Perhaps the biggest reason I haven’t been blogging, however, comes down to one thing.  I feel extremely compelled to write a book.  It seems strange to even say it, because I have never aspired to be a writer.  I simply feel that God is asking me to write something for mothers of wounded kids, because there is nothing out there just for them.  When I was struggling the most, I searched high and low for something that would help me make sense of all of the emotions and issues I had to deal with on an ongoing basis.  I found nothing.  Sure, there were lots of books out there on techniques to use in parenting the wounded child, but there wasn’t anything that I could find to help me understand what I was going through.  I never want any mom out there to feel as alone as I did then.  So, in my “spare” time, I am working on a collection of thoughts and processes that I have gone through in trying to understand my own reactions to wounded kids and the daily abuse that they give out.  I want to share my own feelings and issues I have faced in parenting my kids, so that others will know that they are not alone.  I am working on collecting stories from our experience, as well as the experiences of others.  I am collecting wisdom from our own learning curve in the middle of being in the trenches, as well as the wisdom I have gained from others.  Through this book, I hope to help moms in the trenches understand their situation better and find hope to stay in the battle.

I also hope to help those outside of the trenches to understand the mother of a child with RAD much better.  Because I found myself in an unusual situation in life, I have found myself doing a lot of educating of friends and family to help them understand my situation, reactions, feelings, and struggles.  This takes a lot of time and energy, which, when parenting wounded kids, can be sparce at best.  I want to provide a resource to other families, so that they can help their family members and close friends understand what they are going through.

Here is where you come in.  I would love to include stories from other families, as well as the insight and wisdom you have gained on how to make it through these murky waters called parenting wounded kids.  I’d also love it if others wanted to submit blog posts, so that we can continue to make this website a place where we can help encourage one another and to know we are not alone.  Either way, I would love for you to write and submit your stories, feelings, insights, so that all of the amazing moms out there in the trenches can know that they are not alone.  I want this book to be a place where honesty and openness help to bridge the gap and show us we are more alike than we realize and that what we feel and experience in these situations is normal.  

Also, Lynn is working on getting an entire blog system set up for anyone interested.  You will be able to post your blogs in a way that makes them as public or as private as you’d like, meaning that you could post your blog entries for anyone to see, or for only family and friends of your choosing to see.  It will be like an online support group, where we can all post how our days are going and be able to encourage one another and pray for one another.  I’m extremely excited about this addition.  Look for information about it sometime this summer!

I have been doing a bit of research on the effects of writing on healing, and research shows that simply the act of writing out our deepest feelings, secrets, and circumstances can bring amazing results in terms of our own emotional and physical health.  I firmly believe that this project could be extremely therapeutic to all of us, as well as helpful to those who read it.

I want to inspire you to share your story.  The joys.  The sorrows.  The lessons learned in the midst of it all.  You have a story to be heard, and countless others can benefit from sharing it.  Even if it’s just a story about one incident, a small victory, or a big defeat.  What is your biggest struggle in parenting a wounded child?  What has been your biggest roadblock, or perspective change that had to happen in order to be able to love your child unconditionally?  What have you done to help yourself stay sane in the middle of complete insanity?  What are your secret fears in being a mom to a wounded child?  What are your dreams and hopes?  Your struggles?

Let’s continue to provide a place where our openness and honesty can help others know they are not alone, as well as to help others understand what we go through in our attempt to help wounded children heal.

More and more, I realize how important having contact with other moms of hurt children can be for those of us on this journey.  Who else can understand our pain, joys, fears, and overall feelings?  This mom and I were discussing how abnormal we sometimes feel around those who don’t have wounded kids.  While others discuss their last pedicure or how well their child is doing in school, we’re dealing with urine, poop, and sex.  It can sometimes feel like we live in an entirely different world than everyone else.  And that can be isolating!

Having contact with others going through what you are going through can be so important.  We need to know that we are not alone, that what we feel is normal, and to feel like others care and know us.  For this reason, we have our once a month Forever Homes support group meetings.  While our vision is to have one in every city, right now the extent of the meetings has been only in the Tri Cities of WA state.  It has been incredibly exciting, though, to watch this group of people develop into a true community of people who care about each other and provide support to one another.  Such a blessing!  These moms have become my friends and cheerleaders. They are precious to me, and I am incredibly thankful for them!

We have also begun to have a time for just the moms to get together, because we all started to feel like once a month was NOT enough!!  (By the way, if you are interested in this get-together and live in the Tri-Cities, it will be this coming Thursday – June 11 – at 6:00 PM, in the banquet room at Round Table Pizza on Leslie Road in Richland – We’d love for you to join us!)  We moms need each other for encouragement, laughter, and hope.

For those of you who do not have a support group in your area, please do not give up hope.  You are not alone.  I know that you are very busy with your own wounded child, but I’d like to challenge you to the possibility of starting a support group in your area.  You will be able to meet other families going through what you are going through, and you can be there for one another.  

There’s just something about being understood that fills up our soul.  I think that’s the way God made us….to need to have connections that goe beyond the surface.  To be known, understood, and loved.  And sometimes that feels harder when you’re parenting wounded kids.  Not that many people really know what you’re going through. That’s why we need to stay connected to those who do.

Usually, the source of our false allegations (at least the ones we know about) have been our third son.  When he first moved in with us, our son would purposefully refuse to eat dinner and then go to school the next day declaring, “My parents don’t feed me!!”  He would also neglect to wear the nice, new clothes we had just purchased him and opt for the most ratted looking outfit he could find, sneaking out with it on before we realized it.  Then, he’d work hard to look like a poor little foster boy and attempt to get others to feel sorry for this poor little boy whose foster parents didn’t care.  Refusing to wear a coat that morning, he’d look up into the teacher’s eyes and somehow make it sound like we wouldn’t allow him to have a coat that day.  Yes….good times, good times.

Luckily, as far as we know, most of the people he would tell these tales to were those who knew him well and knew about his wonderful, budding acting career.  One teacher, however, began to believe his lies and started to create quite a mess for us.  I began to get completely exhausted from the nasty phone calls from this woman and began to insist for changes in his schooling program.  It didn’t take long for us to work with those who knew us well to get him pulled out of that teacher’s program and he began to do much better in the program where the teachers knew and ignored the games he tried to pull on them.

I have heard of families whose stories did not end so happily, and my heart breaks for them.  I can’t even imagine the heartache they must have endured to be falsely accused and to have ignorant adults automatically believe a very wounded child.  Devastating!

Our son, this same boy, just a few weeks ago, began limping one day to ensure that the bus drivers thought that his dad had run over his leg that morning.  By the time I picked him up from school, it had blossomed into a full-leg drag that made Igore look like an Olympic athlete.  Of course, as soon as I told him to “knock it off and walk normally,” his leg miraculously healed and he was able to walk normally again.  Sigh.

But this time our false allegation came from an unusual source.  My daughter.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I know that the “evil witch” stories abound when she is talking with her friends.  And, to her credit, she knew better than to talk to an intelligent adult, who would have seen through her story right away.  But her story definitely showed where she was at.

We had our Forever Homes cookout last night.  Had a blast, by the way!  This group of parents have to be the most amazing group of people I know.  Loving, amazing people, who have a heart for kids.  My peeps!

Anyway, we get a call from one of the parents afterward.  Evidently, my dear, sweet daughter had told one of the other kids in the group that I slap her across the face every time I’m mad with her.  Mind you…I’ve never touched a hair on the girl’s head.  But, according to her, I slap her face when I’m mad.

How did we handle it?  Well, after getting over the initial shock of hearing this declaration, my husband decided that it was way too dangerous for her to be near her angry, out of control mother, who might just fly off the handle and slap the poor, innocent child at any moment.  So, he did what any good, loving father would do.  He protected her by sending her to her room, declaring with a chuckle that he loved her too much to risk her getting slapped that evening.  Of course, she wasn’t too happy about that, but really….we do care about her safety!

Later that evening, we told her that we knew she had lied to her friend (she denied saying anything, of course) because she was angry with me.  (I, of course, have not been giving her “any” attention and have been so rude as to go on a few outings with friends this week….the nerve!)  Admittedly, her entire goal was to pay me back for not giving her what she felt she needed (aka: non-stop attention).  I had also been a bit crabby that weekend, which hadn’t helped her anger at all.  I hope, however, in the future she learns a better way to deal with her anger.

Luckily in this scenario, too, we had a wise adult hearing the accusations and dealing with the situation appropriately.  She let us know what our child was saying and told her daughter what the truth about the situation was.  Dealing with false allegations doesn’t always go so smoothly, though, and can be incredibly difficult.  We know of a family who ended up having to hire a lawyer to deal with a counselor believing a child’s fantasy/lies.  Unfortunately, this issue comes with the territory of working with wounded kids.

Before even dealing with false allegations, I would highly recommend developing a good relationship with your child’s school and any other adults working with your child.  Without the school knowing us, our parenting style, etc., we would have been in big trouble once he started crying wolf.  Luckily, we had already spoken with the teacher, the school psychologist, and principal.  They knew our discipline methods, how we handled food issues, and also what our son’s primary triangulation techniques were.  We also had a good working relationship with his social worker.  She knew exactly what happened in our home, so that when he tried telling lies she knew what the truth was.  While I know that not everyone has a trusted social worker who can help them navigate these murky waters, this can be a huge help.

If you have a child prone to tall tales about your meanness and cruelty to him or her, I would highly recommend making friends with those adults in the child’s life.  I have heard of some moms who introduce themselves at the police stations and explained their child’s issues (especially if the child has Reactive Attachment Disorder, like our kids), just in case there was ever any question about something happening at their home.  Taking a few precautions can help your child in the long run, because it will prevent a well-meaning adult from making them more sick by believing their lies.  After all, our whole goal is to help our children heal.  Being able to turn others against mom or dad doesn’t help them heal.

It was discernibly different how much better behaved my kids were, as well.  Partially because they wanted to show off for grandma and grandpa and partially because of the healing they’ve already gone through.  But mostly because grandma and grandpa’s help freed me up to help the kids deal with their issues more.  Them being here allowed me to “spin the plates” a little easier, because there were less plates for me to spin overall.   (usually there are plates shattering all over the place….and many with food on them!)

For example, Saturday was amazing.  Grandpa was outside working on one of the cars.  Grandma was helping me get lunch ready when one of the kids started to cycle downward.  That means they were doing fine at the moment, but I could tell that if I didn’t deal with the situation we would all regret it.  I helped that child work through whatever issue they were dealing with at the time, ate a wonderful lunch fixed by my mom, and enjoyed time of normal conversation with the family.  Toward the end of lunch, I could tell that another child was not doing well.  I immediately started spinning the plate of a “therapy session” with that child, while my mom was spinning the plate of doing dishes.  Grandpa, who hates to sit still for even a moment, went outside to work on the car once again….one less big plate for us to spin later.  And a huge help financially to our family (I especially appreciate it after just spending an arm and a leg in Seattle when the other car broke down).

This past week reminded me once again of the Forever Home’s vision to inspire people in the community to surround the families who are called to adopt wounded children.  Our families truly cannot do it on our own.  First of all, we desperately need God’s help.  Only with God’s strength can we love our children unconditionally like they need to be loved.  And we really do need the body of Christ to surround us with prayer, encouragement and practical help.  It’s too exhausting to do all by ourselves.

How can you help the parent of a wounded child?  There are so many things that may seem small to you but can make a huge difference.  Remember back to when you had a newborn baby?  Remember how it felt to have others bring a meal during those first few weeks?  Well, the amount of work that it takes to care for a newborn can many times pale in comparison to parenting a wounded child.  When a family has child so badly wounded that she is emotionally still an infant in a 10 year old body, the supervision involved can be completely overwhelming.  Bringing a meal over once a week or even once a month can make all the difference in the world.  Coming over to help with dishes can give the parent of a child with attachment issues the time to do bonding activities with them.  Helping with yard work can ease the burden of an exhausted mom.  Helping with car maintenance or repairs can help a family strapped financially because of their child’s stealing habits or damage of property.  You have no idea how big of a difference those things make.

Even emotionally, encouragement to a mom with wounded kids can make or break a situation.  People have no idea how much abuse a mother with RAD kids takes on each day.  I would have never believed it had I not experienced it personally.  There’s a reason not everyone adopts older, wounded kids.  It isn’t easy.  Yet, doing so accomplishes the very thing closest to the heart of God.  How many times did He say to care for the orphans and widows?  A lot!  When you support these families, you support what is important to God.

This week, I had a taste of what that kind of help and emotional support felt like.  It was phenomenal.  Can’t even begin to explain how it lifted the burden for just a little bit and helped me to be able to give the time to my kiddos that they need.  Amazing!