This past week has been a whirlwind of complicated issues with us. Tomorrow is Corbin's 2nd birthday, the 2nd anniversary of the day he died, the day our world was crushed and changed forever. Clearly that is difficult, the level of emotions in our home is high. The kids didn't know it was coming, until I told them - they really didn't have any reaction to it, other than "oh, that's sad. mom are you going to start crying all the time again?" that is pretty much what they associate with Corbin, mom and dad crying. Sad.
Adrian is the other reason this house has been living in crisis mode. Adrian has been completely and utterly out of control. Living with Adrian is like living with a variety of natural disasters. I am not calling him a natural disaster, but I am calling his behavior that. Sometimes he appears to be having fun and following rules, then you turn your back and instantly another child starts screaming that Adrian did something to them. Adrian, of course, denies this. When Adrian denies something he doesn't just say, "no, I didn't do that". He starts screaming, cursing, flopping his arms around, throwing toys, throwing children (Noah happened to be "in his way" during one of these rages) and doing a myriad of other inappropriate behavior. Adrian has also been doing this when told "no" or when being told to stop doing something. Of course he doesn't do it every time - but he is doing it a lot. He did this the other day at school, on the play ground with his entire class watching. His teacher watched him pick up a large stick and whip it way up into the air - she watched it with her own eyes - no mistake that he did it. When called out on this he completely flipped out and started raging at his teacher. She said she has never seen a child flip like that. She said it was so clear that he was completely unable to control himself or stop himself. She said it went on for about 5 minutes before she was able to get him to sit on the bench. He sat on the bench for the rest of the time. His teacher said he glared at her with more hatred than she has ever seen and mumbled mean things under his breath. She said luckily there weren't any children near because she was fearful of him really hurting someone. She said the other children were terrified. The kids in his class are already scared of him, because when he is mad he tells them he is going to rip their teacher's head off and that he hates her and plenty of other mean and scary things. The other kids pretty much steer clear of him, thankfully, otherwise someone really could have been hurt on Tuesday. When it was time to go inside Adrian was clearly still dysregulated so the teacher dropped him off in the school social workers office, he continued his out of control behavior in there. he spent quite a bit of time screaming at her, telling her she needed to turn the tv on for him - or do some other thing for him. It was lunch time, clearly Adrian was not in any state to go into a busy lunch room. So someone brought him his tray to eat in there. After about 90 minutes the social worker said he was calm enough to re-enter the classroom. So his little rage session lasted about 2 hours. He is 6, what will this look like when he is 9, or 13 or even scarier 18?
Living with a tornado is tough. I am not complaining, just trying to get more people to understand what it is like to live with a child so greatly affected by trauma. So affected that no matter how much we love him, it is still so very scary for him. As a mom, it is very difficult to love a child who, at this time, does not have the ability to love me back. I know he likes us, our family, I know he doesn't want to be anywhere else. But, at the same time, living here in a loving family is so very terrifying for him. Adrian has some big scary demons that he needs to learn how to let go of, or control. Right now those demons are controlling him and we are in need of some serious help. Adrian's siblings are scared of him right now. They will play with him when he is happy and controlling himself - but when he starts to loose it, they all flinch and run for cover. That is hard to see, it is difficult to watch 1 child have such an effect on my other children. It. is. hard.
I continue to have a lot of hope for Adrian, for his future. But, I can also recognize that right now we cannot do this alone. He needs more help, we need more help. We cannot continue to help him heal when our minute to minute interactions are filled with so much stress and crisis. Here is a good example; I am a stay at home mom. I spend my days with my children. Adrian spends Monday through Friday at school. His bus picks him up at 7:30 and drops him off at 3:30. I have 8 hours of non-crisis. usually some of that time is spent communicating with Adrian's psychologist, pediatrician, teacher, principal or someone else. Some of that time is spent putting out the fires that Adrian lights in his other environments. By about 2:30 I start to get a headache, by about 3:00 i have a stomach ache. Every. Single. Day. I am anxious about him getting home. Anxious about what kind of mood he is coming home in. Anxious about what kind of night we are going to have. I have started to really try to do some calming techniques for myself, to be as calm as I possibly can when he walks through that door. I am trying to be as positive and hopeful as possible. Hoping that my positive attitude will eventually, one day, rub off on him.
We are now headed in to see Adrian's psychologist, hoping she has some options for us. We need options and we need them fast. Trent and I are leaving tomorrow to attend a conference for parents of children from trauma and children with RAD. We are excited for this conference. We are hopeful that we will be able to learn something and make some connections with other parents. Some badly needed connections. We are also nervous - what will the weekend look like for the amazing person caring for our 4 older children (Stella is coming with us). Hoping answers are about to be placed in front of us.
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