More Bullet Points: Therapeutic (Some Surprising) Activities

To say that it's been a rough couple of months is an understatement. This is not an easy road. I'm on a Facebook support group comprised of "trauma mamas," other moms like me who are dealing with the difficulties that come with parenting children from hard places. A day doesn't go by that a mom or two or fifteen doesn't vent that she doesn't think she can handle one more day. And there are more days than I'd like to admit that I'm one of them.

So we are muddling through the best that we can, which some days is not good at all. I understand from my research that ages four, eight, 12 and 18 are significant years for the trauma beast to rear its ugly head, due to leaps in brain development and scholastic expectations. Guess who turns eight in two short weeks? Right on cue, trauma-related behaviors have exploded. My "cheat sheet" for dealing with them might as well be burned; none of it works anymore. We are in uncharted waters, trying to find a star to steer by.

A few activities have proven to be unexpectedly therapeutic. Nothing works for every family, but I figure I'll throw them out there in case they prove to be helpful to anyone else.

• Wrapping presents. Typically, we can count on anticipation-anxiety -spiraling-out-of-control negative behaviors in December. What most families find that works for them is to either have kids choose their gifts in advance so there are no surprises, open their gifts as they arrive so there are no surprises, or have no gifts under the tree at all until the arrival of Christmas morning, to reduce the amount of unwrapping-day anticipation. Having no gifts under our tree was driving T nuts. So we set up the wrapping station in his playroom and I gave him every gift I could dig out. He wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. And it was strangely calming for him. The only gifts I wrapped were for him. Other than that, he was Santa's helper for this entire family. He did a great job. I'll gladly hire him again next year.
• Rainbow Loom. This toy -- which a child uses to make bracelets, necklaces, and key rings out of little elastic rubber bands -- is simultaneously the most annoying thing ever and the best thing since sliced bread. Annoying for  the little rubber bands one finds all over one's house. Great because, like knitting and crocheting, it requires quite a bit of concentration, and concentration is brain regulating. I know this is sexist, but it's how we were raised -- all us moms are amazed that boys love the Rainbow Loom. The kids get together and teach each other new patterns. They go on YouTube to watch instructions for new designs. They compare elastic band colors and exchange bands and completed projects. It's the darnedest thing, but it works.
• Reading The One and Only Ivan, a book Grandpa K. picked out for him. I'm not sure how much Grandpa K. knew about the story line, but it is a Newberry medal award winner, and I  always look for Newberry award winners. It is about a gorilla named Ivan who was taken from his family in Africa and plopped in a tiny cage in a roadside menagerie in America. T is expressing a lot of empathy for poor Ivan and Ivan's dog and elephant friends, and the sorry lives they are leading. Warms this animal-rights mama's heart that her child thinks putting an elephant -- who should be roaming 20 or 30 miles a day -- on a four-foot chain is not a nice way to treat animals. And that animals should be living in the wild, not in a zoo. Every now and then Ivan has a brief memory of his life with his family before his world got turned upside down. Reminds me of a kid I know. One who can be spinning and twirling and jumping and flapping his arms and vocalizing squeaks and squawks and trills, but will run to get his The One and Only Ivan book and sit quietly listening to mama read it. It also gives us a chance to talk about memories and loss in a less personal and raw way. Spoiler alert -- one of Ivan's friends just died and Ivan would give all the yogurt covered raisins in the world to have a heart of ice so he wouldn't have to feel sad. Me too, Ivan, me too. 
• Opening gifts right away Christmas morning. Before breakfast, before getting dressed, before cleaning the house, before waiting for everyone to get out of bed. He's spent since before Thanksgiving anticipating this moment. We just get it over with and then we can move on with our day without on-the-minute-every-minute questioning when are we going to open presents. He's content to live within the day once that part is over. This is not about rampant consumerism; it is about anxiety and the unknown. It keeps me regulated to not have to keep him regulated. Putting on my oxygen mask first. And while I'm at it, I allowed him to unwrap his traditional Christmas Eve book sometime early in the day on Christmas Eve, after several requests from him to do so. The evening unwrapping tradition is for me and too much anticipation for him. So I threw tradition to the wind, and life was better.
• Skiing. Large motor activity. This is a kid who needs physical activity to stay regulated. And the weather around these parts heads south in mid-October, right when soccer season ends. We used to be able to count on running, but he's digging in his heels on that one right now, I think because he thinks it's something Mommy wants him to do, and his goal in life right now is in not pleasing Mommy. I still take him to the track, but he shoots hoops or kicks around a soccer ball in the infield while I run. Not without considerable complaining, I might add. But Sunday was our first day of ski club with our friends. The beauty of it is handing him over to a young male instructor who lets them ski the steepest trails and get airborne on the jumps -- stuff that wouldn't happen with Mommy, especially since I don't ski the steepest trails or do the jumps -- although I was running some bumps on Sunday -- quite the daring thing for me. Unbelievably, this is his fourth year skiing. Already. And this year, as an almost eight-year old, once lessons and lunch are over, and he's adamantly refusing to go back out for a few afternoon runs -- because that would make Mommy happy -- peer pressure kicks in and he gets talked into it by a friend. And the two Moms let them go by themselves now, for the first year -- as long as they stay on the green hill so we catch a glimpse of them from time to time, and would ski by them if they got into serious trouble -- and they had a blast. And maybe there is something about Mom not being glued to his side that is giving him the room he needs to connect once we come back together. It's counter intuitive to everything out there about attachment parenting. Keep them close. Time in. Cocoon. But there we were -- I let him roam the mountain with his friend and cranky morning child was happy afternoon child. He helped me take my boots off and buckle them up to put them back in my bag. And was a trooper about helping to get all our gear back to the car. And then rubbed my very tired feet after dinner.
• The photo album. Last year at annual post-placement report time, when we have to provide six photos along with our report to Ethiopia, I ordered a bunch of photos of T from when he was five and toothless. When they came in, I gave him as many as he had spaces left in his photo album, but that wasn't a whole lot. I didn't mention I had a ton more, in order to avoid daily begging for a new photo album. So for nearly a year, there's been a box with photos in it sitting on our never used kitchen table. This year for Christmas I got him a brand new photo album and wrapped that and the box of photos. He was less than impressed on Christmas morning. But. After the new toy excitement wore off -- which took about a week -- he wanted to start filling in his photo album with his photos. We've been sitting down for 10 - 15 minutes per night, organizing the photos by date and putting them into his album as we share memories of each one of them. He looks forward to it. It's been a connecting activity -- a rarity these days. As we went through the photos, he picked out ones to put into an album to send to his family in Ethiopia. We have finished his album and our next project will be to start on his family's album. 

A photo he chose to send to Ethiopia. It's a nice one. I think I'll have to order another one for us.

School is back in session, in fits and starts due to bad weather, and he's a little off the wall about that. We're going to hunker down and do our best to get through the transition. I have post after post after post over the years in which I state that maybe we have turned a corner. And then, not. As our attachment therapist told us back in the days of no front teeth, attachment related behaviors never go away; they just morph into something new.

So I have no delusions that any of the activities above will be healing. But they're working for us right now. So we're running with them. Eventually they won't work anymore and we'll have to figure other stuff out. I wonder how he will take to crocheting.

Postscript: After school today, T asked me if I wanted to make something on his Rainbow Loom. I'm good at embroidery and cross-stitch, but have never done well with crocheting or knitting. But I said yes. We made a bracelet with a repeating pattern of six tie-dye bands followed by six glow in the dark white bands. He's kind of jealous he never thought of that pattern. When it was finished, I told him I made it for his sister in Ethiopia. We laughed about how surprised they all will be when it glows in the dark after the sun goes down. After it was finished, he hugged me and thanked me for doing his Rainbow Loom with him. We take our victories where we can find them.