My Son is Trying to Prove We’ll Abandon Him Too
We adopted my 11 year old son in November. Since then he has been trying to be so bad that we’ll change our minds and send him back to a foster family. Its been a rough four months.
Tonight I’ll be taking my 3 kids to Seattle for a fun weekend while Jennie hosts a retreat for adoptive mom’s of special needs kids. We haven’t normally let the kids know when we are planning something fun since they’ll try to sabotage it, but this time I wanted them to help plan the trip (and we needed them to keep get their rooms clean) so we told them a couple days ago.
My son became noticalbly anxious at the announcement. He immediately began some of his nervous ticks – rubbing his hair and picking his lips. This morning he was on a tyrade, refusing to comply with simple requests, asking silly questions, pretending not to hear…all the classic control behaviors of RAD kids. I found myself frustrated because I really couldn’t do anything about it. I had to take him to Seattle – there was no one available to watch him – and he was going to have to participate in every activity since I’d be parentng solo with no one to stay at the hotel with him.
Then I realized that is what he was working for. I called him over and told him, “I know you are trying to sabotage this trip, because if you have fun this weekend then it means you won’t have as many reasons to hate being in this family.”
In his confused little mind he thought that if he just was bad enough we’d send him away. He thought that if he allowed himself to have fun that he would start wanting to be part of our family and that would be one of the things he controlled that he did not want to give up.
I told him that even if he stabbed me with a knife that he was going this weekend, and that no matter what he did he was going to participate in EVERY activity. The only thing he had control over was weather or not he was going to have fun along the way.
We’ll see how it goes. I told the other two that every time he tries to wreck our fun we each get a “star.” Every five stars we get a drink at starbucks. Since Seattle is the birthplace of starbucks, I am sure that we’ll never be too far from one.
Feel free to chip in to our starbucks fund – its for the children!
Update: He really seemed to respond well to the challenge. He held it together until 8pm on day 1. Day two was more difficult with a shoplifting incident, although there was genuine anger at himself for messing up.
Lynn,
I’m really enjoying reading your posts and love seeing the work that you’re doing. We have two bio kids and two adopted kids (both adopted at age 4 with medical needs). We are experiencing some attachment disorder issues with our son and are about to begin therapy. So wish I could be at Jenny’s retreat!!!!
- Jennifer Shapiro Isaac (from MBI)
http://toafricaandhome.blogspot.com (our adoption blog)
http://www.fromhivtohome.org (our non-profit for HIV+ adoption)
We’ve been there, with the whole “I’m gonna prove you’re just as bad as everyone else” routine. In addition, we’ve postponed vacations because just the sight of suitcases reminds the kids of the times they’ve had to move, and those are NOT happy memories.
Keep up the good – and hard – work!