I would like to belive that all is well with Isaac, but I must admit we and he have a lot of hard emotional work to do. Yes, we have made great progress but it is like the old saying "The more you know, the less you know." The futher we come with him, the more apparent his suffering is.
Today is Veteran's Day so I am home for work. On work days I normaly am up at 5am and out the door by 5:45. Becuase I was home the boys came running into our room and we let the crawl in bed for some family time. Emerson is very used to this, but it is rare that Isaac is up early enoguh to take part. It was glaringly obvious this morning that Isaac had a huge internal struggle going on. He wanted so baddly to cuddle, to enjoy the closeness, but it was so forighn to him that he was on edge the whole time. If things became slightly uncomfortable for him he would start thrashing his arms or crying hystericaly. Back to the world of 0-60 on emotions.
Later on this morning I also caught him staring at him self in the mirror while pawing at his hair (this is his new nervous tick.) He looked at him self with such sadness that I was close to tears. My attempts to cheer him were met with resistance. My attempts to acknowldge his pain were met with resistance, a hug "NO!" walk away "NO" sad? "NO" mad "NO!" It is so hard to watch a 3.5 year old try and processes something so complicated as abandonment x 3.
His other big thing right now is that things must be on his terms. If I go to give him a hug he will sometimes push me away, two seconds latter he is crying out for a hug. If I state we should go outside and play he says no, the goes outside without me and screams at me to follow. This has got to stop. I recognize that many kids who have expereinced similar trama do this behavior, but I also know it is because they want to be in charge because in the past the adults were not worthy of the honor.
It is a lot of work for us and requires an insane amount of patience. The good news is that he does cuddle, he does make eye contact, he loves to read in the rocking chair.
With all this said, I want to let my readers know that it is national adoption month. I want you to know that there are still 145 million kids out there that need homes, I want you to know the longer it takes for their forever family to bring them home, the harder life is for them, I want you to know that it is not ok for us to forget the horors these kids face, or even worse to forget they are out there. Kids need families that love them through thick and thin, and the orphans that remanied traped through buracracy need our voice to shout out that an institution is not an acceptable alternative.
It sounds like you are peeling back the layers of the onion little by little. Your family is the right one for I to do so. What more can a child ask for than a family who has the stamina to stick with him and the love for him to learn to trust?
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