No Spanking Zone

WARNING: This post may cause controversy. It will probably lessen your opinion of me even more.

All foster parents have to sign an agreement that they will not use corporal punishment during the foster care period. "Corporal" is very broadly defined to include not only spanking, but slapping hands or mouths, washing a mouth out with soap, making a child eat hot sauce or vinegar, making a child run laps or do sit-ups/push-ups, making a child stand in the corner, making a child miss a meal, taking a child's belonging away without providing a way to earn it back, withholding an allowance (the state provides them one) without providing a way to earn it back, pinches, pokes, slaps, ear pullings, flicks, basically anything but the TIME-OUT.

Well, let me just tell you...this has been a real struggle for me because the time-outs do not always work as planned. Even though we are administering them the same (# of minutes equal to their age, put in their room, explained why they are put in time-out afterwards, apology demanded, hugs and kisses....very a la "Supernanny"), I have been hit, had a room trashed, had both scream themselves hoarse (good thing we live in the country), and literally had one foaming at the mouth this week. (Note to self: check on last rabies shot)

I know why DCFS puts in the "No Spanking Rule"...it's A) because a lot of kids in foster care have experienced physical abuse whether known at the time they come into care or discovered later on and B) some foster parents would take it too far. I add reason #3...there are times you feel such a rage that if God did not stay my hand, I fear for my own strength. I know in my heart of hearts, I would rather not have a situation come to a spanking but for some kids, it's the only thing (administered correctly) that snaps them out of their hissy fit.

I'm sure I'll get responses quoting the "spare the rod, spoil the child" and responses stating that "spanking is barbaric and only done by parents that have lost control". Regardless, the choice is not one I have right now...so we continue with time-outs. And more time-outs. And more time-outs. I trust in the value of consistency. I trust that the girls will learn to handle the word "no" eventually. I trust that they WANT the boundaries even if they don't know they want the boundaries.

I trust. And pray for wisdom beyond my experience and peace in the midst of one of the worst weeks to date.

Drs Jekyll and Misses Hyde

The burning question this week is why my girls behave so well for others and so rotten for me?

Seriously.

My mom and dad kept them overnight to give Darren and me some time to finish our thoughts and sentences without interruption (a rare occurrence these days). This was their first time overnight without us and without kids their age to play with so I wasn't sure how they would do. Plus they were going to mom and dad's church on Sunday and would have to wear tights, which I wasn't sure at what age tights go from being cool, ballerina things to leg circulation killers. Maybe when you are old enough for your thighs to rub together and start a fire.

Mom and Dad reported that the girls did great! In fact, my sister Renee kept them on a different evening and they did great. Also did great for Darren's mom and dad. I guess I should be thankful that they behave well for others so that I can actually get people to babysit but what happens between the time they are with others to the time they are home???

My mom says that they behave poorly for us because they feel comfortable enough to "let their hair down". It's a sign of bonding. I'll have to ponder that one.

Meanwhile, they were absolutely a bouncing off the wall, sass talking, whining nightmare when they came home yesterday. In fact, they weren't even home yet...it started on the car ride home. I feel like I use my microwave timer for timeouts more these days than I use the heating function on the unit. I had to CARRY S on the bus on Thursday because she was having an almighty hissy fit. The bus driver looked at me like "What is this crazy lady doing?" as I sighed and said, "We're having a morning." K ended up in bed at 7:30 last night because she wouldn't stop sassing off.

For both Darren and me, we try to step in when the other one is on the verge of snapping. We don't like the tension or the fact that we both feel rather crabby at the end of the evening. So hopefully we can have a breakthrough here soon before we have a breakdown here soon! Much more of this, and I fear a van is going to pull up with a man who tries to wrestle me into a white sweater with funny sleeves.

God Makes Ketchup

I have been struggling to explain who God is to S & K.

I know they have been to church. In fact, in the midst of S's ramblings in the back seat, I heard her say, "Lord (pronounced "Lawd"), give me POWER." and another time she was running around, pretending to hand out what I can only guess were Gospel tracts while saying over and over again "God (pronounced "Gawd") is MOVING today.". I can imagine their church experience involved women who wear hats, a swaying choir in robes, and a preacher who gets a sweaty forehead as he points his index finger to the sky and yells.

But when I ask them who God is, I get a blank stare. They've had a lot of religion without knowing what is behind all of that. How do I tell them about their Creator? Their Abba Father? Jehovah Jirah? Jehovah Raphe?

I started by explaining to K that God made her and many wonderful things around her. I asked her to think of things God made, thinking she would say "the sky" or "the grass". Instead, she listed ketchup, furniture, her shirt. She views God as a manufacturer of goods, I guess. I started to explain to her that God created the elements that go into those things without actually sitting at the sewing machine or carpenter's bench and then realized that I was speaking to a four-year-old.

S is quicker to pick up on the use of Jesus' name in prayer, the songs, the Bible stories. But I don't just want her to become an encylopedia of head knowledge about God. My desire is for both of them to know Him, to make the choice for themselves to follow Christ's example and commandments, and not just to do things because their mom and dad did.

For now, we are trying to lay the foundation by teaching them the stories of the Bible, teaching them to pray, to be respectful of God's holiness, teaching them psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (good thing I am the only one who knows how to load songs on the MP3 players for them because I'm sure they'd rather have Hannah Montana and High School Musical). And we pray for the day when they have a full understanding of salvation and make that choice for themselves.

Until then, they keep hoping God makes more ketchup.

Arsenic Afternoons

I don't know what teachers give kids right before going home but the moment they step off the bus until after supper time is when they are absolutely bouncing off the walls. Perhaps it's the long hours they sit listening quietly. Perhaps it's the fact that they have had to behave all day long. Whatever it is, when S gets off the bus, she is loaded for bear. She will go tearing into the house. I follow the trail of clothing that she is yanking off and simultaneously turning inside out (it's uncanny) to remind her that it is too cold out to wear a pink tutu and snow boots.

Then it's like she is coming off a week long fast. She is hhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuungry (imagine this in a high decibel whine). A small snack is not enough even though I know she won't eat any supper if she eats more. Then it's bouncing off the walls about what's in her bookbag, and what's for supper, and when is K getting home ("Same time as every other day", I say), can she go outside, can I play with her, when can she have a friend over, she doesn't want to ride her bike, is "Hannah Montana" on (I say, "Death to Hannah Montana"...well, at least in my head I do)...

This runs for two hours straight. K gets home 45 minutes later and she has usually gotten a little sleepy on the bus ride but hits the ground running nonetheless. And the chaos escalates.

My sister Renee calls this "Arsenic time" - because you either want to give some or take some yourself. Darren gets home about halfway through the "arsenic time" and while I would love to give him a moment to detox and relax after work, the reality is the girls usually attach themselves to each of his legs while I am in the background trying to clean up spilled drinks, dirty clothes, etc. He can see the steam starting to rise off my head and my eyeballs shooting flames out of their sockets and knows I am T minus 10 seconds from what Bill Cosby would call "A conniption". He sighs, puts down his laptop bag, and shuffles the girls outside to play.

I'm not sure if this is a phase all kids go through. With my luck, if it is, it will last until they are 18.

I'll be back, after these messages, and a dose of arsenic.

Dear Miss Manners

This week, we are concentrating on table manners.

My guess is that S & K have had to fend for themselves when it comes to food, as evidenced by the fact that the table, their plate, the rug, their shirt, and eyebrows/hairline are all covered in bits of food after dinner. They tended to eat with their fingers or somewhat with a fork while back shoveling the rest of the food with their hands.

I've promised them that if they work on using their fork, not their fingers, not talking with their mouth open, not sliding off their chair under the table, not trying to leave the table as soon as they are done instead of waiting for everyone else, not showing their mastery of noisy bodily functions at the dinner table, etc....that we will be to a REAL restaurant (so far, the only request has been McDonalds...repeatedly...if I never see a golden arch again, it will be too soon) with menus, and trays, and waitresses, and everything.

And as for Darren, well, he's feeling the full effects of a house full of women. Someone please send him a blow torch or chain saw before the last bit of testosterone flees from him.

Oral Fixations

Nibble, nibble, little mouse
Who is nibbling at my house?

EVERYBODY!

It started with the dogs, Atticus (big, slow, loves to lick everything, doesn't run unless it involves food) and Sasha (timid, quick, shy, sneaky). I have caught them chewing a cell phone charger, lag bolts, palettes, rugs, planters, my mom's cell phone, flip flops, sidewalk chalk, screens, the house, the porch railing, concrete, Kim Possible figurine, etc. I bought some new dianthus and turned around and they had eaten the planter and the plant. I finally went to the local meat locker and picked up huge beef femur bones which keeps them busy for hours...but then my yard looks like a cow graveyard.

On to two girls with oral fixation...shirt sleeves, hair bands, MP3 players, shirt ties, napkins, fingers, pens, pencils, markers, backpack straps...my brother-in-law Shannon thinks it's a "comfort thing". I think I may go crazy. If you want to find me before I do, follow the gnawing sound to the house whittled down to a toothpick behind the cow graveyard.

Transgendered Barbie

I have a love/hate affair with the whole Barbie empire. While the girls love playing with them, the Barbie clothes available now are kind of trashy. And I keep stepping on tiny pairs of shoes, purses, cell phones, handbags, etc. around the house. Oh yes, and a Barbie latte cup. What's next, Starbucks Barbie? She'll be dressed in Prada, talking loud on her cell phone, while jittering and jumping on a caffeine high.

I used to love playing with Barbies. Erin and I would spend HOURS making up elaborate story lines. We made a house out of old orange boxes that we would put wrapping paper on for wall paper and cut pictures out of "Farm and Ranch" magazine for the windows. Kleenex box beds and Sunday shoes for cars. The only thing we didn't have was Ken Barbie because (I suspect) our mom thought our story lines would become more "graphic" and there would be little, unexplained Barbies forthcoming from the pair. Hard to get more graphic when both Ken and Barbie have plastic, welded on underwear.

Erin and I were determined to have a male lead for the story, though, so we took one of the oldest Barbie (the one whose arms didn't bend and only had sparse, straight blond hair), cut off all the hair, and put it under the weights on the weight set until the boobs were smashed into a concave shape. So we ended up having a butch-looking, "transgendered" Barbie/Ken. I think that scared Mom more because at Erin's next birthday, we finally had surfer dude Ken. He didn't have as many clothing options, though, so most of our stories had to revolve around the pool or the beach.

So we'll see how long the Barbies stay around our house. S & K's story lines revolve around "buying hair at the salon" and dancing like mad to "High School Musical". So far no requests for a Ken doll have been made but if I see Barbie hair on the floor and a doll with a double mastectomy, we are heading to Walmart fast!

So how is it going...really?

So many of you have asked how it is going. I weigh whether to give you the warm, fuzzy answer that you are looking for like "Oh WONDERFUL! I knew these girls were mine from the moment I saw them and we spend hours doing each others' nails."

But that's not reality. Here is the unfiltered truth...

I cried to Darren three nights into this that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to handle this. I don't "feel" like the girls are my own yet although the bonding grows each week for all of us. I was so glad to hear my friend Jill say that, even though she had anticipated the arrival of her adoptive daughter from the birth mother, she, too, felt like she was "watching someone else's kid". I am not a person that attaches immediately to much of anything but when I do, it's for a long time. And I am committed to these girls for as long as the Lord allows.

Each week gets better. There are starting to be more good moments than bad. We are down to one good time-out per day for each one and they are starting to self-correct their behavior with one lethal "if looks could kill" glare from me. But I can tell that they have not had a lot of attention in their short lives. The first two weeks they would constantly need to be around me, calling "Mommy, mommy, mommy" which I know should thrill my soul and certainly did the first few times but 54 times into it for the day, it was less than thrilling. I felt like the life force was being sucked out of me.

Slowly they are learning to play on their own, to be content and secure, to be respectful and obedient. All in all, they are adjusting remarkably well considering...

And I am learning to manage my expectations. As part of the adoption licensing process, we had to write a paragraph about what we imagined our biological children would be like. I wrote that my daughter would be strong-willed, overly dramatic, love to read...

And what do you know? That is exactly what my adopted daughters are like! Oh, how God must laugh.

Go-Go Bananas

As most girls their age, S & K are obsessed with cheerleaders so when they found out I was a former cheerleader, they were impressed. I didn't have the heart to tell them I probably only made the squad because I was built like a Mack truck and they could use me as the base to hold up all the princessy girls who got to pirouette on top of the formation. Nonetheless, I dug into the back of my brain for an old cheer we used to do that went like this:

Go bananas
Go go bananas
Go bananas
Go go bananas
First you lean to the left
Then you lean to the right
Then you peel the banana
And you "mmm", take a bite

Not sure why we ever cheered on fruit or why I have forgotten the important things in life, like how to find the area of a cone or what a gerund participle is while maintaining other worthless bits of knowledge like this cheer and all the words to the "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?" song.

Equally weird is the fact that I am not very girly at all yet spent five years of junior and senior high posed up in front of people in an impossibly short skirt trying to get them to yell the same things I was. What is the purpose of cheerleaders, anyway? Most people were craning their neck around me trying to watch the game and would rather yell at the ref than chant "Go, fight, win...do it again." (Like the team really needed that direction or they would have stopped mid-football field, looked at each other, and said, "We've just gone, fought, and won...what do we do now?")

At any rate, the girls LOVED the cheer and my 4" vertical leap looked like two feet to them. Much prancing, jumping, shouting, and pumping our arms in the air later, they are still "go-going bananas" and me? Well, most days I can go bananas without anyone cheering me in that direction at all.

Beauty and the Beast

I got a birthday card from S today that will go down in the annals of history. It reads:

"I love Mom. Happy Birthday. She meks me Happy. You are the beast mom."

I'll assume she means "best mom" although I am sure some days I am a beastly mom;-)

Hairy Times

I never knew black women had such hair woes. I should have had a clue when an African-American (AA) woman in my foster care licensing class begged any of us who received AA girls as placements to "PLEASE get some help with their hair." I figured I could do my own research and figure this out, right?

WRONG!

I stood in the hair aisle at Walmart looking like a man in a scrapbooking store. There was wrapping lotion, hair mayonnaise, pink hair oil, olive oil spray, plastic shower caps, and things with words like "shea butter" and "jojoba oil" (never seen a shea being milked or a jojoba tree in my life). I diligently read the back of each container which promised silky smooth hair after application. I saw beautiful black women with shiny straight hair smiling at me from boxes of "no lye" hair relaxers assuring me, the rookie do-it-yourselfer, that I could figure out "black hair". Armed with a little something of everything, I bravely made my first attempts.

Somehow, overnight, S & K's hair turns into a tangled mess in the back so I spent the first few mornings trying to untangle it. I slathered on hair oil, hair lotion, etc. until I had oily goo running down my arms and felt like Elvis during a fried egg sandwich binge. I would wrestle the hair into some semblence of ponytails and stick in enough hairbows to cover my efforts. A strong round of olive oil finishing spray and off to school they go. Only to have them return with their hair completely dry again and starting to spring off their heads in a lion's mane halo.

Thursday was picture day for S so I was especially nervous. She wanted to wear her hair down and as best I tried, I could only get it to stay perfectly horizontal out from all sides of her head. We finally settled for low ponytails and I prayed that the photographer would be waiting for her to get off the bus.

It was not to be. She told me that she didn't get her picture taken until the afternoon. I have a feeling that her first grade picture will be one that she shows everyone years from now and says, "I don't know what my mother was thinking...sending me to school like that."

So now I am weighing my options on things like braids and beads and hair extensions and realize we may have to add a second mortgage to our home to afford to care properly for black hair. And I'd like to find the hair models for the relaxers and sue them for WAY false advertising. No lye.

City Mouse, Country Mouse

Throughout this past week and a half, we have had an inkling of the life that S & K lived before coming here. For one thing, some of the vocabulary gives me a strong impression of where they came from. We call it the "South Side" coming out (for those of you who know their origin). For instance, K asked me, "What's up, G?", refers to her backside as her "booty", and told me that "two dudes" were outside (our carpenters who put up railing so the death-defying one story drop off our deck no longer poses a problem). S has dance moves that require hip action I am sure I was not genetically predispositioned to do. And they tell each other their hair looks nappy and that certain things are "nnnnnnnnaaaasty".

It's been fun to teach them about country life. They are still learning the different animals as before donkeys, mules, and horses were indistinguishable to them. And pretty much the only animal sound they knew was "moo". In fact, when I asked K today what sound a sheep says, she raised one eyebrow and quizzically said, "Moo?". Hmmm...only if it has a cow in it's mouth.

Ahhh...Quietness = Stealthy Destruction

You know those moments during your day when you think, "At last...the kids are playing quietly." Then you heart siezes in your chest because you realize that it's TOO QUIET! You start frantically searching room to room because your children who normally are chattering a constant dialogue while they play are not talking at all. That can mean only one thing...STEALTHY DESTRUCTION. Here's some of the chaos I've had in this week:

K decided to get into tubes of chapstick (which she calls her "makeup) and smear them all over her dolls. Unfortunately, the dolls have little mouth opening to put a bottle in and so alas, the poor dolls have suffered death by chapstick suffocation.

S decided the dogs looked hungry and that the answer was plastic play food for the Playskol kitchen Renee lent us. We found half-gnawed pieces of plastic hamburger, croissant, chips, etc. in our yard.

K figured she'd help herself to the water dispenser in the fridge. In fact, what fun to push it and let the water run, and run, and run...spilling down the fridge, all over papers on the fridge, and pooling on the wood flooring. Guess it worked great for drowning bugs, too.

And neither one is 'fessing up to opening the shampoo bottle, turning it upside down, and putting it in the basket on the back of the toilet so that it would empty entirely all over the bathroom floor creating the Exxon Valdez of shampoo spills.

Hurricane Katrina has nothing on the mass destruction my girls can inflict in minutes!