Phase Two

I had stopped blogging last year after Alex had been with us about 3 months. It seemed like we had gotten over the adjustment phase and were moving along nicely with establishing him as part of our family. And in a way, I was right, that first phase was over and there wasn’t much more to talk about in that place.

But recently as we approach the one year mark (I can’t believe it), I have begun to realize that there is so much more to do. There really isn’t anymore of him and us - we are all pretty much a cohesive unit, but there are times when a gulf does exist and it seems like it is getting harder and easier to bridge it. I know that sounds contradictory, but as I know Alex better, I am way more in tune with his feelings and needs. I can more easily anticipate his needs and wants and know immediately when something is going wrong. The problem exists in the fact that these needs now are buried deep within him, resultant not from external circumstances and adjustment but from an internal sense of poor self-worth and self-esteem resulting from years of abuse and neglect. So in a way, even though I know they are there and I can tell when they are rearing their ugly heads, I feel more powerless to do anything about them.

I worry about the internal conflict we are cresting within Alex as we are always telling him how smart and wonderful he is and showing how wanted he is, and inside he is reconciling that with the internal knowledge that no one wanted him for the first 14 years of his life. That knowledge is more deeply ingrained than our new campaign of love and understanding in his life. Reconciling these two competing views of himself will take actual parenting on my part - not my strong suit! I tend to let the kids tell me what they want instead of me leading them. I know that when two ideas are in conflict, it is the job of the child to choose the one that is opposite from the parent’s belief in an attempt to establish themselves as individuals. In this case, I can’t afford Alex doing that.

I worry about these two conflicting points and have started telling him instead of how smart he is, that I am proud of hard he works. He views himself as a hard worker and me reinforcing the concept will add to his self-esteem, I hope. Then after pointing out the hard work, I point to how it leads to the right answer on an Algebra problem, or another similar good outcome, hence how smart. I am hoping to lead him to these conclusions slowly and avoid the internal conflict. Instead of telling him how handsome, we try to also say how proud we are that he takes pride in his appearance, instead of always saying how wanted he is, we focus on what good things he has brought to us and how grateful we are for his presence in our lives. We are trying to pump him up with ideas that are not in conflict with his dim self-view, but with ideas that he already on board with. Don’t know if it is correct or not - but it feels right.

To this end, we have recently engaged a psychologist, who was initially puzzled as to why we were seeking help. She kept asking about behavioral problems, none, discipline issues, none, lack of compliance, none, school work issues, none. But when I explained to her that we needed help starting to fix these emotional scars, she understood and hopefully will start to give us some ideas on how to help. At some point we recognize Alex will have to come to terms with what his life was and what his life is now and reconcile the two together.

I am not sure what everyone wants to know about, I know that most blogs stop after returning to America with their kids, so I will just run through everything - hopefully I won’t put anyone to sleep. In general, life has been wonderful. Alex really has become our child, in our hearts and minds. The psychologist we have met with was describing how she viewed adoptions. She said every once in a while it is like magic, that when the family and child came together, the sum is greater than the individual parts and magic is created. That is so definitely what we feel on a daily basis.

First, the move to Seattle. It turned out to be the best thing ever for us. It put all of us an a level playing ground. Nobody had lived here before so everyone was starting anew. We found a great house with 5800 square feet, 2 decks, mountain views, an exercise room, separate little area downstairs for G4, an office for G3, and a great rec room. Alex and Amanda did have a tiff about who was going to get the bigger bedroom upstairs. Daddy John wanted to get involved, but I was pretty adamant. I told him to let them work it out on their own and they did! Alex got the bigger bedroom but he had to concede a few points and now, his room is the hangout room with the drums and keyboard in it. It was good to see them interacting like true siblings, not worried about who was more favored or bio vs. adopted.

And the reason why we moved to Seattle, G4... Well, he is 17 as of March and finished with his first two quarters in UW. He is doing so well, with a 4.0 GPA. He has been taking Calculus, upper level biology courses and organic chemistry. He even dabbled with an archaeology course that he really enjoyed. He has made friends and is busy most of the time without the rest of us. It is so great to see him flourish, but he is still a typical teenager and stayed home tonight (a Saturday night  to spend the night with the family making home-made pizzas and watching movies).

As far as making friends, we have found the most wonderful homeschooling group here of just teens. There are about 50 families with kids between 13 and 19 that get together every Monday for outings and field trips and then on other days for parties and such. It is a richly diverse group of people and the kids are wonderful. Both Amanda and Alex have made friends and look forward to getting together with everyone. He routinely texts and communicates by facebook with everyone. And girls - oh my - always girls following him around. We are on girlfriend number 3 now, but this one seems a keeper. She is really nice. The boys in the homeschooling group were teasing him about his posse of girls who follow him around, but it was all in good fun. And of course it hasn’t hurt that he has grown more (by about 3-4 inches, put on about 15 pounds of muscle in his chest, he works out constantly lifting weights and doing pushups, etc., and now has an earring!) The earring was one of his 15th birthday presents.

So I guess I will end here - as the move to Seattle was the biggest challenge we faced in our future when I stopped blogging. Looking over the past year still invokes a lot of feelings in me that are hard to describe, it has been so busy and crazy and so fulfilling and wonderful.