
You don't have to eat fast so that other kids won't steal your food
Someone will hold you if you cry
You will have warm clothes to wear
Your clothes will not be stolen by another kid
You have toys to play with
Your toys will not be stolen by another kid
If you get sick, someone will rock you
If you get hurt, you can cry and someone will do something to help you
If there is a cracker on the table and you leave the room, it will still be there when you get back.
You don't have to push another child away to get the attention of the person in Charge (the parent)- there is room for more than one Child in a parent's heart
If a parent gets angry, they still love you all the time
If you do something wrong, it's a momentary injustice and it doesn't mean your life will change
And so many more. Violet is barely beginning to understand these. It will probably be several months before she understands most of these. But we are helping her to learn them. Our child is 22 months old Chronologically. These are big changes for her. Imagine how a child adopted at 6 or 7 learns all of these things...
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