Someone told me that basically, what I am trying to do is too hard, and parents only have hands enough to hold two children to keep them safe walking across the street. I don't know if she meant this as a general invective against more-than-two-child-families, in which case she has a great deal of world-wide convincing to do. But as for me, and taking my brood across the street or around the city, my answer is simple: God gave mamas two hands and one back. I can hold onto them all.
As for the emotional crisis, I don't have all the answers, although I believe that lots of love and consistent rules are bringing us more or less in the direction we need to go. As for the legal complications, I don't have all the answers there, either, although I'm getting a lot of advice and I think that and patience will get us where we need to be. But as for the practical, day-to-day management of three high-needs children, while running errands and managing a household, I have at least one big answer that's working for me:
Wrapping. Or baby-wearing, without any babies involved.
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| This is a picture of Emerson in a bedtime wrap, back "in America." |
Wrapping is basically taking a long, beautiful, extremely sturdy piece of cloth, and winding it around oneself and the child so they are securely held in place. Many parents today wear their babies in backpack-style carriers, and this is the same general idea, with some extra benefits. (Some of what I say about wrapping is true for any kind of baby-wearing, but since right now my only baby-wearing is wrapping, that's the word I'm using.) Because the fabric conforms to the body so closely, one can wrap the child's weight much higher (or lower) and more closely to the wearer's body, and because one can wrap the fabric in different ways, the wearer can change the child's position -- high back or low back, weight on chest, torso, or shoulders, or on front or either hip. I have had significant back problems ever since my pregnancy, and this makes the night-and-day difference to me. I could wear Emerson for about an hour a day in our backpack-style carrier (a soft-sided carrier, or frame carrier) before my back started to flare up; now I am wearing children about 3-6 hours EVERY day. Also, the strong fabric conforms exactly around the child's body. This provides the benefits of swaddling, with the benefit of mom's calming presence. For children with sensory or emotional problems (all three of mine!), this is an important calming therapy, and will help them learn to self-soothe and manage their feelings on their own. Eventually -- that goal is not within our current sights!
Meanwhile, wrapping is also fun for me because I can learn different carries and enjoy the beauty of the different wraps, and even chat on-line with other moms about the details of wrapping. It's extraordinarily refreshing to have something to think about other than the problems and complications of our lives, but the only hobby I could actually do at this point is one that helps me with the daily business of child-management! I can lay in bed thinking about picking out a new wrap, or thinking about other people's stories and wondering if such-and-such a carry would work well for us in the heat. I can actually fall asleep with those thoughts running around, as opposed to the probation-officer and incorrigible-behavior type thoughts, which are pretty well guaranteed to keep me tossing and turning forever!
(Reading about African history and politics is the other tactic I use to keep my mind busy, but by about 4:30 in the afternoon I'm beyond being able to think about that!)
Wrapping is the best of both worlds -- for me and the kids -- because it simultaneously gives me extra hands, and the child extra attention. So a lot of my wrapping is when I need extra hands. Every time we leave the house, Buttercup is wrapped up, so I have one hand for Emerson and one for Hibiscus. Buttercup doesn't go down until we are in a safe, contained space. So I still am cautious about taking all the kids into a particularly chaotic environment -- like walking around downtown -- but I've got pretty good control in our ordinary walks. I CAN hold all three of them crossing the street (or walking down the middle of the street to avoid the water-filled potholes), and they can't actually run in three directions at once. Practically, the older two rarely, if ever, throw fits at the same time -- I think when they see the other one acting so badly it reminds them how ridiculous it is, and they want to show what a "good" child they are themselves -- so it's really only chasing down one temporarily insane child, which is no worse than how I started!
If we're going shopping, or taking a trip that involves carrying gear, Hibiscus and Emerson wear their little backpacks, and I wrap Buttercup on my front and put my backpack on my back. It gets heavy, but it works!
I can also pop Buttercup onto my back when the older children are playing something that either isn't safe, or they don't want her bothering them. I think this has helped smooth the sibling dynamics a lot, that I can so smoothly keep Buttercup from "ruining" their big-kid play. Buttercup usually complains at being removed from the fun, but then she realizes that getting Mama all to herself isn't a bad option either!
If something really needs to get done, Buttercup is usually so "helpful" that it is of great assistance to put her "my back" so I can actually get the work completed. Because, you know, if Daddy is putting things in a suitcase, obviously Buttercup needs to put things in the same suitcase. And putting things IN reminds her that it is also so much fun to take things OUT, and then while Daddy is off folding his shirts his suitcase starts to look like what Emerson compiled when we first started planning this trip to Uganda!
While I make dinner, Buttercup always ends up on my back. By then, everyone is a cross between grumpy and manic. (Except mama. I don't deny the grumpy, but I am too old for manic!) The big kids have often been playing in the yard with the neighbor boys, but they're too rough in their play for it to be safe for Buttercup; or they are inside and supposed to be cleaning their toys and setting the table. Buttercup is always in the kind of mood that needs to wander around the room overturning random things and throwing them, which does not help with Mama's grumpy. So she goes up -- and always protests with violent wiggles, but I just tie her on up there and she can't get down! Then she likes watching what I cook, and singing to herself. Buttercup is on the road to being a Broadway star, with the amount of singing she does while I cook dinner!
Which leads us into the emotional part of wrapping. Basically, by evening, Buttercup is too tired to know how to calm herself, but she needs some calm time. The soothing pressure of the wrap, combined with the calming presence of her mother, helps her get into her own self-soothing routine, which she actually does pretty well with that encouragement. None of my children have many skills in the way of self-soothing! Meanwhile, wrapping is a wonderful way to recover from a tantrum, or a really nasty day. Emerson tends to use the first method, and Hibiscus the second.
When I notice that it's been one of those days that I keep having to say "no!" and "stop!" and she finds it one of those days when she needs to scream bloody murder for extensive periods of time, I try and find a calm moment and invite her to go in a wrap. It's a wonderful time of togetherness and bonding. When a child is wrapped, their head is right by their parent's, so every quiet comment is heard. Much of children's frustration is really about not being heard, so that is very reassuring. It's also possible to have a private conversation with two other crazy children running around! Hibiscus also likes to touch and play with my hair while she's wrapped. I think hair-touching is a common bonding practice among African women, and it seems like running my silky hair through her hands is also a tactile soothing and calming practice for her too.
I started wrapping Emerson a few months ago to help address his escalating SPD issues, especially for calming down at night. We haven't done bedtime wrapping since we've gotten to Africa, but it still helps him calm down. He has gotten significantly fewer snuggles since the girls have moved in, so wrapping is a good way to give him that physical love he needs, while still being able to attend to the girls. When he gets very overwhelmed, he doesn't really know how to find his way back to "normal," and keeps escalating. If I can catch him in the moment where he's trying to recover from a tantrum jag, but hasn't yet found something else to get angry about, wrapping him up for a while is a good way to interrupt the cycle.
Both girls need to go back to babyhood, to either have the experiences that they missed, or to get to go through the bonding process with their new mother. Adoption literature suggests things like rocking children and giving them bottles (or sippy-cups), and otherwise back-tracking to give children those babyhood experiences. Well, I don't have a rocking chair, and whenever I read and give cuddles there are three children jockeying for the best place on my lap. They each need one-on-one loving, but that's going to have to wait until my parents come for a visit or we get home with some friends and family around. Meanwhile, wrapping each child gives them that physical time that they need, and that the girls need to revisit. I also do things like doing the exact same night-time routine for Hibiscus that I do for her little sister, like brushing her teeth and washing her face and helping her get her clothes off, even though I know she can physically do it.
That leaves a lot of stuff for my hands to do at bedtime. And did I mention how sleepiness brings on extra wildness around here? I've finally started wrapping at bedtime, and I don't know why it took me so long to figure out! (Okay, less than a week since Daddy left, but it's seemed like a long time...) I can wrap up Hibiscus, who starts feeling snuggly and loved (and meanwhile can't keep revving her body to crazier levels), and potty and brush Buttercup's teeth while giving Emerson helper-boy jobs to do like refilling our tooth brushing glass, and then Buttercup wants to brush her own teeth for a long enough time for me to finish Emerson, and I can do her pajamas while he does his own, and then two kids are ready. Then when I put Hibiscus down, I'm all ready to concentrate all my attention on her -- although Emerson will get jealous if he doesn't get a turn, so "up" he goes! I can hold a big kid on my back and still grab a little one and move her around if she decides to get into too much trouble, but if I'm fast enough with Hibiscus she might still be busy piling up several hundred books to read that night. (That's an exaggeration; we don't have several hundred books in this apartment, but if we did I'm sure all my kids would want to read all of them!)
Speaking of sleeping, apparently at the orphanage Buttercup went right to sleep on her own, but by now she has decided there are better options. Basically, she wants to sleep all snuggled up to me, period. When Emerson was a baby I could lay in bed next to him -- wait a minute, what am I implying? When Emerson was 4 1/2 and an only child, I could lay next to him every night until he fell asleep, but that's no longer possible. So I pop Buttercup on my back, in a low carry with her arms in, so she kind of sags like in a hammock with a particularly warm and loving wall on one side. I try to keep things quiet, but if I keep swaying around a little, she falls right asleep in spite of herself. At bedtime, if our pattern is working that way, I can rock her on my back while encouraging Emerson while he reads his book out loud, and I can lay her her down asleep on the other bed -- and both big kids get a full arm around them for reading books.
I was laying her right into bed after she fell asleep at naptime, afraid the big kids would wake her up if she stayed with me, but now I've found out she sleeps much longer if I just keep her wrapped up. She's started to fuss and wake an hour into night sleep as well. The first couple nights, when I picked her up and comforted her, she looked right up at me and calmed down. It was an amazing feeling as a new-bonding mother. But then, that wasn't enough; she didn't really cry, but just kept fussing sadly. I've been putting her back into a cuddly front carry, and she soothes right away, snuggled up against me. I think she just needs to go all the way back to infanthood, when her cries weren't heard or attended to, and she learned that it wasn't any use to cry. She needs to go through and do it all over again.
And so that's how I make it through the day!
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