In search of the trigger

The word “no” meant “rejection” and suggested disapproval of him to his very core.

Read more: http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/autism-and-meltdowns-search-trigger-393478934#ixzz1ZeAtN2Vl

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.

Don't be fooled by the face I wear

for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,

masks that I'm afraid to take off,

and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,

but don't be fooled,

for God's sake don't be fooled.

I give you the impression that I'm secure,

that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well

as without,

that confidence is my name and coolness my game,

that the water's calm and I'm in command

and that I need no one,

but don't believe me.

My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,

ever-varying and ever-concealing.

Beneath lies no complacence.

Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.

But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.

That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,

a nonchalant sophisticated facade,

to help me pretend,

to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,

and I know it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance,

if it's followed by love.

It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,

from my own self-built prison walls,

from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.

It's the only thing that will assure me

of what I can't assure myself,

that I'm really worth something.

But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,

will not be followed by love.

I'm afraid you'll think less of me,

that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.

I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing

and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,

with a facade of assurance without

and a trembling child within.

So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,

and my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.

I tell you everything that's really nothing,

and nothing of what's everything,

of what's crying within me.

So when I'm going through my routine

do not be fooled by what I'm saying.

Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,

what I'd like to be able to say,

what for survival I need to say,

but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.

I don't like playing superficial phony games.

I want to stop playing them.

I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me

but you've got to help me.

You've got to hold out your hand

even when that's the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes

the blank stare of the breathing dead.

Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,

each time you try to understand because you really care,

my heart begins to grow wings--

very small wings,

very feeble wings,

but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling

you can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me,

how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--

of the person that is me

if you choose to.

You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,

you alone can remove my mask,

you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,

from my lonely prison,

if you choose to.

Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.

It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach to me

the blinder I may strike back.

It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man

often I am irrational.

I fight against the very thing I cry out for.

But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls

and in this lies my hope.

Please try to beat down those walls

with firm hands but with gentle hands

for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?

I am someone you know very well.

For I am every man you meet

and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn

September 1966

Picking up The Pieces

Our family has been through some pretty difficult challenges this past week, and I figured that now was a good time to jump back in here and get back to my blog that I've abandoned for nearly a year. Who knows what new roads are ahead for us, but I feel the need to bring our latest challenge here and preserve it - so that hopefully one day we can look back and say that THAT was what life was like... THAT was what we overcame... and so that other families facing similar challenges will know that they are not alone. They will know not to give up hope.. even when things are at their very worst.

We had to do the unthinkable last week - we committed our 9 year old child to a mental health hospital. We left him at the children's hospital psych ward last Monday night, and turned his care over to strangers and let go of every bit of parental authority and control we had.. It's a well respected facility, but still, this broke our hearts to be forced to do this. He really got out of control so much so that he became a danger to himself and to us. He asked us to take him, so he recognized that he needed help. He said - during a lucid moment on the way to the hospital - that he is afraid that he can't control himself. Then he sobbed all the way to the hospital - but quietly so we wouldn't hear him. He looked so sad, small and scared as we told him goodnight that first night, and knowing he'd not be coming home with us, but he tried to be brave. It was devastating.

We visited him every day, and slowly he replaced the broken, depressed little boy, with one who was happy and more confident and in control. We visited him every day for dinner time, and we also had 2 family counseling sessions while he was there. Dallas now has 2 shiny new diagnoses: PPD NOS and reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The previous DX of bipolar I has been changed to mood disorder NOS, and they now added a new med - Celexa, and discontinued the Topamax. They believe that side effects of the Topamax he was on were causing some behavior disturbances. He was in the safest place to try this, so we agreed. The therapist also used EMDR therapy to try and get him to work though some of the grief and trauma issues. I am glad he was in the hospital for that. It was a very emotional and painful process for him.

They also worked on behavior goals, anger management, nutrition and self care skills. All in all, it was a very painful, but at the same time, a positive experience for all of us. But most especially Dallas. We are extremely proud of him. He faced a lot of his demons head on - alone - and he met the challenge. He finally came home today and we are so happy to have our son back.

This road to healing is not going to be a stroll down Easy street, but now we have more tools to rise to the challenge. I am so very proud of my son.

<3

Welcome to the Club

To my friends with special needs kids -- Here is a blog entry that will probably leave you speechless, and maybe like me, in tears. Does it speak to your heart too?

Saving Vanessa

This story breaks my heart. I've been down this same road. It still hurts so, so bad.

As for me and mine, I'll be back soon for a personal update from the trenches. Life has been one out of control roller coaster. Mama needed a break from both living it and writing about it. KWIM?

My God...

Mom and grandma send adoptive son, 7, back to Russia...alone.




They should both be prosecuted.

Another scandal over adopted Russian child in US

Tag cloud: Russia, children, Society, Commentary, World, Pavel Astakhov

9.04.2010, 15:36

Another scandalous case, concerning a child who was adopted by an American citizen, has triggered a new wave of anger in Russia. A 8-year-old boy, Artyom Savelyev, who does not speak Russian, has arrived in Russia from the USA alone with a note, saying that his adoptive mother had disowned him.

This outrageous case is not the first one in a long chain of abusive acts against Russian children, who were adopted by foreigners. But the Russian Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, who is currently finding out the details of this barbarous case, says he does not remember that such an act of cynicism - meaning that a little child was sent back alone across the ocean - has ever occurred before:

"The boy had with him only a covering letter, saying the adoptive mother was giving up her the adoption rights because she did not want to destroy herself, her family and her relationships, as she says".

Artyom's adoptive mother was a single woman, Torry Ann Hansen from the State of Tennessee. Both diplomats and journalists are trying to contact her now, aiming to find out what were the motives of her deed. As is known, the boy has arrived in Russia on a United Company flight. Protecting its passengers' interests, the company is providing no information about those who were on board, but says that all the procedures necessary for children traveling alone, or Unaccompanied Minor Service, were observed. A person, Artyom Savelyev was not acquainted with, met him in Moscow. He was found through the Internet, and he received 200 dollars for bringing the boy to the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.

In an interview for the Voice of Russia psychologist - Academician Sergei Klyuchnikov from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences - explains the possible motives for the action that was committed by the adoptive mother of Artyom Savelyev:

"Probably, the child proved to be a problematic one. I do not rule out that our services did not tell her frankly that the child had some problems, but she herself should have shown her will, attention and interest, and to weigh her own strength. The fact that the child was sent back demonstrates that a person - in this case, Torry Ann Hansen - has taken such a serious act as an adoption as an ordinary purchase and returned the boy, as if he were simply goods she did not like".

Artyom Savelyev lived in the USA under the name of Justin Hansen for 6 months. Earlier he was an inmate in an orphanage in Partizansk in the Maritime Territory in Russia. And most likely, he will have to return there. So much the better, because cruelties of adults to children are never justified.

According to the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, 16 Russian children have died over the past 17 years through the fault of foreign adoptive parents. Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and the deputies of the United Russia faction defend the toughening of the foreign adoption procedure. Likewise, a number of experts insist on the strengthening of control of Russian children, adopted by foreigners. Regrettably, for the time being such a practice does not exist in Russia. We receive nice accounts with spectacular photos of happy children. And then we learn that the children were beaten and humiliated or that they were treated like animals there.

Time will be needed for both Russia and America to study all the particulars of the difficult case of Artyom Savelyev as people in the USA are also angered with the behaviour of the adoptive mother of the young boy.

Source: Voice of Russia.

The unlucky Baker's Dozen eggs

Our Easter bunny always hides a dozen plastic eggs in our front yard. (easier to make sure all are accounted for). Some are stuffed with candy, and some with money. This morning Dallas only found 11 eggs, since the Easter Bunny apparently had had too many glasses of wine and couldn't remember where she planted all the eggs the night before. Bad bunny!

Our son looked and looked - and we helped him - and he was getting extremely upset - nearing meltdown stage - that he couldn't find #12 but wouldn't give up looking. So being the quick-thinking mom and dad we are, we ducked in the house and grabbed a spare plastic egg that we thankfully had leftover. I asked my hubby for some change or a dollar bill to slip inside, but he only had big bills, and NO change. So he quickly dug in his wallet and handed me the smallest bill he had - a $5 bill to stuff inside. 8-/ Yeah, the Tooth Fairy has gone down that road too... but I digress...

My hubby walked back out with the egg hidden in his pocket, and quietly planted the egg in an easy to find spot, and it was found. It was dubbed the "Golden Egg" and all was right with the world... at least until later on today, when Dallas found egg #13...

Then all hell broke loose, but I'll save the rest of the story and our Easter Day Disaster update for another day. I'm just too tired to rehash it all right now. So much to catch up on here over the last month anyway, but suffice to say things have been extremely difficult lately. Today did end calmly and peacefully however, and with a hug, a kiss and big bouquet of flowers for Mom from my little guy, which my son insisted he had to buy for me when he and his dad went to the store. My son knows when he's gone over the line, and he's feels real remorse when he does. For that, and for these gestures of love, I am very thankful.

Happy Easter everyone!