I am Published, and Hibiscus's Words

November is National Adoption Month, and our local adoption support group is hosting a conference this weekend.  They usually publish an op-ed in the newspaper to raise awareness about adoption in general and also the conference.  This year I was asked to write it, and I am honored to have my writing published with actual printing presses and things!  Today my writing was published in The Register Guard.

But before I share the link, I would like to broaden the discussion.  So much about adoption is written and talked about by one side of the adoption triad: the adoptive parents.  The voices of adoptees and birth parents are more difficult to hear.  When I think about adoption, and when I write, I try to imagine and share the perspectives of the less privileged parties in adoption.  My children are not yet able to think, write, or share with any broad perspective about what adoption means to them, but I can include a few words.

This morning, Daddy showed the paper with my article to the children and I.  They were excited to see Mama's name in print, and Hibiscus asked what the article was about.  She has sometimes been very upset to even hear the word "adoption," so I was a little cautious how to explain honestly without bringing up upsetting feelings.  "I wrote about going to Africa and bringing you into the family," I told her, "and how happy we were.  And about adoption, and that it is very happy, but it also has challenges."

She remained calm, and thought about that for a minute, and then gave me her perspective.  These are her thoughts about the challenges of adoption:
"It is challenging.  Because there are no mommies, and there are no daddies."

It took me a moment to follow her train of thought back to the orphanage.  "Oh, so that part is hard?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, "and also there's no food.  That's really hard too."  And then she calmly finished up her breakfast and moved on with her day.




Now that I stop and contemplate her words, I am struck by how powerfully she summed up the experience in a few words.  Not adoption itself, which I had written about, but what leads to adoption.  The pain from which our families and our joy can be born.  As a mother, it is my job to think about how to heal her pain, and I do spend so much time and energy trying to do just that.  This conference will support my job to help support her grow through, beyond, and despite her pain.

But for this morning, here is the message from another side of the adoption triad.  It's not about the growing and the joy; it's the most salient words from a 7-year-old who sees and remembers both sides of life.  Many children are still living in the world she remembers:


It's really hard.

There are no mommies.

There are no daddies.

There is no food.


My perspective

Halloween

This year for Halloween, we packed up the van, headed over the mountains, and spent the weekend hiking.  The kids were so busy exploring the canyon below our rented cabin, any thoughts of costumes or vague stories about trick-or-treating disappeared entirely from their minds.  My husband, mother, and I relaxed around the fake fireplace that evening, enjoying our peaceful and quiet Halloween night.

Our first Halloween with children was six years ago, and so far, we haven't done trick-or-treating or the mainstream cultural activities.  On different years we have chosen some different activities, and most of them have included a costume for Sunflower and something social.  This is first year with all three children, and the first year that any of the children could really absorb stories from their peers and figure out that they might be missing out on something.  So why did we choose this year to skip the holiday entirely?

I'm sure the kids would have had some joyful moments and happy memories, but I felt like they would be overshadowed by "yucky" feelings.  (As my kids so eloquently lump together all the feelings they don't want to discuss!)  I forsaw both positives and negatives for the younger kids, but I think it would have been the most difficult for Hibiscus.

First of all, anything out of the ordinary is difficult for Hibiscus.  She is a sensory and emotional seeker, always wanting bigger and stronger experiences and feelings, but although she craves them, they don't make her happy.  She is most calm, and therefore the most able to focus, accomplish something she can be proud of, and socially successful, in her very structured school environment.  She looks forward to family parties and celebrations, but once we actually get there, she gets revved up until she spends most of the time skittering from one person and activity to another; Daddy or I have to follow her with constant reminders to keep her within even loose parameters of socially acceptable behavior; and pretty much every special event ends with a toddler-style meltdown.  And these are family gatherings, where there are only ten people or so, most of whom are calm adults and familiar to Hibiscus!

With Halloween, we are now entering our first big season of American holidays.  October through January, major events follow each other in quick succession, each of which is full of things that children are supposed to do, and even supposed to feel.  Imagine how confusing this season would be to any immigrant!  Hibiscus is at a particularly difficult age, where she is old enough to be expected to participate fully and independently in all the activities, and yet young enough that she is unable to learn by abstracts: she needs the chance to experience the holiday, which she has never had.  She doesn't have the type of personality where she can stand off to the side, watch, and learn for a few minutes; she would need to be just as much in the middle as any second grader, but she doesn't know what's going on.  It's a difficult connundrum.

Add into that her sensory and planning issues -- she is constantly getting uneven and unusual stimulus from even normal events, missing some feelings and cues and being overwhelmed by other normal ones (sensory processing issues), and is unable to plan ahead, calm her own body, or put events in a larger context.  Every day life is constantly confusing for Hibiscus; special events must be a nightmare.  Except a nightmare that she wants to enjoy!

So, at the beginning of October, I was feeling like if we were going to skip some of the holiday season, Halloween would be a good one, simply because I'm not that attached to it.  But as the month went on, it became apparent that Halloween would present even more challenges than usual.

Many children and adults enjoy the feeling of being slightly scared, and then overcoming their negative feelings and feeling even more powerful afterwords.  Halloween is a time to celebrate those feelings, and push ourselves to see how scared we can be and still feel good afterwords.  I admit that I myself am not one of those people, and I have never enjoyed scary movies or creepy pictures.  My children all seem to be following closely in my footsteps, and as we drove around town, even a smiling skelton decoration, passed at 30 mph, invoked strong "that's yucky! I don't like that! make it go away!"  We live in a college town, where a lot of people enjoy their gory decorations, and as the holiday gets closer, they become happy to supplement it with inappropriately sexy.  Well, the sexy is their own issue in their frat parties or wherever they end up, but when it's walking down the street at one in the afternoon, it is inappropriate regarding the conversations I need to have with my school-age children!  Gone is the age when I can distract them with singing a song about pumpkins while we pass a pack of vampires with their thong underwear showing.  My kids are really good at questions!

Short of thong underwear, the costumes and dressing up is something I'm willing to celebrate about Halloween.  I think that it is positive for children to have a chance to turn into something else, and dressing up as animals or story-book characters is an empowering experience for them.  However, as the holiday approached, it became clear this wasn't to go over smoothly, either.  My kids regularly don capes, blankets, and scarves to "turn into" different characters, and if everyone's costumes were at this playful level, they would have all had fun.  But many people enjoy the opportunity that Halloween provides to transform themselves more completely, which is wonderful.  Except my kids are still figuring out who people are in the first place!  It became clear as we saw various semi-costumes that Hibiscus was really upset by things and people turning into something else, and I would guess that Buttercup would have felt the same way.  And why wouldn't they?  Our entire culture is still less than a year old to them.  When you're just figuring out what someone's role is and how to treat them, wouldn't you get mad if they suddenly became something else -- especially something you have never seen before?

Furthermore, play-acting about scary things is much more fun when you don't believe they are really, truly, real.  For most of us, we might hear a weird sound in the woods or see shadows in a dark room, and our minds might jump to thoughts of monsters or spirits, but then our rational minds quickly say "ghosts aren't real."  This helps us to calm down, and American children as young as 5 or so use this self-calming process.  But in Uganda, like in much of Africa, this self-soothing technique doesn't exist: evil DOES walk the earth in bodily form.  Rather than parents comforting their children by turning on lights and reading cheering stories, Ugandan parents warn their children not to go out after dark so the witches don't grab them.  And children really ARE taken by witches!  Even I was warned about the common kidnapping grounds near our house.  Every single person I talked with, even the most educated and the most devout Christian, believed in witchcraft and took it seriously.  In fact, living in Uganda changed my own views about witchcraft and black magic as well.  All that probably works out to be another chapter in this blog, but it is probably a huge reason that although they have imported many of our traditions, there is no Ugandan equivalent to a day when you run around pretending to play with evil spirits.  They were accepted to be there in daily life, and that the main goal was to AVOID them.  All three of my children were immersed in this culture and these beliefs, Hibiscus to the greatest extent.  It only just occurs to me as I'm writing this, that this is probably why Sunflower was more upset by Halloween "decorations" this year than he was when he was only three.

The children's Waldorf school puts on a little Hallween/harvest festival celebration every year.  I hear that it is very sweet, and is along the lines of costumed children walking through a hay bale path, following the life cycle of wheat, and ending with a hot bun to eat.  I saw other second-grade parents preparing for their skit, which was amusing and involved flute music.  I was advised by many families that this was a fun and pleasant event, and my children would be fine there.  I agreed that something like that sounded relatively enjoyable, although there is still the problem of Hibiscus getting so over-excited.  For children who prefer to avoid the scary element of Halloween, festivals like that, and some of the Harvest festivals put on by the big churches, are probably a good alternative.  But for my children, who are truly terrified of the evil represented by the skeletons and witches, and have come too close to their own deaths and those of their loved ones which the coffins and skeletons recollect, I did not think even a distant brush with the mainstream celebration was going to be healthy or happy.



So we decided to just escape Halloween this year.  Out in the high desert, there were no scary skeletons and no adults expecting specific but unusual behavior.  We spent most of the weekend outside, which is the easiest place for intense little children to be successful.  There were still issues of which child got to be the hiking leader, and who was pushing whom, and whether or not it was a good idea to play in the rushing, frigid, river.  Our cabin had an usually steep ladder which just BEGGED to be climbed in unsafe ways, and one post-hike restaurant dinner was fraught with complications, like a spilled water glass and an unreasonable tantrum.  But these are ordinary trials, easily overcome, and overall everyone was active, lively, happy, and healthy.  We climbed the beautiful but most challenging trails at Smith Rock, and all three children were proud of themselves and the power in their little bodies.  I heard questions about Halloween and costumes before our trip, but they faded completely once we were doing something else, which shows that the concerns weren't rooted very deeply for my children.

Some day, we will do something to acknowledge the end of October.  Perhaps it will be with Waldorf School and Harvest Festivals.  Perhaps we will be invited to take part in an actual celebration of Dia de los Muertos or Samhain, which I think have the advantages of dealing honestly with the serious issues which are raised by the season.  Some day, I'm sure we'll go out trick-or-treating -- if for no other reason than to say we have done it!

But maybe in the meanwhile, we'll make it a family tradition to go climb a mountain on the last day of October.  The year is ending, the weather is cold, but we and our bodies are true to ourselves, and strong.  Being strong is good for little children!

Happy Birthday, to Hibiscus

Happy seventh birthday to my wonderful, beautiful daughter.

The sun is fading.  My birthday girl and her busy brother and outside, and the littlest one is in the most snug and cozy nap on my back (in Pavo Hearts, for those who are curious!).  It has been a full and wonderful day.  Hibiscus has the last of the kids' birthdays-in-a-row, and we only made it to America in time for this one.  It's the first birthday in her little life that she's actually gotten to celebrate, or that anyone has cared about at all.  Maybe she's an unusual child who will get to remember her first birthday party!

I hope it was a special day for her.  She and I went out to breakfast this morning, which was actually her very first chance at alone time with mama.  In Uganda, Buttercup had time with me while the big kids were in school, and Emerson got some occasional alone time when the girls had to be somewhere, but there was no logistical way to have Hibiscus with me when the other children were somewhere else.  Today, we selected a cake together, had waffles, and went to the grocery store to get ice cream and juice for the party.  We played Jenga while we waited for our food, and she quickly figured out how to test the blocks to see if they were loose, and control her extra movements to not knock the tower over, as well as waiting for her turn patiently, and discerning the pattern to which blocks could be safely moved.  After two rounds, she said "let's try something else" as she started to make shapes with the blocks.  She said she was making a fence for a horse, and I built a horse out of Jenga blocks inside her fence, which impressed her.  Then we built other kinds of towers.

We ate our waffles and ended up talking about school.  She described how one of the staff at her Ugandan school had pinched her and called her a "villager" because she was eating her eggs in the car, and we talked about how that made her feel.  Well, I talked about that, because she still doesn't really have feelings words yet.  Then I asked what happens at Waldorf school in America, and she described -- her tone is still reverent and shocked -- how when she can't do something at Waldorf school, the teachers HELP her figure it out.  I asked her which way works better, being made fun of or being helped, and she said it works much better when the teachers help her out.  I told her that it made me feel really good that I could send her to school at a place where I knew she was safe from being made fun of, and the teachers help her out, and I'm sorry that that happened to her before, but that was the best that anyone was able to do.


And that pretty much sums up my feelings about Hibiscus's birthday.  I am so intensely joyful for her presence in our family and in my life, and so intensely sorrowful about what I haven't been able to shield her from.  About the things that meant she was on the road to become part of our family.

Last night I went into a Hallmark store to pick out a card for her.  I wanted something sappy and sweet and beautiful, and I thought about the things I wanted to write inside.  I thought about some words that I would say to her, to give her some little message to hold onto about how precious she is to me.  So much of our relationship, so much of our lives, is full of frustration and trying to guide her into place, into control.  Self-control, hopefully; eventually.  I know this time is hard on her, but I have deep faith that eventually she will settle into something much stronger and more positive than if I just let her be crazy and do whatever she wanted to.  But these months have been so hard on me, too, and I have sometimes lost my own self-control.  If I can't model patience and fortitude, at least I try to model handling my anger in a non-destructive manner, and owning my mistakes and apologizing.  But I'm not a very demonstrative person, so I fear that the occasional outburst of anger overpowers my gentle demonstrations of love.  In her birthday card, I didn't want to bring up the difficult parts, but I wanted to tell her about how much I love her despite them.

I stood in front of the rack of "daughter" cards and actually started to cry, although it probably wasn't visible to an outside observer.  (I mentioned that I'm not demonstrative!)  I was so proud and happy to have a daughter, and have a daughter whom I could give a card to and was old enough to understand and care.  It was one of those moments when you can stop and think about your life, and I remembered that it wasn't very long ago that I didn't have any daughter at all, and now I have this amazing and lively girl who is turning seven, and that I'm the one who can teach her about love, and safety, and faith, and beauty, and being a woman.  That whole display of sweet pictures couldn't sum up how proud and happy I am to be a mother of a daughter, of my own daughter, my very special girl.

Then I opened up cards and started to read them, to pick one out.  First of all, it seemed like most of them were written to be given to an adult daughter, so some of them I had to put down because they described "now you've grown into," as though growing into being yourself is a process that is ever finished.  I kept skimming and reading.

They were all filled with phrases like "through the years," and "on the day of your birth," and "your birth made me a mother," and "I remember all your birthdays," and "every year since your birth," and so on and so forth.

And I still felt teary, but now they were suddenly angry tears, and I left the store without buying anything, and I didn't manage to give Hibiscus any kind of card at all.  Writing about love is probably more my way of showing affection than her way of receiving it anyways.


I wasn't there when she was born.  I didn't know I was a mother then, and in fact, I wasn't, because it wasn't my job to protect her and teach her about love, and safety, and everything else.  But then no one else did it either, and I wasn't there to step in and protect her, and make her world better.  I was far away and I didn't know anything about her, while she was learning about loneliness, and hunger, and that when the getting gets tough, no one is going to help you out.  And I haven't been with her through the years, and I haven't seen her change and grow through her birthdays.  A few days ago she was telling us about some scary things that happened in her old life, and then contemplating how she never had "a happy birthday" before, and she wonders why I didn't stop the bad stuff and help the happy stuff along.  And I say "I wish I could have been there, and I would have made the bad boys stop teasing you," and "I wish I could have been there, and I would have baked you a cake."  Solving the problems in fantasy helps her a little bit, and her sad face turns into a little smile, as she imagines me chasing those bad boys away.

My own heart pains with the desperation of that wish.  I know that it makes no logical sense, but how deeply and passionately I wish that I had been able to be there from the beginning.  That I could have put myself between her little baby self and the cruel world that assaulted her without cease.  That I could have picked her up every time she cried so she learned that trust is real.  That I could have fed her, and made silly faces with her, and taught her feelings words when she was a toddler.  I have some misty vision of myself, perhaps time-travelling, in her parents' shack when she was a newborn.  I would say something like, "she's going to be my daughter anyways, so why don't we just start right now," as I picked her up, and they already knew things were bad and had been in the middle of an argument about how they were going to take care of an extra person, a helpless girl, so they would have been just as relieved as they were almost seven years later in real life.  And it wouldn't have saved her all the pain of losing the family you are born to, but it would have saved her six and half years of pain.

But I can't give her that.  I can't give her all those cakes that she missed, getting to take the first bite, the chance to be the most important person of the day six more times.


So we did what we could for number seven.  She picked out a chocolate cake in the shape of a heart from the bakery, which also makes me a little sad, because I always make birthday cakes but I wasn't able to manage it in time for the party.  She did not get a balloon or a box of chocolate or a carton of orange juice in the store, because of course she suddenly wanted everything, but I was determined to keep the excitement of this day within the realm of what she could handle.  But she had some time when a mother paid attention just to her, and acted like she was valuable and reasonable.  And she had a party filled with people who love her, which was ourselves and two other families.  When we sang our blessing and I added a prayer of thanks, for her seventh year, and being finally back in America so we could celebrate it all together, the whole table resonated with agreement and thanks for being together.

And new clothes.  And a dollhouse.  I could give her all those things.

Some times all that seems so joyful.  And other times, it seems so paltry.


So today, very happy birthday to my daughter, my special daughter, the daughter who fills my house with laughter and with energy, my very own daughter.  This year, I will try and teach you about love, about safety, about faith, about beauty, about being a woman.  I will try and do the best I can, and I'm sorry that it's not enough; that I'm six years too late.  We will start with this day, and do what we can with tomorrow.  I love you so much.

Re-entry: Five Minutes a Week Later

Remember my five-minutes story, with Hibiscus's upsidedown kidney bean mouth because I was walking out the door?  I can describe her someone-is-leaving tantrum very distinctly, because it happened any time any one needed to go out the door, for any reason.  And apparently when her mouth is opened to its widest and saddest shape, combined with the highest possible amount of noise, it becomes a giant upsidedown kidney bean.  To go along with the wide-open mouth, there are flailing arms, diving towards the object of her affection, falling on the ground or bumping into objects, and screams of "don't go!" and "me too I'm going wiv you!", devolving into guttural wails.  The person in question can only walk out the door because the other person is physically holding her back.  After the departing person has departed, the hysteria gradually wanes, but the dramatic mouth shape and associated wails continue for up to half an hour.

I don't know whether she believed that once our family was re-united in magical America, we would all be together all the time, or if simply her deep fears of abandonment and separation were re-ignited by our move across the globe.  Meanwhile, Mama has to go to an appointment?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Mama gets back, but Daddy has to go to work for a couple hours?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Mama is taking a walk without children?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Daddy has to go to a meeting at work? Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Daddy has to shovel the driveway or Mama goes to get something from the barn?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Generally, she understood much better when she has to go to school, and thus is the one doing the leaving, and was apprehensive but calm.  But she has to go to school but Emerson stays home?  Total kidney-bean mouth hysteria, every time she thinks about it.


So I need to describe Daddy's departure for work this morning.

The kids were all playing in the living room.  Daddy came by and announced cheerfully that he was leaving.  (Side note: we have never, ever snuck away from the children, no matter how much easier it might be.)
"Aw, don't go to work!" Hibiscus cried, obviously disappointed.
"I have to go to work, but I'll see you at dinner time," Daddy replied, and kissed them each.
"Daddy has to go to work so our family has money," Hibiscus repeated the familiar line.  Then she thought a little more.  "Don't go to work today.  I think we have enough money already!"  I can certainly see why it seems that way to her!
"I have to go to work," Daddy answered, getting his coat and hat.
"Come home at lunch time, then," Hibiscus ordered.
"I have a meeting at lunch.  I have to have lunch with someone special," Daddy explained, realizing they might not understand what a meeting was.
"Then bring the special person home and have lunch with us!" Hibiscus suggested.  This made me laugh, the idea of Daddy conducting any kind of business meeting with my three little monkeys swinging off his arms and spilling their yogurt on his lap, all with the greatest amount of affection and enthusiasm.  My children really love guests.  My laughter made the children start to laugh, too, and then Hibiscus asked what was funny.
"I can't come home for lunch, but I'll see you at dinner.  I love you all!  Bye-bye!"  And Daddy walked out the door.

And the children kept playing.  And that is the end of the story.

More on the Christmas Cantata

When we considered older child adoption, we discussed many potential challenges and difficulties, including many of the things that we have faced.  But one thing we forgot to consider: musical taste.  We are a household that has earned degrees in music, both classical and jazz; there are two grand pianos in our living room, and another piano living with a friend; and other instruments include traditional drums and flutes from different cultures, classical strings (violins in several different sizes and a viola), and more guitar-like instruments than I can count.  What are we going to do with a child who has spent six years listening to this combination of hip-hop and pop music, complete with three chords and an insistent drumbeat, turned up way too loud.  How many years do we have to balance out this influence before she's old enough to buy her own music, and turn up the stereo on the back bedroom??!!

So Hibiscus thought the concert was awesome and amazing, and wants to go back today.  It was ridiculously loud and ridiculously dramatic, which seem to be the main criteria around here.  It seemed to be a lot of skits with really corny messages, that morphed into a song, and then all the secondary characters around the stage broke into some kind of crazy breakdancing.

For instance, a woman walks by talking on a cell phone and blowing her nose, and then drops the tissue on the ground.  Another woman is sitting on a bench, and reminds her to put the tissue in the bin.  Cell-phone woman rolls her eyes and walks away.  Nice Woman puts the tissue in the trash, and has a long discussion with the man sweeping the sidewalk about how important it is to put trash in the bin and take care of our beautiful city.  (Ugandans attitude towards trash seems to be a lot like that about lying, that they preach a lot about it but  honesty and picking up after oneself doesn't really enter into everyday behavior.)  Then it turns out that the sweeper-man is expecting his sister-in-law to call and announce the birth of his first child any moment, and that he and his wife have been waiting for a child for six years.  Then Nice Woman goes into a little spiel about how that reminds her of Jesus, and how the people waited for their Savior for all this time, but he finally came, and that is about God because of something-or-other, and then the Wise Men brought gifts and did you know that is where gift-giving was started?  Meanwhile, a spotlight comes on a little area on top of the high-rises, and we see Mary and Joseph struggling along, and the spotlight goes off and instantly they are on the side stage in a different spotlight, while the Wise Men appear as Nice Woman discusses them in the story.  Then suddenly they all burst out in song, and Joseph holds the Baby Jesus bundle above his head and swings around while singing this crazy exuberant pop-gospel stuff, and I am very glad that the bundle does not look like the shape that might mean an actual child is inside.  And a dozen other people come along in some kind of random costume and start dancing too.  And the song is not "We Three Kings" or anything that seems kind of related to the story, because "We Three Kings" would not be loud and excited enough, and I think it would be very difficult to add in the required bass and drum section to allow for the necessary switch into break-dancing.  Because everything has to turn into a break-dancing sequence.  Although they added speed and drums to several traditional carols in such a way to totally ruin them as "carols," let alone "traditional," which is apparently what Ugandans are used to because they all hummed and clapped along.

The program started with the (white) preacher enthusiastically welcoming everyone, and then we all sang "Silent Night" together.  The dancers had not yet appeared, so we only needed to go at about 170% of normal speed.  I don't know if Ugandans have a genetic predisposition towards alto-ness, but they certainly have a learned habit of singing in a really throaty voice.  This was funny because there is one sustained, moderately-high note in "Silent Night," and suddenly you could hear my voice singing it, because apparently I was the only person among the couple thousand who knew how to sustain a high note!

The main stage was this giant area in front, which when empty had a large waterfall surrounded by poinsettias and pine trees in the middle.  Then the couple-hundred voice choir filed in and filled most of the space in the middle in risers.  I think their purpose was mostly to look enthusiastic and sparkly, because they didn't do much more than hum in the background on a few songs.  There was a group song at the beginning and the end and they sang along with those ones, and the one at the end was some kind of enthusiastic praise-Jesus kind of thing, so some of them waved their hands around too.  There was a stage on a couple of levels in front of the choir, with a park bench and a few other props, and this is where most of the skits took place.  There was some kind of platform above the choir, which occasionally they used to dramatic effect, and a giant white screen all the way across the stage above that, which they used for different images.  Then there was another stage on either side of the main area, filled with pine trees.  The one towards our side had a manger, and Mary and Joseph appeared on it occasionally when someone sang about them.

I told a couple of the highlights of the cantata yesterday, so the story today is kind of out of order.  So I will go back to the beginning.  We were supposed to pick up our friends at 12:30, to arrive at 1 to wait for the 3:30 show.  But I knew we were on Africa time, so I didn't get everyone ready and over to their house until 1.  The children were all ready to jump in the car, but the mom wasn't, so we waited a while there.  Then we drove downtown.  Ggaba Road has been very slow lately, but it actually went smoothly, but then the traffic was just plain absolutely stopped once we got to town.  We could have walked it twice as fast, even with all seven children.  Finally, we got to the right place and found a parking spot.  Then it was time to wait.

First of all, we sat and waited under a series of giant tents set up outside, as the ushers gradually filled the tent sections in the order we would be allowed to leave them.  In another part of the parking lot there was a stand selling chapatis, popcorn, hot dogs, drinks, and other snacks, and behind the tents were a grand total of six porta-potties.  We arrived at 3 for the 3:00 performance, so we missed it, and waited the whole two hours for the next one -- but at least we were near the front of the line for that one.

About an hour after we started waiting, we were ushered out, through a church, and up to another room kind of to the side, which was also filled with plastic chairs.  It was the second room filled with people like that; I would estimate at least 300 people were in our room.  Luckily, we were up towards one corner, so the kids played with going back and forth out the edge.  I had a book in my backpack, so Emerson and I read that one together.  He was grumpy and tired and didn't really feel like reading, so he didn't want to read on his own.  We took turns reading the stories, switching at the paragraph for a while, until Emerson decided to switch every time we encountered the word "the."  That was interesting!  But inside my head, I was just amazed.  Back in September, he was still reading the Bob books and getting frustrated, and we were going very carefully over simple rules like what does "ea" say so he wouldn't be so frustrated.  Then something clicked, and he has been reading all kinds of children's books, like the paragraph-full Early Readers at school, and the Madeline books at home.  But this is a whole new level; this is totally text-dense read-aloud only, with unique vocabulary and small text.  He's gotten to the point where he wants to read something, and I say "okay, so read it," and he just starts, instead of worrying that it is too hard.  And really, most books in the world are mostly the same words over and over, so once you start in on it you can get a lot of the point, even if you have never yet encountered "vision" or "malicious."

I described sitting down to the concert, which was quite an adventure, so I will go back to some of the program.  The skits all started off corny, and ended with one of the characters delivering a little lesson about Jesus.  One of them was about difficulty, describing the basic story of the engagement, the census, and so forth, and that it was not actually simple or easy for them, and they probably kind of didn't feel happy all the time.  This was the LESSON.  There were definitely children in the audience, but it was not a children's show, and most of it seemed aimed towards the adults.  Is the assumption that adult Christians are not sure about when or why Joseph agreed to wed Mary, or that they had to travel for a census?   I have been shocked and frustrated with how confused Hibiscus is about basic Biblical characters, but I am beginning to understand why: it seems to me that most of the religion around here is totally based on homily and assumption, and very little on the actual Bible.  The children are told that if they are rude to their older brothers and sisters they will go to Hell, and given very specific definitions of Hell, and lists of other behavior that will land them there.  Which is The Divine Comedy, it is not the Bible.  Then they sing lots of songs with "praise God" and "Jesus loves me," and they turn around and tell me that they will beat all the people who are mean to them and to Jesus.  Hibiscus even described a helicopter with bombs she would drop on people who are mean to Jesus!  This is a nice sweet idea about loving Jesus, but when it is paired with no actual knowledge about anything Jesus ever did or said, it turns into a discussion about where he fits when he is inside you, under one's bellybutton or in the rib cage.

This is the child perspective, and it seems like many people do not really deepen their understanding as they get older.  The religious message that I have overheard again and again is how if you believe in God and really love him, LOVE LOVE LOVE, with lots of swinging your arms around and stamping your feet and singing really loudly... then you'll get rich.  Because God blesses the people who love him, especially when they sing really loudly.  I have actually had discussions with my friend the priest on how prevalent this view of loving God = getting rich and lucky, which he finds a big problem, so I am not naively imagining this.

And this bring us to why Hibiscus wants to have a helicopter to drop bombs on mean people, which was the part of the Cantata that made me absolutely livid.  If you are really into melodrama, I suppose Jesus' birth scores you lots of sequins, but the real drama is in the death.  So it couldn't be left out of a Christmas program.  (Unlike the entire life, ministry, and philosophy of Jesus, which was not alluded to in any way!)  I think it followed the young man's monologue about how he slowly descended into peer pressure, parties, alcohol and drugs, until he realized that his life was empty and the only thing that could fill it was Christ.  I realize that a lot of modern churches really like this "testimony," although personally, I would rather my kids don't hear so much about drugs and descending into "coolness."  But then there were some lighting changes, and another guy came out and sang some very dramatic and sad song.  At least I assume it was; I wasn't paying much attention to him.  Because behind him, they started playing a movie on the big screen of the crucifixion.  It might have been part of Mel Gibson's movie, or it might have been something else.  But it was gory, and it was detailed.  It started with Jesus carrying the cross and falling down, and we got close-ups of his arms and his back.  Later we saw nails positioned in the hands, and a hammer swinging.  It was several minutes long, and all fade-ins and fade-outs to different gruesome parts of the crucifixion.  I didn't see most of it, because I don't like to watch things like that, and then I was busy trying to convince the children not to watch.  Emerson was on one side of me, and all the children until Teacher Monica on the far side.  I started in on Emerson, because I know he has this fascination and deep terror of scary things.  He wouldn't look away, and I could cover his eyes but he yelled at me.  On the other side, Hibiscus was watching with her eyes literally bugging out.  Lately she has been especially terrified of bad things happening at night, and bad people coming into our house, and monsters nabbing her.  I know that images of someone being beaten bloody are exactly the kind of thing that pops into your mind when you are afraid of the dark and you want your mama to stay next to you, but she actually has to do your sister's bath at that moment.  So I tried to convince her not to watch, but she told me she liked it, as the tears started to fall.  Then I noticed Hosta on the other side of her, who had huddled up with her knees up to her forehead (she spent most of the program on her feet, jumping up and down), her face totally covered with tears, but she also could not tear her eyes off the video.  After that I was trying to distract Emerson again, and meanwhile thinking about how I could lean my body so Buttercup, in my wrap, wouldn't have an ideal view of the screen.  In the end, I'm not sure how much it helped, and all the children saw way more than was good for them.

So what happens today?  The children have mentioned half a dozen times how much they liked seeing Mary and Joseph, since they just did a little pageant of their own at school.  And then they've spent a significant portion of the day pretending to fall on the cross and discussion exactly where the nails were placed on the feet, and banging pretend nails into each other.  It really makes me mad.  Overall the cantata was not my cup of tea but it was a fun experience, but supposing I actually lived here, I would seriously consider not attending again next year just to avoid that disgusting video. (Or whatever they replace it with next time.)  It is NOT something that is appropriate to put into children's hearts and minds!  First of all, they have so many of their own difficulties to cope with, and this was just plain gory and unpleasant, and these images now live inside them.  Secondly, they are too young to get any actual meaning from it.  The first thing, that we have already discussed several times, is that this was a MOVIE, not the Bible.  In my own home and church life, I certainly expose my child(ren) to the story of the crucifixion, but I keep it simple and based on the actual Bible.  A young child will remember their first exposure to the story, and I want it to be the actual, literal story, not some film-maker's interpretation.  You never know if what will stay with a child will be the parts that he took from the text, or something random that was never important.  (Like Jesus being tall and blond, which he was.)  But the deeper issue is that if the children are too young to understand the meaning and the reason behind the crucifixion, they are way too young to be thinking about the details of death.  Never mind calling for bomb-dropping helicopters, Jesus actively refused even mild violence on his behalf, and refused to protest or defend himself.  Why?  THAT is what Christianity is about.  If you're not old enough to discuss that, you're not old enough to discuss what they used to whip Jesus, and how much he was bleeding.  Period.

So, that was my philosophical rant; let's get back to the cantata.  Shall we discuss breakdancing?  There was really quite a lot of it.  The theme seemed to be a city park, so we had streetcleaners breaking out in breakdancing several times.  However, there was some attempt at variety.  For one number, a ballerina (the one white woman in the entire thing, actually) was in a spotlight in the little stage that was above all the other stages, and she twirled a couple times, and then lights came on the main stage and a bunch of girls in ballerina-like outfits swooped out, twirled a couple times... and started breakdancing.  A later troupe of mostly male dancers were wearing black and white, leather jackets, and sunglasses.  It was a little hard to see how that fit in with the sequins-and-Christmas theme, but they certainly were matching costumes.  And the breakdancing was quite good, and they did a bunch of fancy tricks.  I probably would have been impressed if I weren't so amused by how everyone kept breakdancing!

Another part of the cantata for me was dealing with the children.  I decided to keep Buttercup on my back, where she could see (and incidentally not escape).  She figured out pretty fast that she had a good view and was perfectly content, although that involved lots of jumping up and down in place.  I had also gotten snacks before we went in, and gradually handed them out to the children. I started off with half a chapati each while we waited for the show to start, which went smoothly.  But I had tried to get something at the snack stand that wasn't JUST simple carbs, so I got little slurpy yogurts.  These are small plastic bags filled with sweet yogurt, and you cut off a corner and stick a straw in and drink it out.  This works pretty well if you do it properly, which half the children managed to do.  Unfortunately, half the children wanted to put their yogurt down for a while, and since they are just plastic bags, this is not very technically possible when you are sitting crammed in a pew jumping up and down.  So when Buttercup got full, I gave the rest to Hibiscus, and then I refused to get Hibiscus her own because she'd already eaten half of one and I didn't want her to put down the next one, but when Hosta got tired of drinking I gave that to Hibiscus too.  Needless to say, that made everyone mad at me.  The friends' children managed to drink their yogurts without incident, although the older girl was still carrying the bag when we were trying to walk to the car.  Her mother had to ask her to drop it, which shows how deeply the no-littering lessons sink in -- although she had to ask twice, so maybe the child noticed the discrepancy and the next generation will manage to do better.  But it was Emerson who won the yogurt award.  He asked me to hold his yogurt several times, or offered it to me to take a drink, so I took a drink and handed it back.  But at one point he got the straw stuck inside the bag, so he put it on my lap so I can fix it.  Imagine: it is dark, there are strobelights, you are trying to figure out which of the next six children wants a yogurt, and there is a bag with a hole in it somewhere plopped in your lap.  It ended up spilling yogurt all over my dress, the wrap, the camera case, the floor, and who-knows-what else.  And then Emerson took it back and sucked the rest of the yogurt directly out of the hole, which worked well, except he took forever to do it (like most things that he does), and I think yogurt bags were designed for speedy consumption.

As for the grand finale: Snow.  Snow is really spectacular here in equatorial Africa, and they had an amazing production of it.  We are not in rich Dubai, which apparently has an indoor ski mountain, so it wasn't the actual cold stuff, but it poured from the ceiling in huge quantities for several minutes.  (I think it was some kind of bubbles.)  The kids were very excited and impressed, and jumped around and squealed and tried to catch it.

And now I will conclude my story with what Hibiscus told me the next day.  First of all, she keeps repeating that she wants to go back, and I have not the slightest intention of reliving the rest of the exhausting day in order to attend the performance again!  But then she told me this morning that she was glad we went to this show, because Ugandan people don't go to shows, and no one in Uganda knows about shows like this.  This is pretty amazing information, given that probably between a thousand and two thousand people were happily watching the show, and I saw exactly one other group like ours, which had a couple Americans mixed in with the locals.  There have been two shows a day for the last ten days or so, and they will switch to four shows a day from tomorrow until Christmas -- just at this church, and I think the other churches do their own shows, and a few of the other mega-churches definitely have mega-shows.  A quick estimate gives about 40,000 Ugandans attending this particular show, along with a hundred or so muzungos, which is a slightly different number than "none."  I reminded Hibiscus about the Ugandans who had been all around her, and that our Ugandan friends had brought us, so it was pretty clear that some Ugandans knew about shows like this.  She calmly and didactically informed me that her daddy in Bbunga did not know about shows like this, and she had never been to a show like this while she lived in Bbunga, and no one else went to shows like this either.  Therefore no one in Uganda knows about big shows.  Obviously, mom.

In preparing for adoption, we talked about the significance of taking a child away from their culture, but I think this is the equally important side of the same coin: a naive six-year-old, starting a new life, comes to the assumption that she is the expert on her own culture.  In many ways she knows more about the Buganda than I do, but in other ways, her experience is so narrow and misunderstood, she really knows almost nothing about her own culture.  But since we take her away from it, she thinks she knows everything.  It makes me very glad that we are spending these months here, and hopefully we can combat a little bit of her own assumptions through the coming years, so that she does not believe that her miserable little life in the slums is the only option for Ugandans.  That some people are kind to their friends, and some children like to read, and some Ugandans go to concerts.

We can have those discussions while not engaged in our full-immersion program of symphonies, jazz quartets, and choirs with actual sopranos in them.  And Christmas performances of The Nutcracker, but only if it has been pre-screened for not switching to breakdancing part way through!

b

Continued Progress at Zero, Zip, Zilch

Yesterday we seemed poised on the cusp of so many things happening, that I thought I needed to give another update.

Equally poised.  No actual progress on any front.

I was really hoping that the landlord would have some good leads on other apartments, and would have in mind something similar to this.  He was so helpful to spend half his morning taking me around to a couple of places, and I know he made a bunch more calls as well, but the places we saw were duds.  I have discovered something within myself in the last few weeks since I did the last apartment search: I am unwilling to move into a LESS nice place.  I just am not going to do it.  I can focus on the positive, like it will be interesting to live in three different places in the city, and that will give me a broader perspective.  I can think of the things that I would be happy to switch over to in a new place, like a refrigerator-sized fridge.  But I now realize, that if I have to move and find myself somewhere kind of grungy, or the kids have nowhere to play, or half the appliances are missing.... I am just going to go over the edge.  I really am.

We now live in a really nice subdivision of Kampala, which I have mixed feelings about.  I really miss being right in a real trading-center-y village, with a huge outdoor market down the street, and minibus taxis into town just past that, and walking past all the little fruit stands and tailors who all knew me.  This area is much more isolated.  I don't think I ever would have gotten to know Kampala in the same way if I had lived here, simply in terms of going out and exploring around, because it's less practical to do.  I am quite sure I wouldn't have been able to gain such a strong feeling for the culture.  I might not have had a million best friends in Ggaba, but I did have a lot of personal relationships.  I went to the same shops and fruitsellers every day, and people knew me.  EVERYONE knew me!  And that did lead to a million small but meaningful interactions, very different from someone just coming up to me on the street, asking me a bunch of questions, and I never see them again.  (Like happened today.)  So I miss that.  But in a wealthier suburb, I also feel more pigeon-holed, like I am obviously a rich white person and they know all about rich white people.  I'm glad I'm not in the even richer suburb next door, where almost everyone is rich; I enjoy the different houses and people doing different things around the neighborhood.  But I also know that that makes it a little bit safer here.  I don't stand out as much, and the kind of places where I would stay is not a big glowing beacon of "find the rich people here"-ness as it was in Ggaba.  (My apartment building was robbed at least four times in the five months I lived there, despite multiple layers of security, not including my insider-theft.)

Anyways, I don't want to leave this area, since at least by now I know it somewhat, and I'm not going back to the Ggaba area where I am quite sure Crazy Evil Lady bears a big grudge against me.  And in a month, if I'm still in Uganda, this apartment will be open again and I can move back if I want.  So I've decided that it makes more sense to pay too much for a month of feeling pleasant and safe, rather than move to some place kind of dumpy after two very good apartments.  In which case I think I would totally lose it, and my husband would have to buy emergency Christmas-priced airfare to come pry me off of a puddle on the floor.  And my children would be traumatized by the mama-puddle-fying.  And the airfare would cost much more than the apartment upgrade would have in the first place.

(In case you are curious, the kind of apartment that would suit the children and I would be about $800-$2000 US dollars a month.  No matter how grungy I felt like going, I think it would be just plain stupid to get a place that was not fully gated with 24-hour security, and that's about the starting price for that much.  Being white is just too much of a temptation here.  Being white with black children is also mildly dangerous, although probably not in the daytime with normal people around.)

So, we didn't get anywhere on the apartment search.  First, the landlord brought me to a couple of places.  Then on my way back home, I asked at a couple more places, just because they were there and looked available.  Nope.  I was planning on going out again to a couple other places thatI saw on the last search, but decided to save those for tomorrow.  I actually did an internet search, realizing that it might possibly come up with something because I'm in an upscale neighborhood.  I did have a couple of agents call me back, so I think they will show me something tomorrow.  If that doesn't work out, I can go the previous route and get the house-hunter guy to drive around in the car with me, making all kinds of telephone calls and pointing the driver in different random directions to where he hears a rumor of a vacancy.  So I'm far from the end of the house-hunting line, but I had really hoped this worked out the easy way.


As for the other projects.... the guardianship order is still sitting nicely in the judicial halls.  Apparently my lawyer checks in with the girl who types things up, who said it is typed up and the judge needs to sign it but was very busy today.  After she signs it, the lawyer needs to pick it up, and make the payment for the order.  After getting the payment, she takes her receipt (probably in triplicate) and goes over to a different office, where they confirm the payment and the signature and who-knows-what, and then put the seal on it, and then she can take it away.  Although apparently the problem is that the guy who puts the seal on it is often not in his office, and then it takes longer.  She said the guy who puts the seal on it causes many delays.  Sigh.  The amount of complicated-ness around here is really spectacular.  On the up side, the typist girl confirmed that the ruling is in our favor.  I suppose that's kind of nice to hear, although the judge was about as clear as she legally could be in the court that she would be ruling in our favor, so it's not really a great load off my shoulders.  Like actually being able to hold the thing in my hands would be.


And for the ID, I didn't make any progress with that, either.  In Ggaba, I could walk down to the village and have our pictures taken.  From here, I almost have to go back to the same place.  I'll need to pick the kids up from school and do it on the way home, and then bring them home on the minibus, which after all the apartment drama just seemed like too much to handle.


And the trip out of the country: no progress there either.  Except it looks like I'll have to get to both the passport office and the IOM appointment next week, which is making it harder to schedule.  On the positive side, it sounds likely that I will be able to get the girls' passports before the break, which would make it legally simpler to take them out of the country if I can't get it coordinated before the other parent leaves.  Except for the part about actually, physically taking them.


And the kitten.  The kitten is not making the right sort of progress; the kitten thinks he lives here now.  I must be growing jaded, because I can distantly think "oh, attacking that clothespin is pretty cute" but I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in having a kitten around.  My mind spends all its time on how I don't want the kitten in the bedroom or getting its claws into our clothes, and I move all the wraps out of the room and close the door.  And then Buttercup sees the kitten and screams in mortal terror, and I remove it from the house again.  The problem is that everyone keeps their doors open here to let the breeze come through, which it does very nicely, but apparently kittens can just saunter in too.  And as soon as the big kids come home from school, they spoil it rotten, as long as by "spoiling" you like two very excitable children hovering over you all the time.  Apparently this kitten has an iron constitution.




And the children.  Must Hibiscus talk all the time?  Really truly all the time?  And this afternoon poor Emerson was really getting the short end of the wild-Hibiscus stick.  I don't think I have extra sympathy for him because he's my birth child and I love him better, but I get sympathetic for him when she just natters away at him ceaselessly, and you can see him wilting as the day goes by.  He has started whining and complaining about her a lot, which was getting on my nerves.  And then I realized how often Hibiscus drives ME crazy, and I have to shut my eyes for a moment and steel myself very carefully before I turn around and say something.  And I am 33 years old, have a masters degree in education and child development, and walked into this with my eyes wide open, and poor Emerson is only four, has anxiety issues, and never wanted to share his legos in the first place.

This afternoon, I guess she started immediately by almost pinching him in the gate and then telling him she didn't care, which is exactly the sort of argument I am not going to get in the middle of.  But after he "reported" her I called Emerson over to me, and said that if he wanted to he could go and play by himself.  And that Hibiscus really wants to play with him, so if he just leaves the game when he doesn't like how she's acting, she will try harder to not drive him away.  He immediately took to this idea, left Hibiscus and got his legos out.

A few days ago I did a major re-sorting of the legos, both physically and logically.  There are several sets mixed together, which is okay because Emerson was making up lots of new trucks to build, but now it has gotten overwhelming.  I sorted them all out by color and put them in little baggies, so he can find a specific piece when he looks for it.  And I put an absolute moratorium on Buttercup touching the legos because she is too little.  And I told Hibiscus that she had to build her OWN set of legos, and she had to follow the book and make it properly a few times in a row before she can build something else.  Or she can not follow the book and make her helicopter into whatever she darn well pleases, but what she cannot do is pick up one of the other books, put together the first few pieces that are easy while meanwhile mixing up whatever order the pieces are in, then give up as soon as something doesn't work right, and start grabbing pieces from all the baskets -- including the ones Emerson has spent days sorting out -- stick them on randomly for a couple minutes, then think of something else, drop the whole creation on the floor, all the little bits scatter everywhere, and she has no interest in cleaning them up properly, let alone re-sorting the pieces.  I actually think doing legos would be really good for Hibiscus, but she needs to start small and stick with it.  The full lego basket is too much for her.  I told her that Emerson had one set and he did it over and over and over before he got any more legos and she needs to do the same thing, period.

So what does she do when Emerson comes over to his lego project?  Follow him, of course.  And not even get our her lego basket, but just kind of sit around and heckle him, and try and sneak putting together clandestine lego creations.  Again, I'd love her to build with legos and learn about all the lego-learning things, but not at the expense of Emerson's sanity.  And there is really no reason she can't do that with her own lego set.  Emerson finished his tow-truck and towed-car set yesterday morning before school (it turns out he can do his hour-long morning routine in about three minutes flat if he's trying to get to lego-time), and has been painstakingly sorting out all the pieces for his garbage truck since then.  He wants to put everything in a basket before he starts building.

When it was obvious that she wasn't doing anything at all except sit there and annoy Emerson, I told her that Emerson had found his own space to play, and she could now find her own, which was anywhere except where Emerson was.  After quite a bit of sulking she settled on doing something with Chutes and Ladders in the hallway.  The problem was when Emerson moved to get something and she screamed at him that he couldn't look and he couldn't come near and he couldn't touch and he couldn't even be near her.  My dear child, you are fully allowed to have your privacy, but NOT IN THE HALLWAY WHICH IS BETWEEN YOUR BROTHER AND EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE HOUSE.  The hallway is not actually the ideal place to sit if you don't want anyone to look at you, ever.  Although apparently it's pretty good if you want to scream at people to not look at you.

At dinner time, here were just a few things out.  Emerson likes to take care of his own legos, and he was diligently working on that.  Hibiscus was supposed to pick up toys off the floor.  Have I mentioned that Emerson is usually slow and careful and deliberate (and distractible) and Hibiscus is at least as distractible, but quick in all her movement and efficient when she actually does something?

Suddenly, violent, terrible screaming.  Emerson is hovering over the floor, which is covered with bits of lego, which used to be the tow-truck and car.  Hibiscus is looking shocked and guilty.  I asked if Hibiscus had bumped into him at whirlwind speed and knocked him down with his completed, glorious legos set.  More crying.  It turns out it was worse: Hibiscus had decided to pick up the legos herself, despite my telling her at least twice to leave the legos alone, at least four times that she needed to clean the toys off the floor, and Emerson keeping up a pretty much constant chatter about how no one else was supposed to touch the legos.  While he was neatly gathering things together, Hibiscus took the most exciting piece on the table, thought she was clearing it, and apparently ran full-speed into disaster.

Then, not two minutes later, she added injury to insult.  For some reason she decided she needed to rearrange all the chairs at the table.  I have told her over and over not to carry chairs on her head, and she obeyed the letter of the law but not the spirit of picking up chairs and swinging them around in a small apartment.  Still at full-speed (albeit burdened) she knocked a chair leg right into Emerson's rib cage.  He was not a happy camper.



So that is my day, in which we made no discernible forward progress at all.  Although it is possible that the guardianship order took some more invisible steps, as did Emerson and Hibiscus's relationship.

Part I: Definitions of Discipline

We are working on No One More Times, Yelling "NO!!" Is Sassing, and That Means You Too.  With a side of Respect Your Sibling's Special Time.  And in the Table Manners department, we are working on Sitting On Your Bum.  Of course, that doesn't mean that we're abandoning all our other ordinary manners, or things like lying to your mother are going to slip by, but those are the special projects of the month-ish (or whenever they get absorbed).  And if that sounds like it's overwhelming for the kids because we're working on everything at once, I assure you, it is NOT everything!

(Notice their flower names at the top of the page...)

In this post, I am going to write more about managing clear family policies and teaching discipline in a family of high-intensity young children.  It's something I think about every day, and sometimes every minute!  I am still frustrated with the older children's behavior, but we are making progress, together.  I will share some of the specific things that we are doing that work for the children, and I will share some of the ways that I think about discipline.

First of all, a little bit on what I think discipline itself is.  I think for all parents, but especially for those of us raising highly challenging children, that it is essential to be clear in our own minds about our own deeper philosophy behind what we are doing.  A clear definition of the end goal, and feeling clear about why we are making each choice, is the headlamp that lights our paths through all the swamps and dust-storms that our children constantly create around us.  It's not a floodlight that makes everything easy, but by constantly re-charging our mental batteries by thinking carefully about what and why we are doing, we parents can be the ones with the lights on, leading through the path of confusion.  Because our children are more confused than we are!

First of all, the word "discipline."  This is a word I use a lot, and to me it neither has negative connotations nor is it about the "no-and-punishment" side of parenting.  Discipline is discipleship, and discipleship is teaching, and teaching is what we do with our children all the time.  Discipline is the type of teaching that we do that is about areas like behavior and self-control, rather than areas like learning to read.  And we are teaching discipline to our children every moment, whether we are choosing to think about it or not.  What we model to our children is the most powerful message that we send!

I try to strengthen the message that I model by bringing it into the foreground and telling my children about myself.  I apologize when I'm wrong.  I talk about when I'm frustrated, and talk through looking for a solution.  I tell them stories about when I felt angry or upset, and how I dealt with it.  I try and focus on emotions that are within their little-kid palette of understanding, especially when there's an issue that they have been struggling with lately.  This is difficult for me to to do and I have to be conscious of it, not because I'm ashamed of making a mistake or getting frustrated at someone in line, but because I don't naturally show or talk about my emotions very much, and I'm good at hiding my emotions.  I have to step out of my comfort zone so my children can see that I struggle and have to deal with my struggles, just like they do.  Right now, I make it very clear about when I need to do something I don't want to do, or obey someone else's rules even though I don't like them, because this is a huge area of difficulty for my children.

Which leads us to the word "obey."  This is a word that was rife with negative Bible-belt connotations in the world in which I grew up, and my parents and everyone else avoided it entirely.  I don't any more.  Simple words are better for kids, and "obey" is a simple word for a lot of complicated ideas, including respect, cooperation, listening, delaying gratification, and accepting responsibility.  However, I define "obey" in the adult way, and not the child-only way.  Do we expect an obedient child to do whatever an adult says immediately and without question?  That is going to get him into a lot of trouble when he gets older, and people put pressure on him to do all kinds of things, including some we parents wouldn't like at all!  We can make it clear to children that they are allowed to use their heads and their words while they are obedient.  Even in the Bible, many prophets like Isaiah and Moses discussed issues with God, and brought up their concerns.  Moses took off his sandals in front of the burning bush, but he did not acquiesce immediately to what God had in mind.  If Moses can bring up his concern about his speech, and God can make a compromise of adding a brother-in-law to his team, then my children are being perfectly obedient if I ask them to set the table, and they say "may I please go get my game from outside first?" or "I don't remember where the plates are any more."  That's obviously different from screaming at me or running off, and that difference defines what obedience in children means to me.

Like in defining obedience, my husband and I think a lot about instilling values and habits that will serve our children well in the rest of their lives... which is often very different from what makes an easy and pleasant child!  I don't want my children to obey without question, because although that would make setting the table go a lot faster, it's not going to help them with peer pressure in high school.  We want to teach our children how to think and how to problem-solve, and I acknowledge that sometimes they're going to come up with a different answer than I have.  Tonight we discussed why Hibiscus had gotten a Sit, and I pointed out the rule on our chart and what she had done.  She agreed that she understood, and I asked if that was fair or if I was being a mean mama.  She mumbled that I was being mean.  And that was a fair answer.  My understanding of the situation was different from hers.

I love the Waldorf idea of "rhythm instead of discipline" (except obviously I think that rhythm itself is discipline, since discipline is positive), and it gets us a long way in this household.  And we are a Sousa march or a Strauss waltz -- no Copland allowed! -- as far as rhythm is concerned: everything that can be regularized is pinned into place.  But for my highly challenging children, a household rhythm isn't enough to contain the roaring rockets of their internal chaos.  So then the question is, consequences or punishment?

When I wrote about our Sits, some people commented that I seemed almost ashamed of giving out punishment and that time-outs are perfectly normal.  I am not at all ashamed of having consequences that my children don't like, but I want to be clear in my own mind about whether the Sits are consequences, or turning into punishments.  What's the difference?

I would say that a consequence is directly related to the particular event that happened, and that it allows room for the child to grow and move out of it.  A punishment is handed down from above, and the purpose is to make the child feel "yucky" (as my children say).  Let's go back to thinking about adult life: our lives are chock-full of consequences, but there are very few punishments.  If you go to a party and are laugh when someone gets hurt and grab all the hour d'oevers  from the snack tray, no one is going to take you into the other room and make you stay there for the rest of the party, but you're not going to have many friends or go to many more parties.  That's a consequence.  But because no one hauled you into the back bedroom, you have a chance to grow: you could sincerely apologize to the people you laughed at, and go into the kitchen and help make another tray of melon balls.  It wouldn't erase the negative, but it would change people's impression of you, and someone might invite you to a party another time.  Maybe.

Some parents think about that kind of consequence, and work really hard to make every consequence fit the misdeed exactly.  Some kid-problems have obvious kid-consequences if we simply step out of the way and don't fix it for them, but I don't go beyond the obvious.  My kids need regularity, and we do Sits for everything else and that is regularized.  I don't knock myself out thinking of the perfect matching consequence for every misbehavior.  But a Sit IS the natural consequence, because overall, their problem is that they need to calm themselves down and think before they act.  Or while they act, or after they act... in fact pretty much any thinking at all would improve most evenings around here!

Are punishments for children wrong?  I don't think they are entirely.  Again, in our adult life, there are some punishments.  A cop can give you a big fine for driving too fast, and I think a lot more people follow the speed limit because of the potential punishment than would without it!  But a punishment that is above and beyond the natural consequences of our behavior is rare, which makes it more powerful.  So if we parents find ourselves giving punishments a dozen times a day, that indicates to me that something is out of balance.  In fact, because young children are so spontaneous and have so little understanding of the world beyond themselves, I think there is almost nothing they can do to merit an actual punishment (being placed in a position to feel bad, instead of a position to grow).  My children are too young and too random to be acting maliciously, however frustrated their behavior might make me!

Something like a Sit or a Time-out could be a punishment or it could be a consequence, and it might look the same from the outside.  It is my job as a parent to be constantly asking myself, am I enforcing this in order to help them learn and grow, or am I trying to make them feel bad because they made me feel bad?  Do I want them to develop internal habits or just avoid something negative?  Right now, I do believe that the way we are doing Sits teaches them good internal habits -- like learning to STOP.  (I'm not sure the actual thinking part has made it into the equation yet... maybe next year!)  Both Emerson and Hibiscus get wound up until their internal accelerator is jammed down to the floor, and they can't learn anything else until they learn to stop that revving-up cycle.  Emerson and I worked on that for months this spring and summer, with me essentially stopping things for him over and over and over again, until he figured out how to slow himself down.  (We went home, closed books, put food back away, sat on roadsides, etc etc etc... that's mom putting on the emergency brakes.)  Actually, this is a little bit of a challenge right now, because it's very important to treat the two of them equally, but Emerson is moving a little bit beyond just plain needing to STOP, whereas Hibiscus definitely isn't.



Here is what I have learned academically about helping highly challenging children move beyond one challenging stage: repetition and consistency.  Here is what I have learned from actually parenting them: you have the same fight twelve million and fifty-two hundred times, until you go from thinking you are a particularly patient person to wanting to shake your child until their teeth rattle and then push them off a cliff, or at least out of the house you have to live in.  (That is not gratuitously violent imagery, that is a painfully honest description of raising two highly challenging children.)  But if you manage to make it through and be consistent and kind of calm for the fifty-two-hundred-and-first time, you suddenly realize that it's been days, or even weeks, and you haven't had that same argument any more, and they are cheerfully and pleasantly completing the challenged task.  It takes so long to notice because you are on your six millionth repetition of a different argument.


I am also learning that the more absolutely specific, exact, and clear my expectation is, the shorter the learning/arguing period is.  So we have walls covered with labeled drawings of routines and expectations and an entire home-made book of policies, as well as skits between dolls where the children laugh at how obviously one is misbehaving and diagnose the appropriate consequence, and certain phrases that we use over and over again.  Tomorrow, I'll write another post and go into detail about how we have used all those props to help the children gain footholds of understanding in the complicated world of Self Control.   And how frequently we have used the poster at the top of the page in the first 24 hours, and that apparently I should have put it up weeks ago...

Hibiscus Drives Us All Crazy

It's the middle of the afternoon, and I said we could have more birthday cake and presents if the kids could clear the table off.  No one started on that project, which seems like actual work, but Hibiscus found a piece of mostly-unused construction paper and made a birthday hat for Buttercup.  First of all she taped it into a cone shape, and when she put it on Buttercup's head the little girl started glowing with her unaccustomed special-ness.  Then she wanted to add a chin band, and Emerson helped her find materials and they all started singing "Happy Birthday" variations happily as they worked on the hat, while Buttercup fairly danced with pride.  Suddenly, Hibiscus decided it "wasn't good" and she ripped it apart and crumpled up the pieces, while the other children watched in shock and disappointment, and Buttercup's joyful little face melted away.

That's our Hibiscus!

Then she spent a while arguing, because I had already said I wasn't giving them any more paper or art supplies until the current mess had been cleaned up, but Hibiscus apparently felt that because she had made the mess even bigger while making all the other children upset, that she deserved an exception to the rule.  Which she didn't get, so she sulked.

Then she started cleaning one thing up, which is generally how it goes.  She wants to be helpful, but as soon as she starts she gets distracted or sees something new to get out.  In this case, she put some cheese from snack in the fridge, as I asked.  For some reason, Emerson was also near the fridge, and he pushed it shut, which Hibiscus thought was too rough, and she started scolding him.  One of our frequent scripts in this house is "who does Hibiscus need to worry about?" and the answer in "Hibiscus."  (In other words, stop bossing your brother and sister around!!!)  Hibiscus ignored me, and opened the fridge again and started fussing around with all the little bottles on the side, putting them in "perfect" order while telling Emerson how bad he was for messing them up.  I agreed that Emerson could have shut the door more gently, but thought there was no reason to stand there rearranging everything in the fridge meanwhile, so I told Hibiscus to get out of the fridge and Emerson to shut the door gently.  Twice.  Maybe three times.  Hibiscus said "I just doing this" and continued to adjust the bottles and then grabbed the door away from Emerson to shut it herself.  That falls under our Just One More criteria for a Sit, so she got one.  And she tried to sneak out of it when I wasn't looking, so she got a longer Sit.

Earlier today, I decided I would do just one little project that would make me feel better, so I had cleared off the couch.  It is the largest horizontal space in our main room, and it was totally heaped up with stuff.  Besides, then I could sit on the couch and do some work on the ipad while being kind of relaxed and drinking a cup of tea.  First of all I got mad at Emerson for climbing right on the newly-folded clothes I was arranging, and then the kids kept passing and dropping the extra parts from their projects on the nice clear couch.  After addressing each incident, I finally told the kids all to look at me, and to not put anything more on the couch today.  Period.

When I told Hibiscus she could come out of her Sit, she went straight over to the windowsill where Buttercup's birthday presents were sitting and picked up her most exciting new game.  I warned her that she better not be playing with her sister's new game without permission, and she said she wasn't.  Then she brought the toy bag over to the couch, and I said she had better not be putting anything on the couch, and she said she wasn't.  Buttercup was watching her lovely toy and her bossy sister with increasing worry.  Hibiscus then proceeded to take the toy that she wasn't playing with and dump the entire thing out on the couch that she wasn't putting things on.        


This is all in about the span of twenty minutes or so, but she is like this ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  She is constantly taking things from her brother and sister, which she is likely to break or just drop randomly in a different place.  She tells them what to do, and grabs things from Buttercup to do it for her and goads Emerson into getting upset, and then "reports" him for using his angry voice.  She ordinarily has a very good relationship with both siblings, although of course they have their little altercations, and they actually have a great deal of patience with her explosiveness.  One morning they were getting ready for school, Emerson and Hibiscus bumped into each other, and Hibiscus rounded on Emerson and screamed "DON'T BUMP ME LIKE DAT!!! DAT'S MY OWIE!!!"  I would have reprimanded her that it was an accident on both sides, and there was no call to scream, but luckily I am a little slow on getting between them.  Emerson turned and immediately apologized and asked to see her owie, and Hibiscus showed him her leg in that special aggrieved manner that young children reserve for small pains, and Emerson knelt down and admired it and sympathized, and then they both went on with their day quite calmly.

Buttercup is even more accustomed to being pushed around and adores every chance to be with her beloved sister, which is a little bit of a problem in itself and I am glad that she is gradually learning to stand up for herself.  Now in the last few weeks, Hibiscus is back to her early behavior in our house, when every time Buttercup says something she repeats it to the rest of the family, and every time Daddy or I address Buttercup, she answers quickly and loudly.  If we ask Buttercup to do something and she doesn't immediately jump into action -- which is pretty much always, because she is either going through a toddler-refusal, or just because she thinks things over carefully before beginning -- Hibiscus repeats it for her in Luganda, ordering her to do the thing in rapid-fire succession which simply confuses Buttercup, and then grabs the things out of her hands and starts to do it for her.

Or then there are times like this:  The morning after her birthday party, Buttercup wanted to look at her new book.  She sat in the middle of the floor to pore over it, and Hibiscus said "you want me to read it to you" and sat down next to her and took the book out of her hands.  Buttercup acquiesced because she likes spending time with her big sister.  But then a minute later I looked over, and Hibiscus is holding the book over Buttercup's head while Buttercup is reaching for it and starting to screech and sob.  Hibiscus saw me ready to interfere and protested "but she WANTS me to hold the book for her, Mama, she is wantin' me to do like dis!!"  Ah, no, my darling, I really think this is a misinterpretation of the situation!   Buttercup is becoming very capable of expressing her feelings about things -- not to mention understanding spoken English -- and yet Hibiscus will announce to the rest of us how Buttercup is feeling.  Which, coincidentally, always seems to be that Buttercup wants what Hibiscus wants, even at Buttercup's own expense.


But that's not the only thing she announces.  She tells me when my phone is ringing, or has the text-message sound.  If I don't come running immediately, she keeps telling me over and over, imitating the text-message sound.  She tells us when a Skype call is ringing.  She tells us when fire engines go by.  In fact, she informs everyone of every sound all day long, which I suppose could make her an excellent assistant if we were all deaf, but as it is she just makes us WISH we were deaf.

One day I asked her if she saw anything poking out of the side of my head, and that they were called ears, and since they were still in their usual place she might assume I could hear things on my own.  I tried to make a joke out of it, but I might have been too irritated to fully succeed.

But that's not all she says.  At the best of times, she is a talkative child, and there's nothing wrong with that.  As Daddy says, she gets a lot of practice in spoken English!  But when she's stressed or tired or excited or generally out of her precarious internal balance, she talks all the time.  And I do mean ALL the time.  One night I started counting to myself, mostly to give myself something to do other than run and scream, and I think the longest she ever went without talking was about three seconds -- and that was the exception.  Most of the time it is more like one or maybe two seconds; just long enough to hear what the next person might be talking about, so then she can tell them what they meant to say, or what she would say on the topic, or that they are wrong, or just because she was in the process of swallowing and was physically incapable of speech for a moment.  Only a moment, though, as she keeps talking through most of the eating process, even when no one can actually understand her because she is also shoveling food in at top speed.

I am a talkative person, as everyone knows.  My son has been a chatterbox since he could string words together, and does indeed have excellent speech for his age with all that practice, so I am used to talkative children.  And I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind some overlap in conversation, and with my good friends we will both be very talkative and sometimes be both talking at once, while also listening and one or the other pauses for a moment and then rejoins the story at an ebb in the other's conversation.  So, "talkative," I can handle.  I have experience.  You will have to trust me that Hibiscus is another category altogether.

So all through dinner, we have either a monologue or, if someone else gets a word in edgewise, she changes course and tells them what they meant to be saying.  We try to discuss conversation rules, but after a while it kind of puts everyone else in an exhausted coma, and no one else can think of anything to say anyways.  Then we get up from dinner, and she narrates what she is doing as she cleans up and gets ready for bed, along with telling everyone else what they should be doing, and of course every major or minor injury to body or soul she feels along the way... which are prolific, since she also is in her manic and awkward stage of the day.  Eventually we get to books.  As in, I read books out loud, and the children listen to them.  Except it goes something like this:

"Hedgie the hedgehog climbed --"
"Oooh, he is climbing, look he climb!!"
"--up to the hayloft ---"
"Mama mama mama, what a hayloft? What is dat one?"
"It's the top of the barn, see, right here.  -- the next morn ---"
"Look, dis one a bird!  Dere a bird in da sky here!"
"-ing to get a ---"
"One, two, tree, FIVE birds, YOU count Buttercup, one, two, no, you doing it WRONG I count da birds---"


I have my masters degree in education.  I know how valuable reading books is to young children, and that a significant part of the value is that it inspires conversations between adults and children.  The children get to explore and learn new vocabulary, and have practice talking about characters and counting objects and so forth, all with lots of interaction with their loving adult.  The conversation is an important part of the reading process.

Nevertheless, this is not what they meant.



I know in my head, that if it's been a hard couple weeks for all of us, it's probably been worst for Hibiscus.  She has by far the least internal regulation (even included Buttercup), so the move with all its change of routine has been the most difficult for her.  She has loved our guests, but they have come with more changes of routine and new personalities to figure out.  In the court room, she is the only one trying to balance complex relationships with both sides of people, and she's picking up all the emotions and understanding none of the logic.  She and Buttercup are more deeply disturbed by loving people having to leave (especially Daddy, but also Diane and it re-awakens how upset she is about Gramma and Bubba being gone), because they have more experience with loving adults leaving than loving adults coming back again.  So I understand.  It's enough to throw anyone off kilter, let alone a little girl who doesn't have much balance to begin with.

But lately, I've been pausing for a while at night to adjust her blankets and say a little prayer over her.  Because it's been easiest to love her when she's asleep.

Happy Thanksgiving

I understand that somewhere in the world, people are gathering with their families and eating turkey and getting ready to go shopping for great deals, at stores which don't pay 54% import tax on everything on their shelves.  I am not really missing the Thanksgiving-ness, probably because I never picked apples and got out my sweaters and watched the mums come out and trimmed back the roses; in my heart it's still gotta be about August 23rd or so.  I haven't had the energy to try and prepare a fake thanksgiving kind of thing, but we let the kids take the day off school, which we are spending at the swimming pool at the Speke Resort.  Once we finally got out the door.

The days keep passing on by.  Tomorrow is our rescheduled court date, so it's good that is getting closer.  The next day Mark leaves, which I am not glad is getting closer.  I wanted somewhere to enjoy his trip more.  How do you enjoy being with a person?  How do you treasure every moment with someone?

We form different relationships with different people, and maybe with some long-distance friends we have a long-distance pattern, or we have something special we always do together, or we know how to sit down and have heart-to-heart chats at every opportunity.  But that's not the relationship I have with my own husband.  Maybe it was ten years ago, when our relationship was fresh and exciting.

Now we're good at being silent together.  We're good at seeing what needs doing and setting ourselves to doing what we each do best.  We're good at sitting down to dinner, and I get things from the kitchen and he keeps the kids engaged.  We're good at talking over the things that come to our mind or bother us during the day or that we are thinking about, when it comes to our minds.  We're good at working on our separate projects, and tossing out a comment now and then, or sharing an irony we notice.  We're good at splitting bedtime up.  We're good at sleeping with our backs together, like a solid support through the darkest night.

But I guess we're not good at "making the most" of a few days' time together.  Which right now is weighing on my heart, but I also feel resentful, like we SHOULDN"T have to be good at it.  We're not meant to spend a few special days together, we have a relationship that's built to go the distance.  I couldn't spend my whole life with someone if we sat down to serious talks every moment, but I can spend my whole life with someone who is good at being silent with me.  I feel like a six-day trip with my husband is like asking a Volvo to run with the Miatas.

(And the car metaphor is in his honor, since I would never even think of car brands if he weren't around!  And I'm going to have to ask him which brand to use, actually.)

But.... I will be thankful on this Thanksgiving.  I am so thankful that we can celebrate this day as a family of five, although it would be a little easier to feel that thanks all the way down to my toes if we had a little more paperwork that meant the girls were safe in our family forever.

We spent the whole afternoon at the pool, and I love watching my children play.  They express the essence of their personalities in those moments.  Hibiscus, who has been on constant overdrive since the move and all the other disruptions, calmed down into the focus of playing and moving in the water.  By the end of the day her wild energy had been burned down to the point where she was sitting with me and her sweetness and loving heart and desire to listen and connect were right there on the surface, instead of buried under these layers of chaos that are so difficult on parents -- and everyone else, including herself.

I got the girls showered, and as we waited in the golden afternoon light, Buttercup calm in the wrap, Hibiscus sitting next to me on a pool chair: she wanted to watch some "beautiful birds," and made up a conversation for the ring-necked doves in a funny little dove-voice.  They were sisters in her mind, which I thought was an image of a central relationship in her mind (if one were bigger, it would be mama and baby, obviously!).  She was leaning on me, and then when I got out the brush she wanted to do my hair, and she waited for me to take the barrettes out and then gently and lovingly brushed my hair.  When we were ready to go, her eyes were quickly on our faces, figuring out what we wanted so she could be the best helper.  She chose to carry a heavy bag, and only released it when she realized she couldn't carry it and hold both parents' hands, which was even more important to her little heart.  Her desire to please and connect and be praised and love-love-loved is so strong and powerful, and sometimes my heart breaks for her, because her usual behavior is constantly cutting off that connection she craves so deeply.  And not only craves, but she is gifted at creating that connection -- when she isn't busy cutting it apart again.

I look forward to the next phase in our relationship, when we're not just in this constantly chaotic "what is a family, am I going to be here in the morning, how to not hit" phase.  When we can search deeper into her own self, and find the "off" button for some of her chaos.  Or Mark pointed out, we don't even need to turn it all the way off; if she could move from, say, eleven down to seven, we could all live with it.  Noise and enthusiasm make for happy kids even if the parents are a little tired; children who smash their heads into things, and as they crash their way through life whenever they careen off another body they think that person is trying to purposefully hurt them, are not happy themselves and their parents are not able to be happy with them.

Meanwhile, tonight we dared eat dinner at the resort to celebrate Thanksgiving, on the veranda overlooking a little decorative lake  We had Indian food, not turkey.  There was significant difficulty with the "stay in your seat and don't fall in the pond" rule; it was like solving a puzzle to keep all the food and drinks where the children couldn't spill them (one inch of water at a time!); and both girls started crying hysterically when the party next door set off fireworks.  As Mark pointed out, it would have been a lot more relaxing with drinks (more than an inch deep!) in our hands and significantly fewer children!  But I think it makes a statement about our family that we're taking our kids to a fancy restaurant at all:  We are saying that we think our children are beautiful and they're worth it.  We are saying that we're willing to teach them what they need to know to be successful in society.  We are saying that it's a special day and our time is most special when it's all together.

And Mark and I are saying that we're up for an adventure.  Which is something we are good at doing together!