The Crew - Miss Fabulous, Lil Bro, Big Sis and Mr. Man

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Bunny Necklace



In harmony with Mondays post where I got a little negative mentioned things had been going so well with Miss M the bottom was likely to drop out at any moment, well... the bottom has not fallen out of our happy wagon but we did have a bump in the road Tuesday morning. It was just one of those mornings where Miss M woke up and from the time her eyes opened her world was not right.

She came really close to raging over a necklace, cause it's always a really important issue that she gets angry about. You know bunny necklace equals fight for my rights and rage against my family! ?

Big Sis went to the dentist Monday and got a treasure out of the box. She also got a reward for each of her siblings because she is kind like that. The reward that she choose for herself was a bunny necklace that was almost exactly like one that Miss M has.

Miss M tends to not really care about possessions unless she has taken them from someone else acquired them on her own or she feels that someone else has something that she doesn't have or that someone else has something that she should have or something that is perceived as her's. These are of course issues that we work on, on an ongoing basis with her. Goodness look how many times on is in that sentence. What does it mean???


I digress; in the past acquiring things on her own was quiet an issue. That has improved greatly. She kind of came to accept what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine. She began to respect not going into other's room without permission and supervision. The acquiring greatly decreased. However, she has remained possessive of things that are her's. This is not uncommon in children who have lived in orphanage environments where nothing is theirs ever. Good Lord even the baby photo album that I attached to her crib at the orphanage with baby links disappeared. It was pictures of us, her family. Who would want that???

Anyway, now that I have taken you back in time and you have likely seen the need to grab a cup of coffee as you read on, back to Tuesday morning and the bunny necklace. So on this already struggling morning seeing Big Sis with the necklace that she perceived was her necklace was indeed the straw that broke the camels back. Miss M went off about Big Sis taking her necklace.

I would like to give a BIG shout out to Big Sis who handled the situation B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L.L.Y! If she had not handled things in the way she did the betting odds that Miss M would have raged are real favorable! I am talking place some big money on that horse and sign those papers on that summer home in the Keys cause you be a winner!
Big Sis remained calm and explained, "This is not your necklace Miss M. I got this necklace at the dentist office yesterday." She left a screaming Miss M who was exclaiming, "Yes it is my necklace ...." and she went directly into her room and found Miss M's bunny necklace. She handed the screaming Miss M her bunny necklace and said, "There you go." And proceeded to head to the kitchen where she helped Mr. C get his breakfast.

If she had not handled the situation like a therapeutic professional CHAMP, Miss M would no doubt have lost it to the unrecoverable degree. More often than not Big Sis is true to her pre-puberty hormonal age and not a therapeutic professional and as a 10 year old would lose it herself. But it was so awesome to see that the training all the way around for both Miss M and the siblings is sticking in some way some of the time because they do know how to better handle situations sometimes.

Last week I mentioned there had been an incident that I would post about after talking to the professionals. I am going to be vague because of the situation itself. I did address the whole thing with our CBA yesterday during his visit. Again Big Sis was the sibling involved and when the offender approached her she did absolutely the right thing by saying, "NO!" and coming to an adult immediately.
I was the adult and I reassured Big Sis that she had done the absolute right thing and that I would address the situation with the other child. I went to the other child and I am proud to report I did not indulge in the freak out factor that was present with in me. I was level emotionally and conducted the conversation in normal speak like "what's up?" I asked the other child why Big Sis had said no to them. The other child said, "I don't know" with those I don't want to talk about this and can I get out of talking about this eyes. I said, "Well tell me why you think Big Sis said no."

For one thing I never take for granted that Big Sis could have misinterpreted what happened and that it wasn't really intended in that way. Okay so I really hoped that was the case. But the other child stated them self what had happened just the way Big Sis had reported it. So I took that opportunity to remind that child about appropriate and not appropriate behavior and choices. There was a dramatic attention-seeking cry. I remained loving but did not feed into the attention seeking and we went about the evening routine of dressing for bed and picking out a snack. The attention seeking show quickly ended and the evening went on as normal.

On Monday during our evening family time where we discuss spiritual matters and look up scriptures together we used that time to address the subject but not any person in particular, absolutely no finger pointing. That went well and was a good safety lesson/reminder for the other kids. Sadly I could tell that Miss M made no connection to the discussion and what had occurred a few days earlier. Nan commented the same observation to me privately saying, "She absolutely did not get that what we were talking about had anything to do with what happened the other day."

The professional advised that we had handled it appropriately and that we definitely needed to maintain the security features that we have in place regarding two adults at all times and supervised play, etc. We are also going to mention it to the pedi-Psychiatrist when we have our appointment at the end of the month.

The CBA feels confident that we have safety in place and that everyone is safe as long as we maintain this. He said that since the aftercare program has tightened up the supervision there that was positive and that since Miss M so far consistently displays different behavior at school from at home behavior hopefully we won't see that kind of thing at school. Obviously that would be a whole other kind of problem.

So we just keep moving forward in healing and focus on safety at the same time.  Life isn't easy but it is worth it.

3 comments:

jessica bear said...

Wow, heavy stuff, Dawn! I'm so proud of you...did you ever think when we were teenagers that your life would be like this? I think about that sometimes...how life is such a big cycle...anyway, just look at what an awesome life Miss M, Mr C and E have now, thanks to you and Jeremy (and Nanny!)! And they will see that when they get older and look at you and tell you one day just how much they appreciate your sacrifices and unconditional love and support...it IS all worth it!

jessica bear said...

Oh-I meant to add:
Love You Guys!
(((HUGS)))

Mom 4 Kids said...

Thank you Jess! No I never thought my life would be like this. It is worth it!