When the dream and reality collide

Everyone I know is talking about the mother who shipped her adopted child back to Russia.  Is it awful? Yes.  And yet, I remember when we adopted Chet so many years ago, the feelings of helplessness and often hopelessness that would overwhelm my wife and I. 

It is likely that the orphanage and the adoption agency did not know that he was on the autistic spectrum.  However, I will never forget the glib comment the agency director made to me as she put a filthy, obviously severely ill child in my arms.  "he just needs a room full of toys."  Did he have that?  Oh in spades.  How we kept ourselves sane during the wait from placement at 6 wks to coming home at 16 months was buying toys for our first child.  Did he know how to play?  He** no.  But we were more than willing to spend hours teaching him how.

He was sick.  Physically sick with absolutely everything that came down the pike that first year.  He had to learn a new language.  New foods.  New faces.  New everything.  And we were brand new parents.  I am an optimist by nature.  I would tell my frazzled wife that surely things would be better when he was healthier.  When he was used to our food he would stop making himself throw up at every meal.  When he had language skills mastered he would stop screaming for hours.  He would stop biting when he could fully express himself. etc. etc. He would stop banging his head when he learned that we were never going to leave him.

At some level, those things had to all play a part in the things we went through.  But a couple years into our life together, he still screamed, he bit so often I kept having to beg to keep him in the pre-school, and his play was just different from other kids.  He would spend hours ripping off the wallpaper but only play for a few seconds with a toy.  He could not catch a ball.  He loved going to the park and we went every night.  But he still screamed like I was flaying him when it was time to leave.

I read every book I could find. I read about spirited children.  I read about explosive children.  I read about ADHD.  I read about allergies and diet.  I read about discipline by the numbers, with rewards, with consequences.  I tried every trick I read about and some I thought of on my own.  I sought out professionals.  They said helpful things like "your son is too young to test but he has ADHD"  They said, play therapy wasn't helping.  I got sick of running up debt when I was playing all the time with him.  As was my wife.  As was my mom.  Other professionals told me I should run workshops for parents to teach them how to adapt to their child's needs.  Oh yeah, that would help me out loads!

We couldn't leave him with a babysitter.  He could not be controlled and kept safe by any family member.  Yet every family member was still an expert--even those who didn't have kids.  They all had opinions of what we should do.  There were implications we were the problem. We were too strict.  We were not strict enough.  You choose the allegation and the day.  It varied all the time.

Chet moved to school age.  Problems changed but worsened.  Special ed was a nightmare.  I fought the fight as long as I could and when the school allowed him repeated contact with another student  who was inciting  him to stalk a female student I pulled him out to homeschool.  I was at the end of my tether.  Did I want to send him away?  Not really.  His behaviors?  Yup, all I wanted was the child I had spent years dreaming about and did. not. have.  We had zero easy fun family vacations while he was a youngster.  We always had to go to the same place where the room would be exactly the same and do the same things.  Even then, there would be melt downs and tantrums.  Going to stores was  a nightmare.  The crowds bothered him.  The noise in the light fixtures (which I couldn't even hear myself) stressed his nervous system to the breaking point.  We learned to shop early in the morning and we switched off who went so that he didn't have to go.  Our circle of friends became very small.  We supported each other because there was no one else to go to.

The internet was not the wide open place with blogs and info galore that it is today. Social service agencies told me there was nothing they could do because our adoption was international and not domestic.  Looking back, I sometimes wonder how we made it through.  How we managed to be happy in the face of the constant daily challenges.  I know it was harder on my wife.  Chet and she butt heads more intensely than he and I. 

But the one thing we had going for us was that we had no other children.  He was our focus and we were his.  We bore the brunt of the emotions he did not understand, the pain he could not process, and spent time trying to teach him to live with joy.  I might have very well felt differently if I had other children in my home when he was younger.  I would have worried that his rages could cause injury, either physical or emotional.  I would not have known how to keep people safe and growing in healthy manners. 

So while the actual actions of that desperate mother make me shudder, the lack of information and supports out there for adoptions that are more than parents bargained for make me shudder more.