I love attachment.
I hate attachment.
I love that my children are developing bonds to us, the people who will always be there for them. I love that they are learning to trust us, to feel safe with us and to love us.
I hate the nightmare that is getting to the place that they need to be in order to do all those things. I hate that in order to learn to love us they must grieve all that they have lost in their short lives. They have experienced more loss than many people experience in a lifetime.
Fudge continues to struggle and fight us at every turn, It has been a long month with him, in fact it has been a long 6 months ( as many of you well know). He has ended his last 2 days in tears and been sent to bed early because he is unable to stop arguing and being rude when he is in trouble. He began is day today in tears because he refused to wash his hands after going to the bathroom. It was a long morning. Then he left for school. I will see him at lunch hand I am dreading what I am going to hear from his morning teacher because more days than not she stops me in the hall to talk about his behaviour. He is not hitting so I guess that is a plus but he is threatening and teasing and being rude. Rude seems to be his behaviour of choice this week
I love attachment.
I hate attachment.
As hard as Fudge is at the moment Calvin is managing to keep my hopeful, he is in a word, wonderful. Do not get me wrong he is not perfect. In the past week he has spray painted the inside of the toilet black with black hairspray, ignored my instructions numerous times, had a tantrum over his lunch, talked back and worked hard to annoy his father but he is not raging. He responds when he gets in trouble, he is remorseful, he makes amends and accepts his consequences without argument and does them.
Calvin keeps me hopeful. Calvin who used to rage and try to break anything he could get his hands on. Calvin who did everything he could to make us stop loving him, to make us give up on him. If we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with Calvin than surely we can get there with Fudge, right. ( don't rain on my parade, I need all the hope I can get right now)
That is what is giving me hope this week, that and the fact that they go to school everyday and I get a break.
5 comments:
I won't rain on your parade- and I don't know how the homeschooling RAD moms do it...
All of us in these situations have to keep hope alive. Sometimes it's all we've got. It really does seem like we make baby steps, then regress and then move forward some more. But it SO difficult when things aren't going so well.
I would never rain on your parade either. I cling to hope as well, even when we have really bad days like yesterday. Hoping you get some little glimpses today of the child he was created to be.
Ahh yes, the tug of war that is attachment. It tugs us all in so many ways. This has maybe been the biggest surprise of all for me about it: how much it sets me up with all sorts of various inner tensions. But if I'm feeling all that, imagine what our terrified kids are feeling. You are so right to be hopeful, so hold on to it!!!
Can I just ditto that? We're closing in on our one year move-in date anniversary, and have been seeing a ramp up in behaviours and anxiety since September. It's exhausting, frustrating and somedays it's all I can do not to run screaming down the street. But at the same time, we're finally "Mom" and "Dad" and we're moving forward as a family. Is this a different kind of labour? The "birth" of a family?
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