Conscious Compassion

This past Friday night David and Jayne Schooler spoke to a crowd of foster and adoptive parents over a yummy Mexican dinner. They have been featured in the video series we've watched and enjoyed on Tuesday nights, but I must say that I really appreciated their live in-person thoughts even more.

One comment Jayne said really stood out to me: "Conscious compassion for our adopted kids can not be sustained."

What she means is that when we hear the stories of these kids, of our kids, who come from orphanages and foster care and other hard places, our hearts can't help but break for them. There is compassion that swells in us to care for the innocent, to fight and protect. But it won't last.

It's horrible, but it's true. At least it was for us. I'm not exactly sure when the compassion that once motivated us to move mountains and add three more boys to our roll call started to fade, but it did. Somewhere between the blank disobedient stares, the undermining passive aggressive antics, the manipulative behaviors, and the sleepless nights with a newborn- I confided to my husband about one of our foster sons, "I can't stand this kid."

Geez. What kind of horrible person would say that about a child who was abused? About a child who was ripped from his home? Taken away from his mom and sisters and deposited in a strange land where the natives don't speak his language? Apparently my kind of person. I would say that. I did say that.

And we didn't even have it that bad. I've heard horror stories about wounded kids from foster care who act out their anger and abuse the only way they know how- with sexual deviance and more abuse aimed at the families trying to help them. I can't even imagine that. I can't even imagine. Our story was nothing like that. We were foster parent impostors compared to others. We were playing nerf-ball while other families were battling it out full contact style. And even for us, compassion was not enough. It stirred our hearts, but it didn't last.

It's the same thing as trying to sustain your marriage with puppy love. Those butterflies from that first kiss will not bring you through lay-offs, cancer, a sick child, or even through your first holiday with in-laws. :) Puppy love is a fleeting feeling. Cory and I have been married almost 13 years and do you know what I feel every time my husband holds my hand? Nothing. I feel nothing. But do you know what I know with unwavering certainty? That man loves me.

Puppy love is a feeling. Compassion is a feeling. It won't last.

So what's the answer then? When the feelings go away how do you make it through Thursday, and then get up to do it again Friday knowing that Saturday and Sunday are coming?

For me, there were a lot of answers. There was holy community. There was talking with mom's going through the same thing.  There was increasing my knowledge about how kids use behavior as their voice. There was kit kats and m&ms. There was trial and error-ing the techniques from Karyn Purvis. There was planting my kids in front of hours of Netflix cartoons. There was dinner brought to our house. There was trading off shifts with my husband. There was leaning into God. There was free babysitting. There was reading adoption blogs. There was saying yes when friends offered to do laundry. There was ignoring what I felt and acting on what I knew:

My kids are worth it.

Keep it up Mommas. Your kids are worth it.

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Here's a few more quotes I found inspirational from the past six weeks:

"Our kids were wounded in the context of relationship and they will be healed in the context of relationship." -Jayne Schooler

"We keep going because every day that we wake up and do it again, is one more day that our kids had someone not give up on them."-Adoptive momma from the videos

Got a quote you love? Click on "comments" below and share it to inspire us all.

Reflex parenting

We're starting kinda academic for a Monday so turn your thinking cap on for me. Before we get into what reflex parenting is, let's first define reflex.

Reflex: the consistent, automatic, and immediate action of a muscle group in response to a specific sensory stimuli. 

Still with me? Let's get even nerdier. Did you know that a reflex is not controlled by the brain? It is a reaction of the spinal cord. And trust me you want it that way. When you touch a hot stove you don't want the sensory signal taking it's sweet time to travel from your finger, up your arm, ascending the spinal cord, passing through the cerebellum, and finally up to your cortex where it could get misplaced amongst all the other to do lists your brain has going on that day- you know things like emotions, volitional movement, sensory processing or higher level thinking skills.  You just want your hand off the stove as fast as possible!

Another example of a reflex is the deep tendon patellar reflex. This is the one where you sit on the edge of table, the doctor taps your knee and your leg kicks out. In the therapy world, the fancy word for that is quadricep activation or knee extension. Typically your brain controls knee extension -when it comes to your child kicking a soccer ball, or laying on their back throwing a fit- that's knee extension. It's the exact same movement for all three but one is the result of brain activity and includes purpose and motivation while the other is a reflex with no emotion involved.

Reflexes are fast, emotionless, and always give the same response.

Now let's talk about reflex parenting. Listen, I'm all for trying to shape my kids character. I want them to be self-disciplined and self-regulated because the plan is for them to move out of the nest someday...and be in charge of their own dental hygiene amongst other things. I don't expect their future boss to see that my child gets 10 hours of sleep and stays away from dairy. And I' not gonna tell his future wife, "You have to remind him to brush his teeth. And always give him one warning to pick up his clothes before you start counting to 3 or he'll have a meltdown."

(Although I have told my oldest that when he gets married, if his wife does home haircuts she needs to call me- because there is only one way to get that front double helix cowlick of his to lay flat.)

Levi 5 years ago

Reflex parenting is not about character development. It's not for teaching hard life lessons about alcohol use, honesty, sexuality, generosity,  and compassion etc. Those are higher level skills. Reflex parenting is just for those annoying little things that all kids do. I'm talking about tattling, whining. pestering, fighting with siblings, crying and on and on. As my husband puts it: the chinese water torture part of parenting. You can't get all bent out of shape every time your child whines or tattles. Drip. Drip. Drip. Because you will make yourself looney bin crazy. They are going to do it. You just need an automatic, emotionless, and predictable response. You need a reflex; a quick phrase to handle the situation that you can say every single time without thinking about it.

Below are some reflex parenting one-liners that we have said or have picked up from other parenting friends.

Disobeying-
"Would you like a consequence or a do-over?"

Tattling- 
Mom: "Did Mommy push you?"
Child: "No, Kaden did."
Mom: "Then you should talk to Kaden about it."

Fighting over toys-
"What's more important the toy or your sister?"

Pestering-
"Not cool. Knock it off."

Whining-
"Sorry, but I can't hear you. You need to talk like a big kid so that my ears can understand you."
-or-
"Use your words."

Repetitive Whining-
"You've already told me that. Is there something else you would like to say?"

Fake crying
"Is it one of the 3 B's?  (bleeding, barfing, broken). Nope? Then come get a kiss and you'll be fine."


Disclaimer: So obviously these aren't going to work every time. Sometimes you still get burned by the stove.  But based on the research study we are doing at home with our own little focus group of children, we are seeing some good results with our reflex parenting. Hopefully you will too.
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Got any other good suggestions? Sound off in the comments. Because, seriously,  who doesn't love a good one-liner..."You're over me? When were you under me?" :)

Life Books and The Sex Talk

This past weekend we were lucky to have our adopted boys' bio mom, half-sisters, and maternal grandfather come for a visit from out of state. I say lucky because I know not every adoption triad is privy to such respectful and honest dynamics between everyone.  Please know that respectful for sure doesn't mean easy.  But it does mean worth it. It's worth it because my three youngest boys get a holistic view of who they are and where they came from, which I think is particularly important  since they don't "match" the rest of us.

A quick caution though if you decide to embark on an open adoption:  Make sure you tell your child their history first before bio family does- that way you can translate it the way you want your child to receive it. It's kinda like how you want to have the sex talk with your son before he gets the scoop from his junior high buddies. Case in point,  this past weekend I walked up on a conversation between Judah and his sister as she was saying, "Our mom went to jail because she hit you in the face with a hanger." I'm not sure if she wanted shock value or was just thinking her concrete 8 year-old thoughts out loud, but either way, he struck back with an unphased reply, "I already know about that."

I was soooo grateful he had worked through that with us first.

If you aren't able to give your kids roots through a connection with birth family there is another way to normalize their experience by creating a life book for them. A life book is simply a collection of memories and pictures that puts words to what has happened. It's a tool that can be used to help your kids understand the inevitably hard transitions they have survived, but maybe have not processed yet.

I plan on making three books eventually, one for each of our adopted boys. They were adopted as a sibling set, but adoption means something different to each of them because of how old they where when it happened. For example, Judah was the oldest and remembers the time in foster care where the others don't.  He is also the one (at least right now) who has the most struggles-  probably because he remembers more and probably because he was the one who endured the abuse which put them all in foster care. So far I have only made his book.

I wrote it as though Judah was the narrator of the story. I did this on purpose because I wanted him to embrace this story as his own. Because frankly it is his own.  It cost about $30 to make using www.snapfish.com but their are lots of other websites you can look into that do the same thing. It was super easy to upload digital pictures and add my own narrative. And thanks to his mom, his book even has a few baby pics and a pic of his birth dad whom we have no contact with.

Below are a few examples from his book so you can see how I tackled some tough topics. Of note, I did not address the abuse in the book because putting that in black and white print makes it static forever. To me, that is a fluid topic that needs to be addressed in different ways  throughout the years depending on what his questions are. And honestly he has significantly healed from that already, thanks to a beautifully hard conversation he and I had with Mom last year. Find more on that here if you are interested. If you can't tell, I'm very much a talk-about-the-elephant in the room person.

Back to the life book. This is definitely not the only way to make a book, I know there are lots of other examples on-line. I know this because I stole ideas from ones I found just like you are welcome to steal from me. :)  Just try to give your kids words for what happened to them. The goal should be to take the events of their fragmented life and make it into one seamless happy story.  I am really proud of how Judah's turned out, but not near as proud as he is!

Front Cover

Opening Narrative: "Hi! My name is Judah and I love to read books. And guess what? This book is a story all about me. Did you know that sometimes stories are sad? And sometimes stories can even be scary? But you don't have to be nervous about that. Because this isn't a sad story or a scary story. NO WAY!! This is a happy story because it's MY story. And guess what else? This is story is full of surprises. You better keep on reading so you can find out what they are."

Adoptive parents and birth parents

On this page "he" explains the first surprise- how his named was Jordan when he was baby but it changed to Judah when he got adopted. He remembers his old name because he was four years old when we changed it, so I included that in the book. "He" goes on to explain what birth parents vs adoptive parents mean and how adoptive parents are the same thing as your real parents. I tried to think of some questions he might get from friends, and give him the words to answer. 

Lots of pics

To explain why he has brown skin and Mommy, Daddy, and his older brothers have white skin, "Judah" tells how a baby's skin always matches the tummy it was growing in. Technically he is biracial (hispanic and black) and he really matches his black birth dad the most, but I wasn't ready to tackle genetics and THE REAL SEX TALK with him just yet. :)

Mixed with narrative

A very crucial part of the story happens on this page. It explains how he came to be adopted, and most importantly does so without demonizing his mom. "Judah" says: "Did you ever think about all the things you need in order to take care of a family? Some things a family needs are: a house to live in, beds to sleep in, money to buy food, toys to play with, a car to drive, and lots of LOVE. Mom had some of those things, but not all of them and that's why she wanted me to live with Mommy and Daddy. She knew they had all those things and that they could take really good care of me and my brothers. It was a very hard decision for Mom, but she says it was the right thing to do and she doesn't regret it. Sometimes there might be some sad things about adoption at first, but that's ok. When I'm sad I snuggle in Mommy's lap or talk to Daddy. They help me figure out all the sad things and tell me how much they love me. And then of course I am happy again! Because remember what I already told you...this is a happy story."

There are a few more pages of narrative specific to our situation related to moving to Arkansas and meeting the Judge. The book ends with an easy: "My name is Judah Jones and I hope you liked my happy story." The very last two pages are personal letters written to him from my husband and I. And there you have it...a life book. Was that helpful?  I hope so. Judah's book is specific enough to answer questions but general enough that I can add details as he grows. I  gave a copy to his birth Mom so that she would know the language we use with him and hopefully mimic it too. She loved it of course. 

Have you made a life book for your child? Or figured out a way to explain a tricky subject in an age appropriate way? I would love to steal some more ideas. After all, I've got two more books to make!! Sound off in the comments below.