October re-eval

We just had our re-evaluation and got a new plan. We're going to work through this, even though it won't be easy. I only have one pattern that I need someone to help me with, so the program is do-able. It's really hard to have people in the house, but no one to help. S has started pre-school, and overall things are going well. She has never been anxiously attached, so she had no problem leaving me. One thing she said shocked me. She obsessed about me comiing to get her. I don't know if the teachers mentioned it when it was time to leave. I think she wanted to stay on the playground, because that's the last place they go before it's time to leave. She also talked a lot about saying goodbye to the other children, she didn't like doing that. The second or third day of school, she almost started crying on the way home. this is significant, because almost nothing makes her cry. She said she didn't want to say goodbye to the other kids. I'm so happy it was just that, I immediately thought something horrible had happened to her. They are talking about feelings in school, which is really great. S doesn't express feelings at all. I have been working on labeling feelings for her. It hadn't occured to me that she is pretty even tempered. That would appear to be a blessing, but it makes me wonder what she is internalizing. I finally made her a scrapbook of her life before we adopted her, so I'm hoping she'll be able to express some feelings. She says the cutest thing to me now, I think she got it from a book we read. She says, "Mommy and S hug and make a heart shape, right?" Doesn't that bring up such a wonderful visual? I look forward to sharing our progress, hopefully on a more regular basis. The biggest thing we are working on is impulse regulation.

Back in town and NOT with the program!

Okay, so we're slackers, what can I say. Vacation is over, school has begun, and the need for NR is glaring. I am dreading getting started again, and looking forward to it at the same time. I think the biggest thing we need to work on is impulsive behavior. S wants to do the right thing, but acts before she thinks. She started pre-school about 6 weeks ago and we love her teacher. She is very understanding and handles the impulsive situations very well. My biggest concern is how it's all handled at school. The teacher is so nice and calm, and seems to understand that S means well and isn't aggressive, but her lack of pre-thought process can look like she wants to be mean. When you watch her do something, you can see that it done for a reaction, not to hurt anyone. We're going to stick with it for now, and hope things get better once NR is re-introduced. This post needs to be brief, I'll check back in and report our re-eval results.

Last Update for a Month or Two

We will be leaving for vacation in a couple of weeks for a while, so I won't be updating. We will go for a re-eval in the fall, and I'm really excited to get a new routine. We've also made an appt. with a developmental optometrist to see if S needs vision therapy. Her eyes do not work together, and one or the other turns outward. The good news is that I've read that turning outward is better than inward.

Yesterday was the most amazing day. I was having a discussion with S's sister and she started to get upset. She was talking to me and half crying. S heard this from the other room, came over to her sister, and started to comfort her. It wasn't just a pat on the back and walk away thing either. She asked her what was wrong, then assured her it would be okay. After that, she went and got a game we all play together(bananagrams), took the letters out for her, and pretended to play with her. It was so amazing to see her 'get it' and go through so much to make her feel better. What she did was cute and also very effective to re-set the mood to a pleasant one. This was such a big step for her.

A couple of weeks ago, she tried a vacation bible school where one of her sisters was able to be with her the entire time. By day 3, she was overwhelmed, and didn't want to go. I went with her the next day since she came home early the day before. The noise level was too high for her, and the amazing thing is that she was able to tell me that. The 4 day was a 'performance' type thing, and she was clinging to me. My daughter suggested is would be good for her to just leave me to go with her and just face her fears. My husband came over and agreed with this suggestion. I refused, knowing full well that that was not a good idea. I stayed with her until she was comfortable, and she was fine, even with the noise. I am fully convinced that she understood this compassion, that's how she was able to show compassion towards her sister. Yes, she has to face her fears, it's the only way she'll do anything. I have gently coerce her to try new things. Sometimes she ends up clinging tighter, other times she ends up loving it. She is hesitant to try new things, she fears new situations. I know how hard to push her without betraying her trust. This is the key issue-trust.

Overall, she is doing great. We have a lot of work to be done, but we are at a good place. We have had no adverse reactions to fetals, the only thing we are doing now. Last time we started them, we had immediate sleep problems and an unpleasant disposition. I think there has been a lot of improvement with the increase in communication. We are about to go back to the orphanage where S came from. This is very early to go back, but I think it will be very good for her. We may have some horrible regression, and I hope we don't go too far backward. Even if we do, I think it will have positive results in the long run. I fear the worst, but I'm not expecting it. My feelings are that she is too young to comprehend the big picture, but it might be just enough to settle some feelings that she doesn't remember the origin of. I think since adoption was so traumatic for her, that she will be able to replace those bad, fearful feelings with the present circumstances. Meaning- what initially traumatized her can be re-lived and replaced with the comfort she has today with her new home. A psychologist might totally throw that idea out the window, but I feel that I know my daughter well enough to not be putting her at risk for something bad. We can communicate now, so if there is something that she wants to talk about concerning the orphanage, then she is young enough for memories to come back and discuss them. Maybe she will be able to put the past trauma behind her since she will be able to sort out the mystery of it all this early. I think she has some memory, even if it's not something she can express in words. I think going back might trigger some sort of conscious memory, but this time, she won't be leaving the orphanage to be with another family. I see it like getting back on the horse, it's hard to do, but you have to realize that it won't be that bad again. The old experience will be replaced by a good one. We'll see, I'll be sure to write about it when we get back. That's all for now, I need to get packing.

May Update

We're back into our NR routine. Unfortunately, we won't be able to go back for a re-eval in May bacause we'll be out of town for a graduation. On a general note, we've made huge leaps in development. Speech is very clear, and we're in complete sentences with proper grammar most of the time. Fine motor skills are hugely improving. There is still quite a contrast when she is with other kids her age. She plays really well with other children, but they realize she is different and it is beyond heartbreaking. She is the sweetest, most friendly, loving, kind child you could ever meet. It makes me wonder how many misunderstood children are never appreciated. I wish I had the time to write a book about my life with her. I am so priviledged to have been chosen to be her mother. She makes me see life in a different light, and I appreciate every day more because of her. I want to protect her from hurt, but at the same time, I want her to interact with the same people who could break her heart. They have so much to learn from her and enjoy. If only I could find people who would actually listen instead of thinking they already knew what you were going to say. If only they were willing to learn instead of being prideful. Maybe someday, she will be able to make people listen, and my job is to get her to that point.

The same day we started back to NR, S played quietly by herself in her room. I didn't think too much about it, since she is maturing, it could just be becasue of that. Then on day 2, the same thing. Surely not a coincidence, never is with NR. Am I looking for it? Actually no, I usually don't put the 2 together until a day or 2 later. We are doing fetals, which we had to stop the first time they were prescribed a year ago. I was afraid of re-starting them, but this must be the right time. Last night, she woke up wimpering. She has always been a sound sleeper, so this was unusual. I brought her to my bed, and she spent an hour thrashing around. She kept kicking her dad in the head, and keeping me awake, so I brought her back to her bed and lied down next to her.(in her toddler bed) She was still restless, and she didn't want me to touch her to comfort her. She is still resistant to touch as comfort. I finally rolled her onto my chest, with intentions of eventually getting up and doing something else with her. Well, much to my surprise, the second she got on my chest, her body immediately relaxed, and she was asleep within minutes. Only then did it occur to me that this all must have been in reaction to the fetals. Of course, I felt guilt at probably handling it improperly up until that point. When you are getting kicked and hit and woken up repeatedly, you generally don't react with compassion. I kept trying to re-align her so she wasn't perpendicular to her dad and I. In a half sleep state, I probably even told her to stay still. Now that I realize what is going on, I'll try to remind myself to react with compassion. As we get farther into out NR routine, she is pulling the same old stuff, playing around and not wanting to do it. How can you do patterns when your child gets stiff just because it's fun? Or how about rolling over and giggling? She's not making this easy on either one of us. Sometimes I think it would be easier when she is older, because I can reason with her. But if I wait, she may just become more unreasonable and defiant. So in the next 3 months I have lofty goals-potty training, swimming, and getting ready for some sort of pre-school. I'll be here all of next month, so hopefully I'll post more often. I have high hopes, lets see how far we get!

March 2010

I can't believe it's almost halfway through March. I am embarassed to say that we have totally neglected NR work for weeks. There has been so much going on and constant changes to our schedule. S is nevertheless making progress. She is talking up a storm and it's so much fun to hear her. She asks amazing questions, but I noticed she does not talk much about feelings, only things and concepts. We just got back from a trip where we had to fly to get there. We hadn't been on an airplane since September, so I knew there would be anxiety. The first flight was only a little over an hour, and she buried her head in my neck the whole way. The next flight was 4 hours and she was just fine. We stayed with friends who have a daughter her age. They played and played and talked and had so much fun. Our 3rd and last day, all of the activity and changes took their toll, and her anxiety increased. When she is anxious, she gets very repetitive with her speech. When she is scared, she'll repeat what I have said to her to keep her calm. She goes through the sequence, "It's okay, it's okay, I'll keep you safe, I'll protect you" and she'll say it over and over. If it's something brief or stationary that scares her, and I tell her it's gone, she'll repeat, "It's gone, it's gone" It's frustrating for me to hear her repeating the same thing over and over again, but I know it's comforting for her. I hate that she has so much anxiety. The good thing is that she can and has conquered so much of it already. At gymnastics class, she now will attempt everything there. She crawled through a tunnel without hesitation last week and this week. Way back in the days of OT, it took almost an hour to get her to peek her head into the entrance of a tunnel. I don't think she ever went all the way through in all of our time there. I'm encouraged that time will work all of this out. Repeated, safe exposures to the scary situations and objects will eventually have her feeling safe. Unfortunately, I'm not sure she's ready for a preschool environment. My other kids were very shy, and I found well meaning teachers to be very cold in their approach and thought that thrusting them into a situation would make them not shy anymore. It just made them not trust their teacher and be scared to death of the next moment that their teacher would do that again. No school situation should have the child living in fear and anticipation of the next anxietly provoking moment. I lived most of my school years with that anxiety. The fear of being called on was the worst. I would have so much anxiety the entire class with a teacher that I knew called on people randomly. I'm betting those were not my best subjects. My one wish would be for teachers to respect where they don't understand. I think you have to live through something to understand it completely, but if you haven't lived it, try to trust that the parent really knows their child better than you do. Yes, you can see how kids manipulate their parents and want to show them you won't put up with that. I just wish it were possible to see each kid for who they are instead of throwing them into a category. That's the biggest issue with getting S the help she needs. I was told by someone in the school system that they would have force fed S. Their big concern was that she was way behind because she had no self feeding skills. It's not that she couldn't hold a untensil and bring it to her mouth, she just couldn't tolerate what was on the utensil. I felt like my words meant nothing. I can still hear how they were telling me that they could offer so much more(their words) and that they had decided I was an incompetent parent who couldn't even teach my child how to eat(my words)! Okay, I got off on a big tangent. I plan to make a schedule for our NR and hopefully have a good report in a week. We need to start fetals, so I'm a little nervous.

February re-evaluation

We had our February re-evaluation a couple of weeks ago. We're making progress, but our progress is only as good as our effort. S has gotten quite resistant to doing anything, so we're trying to employ another method. Our movements have changed this time around, we're going back to the fetals which stirred things up so much last time that we put them off. S is such a sound sleeper, and doing fetals disrupted that. But, I know we need to move on, so we'll try it once again. We plan to return to China in just a matter of months now, so we need to work through some of this early stuff to be able to have a successful trip. I honestly think that this is a really good time to return to the orphanage, because we are at a point where she is much farther along in the aqttachment process, and I think this trip could help her sort things out. I have not shown her pictures of her nanny or of the orphanage. I want to see if she is able to remember any of this on her own so I know it's from her memory and not from what she has pieced together from pictures and stories. I know from my older children how thier minds work. When you explain something to them, they can only relate to it and process it based on their limited exposure to the world. I can even see this in my teenagers. They tend to not believe that things aren't how they see it. It's not because they don't believe you, they just don't have the life experience to see the bigger picture. So that makes me very hesitant to give her too much information before we go back.

I'm happy to report that the little fearful sounding outburst she used to make has disappeared. I have to admit, I was really nervous about this. I think something new is coming up to replace this, but this time I'm not so worried because the last one was so short lived. We're having bigger problems with her bed. She's still " 'fraid bed". Nap time is pretty much gone, unless we're in the car and she falls asleep. At night, I'm able to rock her, and either put her in her bed awake or sleeping. She doesn't say anything about being afraid when I go get her in the morning. I am loving being able to rock her though, I never thought I would see that day that she let me and even enjoyed it. She is very talkative and tells me about what she did that day. She spent quite a bit of time with her 3 cousins these past 2 weeks, it was a huge leap in personal growth for her. Her eating is getting so much better. We're still using a bottle, but there are more solids. She even ate some of a banana, which is a huge step in sensory! A banana is about the worst texture to have in your mouth. She wants to use a cupo so badly, she pretends all of the time, but she just can't quite get the nerve to do it. Potty training is not happening. I did put her in underwear yesterday and she showed me where the puddle was on the floor. Progress? I had to get her up while she was still sleeping yesterday and I niticed that her diaper had only a small amount in it. This was the way I could tell my other kids were ready for potty training. So now that I know that she can hold it most of the night, I am going to attempt to train her.

Yesterday I overheard her talking to herslef and saying, "Good girl, you did it!" and then "Try again". She'll say that to me when I do something she wants me to do. She likes to try to have me do some of the things I have her do and then praise me for doing it. The other day I helped her put her shoes and socks on and she said to me, "Thanks for helping"

One of the cutest things she's done and a huge step for her was showing a huge amount of empathy. Her big sister was very upset due to frustration and she was crying. S went up to her and said, "Why are you crying?" Then she ran to the bathroom and got her a tissue and put it up to her nose and said, "Blow". Then she said, "Throw in the garbage" and ran to throw it away. She came back and said, "It's okay, lets go play (something, I forgot what)" "Come on" as she grabbed her hand and led her upstairs. I've seen her play with her dolls that way too, it's so wonderful to see that.

She is really doing great with gymnastics. She will try almost everything now. Yesterday, she crawled through a tunnel, something she would have never done several months ago. She's getting so much better at following directions. She needs to be potty trained for the older class, so I guess I need to work on potty training for several reasons. I understand the need for some activities to have potty trained children, but this excludes some children who have no other restrictions. Where do the children get to go who have incontinence due to spinal problems? I know there are children who have spina bifida or repaired spinal problems whose only side effect is incontinence. Are exceptions made for these children? I have found that there are really no options for a child who has different needs. Even in the school system, they accomodate because they are required to, but the needs of the child aren't really met. I know there are lots of parents out there who have this issue, I wish we could have a local network. Most people just end up homeschooling. There's nothing wrong with that, but there needs to be other options also.

I forgot to say, S's eye tracking showed an improvement, yay! One more thing I forgot. Yesterday S was playing with her Leappad ABC book. It asked her to touch all of the words beginning with a certain letter. Much to my surprise, she went from word to word, doing exactly what they asked! We have done very little letter recognition work, it's amazing what she knows on her own. My other kids could all read before they went to kindergarten, so I haven't pushed this so she isn't bored learning letters when she gets to school. I tried this same approach with my now 12 year old and she was the earliest reader yet! She read to her pre-school class, much to the surprise of her teacher. It's not that I don't teach S or expose her to everything, I just do it in a fun way instead of drilling her and formally 'teaching' her. We've had so much more to work on that was so much more pressing, that learning letters was last on the list. She is only 3, so it's not like she should have this all down anyway. I'm excited to know she is picking up on everything, she's just not letting on all that she knows. I have said this from the beginning, and still believe it, she is keeping a lot inside and just giving us a glimpse of what she knows. Maybe it all has to do with attachment, if she doesn't let on what she knows, she maintains some control. She doesn't exhibit a huge need for control, she just is fearful of new things. After attending Denise Best's semminar, I was happy to learn that our attachment is much better than I thought. I was expecting the info to be a 'light bulb' moment for me and have all of the answers spelled out for me and that was not the case. Good that we are better off than I though, but bad that I don't have all of the answers.

Lastly, please leave a comment if you follow this blog. My goal is to document our progress and be encouraging to others. If you would like to see other things discussed, please let me know what would be helpful. Every child is different, but NR is like a diet, it works if you stick with it. I am a true believer in this method, and my daughter is the proof that it works, even when I was a sceptic along the way.

Progress to Report

I just realized the other day that we have made some immense progress in sensory integration. Just 6 months ago, S would NOT wear a jacket and certain textures of clothing. She wears a jacket without protest now, it used to be screaming and ripping it off. She will wear different textures that she wouldn't tolerate before. She actually touches and play with play doh now, she used to pull her hand away from it like it was something foul. She plays with moon sand, another texture she hated. We can brush ALL of her teeth for almost as long as we want to. She is eating some real food these days, not a lot, but way more than 6 months ago. The best part of this is that she has not had any other intervention but NR. The biggest progress I noticed was just last week. I was at the hair salon and she was on the floor playing with some toys. Someone turned on a blow dryer, which normally would have sent her into a panic and leaping into my arms. I was braced for her, when I observed her casually look in the direction of the sound and then go back to playing. This was nothing short of a miracle. She is also making progress in attachment. She plays the little mommy, slinging a bag over her shoulder and saying, "Bye, see you later." "I'll be back soon." I'm going to the grocery store." I remember getting advice to let her watch me brush my teeth to make her want to do it too. This was way back when she couldn't care less what I was doing. She plays with her doll like a little mother, which makes me happy when I see how she pretents to care for her. She does lift the doll out of the high chair by her hair, something I can assure you she has NEVER observed by me or anyone else. I tell her she is hurting her baby and she just laughs at my reaction. Okay, so we're not there yet, but progress is progress. She immediately says, "I'm sorry mommy" when she's done something I don't like. How I wish I had a crystal ball, or maybe not..

Wow!

I have some great news to report! Today was gymnastics class, last week daddy took her. He told me how she took turns on the trampoline and sat down and waited the minute she was told to give someone else a turn. I thought that was great, but didn't think too much about it. Today I got to see this miraculous event for myself. When another child came up to the trampoline and I told her she needed to give him a turn, she immediately ran to the side and sat down, waiting patiently for her turn. She did this time and time again, much to my amazement. I have never seen her this self regulated in my life. It could be because of the vestibular and sensory stimulation allowed her to stay calm, I just don't know. She can be doing all kinds of activity like that at the park without the same results. Maybe it's the bouncing of the trampoline that she needs. If that works, you'll soon be seeing a trampoline in our back yard. This is the glimmer of hope I needed. Isn't it weird that if you could see into the future and know everything will be okay, that none of this would worry you? On another good not, S allowed me to position her for the tonic neck reflex. She has been uncooperative thus far. It's not one that you can make them do it they don't cooperate. That's all for now.

Advice

Okay, I've talked to Bette about our issues. It all becomes much clearer when you can talk it out with someone who has insight as to what might be going on. She thinks these new behaviors are being caused by anxiety. I agree that is what it looks like. We can do compressions and body holding to help her get de-stressed and re-regulated. Remaining calm will be the hardest part, I tend to act a milli-second before thinking. Big character flaw, but I constantly work on it. I admit I started out calm, but when nothing worked, I resorted to yelling her name loudly hoping it would startle her into action. No such luck with a traumatized child who has tuned out all she cares to avoid. It's hard to speak softly when she has ripped the glasses off of someone's face and threw them. Bette also suggested theanine, which I will take myself to lower cortisol levels. I have many other life factors which are contributing to this situation, blah.....

So I'm going forth with renewed optimism again. If I can continually view her issues as being scared and stressed, it will be easy to treat her with the softness and compassion she deserves to get through it. I look at it like my phobia, there isn't anyone who can talk sense into me that the stupid little insect cannot hurt me. I'm afraid of it even when it's dead. I don't need someone to tell me not to be afraid, it just doesn't work. I need someone to tell me they understand and get me as far away as they possibly can before the ugly thing springs back to life! How horrible to think she might be having fears like that. I guess that's why she's my kid. I can hug her and carry her away to another couch when she's " 'fraid couch" even though the couch can't hurt her. She refers to herself in the 3rd person when she says she's afraid. Bette said that the 2 sides of the brain aren't communicating, and we need to plug on with the tonic neck pattern. I think that that is what stirred this up to begin with. This is going to be harder than I thought. We'll get through it one way or another.

January 2010 misc. observations

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful simple crawling can be. I guess my irregular schedule of exercises has proven to be somewhat of a good thing. Since the only therapy we are doing is NR at this point, I can easily identify behaviors and changes due to following the program. I am so confused and frustrated at this point, something that is hard to admit. While my life is filled with things to worry about, if I compare myself to the average person, I am quite fortunate. I live each day as if it were my last, and I am grateful for every moment I'm given. I wish I had some clear cut answers when it comes to solving my daughter's issues. What is the cause of her problems, sensory processing disorder, RAD, prematurity, or a non fully integrated neurological system? Do I treat all at the same time? Do I experiment with different therapies until I find something that works? I know most people who do NR do several therapies at once and the practitioners encourage that. I will use more than one if I need to, but for now I'd like to do one at a time. We are going to explore attachment therapy, I think that is crucial at this point. I guess I keep hoping for a magic solution or the light bulb moment when something specific is pinpointed and a magic solution revealed.

I had one of those knock the wind out of your sails moment yesterday when I heard a 9 year old girl describe S as 'very energetic' and a few other descriptive words that stabbed me right in the heart. S can have very calm moments, but they aren't frequent. She can play with something she likes for very long periods of time, but other times she buzzing around the room. Her little stages she goes through are relatively short lived. Just when I start getting worried about them, they disappear. The latest is a little throat clearing sound. I remember reading something about it on the Neuro group, but I doubt I'll get time to go back and investigate it. Time seems to be the biggest issue. If only I had time to do it all, I'm sure everyone feels this way. I hate the time it takes to type all of this out, but it is actually theraputic for me to get it out. I don't want to forget where we've come from in this journey and how far we've made it. My intention is for this to help others through it all. I plan to be able to post when we've graduated, I hope that's not too far away. It will probably be another year, especially at my pace. I'd like to think that more people are like me and aren't perfect in getting 100% in every day. This way they can be encouraged that they can still get to the end by going a little slower, and won't give up because they've had to take a break. I think the program is bringing up things that S can't verbalize, and it's causing the things we are seeing now. She is very scared of a lot of things. We carry her a lot, which I don't mind because it's great for attachment. The newest thing that has come up is that she lets out this little utterance of panic, like she just saw somthing that startled her. It seems to be connected to the throat clearing thing. It almost sounds like the grumting sort of sounds that autistic kids sometimes make. Yes, this scares the heck out of me. Are we dealing with autism? I don't think so, I highly doubt it would just show up now. I've thought back to anything that might have changes in our lives and I thought of something very disturbing. She's had some pretty big bumps on her forehead from bumping her head. She didn't have any significant falls, but she's still had a couple of sizable lumps on her head in the past month. I think if she had some type of damage that we would see it in other areas. The poor thing seems to be prone to injury on her head. It doesn't help that she head bangs when she is frustrated.

I guess the last thing is that there is no one person who is going through the same exact thing. It doesn't mean that no one can help, but I still feel alone. I have a couple of good friends who are good listeners, and that is priceless. Friends come and go, but all you need is one or two who you can be there for and they do the same for you. I've had other friends who are adoptive parents also, but just like any other situation, if your child is making more progress than theirs, they tend to dump you. Same thing happens if they get beyond the bad stuff before you do, they don't want to be in that category anymore, so you get dumped again. Such is life.