The Words Every Adoptive Mom Longs to Hear…

Like most other adoptive parents, I adopted children because I, selfishly, wanted children. (My theory was if I had children to care for, I really didn’t have a lot of extra time to clean the house. I would rather care for a child than mop the floor…) An adoptive parent should never think their child who is adopted is beholden to them. The child didn’t choose to be born into their circumstances, and they certainly didn’t ask to be adopted. And I have had more than my share of emotionally unstable children, (aren’t all teenagers unstable anyway?) and never expected them to be happy about my choice to adopt them, (or at least not to express that feeling.)

But I was wrong. I went to Marie’s award ceremony at school today. Most parents didn’t go, it was during the day and I’m sure it was hard for them to get off work. It was hard for me to get off work, too, and I will have to work on the weekend to make up for it, but I went because I wanted to support Marie, who had been doing phenomenally in school. Marie didn’t know I was coming, and she was sooooooooo excited! She ran over, gave me a big, wet, on the lips kiss, and put her head on my shoulder while she hugged me tightly. She was genuinely happy to see me, (and not just because she knew I would take her out for ice cream after the ceremony.) She dragged me to all of her friends, and announced to them in American Sign Language something that made my heart stop and tears come to my eyes. She said, “This is my mom. She wasn’t my real mom when she adopted me when I was 7 years old, and at first I didn’t like her, but she made me feel safe and she gave me food and clothes. Now I love her very much and she is my real mom because now I have a happy life and I know I will have a happy future. And someday I will have babies and make her a grandmother!” I am her mom, indeed!

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To read about our traumatic early years together, please purchase my book, The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids with Disabilities and Remaining Sane on Amazon.

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“If You Look for the Goodness in Your Children, Good Things Will Happen”

My dear friends and readers,

Please excuse this commercial interruption of your regular reading.

If you enjoy reading my blog, you will LOVE reading my book!

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane
Authored by Linda Petersen

(Review by Dawn Raffel from Readers Digest:)
Her story begins not with her children but with her own childhood spent traveling the country in the backseat of her parents’ car (her perpetually restless dad had post-traumatic stress disorder from WWII), often with very little money and few provisions. Where someone else might have seen deprivation and isolation, Petersen viewed her unusual childhood with a sense of wonder and gratitude. After marrying young and giving birth to a son who was legally blind (and who went on to earn a PhD on full scholarship), Petersen and her husband adopted four more special needs children and fostered many others. Each child has their own special story about overcoming tremendous physical and emotional difficulties in order to be able to succeed and enjoy life. Her honesty, wit, and terrific storytelling make this a book you want to read rather than one you feel you should read.

The link to the book:
https://www.createspace.com/5321986?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

Thanks sooooo much! Happy reading!

She Looks Just Like Me!

My children who are adopted are of mixed races, which has instigated a lot of joking over the years about how much we are like each other.

Three of my children have brown eyes, just like me! Two have blue eyes, just like their dad! Amazing, just like each other!

All of us love ice cream, especially cookie dough! What are the odds?

Swimming is something we have in common, (mostly because we live on a lake.) Dinora was able to swim by the age of 18 months old. She used to jump off the side in the deep end of the community pool with me. Everyone kept saying it was dangerous being so deep. But she was so tiny that even if she jumped off the lower end she wouldn’t be able to touch the bottom, so what was the difference. All of my children are natural swimmers.

Three of my children are creature lovers, anything from earth worms to boa constrictors to the every day dog, cats and bunnies.

With the exception of me and their dad, everyone loves scary movies. (Don’t know where they got THAT from, I hide under the pillow and shake if I even hear an eerie chord.)

With all of these similarities, of COURSE we are related! And so we have built MY family…

Now they are building theirs. Francis has a one year old daughter who looks JUST LIKE HIM, (minus the vision impairment!) Dinora has a young daughter who looks JUST LIKE HER, (with the exception of reddish hair, taking after her Irish dad.) And now Steven has a baby daughter who looks JUST LIKE HIM! All of the similarities we fostered as a family cannot compare to the fact that their flesh and blood look similar to them. But that is not what they focus on. They continue to bond over similarities…Steven’s daughter really loves animals and strawberries, she MUST be his daughter! And Dinora’s daughter is a little diva, enjoying make-up and nail polish, (so much like her diva mom.) Francis’s daughter loves vanilla pudding! And MUSIC! Go figure!

The truth is, family is not what is built by flesh and blood, but by common interests, tastes, and a whole lot of love. Of COURSE we are all related, we are a family!

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The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane
Authored by Linda Petersen
The link to the book:
https://www.createspace.com/5321986?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

We Had a Rockin’ New Years Eve with the Three Stooges!

Celebrating New Year’s Eve with the children has always been a challenge. They have different tastes and interests. It is especially difficult with Marie because she is deaf. Movies are okay for her with closed captioning, but she only has a first grade reading level, so most of the words are beyond her understanding.

On Christmas day hubby hit the jackpot. Our oldest son, Francis, bought him the entire collection of the Three Stooges! We took advantage of this thoughtful gift on New Year’s Eve. The whole family sat around the television, gourmet pizza in hand, and apple juice as our simulated alcoholic drink. And we watched the Three Stooges. For HOURS. From 2014 to 2015. Their slapstick humor, so completely socially inappropriate now, was so funny that we doubled over with laughter and tears ran down our cheeks. THE WHOLE FAMILY! ESPECIALLY MARIE!!!!! Near the end of the evening, Marie, who had been sitting on the couch next to her dad, leaned over and put her head on his shoulder and her arms around his robust body. Almost afraid to move lest he scare her away, he gently put his arm around her, and looked at me and smiled. This child, who has a serious attachment disorder and from whom affection has been doled out in minuscule doses, was cuddling with her dad!

Afterwards, when we were all laughed out and the morning was near, one by one we reluctantly sauntered off to bed. While hubby and I were cuddling before allowing sleep to take over, hubby began to cry. “Did you see how Marie cuddled with me?” he asked. “It was the best night of my life.”

Yes. Yes it was!

The Truth about Reactive Attachment Disorder

I witnessed a conversation with the sister of a boy who had been adopted at the age of 2 years old after being abused by his biological parents. As an adult “he has always been in trouble with the law and has been in jail.” Upon hearing this, a deep sorrow enveloped me. I have such empathy for that child, having three of my own adopted at a later age. It was with a sweet naiveté that I had them join our family, believing that love can cure all. Despite our family’s best efforts, love did NOT cure all. To pretend that it did does a disservice to all of those families living with similar children. As brightly as I may portray our family, (and they ARE wonderful children whom I have never regretted adopting,) they have serious disabilities when it comes to social norms. They have reactive attachment disorder.
To quote from Wikipedia, “RAD arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood. Such a failure could result from severe early experiences of neglect, abuse, abrupt separation from caregivers between the ages of six months and three years, frequent change of caregivers, or a lack of caregiver responsiveness to a child’s communicative efforts. The AACAP guidelines state that children with reactive attachment disorder are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal models for relating to others”
I have worked hard to form attachments to my three youngest children, and, while I like to think that I am a “normal” mom to them, I have to admit that they may have difficulty controlling lying without remorse, stealing just because they want something, or acting out if they do not “get their way”. My son who has autism and RAD has always acted out, kicking the occasional hole in the wall or breaking a window. Such behavior can be tolerated as a child, but when that child becomes a young adult, such behavior is considered “domestic abuse” and “vandalism”. My youngest daughter with RAD sometimes would see something she likes in Walmart and slip it into her pocket, thus necessitating a trip to the manager to give it back. I like to think that such life lessons have sunk in, but I cannot guarantee that, as a adult, she wouldn’t resume just taking things she wants. My kiddos with RAD are chronic liars. I can tell they are lying by the vast amount of details in their stories. They didn’t just lose a school book on the way home, a masked man followed them all the way home, hid out behind the maple tree, jumped out at them when a car drove by and stole their book to use as material to start their fire. Their stories, which they steadfastly stick with, are creative and imaginative and complete lies, and lying is a typical behavior of a child with RAD.
I am convinced that their brains are wired differently. As infants and toddlers, they were not able to form emotional attachments with caregivers in order to feel secure. When their little brains were forming, and those energy cells which would turn into concepts of how the world works, theirs determined they could not count on anyone but themselves. They can be self-centered, unfazed by conventional ideas of right and wrong, and often willing to do anything to get what they want.
Dealing with such children is a life long challenge. I have done a fair job of instilling right and wrong in my children, not because they really believe in right and wrong but because, by habit, that is how we behave in our family. Yes, they love me, but let another “parent” come by who offers them a kitten, and their love will quickly switch. (True story…my daughter almost went to live with a strange couple who tried to kidnap her by promising her a kitten!) Having the social skills to have real friends eludes them. RAD is a devastating disability which affects all aspects of their lives.
My heart goes out to all of those children out there who were unloved in their early years. It is NOT something they can just “get over”. I see people on tv who are arrested for this and that, and I hear their stories. 9 times out of 10, they were abused or unloved as children. I am convinced the loss of that initial security forever causes a permanent rift in the psyche that is contrary to the “norm”. To expect them not to be affected is naive.
Consequentially, a large percentage of people in prison were abused or neglected as young children, and I grieve their loss of “normal” lives, forever damned to seclusion from society as the result of their initial inability to form secure relationships in a loving family.
I apologize…this post is so unlike me, but I felt the need to discuss the issue.
Please join me in listening to my favorite song by clicking on the “Song by JJ Heller”. It is a song that addresses this very issue with a love that I feel in my heart. I hope you feel it also…

If you have time, please listen to my favorite song, “Love Me”, by JJ Heller. I have included the words. It never ceases to bring tears to my eyes…

Song by JJ Heller

“Love Me”

He cries in the corner where nobody sees
He’s the kid with the story no one would believe
He prays every night, “Dear God won’t you please
Could you send someone here who will love me?”

Who will love me for me
Not for what I have done or what I will become
Who will love me for me
‘Cause nobody has shown me what love
What love really means

Her office is shrinking a little each day
She’s the woman whose husband has run away
She’ll go to the gym after working today
Maybe if she was thinner
Then he would’ve stayed
And she says:

Who will love me for me?
Not for what I have done or what I will become
Who will love me for me?
‘Cause nobody has shown me what love, what love really means

He’s waiting to die as he sits all alone
He’s a man in a cell who regrets what he’s done
He utters a cry from the depths of his soul
“Oh Lord, forgive me, I want to go home”

Then he heard a voice somewhere deep inside
And it said
“I know you’ve murdered and I know you’ve lied
I have watched you suffer all of your life
And now that you’ll listen, I’ll tell you that I…”

I will love you for you
Not for what you have done or what you will become
I will love you for you
I will give you the love
The love that you never knew

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The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane
Authored by Linda Petersen
The link to the book:
https://www.createspace.com/5321986?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

For Sentimental, Sappy Souls

On Columbus Day, my husband and I spent a wonderful day just driving around and enjoying the autumn scenery. I don’t know about you, but I seem to have an unusual sensitivity to the beauty in nature, and was once again overwhelmed by the beauty of the bright white and yellow streaks of sun streaming down through the white puffy clouds. Such a sight always encourages me as if reinforcing the fact that yes, there are clouds, and yes there may be rain, but that sun is still up there in the sky, overseeing it all, just waiting to break through and make things better. As an added visual treat, the sun shone so brightly on the tapestry of peak autumn leaves: oranges, reds and yellows, that I felt a need to wear my sunglasses, but with them on I would not be able to fully appreciate the effect of the over-the-top, gasp inducing colors. No photo, piece of artwork or beautifully sung song could have replicated the intensity of happiness that brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.
My husband and I sat, holding hands as he drove. There was no need to say anything. We were at peace, pleased to have such a respite after a hectic week of raising children and dealing with problems. We were in our own beautiful bubble, cell phones turned off so as not to ruin the interlude. It was a wonderful day!
Upon pulling into the driveway of our home, I spotted the two small maple trees which Marie had planted a few years ago. She had excitedly dug them up when they were fragile saplings with broken branches, and planted one on each side of the driveway. She had added gravel at the base of each, and attached a tall, straight, thin stick to keep them growing upright. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed them before. I had NOTICED them, of course, but I had never really SEEN them. They had grown to be about four feet tall, straight and strong. My breath stuck in my throat as the brilliant, bright yellow leaves danced happily in the gentle breeze. They were a growing metaphor for my daughter, blossoming and beautiful and holding the promise of a bright future in their little yellow leaves. Despite once being fragile and broken, they would grow tall and amazing and fit perfectly in this world, reassuring me that my daughter, who was also once fragile and broken, would grow tall and amazing and fit perfectly in this world.

A Miracle on St. Patrick’s Day!

Okay, so the picture above is unflattering, blurry and goofy.  But do you see the miracle?  My daughter, a TEENAGER, for whom Reactive Attachment Disorder has been a major diagnosis, is willingly KISSING me!!!!! It has to be a miracle!  And my heart is happy and full on this Saint Patrick’s Day…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Link to my book

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-apple-tree/id538572206?mt=11

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane

Link to the Readers Digest review of my book:  http://www.rd.com/recommends/what-to-read-after-a-hurricane/