Thinking About Kari's Pain Sponges

The first time my niece, Lauren, came to visit after Tabby moved in, she found herself with a wild-eyed toddler glued to her hip who was somewhat surprisingly distant on the second trip. In our world, that emotional distance was sparked by Tabby's inner perception that she'd been abandoned by Lauren.

In the mind of a severely traumatized child, goodbyes are painful and final, people come and go, there are no attachments, no trust, no stability, and no security. Now in her fifth year here within our family, Tabby is beginning to comprehend that she will see Lauren again at some point. This past visit, Tabby was appropriately affectionate and attached. Heck, if I hate to see Lauren leave, how much more difficult must it be for a child like Tabby?

Kari wrote about pain sponges...that's what we are, we who are parenting troubled children, and even me using the word troubled seems insensitive. The children were not born with this label, they were labeled after a series of adults let them down hard, via abuse and neglect, failure to parent, and then the further damage inflicted by foster care.

Although I am able to usually pull back and observe, to understand what's going on, I must preface it with usually, as there've been many times in which I didn't think I could endure another minute of it.

Yesterday we'd had yet another sit down meeting, the 16 kids still at home and myself, in which I again reminded them of my minimal expectations for decency. It took about an hour to get my point across and I knew there'd later be fallout, but it too was less than usual. As each day ticks by, as each layer of experience within our family is solidified, as each mile marker is passed, it becomes easier.

I was annoyingly insistent about one particular aspect of our difficulties, Javy and Chuy wanted to emotionally control their response to that which I would not back down from no matter what. I am the authority figure here, no matter if I am outgunned nor out-weighed. I am the parent, not the cool friend, and finally they comprehended my point, agreeing that it was a necessary principle in family dynamics.

Dr. Mandy helped me understand recently that no child can endure the repeated trauma and come out unscathed. Resiliency, such as Sabrina's seemingly always smiling persona embodies, eventually cracks, and slips away into destructive behavior or bad choices, while others might make zero progress, or stuff it down until another time. Some kids can and do use sports as an outlet for their fury and aggression, others might not trust anyone for years, might hold back their affection for decades. Maybe it took me parenting 39 children to fully begin to understand the various manners of acting out? Maybe I'm just a slow learner.

Sometimes I do think I've lost my mind as I keep on expecting school performance, chore-helping, church attendance, and the many other activities that a normal family might be expected to participate in reasonably. Maybe I should lower my standards, but no part of me feels like any child should eventually venture forth in the world unprepared. It intimidates me to think about how much learning I need to instill in children, particularly those who don't come here until they're 12 or 13 years old, parentified and nearly destroyed.

Some children have self-immolated, unable to continue within what they perceive is as the stifling confines of a family, unable to function later in society, one had called me in the middle of the night, addled by drugs, incoherent yet sub-consciously reaching out for the mama they'd spent years rejecting. Go figure.

I don't have the answers, just the descriptions. I'm holding a flashlight, it feels as if, and peering into a very dark unknown, treading my way lightly, my hands on the walls to maintain my equilibrium, often shocked by the monsters that attack from behind, sometimes fearful of putting one foot in front of another, but forced by life to continue doing so every day.

It ain't easy.

And worse yet, I need to face Wal-Mart today after church, as I'll still be clean and spiffy enough to go to town. We don't even have a downstairs phone anymore as it was busted on the floor, an eight dollar piece of poo, but why spend the big bucks on it, knowing it's likely predestined fate?

The kids ate 12 loaves of bread in a 30 hour time period, asleep for nine of those hours, is this ridiculous or what? My sweet and charming brother, Jimbo, brought sacks and sacks of oranges from Florida, chowed down and demolished by the kids within minutes.

And all y'all emailing and asking how you can help? Me, having no suggestions because none of us, including me, are magicians. Sarah re-installed my site meter that I'd lost in changing over my blog layout. I need the meter, I need to be reassured that folks are reading what I write, since I interpret that to show to me that folks understand. I only have a few followers, compared to the numbers the meter reflects, even though I'd forever lost the stats of the past week.