Sorry its been so long between posts. I'm trying to keep this up so that I have a written record of this process, and so other adoptive parents can learn from our experiences and know that they are not alone.
The photos are: the girls portrait, the girls at Sonic with Marina's friend Syka who is from Kyrgystan, and the girls in Helen Georgia for Octoberfest with Katya's friend Masha from St. Petersburg.
The most recent disaster happened Tuesday night and has had some aftershocks that are still continuing today. Marina had a MAJOR meltdown around bedtime on Tuesday. Initially it started out being an issue with her attendance in her school's after school care program. Its not like the kids are still in school during this time - they play, do fun crafts and activities, etc. Its necessary for her to go to this program as her school lets out at 2pm and we work until 5 pm or so, and she definately can't be at the house by herself at age 10.
So, we got her moved back to Briarvista after a huge disappointment with Fernbank Elementary, and she seemed happy about this return, but she was still having issues about staying at school after school ended for the day. She began to escalate, saying she wouldnt go to school, she wouldnt go to bed etc. The exact process escapes me now, as it was 10 at night when she was escalating, and I was tired. I remember that she refused all attempts by us to compromise with her and get her to sleep. She ended up sitting at the dining room table, which is very close to our foyer and front door. Marina has a habit of "taking off" when she gets upset. She literally leaves the house and disappears. Usually we get her back into the house quickly, but not without a physical fight on her part. Knowing this was a possibility, we were not comfortable with leaving her alone in the common area of the house for fear that she would take-off, this time in the middle of the night.
So we sat down at the dining room table with her, and tried to reason with her. We knew that there was something deeper at issue here than just not wanting to go to the after school program. Eventually it came out that she wanted to live "on the street" and not with us. She started to get really confused, angry and sad and started transfering her memories of her birth parents onto us - ie. we were the ones who drank vodka, we abused her, we gave her the scars on her arms and legs, we "boomed" her (our word for hit or beat), etc. She also started defending her birth father, the one who actually drank the vodka and abused her, saying she loved him and wanted to live with him. We tried to bring her back to reality, with reminders that her birth father was dead and that we were her forever parents now, and that we never hurt her and did not drink vodka, that we knew that those things happened to her and that it made us very angry and sad that it happened to her. We got out some Barbies from her room, and put them on the table in front of her. She picked up the Barbies and acted out some of the abuse (we had a ken, barbie, and a little sister barbie). By the end of the "skit" ken's head was chopped off, the little sister was across the room, and the barbie was on the floor. My table also has some nice big dents and gashes it in now from where she banged the barbies' nice hard bodies into it.
Eventually she let Andrew rock her, and we got her to lay down on the couch with Andrew. This was 2am. Needless to say, we kept her out of school the next day due to emotional exhaustion, lack of sleep, and a need to be near us after this catharsis.
Well, Katya had a headache that morning. I gave her tylenol and sent her to school. She had slept through this whole ordeal, and she was not fevered, so no staying home. She was livid about this. Also, I guess the girls had split up the barbies between them, and the ken that got beheaded was claimed by Katya. Katya is still pissed today. Almost no talking, no acknowledgement, she just sits in her room ignoring us. She wouldnt even eat dinner last night. She is also pissed because her friend Masha has not been at the English school for about a week now, due to standardized testing at her home base school and a dentists appointment. On top of all that (oh the teenage trauma right?), her homebase school electives shifted. She is no longer in "technology" ie computer lab, she is now in visual arts. This is part of the electives program here - every 9 weeks, the kids change electives. Next 9 weeks it will be music, or something. Of course the school is still a major issue, and does not communicate these things to us, so we had no way to explain or prepare her for this change.
Thankfully, that is one of our successes - we got the IEP meeting scheduled for November 7th. Since the parents get 50% say in the decisions, and we have Katya's english teacher on our side, the annoying homebase school counselor has no chance of opposing us! yippie! We are also having our therapist, Madga, come with us to speak on Katya's behalf. Thankfully, she and Ms. Savitt, the english teacher, are native Russian speakers and have both noticed that Katya has language delays in her native language. This will qualify her for the IEP. If not, we will claim that there were developmental delays noted on her medical records from Ukraine (which there might be, but I can't read all the records!), and Katya has PTSD and cumulative cognitive deficit. When Katya has an IEP, the school will be forced to make educational accomodations for her.
In other news, we finally got our first set of family portraits back, along with the portraits of the girls. We will probably take advantage of our portrait club membership and bring the girls back to take photos in their princess gowns this month, and again around christmas and maybe again in january. The princess dress photos are more for them - they really really wanted to wear those fancy dresses in the family portrait, but Andrew and I overruled them, and we all wore matching outfits.
