- 8/18/2008 11:04:27 PMTurning the cornerShortly after we brought Michael home, a friend of mine gave me a pile of "Adopting Families" magazine. The pile contains a wealth of information about adoption from "how to" articles for finding the right home-study agency to dealing with behavior issues. The latter is what I was mostly interested in.
Over the last six months, we have wrestled repeatedly with the same strange behavioral issues. By sometime last week, we had nearly reached the breaking point when we committed ourselves to an even deeper level to the study of human behavior - particularly those of hurt children who get adopted. I began to comb through the pile of literature we had and the term
"Attachment Disorder" kept coming up. Whenever there was a list of symptoms given for it, our view of Michael's behaviorial problems never seemed to completely match and we weren't convinced that this was his problem - at least not completely.
One day last week, I was going through some photos remembering when we all used to laugh and smile and weren't continuously frustrated. I showed some of them to Michael including photos where he was present. I asked him, "what happened to the happiness?" He said, "lying, deceit". He asked me, "will happiness come back?". I said, "I hope so". I made a point of showing him the smiles on everyones faces in each photo. I said, "this is what we wanted to give you".
On another day, Peggy had been discussing lying with Michael. She came up with a calculation that indicated Michael had told in excess of 500 lies in the time he has been with us. Now not all of them are direct intentional lies. Much of his behavior involves pretending that he is unable to do something we we all know full well that he is capable. Some examples are running, bending his knees, riding his bike, brushing his teeth... Each time he says he "can't" - especially after we've seen him do it or when he "selectively forgets", we attribute that to deception which is inherently lying.
Michael said, "I don't believe that I have lied 500 times". We covered some of the incidents that have occured recently and the number of times he spun the truth about them. It became clear to him very quickly how easily and frequently untruth flowed from his mouth. We made him draw 500 stick men with unhappy faces on a sheet of paper. One stick man for every lie.
== Hairy Behavior ==
One particular example of his manipulative attention seeking deceptive behavior involves combing his hair. Michael is responsible for combing his hair every day. He has been with us for about six months which is roughly 180 days. This translates to showing him how to comb his hair approximately 180 times. There is a certain way we like him to comb his hair and it is relative to the direction his hair grows. Michael repeatedly acts like he is incapable of doing this simple task correctly.
However, if I say, "we're going to the store, go comb your hair" Michael will quickly comb his hair correctly the first time and be ready to go. However, if I just say "go comb your hair", he will repeatedly comb it not just incorrectly but totally different or even the exact opposite way we've shown him - all 180 times.
At one point, we took a photo of him and tacked it to the wall next to the mirror in the bathroom. I said, "make your hair like the picture and don't come out until it looks like that". He still comes out looking like a circus clown. He likes to go right to Peggy, opening up his big eyes to look like a lost puppy and says to Peggy with a sappy voice, "mamma... how does this look?" Again - secret language for, "look at me", "see how needy I am", "give me your attention", "feel sorry for me". Perhaps some people would see this and say, "he is crying out for love". We see this as him trying to manipulate and control. He is capable of combing his hair but he chooses not to.
== Family Reunion ==
A few weekends ago, we went up north for a family reunion to Peggy's uncle's house. He has a nice place with a large pond located in the woods of North East Wisconsin. The kids spent a good part of the warm and sunny afternoon swimming and playing.
At one point during the day, Michael was playing with his uncle and cousin. They had a ball and were tossing it back and forth. Michael would pretend he didn't know how to throw a ball and then would launch it far away from the people he was playing with forcing them to go after it. He wanted to be shown how "to do it correctly". Let me be clear on this - all ten year old boys know how to throw a ball. Unfortunately for Michael, his uncle is no dummy and caught on quickly to what he was doing.
At another point, Michael came out of the water and stood on the shore. He wouldn't interact with anyone either in the water or on the land. He just stood there with his head hung low looking sad. Every minute or so, he would slowly turn his head and gaze with his big eyes upon his grandma and his aunt like a weak and helpless orphan. Michael would then quiver slightly as if he needed a towel but there were none available and he was forced to stand there and freeze like a naked homeless child living on the streets of Moscow.
Of course, none of this is true. He was surrounded by family and his towel was laying on the ground in the hot sun right next to him. This pathetic, glancing, "poor me", "look at me" act went on for a few minutes. Some people who noticed him would sigh and say, "awwww... look at him". His aunt on the other hand tapped Peggy on the shoulder and said, "check that out..." Again, she is no dummy and knew exactly what he was attempting.
== Searching ==
After a few nights and many hours of combing through the magazine pile looking for information on how to handle all of this and not finding what I wanted, we decided to make a date night and head out to Barnes and Noble in search of more literature. Peggy had done quite a bit of reading before Michael came and I will have to confess that I did much less than she did. Actually, I did embarrassingly less. She would give me her analysis of each book and I always agreed with her conclusion thinking that this all made perfect sense.
Hurt child = strange behavior.
Since I am a logical kind of person, I could understand the equation. However - understanding the equation and living the equation are very different.
== Finding what was lost ==
We each grabbed about three books and sat down to read them. Before I continue, I have to say that Barnes and Noble is a fantastic book store. If you ever get a chance to go there - even if you are not in the market for a book - do it.
One of the books I grabbed (and the one I am currently reading) is "Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow" by Gregory Keck and Regina M. Kupecky. I sat down and quickly plowed through the chapter, "What doesn't work". I cannot express the amount of healing that occured within me over the next 20 to 30 minutes. I had felt like I found the long lost instruction book to a very complicated, half assembled, and broken machine.
Peggy and I passed our books back and forth to each other saying, "hey... read this". What an eye opening evening! We left there with three books. I'll post more about them as I go through them. So far I can tell you that if you are considering adoption or have already done so, get Parenting the Hurt Child. It will be well worth the cost.
== Healing at the i-Hop ==
After dropping $50 at the book store, we headed over to the International House of Pancakes for dinner. Before eating, we prayed. We prayed specifically for healing, wisdom, perserverence. We thanked the Lord for where we were, the position we were in and this one evening of some relief. We sat and talked about many things - including the 85 degree temperature outside compared to the 65 degree temperature inside. You know, the I-Hop is a nice place and they might have good pancakes but we froze in there and most of our meal was greasy. If my mind was not so heavy with other thoughts, I might be more critical of my experience there.
== The Turning Point ==
The following day, something very interesting happend. Michael began to confess that he knew what really happened to his birth mother. When we first met Michael (then Yuri) in 2007, he would not talk about his mother and claimed to not have any other family. He said his father was a pilot who died an a plane crash. At that time, we had already known that he was the third of three children. During the court proceedings in Cheboksary, we learned about his other siblings but got no information regarding his mother or father.
After we got home from Moscow, Michael told us a fantastic story of a random act of violence where his mother was betrayed by a friend and shot to death outside their home. Some military soldiers came but no police were ever involved. No one was ever inclined to search for the killer even though he knew their name and what they looked like. He even drew a picture of the scene and showed us how it all supposedly happened.
Here are the key highlights of the story that Michael confessed regarding his mother: She loved his father but his father liked to punch her in the eyes leaving them black and blue. His dad left and his mother met some other man. One evening both Michael and his mother were at a friend's house. She was drinking heavily and smoking as she often did. There were bottles of alcohol everywhere. She went into a room and closed the door behind her. A friend then took Michael home. That was the last time he saw her alive. After some period of time, he saw her again at the funeral laying in a casket. He was close enough to get a good look at her face. How does a four year old process such information? Not very well - that's how.
This is the type of story that we suspected was likely to be the truth. Michael is not alone in his incredible journey of childhood pain. His story of his mother's demise is all too common among orphans. Standard defence tactic 101 for hurt children is to conceal this kind of truth and begin a life of fending for themselves. Most often adults are viewed as the source of pain and misery.
We have so much work to do, so much "unlearning", and so much healing that needs to be done. Today was big step in the right direction. Michael let his guard down enough that we could establish some trust as he shared with us perhaps one of the heaviest and darkest secrets that a ten year old can keep or carry.
I told Michael that when he heals from this (and he will heal), he will be not only strong but very special as well. He will be one of God's secret weapons. I said that many other children are hurting from the same types of things and that he will be able to help them heal too. For now, his job is to stay at home to heal and to learn. We told him that children were a blessing to their parents and that they were like arrows in the hands of a master warrior. He will become straight, tall, and strong and one day he will stand firm for what is good and right. Perhaps one day, he will see his mother again. For now, maybe she is looking down at him and thankful he came to our home.
Lord, help us to provide a home and environment where he can heal. Help us to train him correctly. Help us to point him back to You.
