Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Rules #216

A short phone call with someone who "gets you" is liable to cure just about anything.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

I'm not an expert

I am not a therapist.  Nor am I a parent.  I am especially not a parent of adopted children. However, in my current employment I came across an instance where a child is acting out repeatedly, and injuring numerous people in the process, and no one seems to understand why.  The common factor that I've heard from every source is that this child is the case of a recent adoption and every time he runs away, or hits someone, or acts out, he always says, "I want to call my mom." This isn't just a natural case of misbehavior.  This is a child who is crying for help because he's afraid she won't come back for him. This may seem an unreasonable fear, but consider that in the best case scenario, he's already lost everything once. I really want to send this parent a copy of "How to listen so children will talk" by Mr. Rogers and "Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control" by B. Bryan Post and Heather T. Forbes, but due to professional boundaries, I can't. I can't point out that this kid is acting VERY normally considering the circumstances, and that he legitimately has some very pressing concerns. I can't tell her all this, or his teacher, or his principal. I can't do anything. So I'm repeating what I know to the interwebs, praying that somehow the caretakers of this child will find this. And hoping that if the general public is educated on this some more, it will find it's way back to the children who need this.

Again, I'm not an expert. I'm not a parent. I'm not a teacher. And I'm not in this situation. But I've seen it happen. Again and again. My mother always says you can't save the world and she's right, but if I can pass this on to one person I'm doing my part.

That's it, we're moving to Australia

Yesterday was a horrible, ugly, no good, terrible day. I now want to move to Australia. However, this morning began with a quiet house, husband at grocery store, and a clean bedroom. And coffee. Before I left the house. Today is going to be much better than yesterday, I can tell already. Maybe we won't be moving Australia.

Let it go

When you are really, truly, angry with someone, is it really such a bad thing if you tell them.  The caveat is that whether they are truly apologetic or imply that this is really your fault for expecting too much, you must let it go. This is something that I feel is a lesson that God keeps teaching me. Over and over again. I won't go into the specifics as the what but I'm putting it behind me.

But, if it were to come up again, and the situation were to repeat, is it a problem, to redo what they did and then respond that they didn't seem to think it was a big deal when it happened to me?

Again, this is why God keeps teaching me the first lesson, to let it go. Fortunately, I have a new husband who encourages me to let things go.