language disorders and other facts of life

It's widely known that Thomas has a language disorder.  It affects the way he hears, interprets and relays information he hears or sees.  When he was 5 and in pre-K  his teacher asked us to have him tested for ADD/ADHD.  I found an assessment center and had him tested only to be told he did not have ADD/ADHD, but instead had Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder.

We kind of always knew something was weird in the way he reacted to social cues.  For instance, he never understood the fact that someone could be laughing with him and not AT him.  He'd get all pissy, stomp his feet and yell.  We also could tell that he was very verbal from a young age, but never realized his speech, while articulate, was mere parroting.  He also struggled with some sensory issues that affected his ability to eat foods with different textures and to deal with/ process outside stimuli such as large, loud settings or needing to sleep with a pile of heavy blankets on him.

Thomas worked his butt off to reach age appropriate goals in Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy.  He learned how to add content to his speech, how to extract information from his brain and articulate it, and how to 'read' social cues.  Perhaps the social aspect was the hardest.  It was interesting to see how Madison just innately got social inferences and facial expressions and yet Thomas had to be taught how to read someones facial emotions.  Weird.  My hat's off to Thomas for his diligent work over the course of 5 years in therapies.  While some social situations remain elusive to Thomas, he now is able to understand social parameters and gets when someone...or himself....are behaving outside of normal standards.  This is a huge accomplishment.

Even though he has graduated from Speech and OT, I still see areas of struggles.  The other day he had a really nice kid over to play.  He has been friends with this kid for 6 years and while I see that his friend is maturing at a faster pace than Thomas, I also see that Thomas notices it and strives to behave in an age appropriate manner.  Thomas works so hard to behave in an acceptable manner that is physically and mental whoops him.  When his friend went home, Thomas crashed.  He had a melt-down and was drained.  How sad that he has to work so hard to maintain friendships and social parameters. 

What's super sad about his language disorder is that his appearance to the world is 100%  average.  He doesn't wear a physical sign that tells the world he struggles with some issues.  There are times I want to hang a sandwich board sign around his neck that announces his struggles.  I worry as he gets older that the expectations of life get more demanding, he will be so frustrated that he won't be able to function.  I'd love to know why he has this struggle, but I guess it relates to the poor start he was given in life in utero.  My anger at the exposures he was subjected to even before his first breath is immeasurable.  I'm not angry at him.  I'm angry at his birthmom, but that is irrelevant now since she passed away.  I'm left to guide my son to successful adulthood: one where he can navigate the world of social situations and one where he must learn to voice his thoughts in articulate, clearly understandable  language.

While I know his struggles with life skills, he is greatly adept and trying to hide them from outside people.  My heart ached from laughter and from pain when I overheard this conversation with his friend while driving him home.  The comedy of errors began when Thomas' friend answered a question I asked him.
Me: Chris, isn't that you're cousin's house?
Chris: Which one?
Me: Your cousin, Jane.
Chris: Hmmmmm, that name rings a bell.
Thomas: What bell?
Chris: The lunch bell, idiot!

Chris is a wonderful kid, so don't get me wrong here.  It was just so sad to see that Thomas couldn't follow the simple conversation and grasp the social slang of 'ring a bell'.  Thomas is a very social kid and loves to be surrounded by friends, but finds it exhausting and now even he can see when he has failed to grasp a social cue or language inference.  He is still able to laugh off his faux pas but I wonder how it must feel to know he missed yet another simple, social cue? 

Picture this...

The scene played out in the hallway on the third floor of the Federal Building in Bismarck, where Marc has his main office.  He had just left his office and ran into a man that works down the hall as an assistant United States Attorney.  Marc knows this guy casually and has never had a long conversation with this guy before yesterday.

Marc said that this guy initiated small talk about some governmental law involving drugs.  Marc acknowledged he knew about this new law and that's when this guy shoved not just his foot, but his whole damn leg into his mouth.  This guy told Marc he couldn't say what he was going to tell Marc in his office (United States Attorney's Office), but for some reason, he 'knew' he could tell Marc.  He then proceeded to enlighten Marc that this knew law was "A black thing, because of Obama and that's what brother's do."  He then added that drug addiction was also a "Black thing." 

That's when Marc said, "Hey, you know what?  I have 4 black kids!"  He said the look on his face was that of someone being punched in the belly and all the air escaping leaving them suffocating and drooling.  That's when the guy started checking his watch and saying he had to run, but not before Marc enlightened him in the ways of his ignorance.  Marc has a little more diplomacy and eloquence in his 'chats' than I do and I am sure this guy walked away not even sure he had been made to feel ignorant, but feeling justifiably embarrassed by his gross behavior.

What bugs me most about this situation is that this man is an attorney representing the United States government.  He has a picture of President Obama in the office where he works as does Marc.  It's part of the respect that is given to the Commander in Chief of our country.  This guy may not like Obama's policies, but he needs to be respectful and keep the derogatory slurs to himself.  Hey, Marc wasn't wild about Bush as president, yet when his picture hung in his office in the Federal Building, Marc was respectful of the man and the position he held. 

I guess this butt-hole guy showed his true colors of bigotry and racism with what he said to Marc in the halls of the Federal Building.  I wonder how unbiased and open-minded he would be if he was prosecuting a young black man accused of drug crimes?  I'm willing to bet, he would exhibit all the politically correct statements in public, and behind closed doors, berate and belittle ALL black people with the stroke of a broad brush and paint them all as stupid, unemployed dope dealers. 

It's 2011 people.  What's with judging people merely by the amount of pigment in their skin?  Judge people based on their actions, not by their appearance. 

Poop

This is not a post about fecal matter, rather a post about my feelings.  We heard back from GLA and found out that the two little girls from Jeremie are NOT Richnigthder's little sisters.  I was so hoping that there were and we could bring them home and Richnigthder could grow up with his birth siblings.

Alas, they are not. Having faith in my heart that God knows best, I will continue to pray that his birthfamily is safe from the EQ that occured so very long ago now and that if they bring anymore beloved children to a creche, God leads them to us.  I have room  in my heart and home and pray that God leads us to whatever child is meant to be with us in his wisdom. 

It's a small world though, as the guy that emailed me back from GLA has a wife named Cheryl who will be an Orlando Chick next March.  Amazing how tiny this little planet is in reality!

Tick tock, tick tock

We are counting down the days until our dear friends the Watkins family and the Dorcheus family join us for a week of fun.   Next Tuesday, Mike, Tifanni and their 4 gorgeous, funny kids, invade our place.  Then on Wednesday, Nate and Kristi and their 3 kids cruise on in.  I am actually looking forward to the noise and laughter and occasional fight amongst the kids.  Of course being dutiful parents, each of us having passed rigorous home studies for the adoption process, and have been deemed reliable, sensible, upstanding citizens well prepared to parent and guide children thru to adulthood.  In order to ensure that the 6 grown ups survive the chaos, we plan to rely on proven parenting techniques that have withstood the test of time.......LIQUOR!

On Friday, our pack of wild animals will head out in caravan to head to Haiti in our Hearts camp in Alexandria, Minnesota.  Friday afternoon to Sunday our families will be chillin' at Lake Geneva where the kids will swim in the lake, canoe, bike, climb rock walls, play basketball and dance till they can't keep their eyes open.  The parents will of course socialize with one another, compare notes on the stuff each of our kids have broken and just enjoy being in a setting where families like ours are the norm and we don't stand out.  We won't be asked probing, inappropriate questions about how are families came to be and we can just relax and let the kids have fun without feeling like everyone is staring at us.

Who knew that 2 years ago on Father's Day, we would meet two super couples at a hotel in Miami, eat dinner with them at a Cuban restaurant and then spend a couple days with them at our childrens'  creche in Haiti.  These couples have become important lifelines for Marc and me.  I spent time with Kristi 4 months ago in Orlando, along with 67 other women and it let us spend some time realizing the complexities of our lives and how much we have in common.  Tifanni and Mike have become dear, dear friends; God parent's to Richnigthder and Jerome and God forbid, our children's guardians should Marc and I die.  I still marvel in awe how our Haitian children, that lived so far away from all of us, brought us all together with a common bond.

I will be menu planning tomorrow to make sure we have tons of junk food on hand, slip and slides, hula hoops, nerf guns and all the bike tires are inflated awaiting their arrivals.  Naturally I will be stopping at the liquor store to pick up beverages of an adult nature and will of course, make sure I have tons of kook aid on hand for the wee ones.  My kids are so excited to know that these two families are coming to visit that they are a humongous pain in my butt right now.  Everyday, I get asked if tomorrow is the day everyone arrives.  Soon enough I will be able to tell them that today is the day.  Until then, I continue to clean and checking off the days on the calendar.

Summer sunshine, good friends, laughter and happy kids, that's what makes life worthwhile!

I can't stand the not knowing

I emailed GLA to inquire about the two little girls that may be related to Richnigthder and haven't heard a peep, boo, or a holler from them.  I also emailed Vivian and haven't heard back either.  I can't stand not knowing if these little girls might be Richnigthder's little sisters.  Even Marc is annoyed that we haven't heard anything.

If these little girls are related, we most definetly would move heaven and earth to bring them home to be our daughters.  Anyone have a contact at GLA that might be able to get the answer for us?

What if?

For several months now, we've contemplated growing the family thru adoption again.  I contacted Vivian, AKA, Adoption Social Worker Extrodinaire, and she explained how to start the ball rolling again.  Then we moved adoption plans to the back burner while we continue to wait and see if Marc will be moved again.  In the beauty of his job, they have the privilege to move you in the blink of an eye.  The big Kahunas are debating whether or not to close smaller offices and move all the agents elsewhere.

Decipher the last word: elsewhere often means, the border of the U.S. and Mexico.  That translates to worrying about Marc and his safety, and ours too, if we move to a hotbed of criminal activity.  So we have been trying to wrap our minds around the possible move and come to grips with moving from a house we've put our own touches on and now consider home.  We like it here and really don't want to move again, but you have to do what you have to do.  So we cooled our jets on the adoption until we figured out where we might end up by the end of the year.

Yesterday I was reading Dixie's blog at God's Littlest Angels.  She wrote about some of the new kids she has admitted to her creche recently and two little girls caught my eye.  Dixie wrote that  two missionary aides brought the two girls to her creche from Beaumont, Jeremie because the father did not think he could care for the little girls since the mother recently died.  Jeremie is the province where Richnigthder was born and lived before coming to our creche.  One little girl is about 5 and named Shelley and the baby sister is about 8 months old.  Richnigthder had a little sister he called (phonetically....She-lov)  she would be about 5 years old now too.  I put the picture from Dixie's blog up on the screen and just let Richnightder take a look.  I said nothing, except if he knew her?  He beamed and told me he thought that was Shelove.  Of course, I have sent emails to Dixie and Vivian and am waiting to hear back.  If this is Richnigthder's little sisters, then we will do everything in our power to bring these girls home.

So, what if these are his biological sisters?  It means his birthmother has died, just like Thomas' which I blogged about last week.  This stuff is far too complicated for a little tiny brain like mine.  A part of me hopes these are his little sisters and a part of me hopes they are not.  The part of me that feels relief if they aren't related feels tugged to bring them home anyway.  So many kids need homes.  What if no one ever brought these babies home?  What if I'm not on the right path in life and doing all I can to help the orphans of the world, particularly Haiti? 

What if, what if, what if?

Enough with the freaking gay bashing

I am so, so freaking tired of people bashing on gays.  I am tired of bible thumpers who claim to be living God's directives as dictated in the bible being malicious and cruel to people whom are simply living their lives as they feel they were born to be.  I believe one is born gay.  It is genetically encoded in them and that is simply how they are made, wait for it....by GOD!

For God's sake, we are not talking about pedophiles or people who are making and selling drugs.  I'm talking about grown adults, who recognize and embrace who they are and do the best they can to live a life of kindness, generosity and overall, are just good people looking to have happiness and someone to love.  We have quite a few same sex couple friends, Marc has several gay cousins and we also have a couple trans-gendered friends.  None of these people are odd to us.  They are just average people who happen to love someone of the same gender.

I am also very proud to be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.  Our church has officially stated that it allows a homosexual person in a monogamous relationship to hold pastoral positions.  It also openly supports people with different sexual expressions and recognizes that these people are in fact, children of God and are welcome to be members of ELCA Lutheran churches.  I am proud to have a pastor that seeks to develop understanding among small, rural families, that people who are different from their definition of normal, are indeed still worthy of love, acceptance and should be free from the hatred spewed out of ignorance or religious indignation. 

Nobody in this country should be forced to worship God at a church in which they do not feel comfortable, nor should they have to accept anothers views.  BUT, that being said, nobody should proclaim that they have the secret key to the pearly gates.  Save the fire and brimstone argument for someone who doesn't see God as benevolent.  I happen to believe God will welcome all his children home upon death....even if they are gay.  I have a fierce, but quiet faith in my soul and that brings me comfort.  Is that faith because I adhere to the word of the bible....the book that has been interpreted a gazillion different ways by a gazillion factions....or is is because I feel so deeply that God made each and everyone of us,,,even gay people? 

All I know is that in today's Christian world, gay equals bad and I find that abhorrent.  I am a Christian.  I am a believer in Jesus and I believe all of God's children, gay, straight, yellow or black or brown, will go to heaven.  Enough with the gay bashing and proclamations that the bible says its wrong.  The bible also says you shouldn't wear mixed/synthetic material and one should stone their child for cursing their parent.  So put on the cotton sack cloth and gather a bag of rocks.  I'm frustrated and needed to vent.  It's my blog, my thoughts and my right to spew my thoughts out into cyber space.  Many will not agree with my views.  That's ok.  Many will agree with me and that's ok too.  It really doesn't matter since there are so many more important issues to deal with in this world than whether or not someone is gay.

I know.  Let's talk about the million of orphans around the world who are hungry, lonely, and in need of loving arms.  Or how about the despicable state of our public education in this country.  Heck we could even talk about the millions of people without adequate health care in this country because they can not afford it.  See, there are lots and lots of other topics to discuss that are actually important and have some bearing on the future of our country and not one of those topics involves the weary old saga of Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.  Give me a freakin' break.  Give me Adam and Steve any ol' day over crabby old church ladies.  At least Adam and Steve will make me laugh and we can share a laugh and a drink.

Thank God for freedom of speech where I can share my thoughts, however unpopular they may be with the Christian/moral majority.