The older kid thread

[Wisconsin Beth]

Yeah, I get what he's saying too.  I just don't know what I'm supposed to do in that situation and it strikes me as funny. 

[Works4me]

Beer -

I usually wear my socks wrong-side out because they feel best that way so I purposely buy socks that look ok that way. A friend of mine is very sensitive and will often wear other things wrong-side out - things like leggings or a sweatshirt or t-shirt - again, she purposely buys things that look ok that way. Last thing - have you bought a new washer lately? The reason I ask is because I did and I always double rinse but was itching to death - turns out that the new "Extra efficient" washer only fills maybe 1/3 of the way on the rinse cycle!!! So now I wash loads twice, the second wash being more of a rinse - still cannot figure out how this is supposed to save energy but it works for me -lol

Shane -

In no way are you a Doxie! What you are describing is the type of behavior I would expect with a 10 year old who has been through what Poptart has. I think you were spot on that her visit to UC was about you and K spending time with your niece - she has no way to know that you will still love her and in her position almost anyone would act that way. Can you maybe address some of this directly with her and help her to process the feelings and learn from them? In an emotional age appropriate way of course. BTW - I think it is nice that the two of you spend some time with just her at bedtime - what a wonderful way of bonding into a family of your own.

[shanendoah]

whoisjohngalt- I am all for what works RIGHT NOW. Trust me, C and I often try introducing some changes and if they work great, if they don't, rethink, and sometimes we even go back a few steps if things aren't working.
I wish there was the space in our room to set up a temporary sleeping space for Pop Tart on bad nights. But our room really is only 10x10, with a queen sized bed, two bookcases (both overflowing), a computer workstation, and a wardrobe for overflow from our tiny closet. Any place there is floor space is actually space that is used for safely moving about in the room/getting out of the room. Next house we get, I really want one of those walk in closets that's big enough to be a nursery, and then I could set something up in there, a space for her to be in our room but not really, on nights when it was really needed.
We also keep talking about getting her a bunk bed so that she can have friends stay over. That would also give one of us a place to sleep in her room if needed.
We don't have an extra room. One of the reasons we want to move is to get an extra room. She does have music that plays at night. During the summer, she was often happy with just the fan going, and I sometimes wonder if instead of music, we should get her a white noise generator.

Last night was not a good night. She fought going to sleep, even with me in the room. She asked if she could go to the bathroom. I said yes, wondering why she would ever feel the need to ask that, and later realized I should have known that meant she didn't actually need to use the bathroom. She had a sudden need to clean her ears of earwax. And then she wanted to get up to blow her nose. I told her no, that I would bring tissue to her. When I did, she no longer needed to blow her nose (now that it wouldn't get her out of bed). She did fall asleep, probably about 9:40pm (teeth and hair were started at ~8:25pm).
Midnight, the roommate came home from having to cover a late shift at work. It woke her up. She decided that she woke up and didn't know why and that was scary, so she came to our room. C had just come to bed. He told her what woke her up so that she would know it wasn't scary. At which point she was awake because she had a scary dream.
We sent her back to her room with the promise that one of us would be in shortly. C got up to go in with her, but since he is in the middle of finals, warned me that if he couldn't get her calmed down and back to sleep in half an hour, he would let her come sleep in our bed tonight, on the far side next to him. (For the record, we have tried having her sleep on the edge of the bed next to me, and I absolutely cannot sleep that way. As it is, I am not super comfortable when there are three of us plus the two dogs anyway, but at least when I'm on the edge, I can push a dog off long enough to readjust my space if needed.)
When C is not in school, or even not in the middle of finals, he would normally stay with her until she fell asleep again, but this week, he needs sleep, too.

When my alarm went off at 5:45am, we made her go back to her own bed for the next hour or so of sleep time. Luckily, when you just wake her up (vs her waking up from a dream), she pretty much sleep walks to her bed and is back asleep pretty much the moment her head hits the pillow.


This is a new bad dream, and one that's probably based on an actual memory. In it, she's being kidnapped by someone dressed as a policeman. Since she and her sister were originally taken into state custody by the police, this is almost certainly a perversion of that memory. (And even if you've been told police are good, having the police come and take you away from your mom certainly feels like kidnapping to a 7 year old, which is how old she was at the time.) Guess is that it is brought on by the adoption and knowing she has a permanent home again. When you're a foster kid, you know that you could be moved from home to home at any time, so my guess is she had less fear of being kidnapped. But now she's been told she'll be with us until she grows up, so there's something she can lose again, bringing up the fear of being taken away.


And no matter how much I complain and stress about the current issues, C and I frequently remind ourselves of the progress that she has made. She can walk down the dark hallway and turn on the light at night without it being a 10-15 minute dramatic production. She can look at a spider without dropping to the floor and assuming the fetal position while screaming. (She has told us that at one time, not with her mom- so guessing a place her mom took her and left her -she was living in a house that was filled with bugs and rodents and she didn't feel safe.) She can sleep with her closet door open. She can sleep not only with stuffed animals visible in her room, but actually on her bed. As of this winter she is able to have her bedroom door closed, when she is in the room, by herself. She can even wake up in the morning to it being closed and not freak out. (This is because her room gets warmer and stays warmer with the door closed. I am actually thankful for this round of really cold weather, just for that.) We have pouting and bouts of not listening when she doesn't get her way, but we haven't had a full scale "I miss my mom, you guys don't actually love me" melt down in months. (Even her two days before the adoption melt down was nothing compared to some of the earlier ones.)
My big "project" for early next year is getting her to take baths by herself. (She really, really hates being alone.) With the cast on her broken arm, it's not even an option right now. But the last timeline the doctor gave us was that she would go in a removable splint this Friday, and then on Christmas morning, we could remove it permanently (though she's saying she won't, because, you know, she LOVES the apparatuses of being sick/injured). So, my plan for January is to work on bath by self. I can come in at the end to help wash her hair, but she can do that on her own (and often wants to, she just wants company).

Wisconsin Beth - It's funny. We talk about people's ability to love new people without stopping loving other people, or even loving other people less, all the time when it comes to talking about her birth mother. We keep telling her that she will always love her birth mom and that won't change even if she loves us. But we've never talked about it in reverse, about us being able to love her, as someone new in our lives, and not loving her any less just because there are other people we love. 
It wasn't an issue with my dad, and I don't expect it will be an issue with my mom, because my relationships with them are very much adult child and parent relationships, where we are mostly on equal footing, but they are still the parents. With K at 22 (just turned), she's not on equal footing with us, and we still have a bit of a care taking relationship with her. (I am the person she calls when she is having a major anxiety attack and needs someone to come help her "fix" things.) 
All of that is by way of saying, maybe we need to talk about our ability to love Pop Tart completely, while still loving and caring for the other people in our lives.

The "funny" thing is, Pop Tart very much wants us to adopt another child. The thing she most wants in the world is NOT to be an only child. But given her attention seeking behaviors, we know that would be an AWFUL idea at the moment. But what we're saying to her is that we need to wait until C is done with school and also that we want a year or so with JUST her.

[shanendoah]

@wrongsideof30 - Thanks for thinking of me. I'll do some research into this.

Right now, her therapist has us doing visualizing right before lights out right now. (So we read to her, and then we do the visualizing exercise.) In this, she imagines her safe place and we ask her questions about it to make it more fully realized. Pop Tart has a great imagination, except when you ask her to. She at least had started by describing our room as her safe place, but then for a number of nights in a row, she would just start describing the situation as it actually was (Her room, one dog with us, one dog barking, etc), so C and I set a couple of other rules.
While we are thrilled she feels safe with us, and in her room at night before bed, we need her safe place to be somewhere she can go in her head any time she needs to, versus being a physical place she can sometimes get to (when she's home), but not always. We wanted to concentrate on her safe place living in her head. So for the last two nights, safe place has been CandyLand. Not certain what I think about it as a "safe" place, but it does seem to be a happy place (especially since we allow very little candy, and especially not right before bed). We're getting more in depth in the descriptions (beds and pillows are marshmellows, blankets are fruit rollups), so at least it's becoming fairly well realized.

I will say, Wed night she went to sleep without either of us in her room. We did story and visualization, but then we needed to go make a cheesecake (nothing like putting off making a cheesecake until the last minute). C was responsible for turning the ground turkey into sausage and making the cheeze-it crust. I grated the cheese and then used the stand mixer for the cream cheese, eggs, sour cream, flour and sage. We left her door open so she could hear us, and I know C popped his head in at least once telling her to close her eyes. But by the time I was done and looked in, she was asleep.
It's nice to know that while we're not there every night, we can get away with a night here and there where she falls asleep on her own.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I was in K's classroom yesterday, to help out with a craft day.  So I mentioned to the teacher K's issues with one of the boys - she says he's snagging her stuff at naptime and poking her cheeks.  Teacher wasn't aware of it.  I tried to point out that K might not be so innocent in this but asked the teacher to keep an eye on the situation.  She said she would and offered to move one or both of the kids at naptime.  I'd rather she observe first but she's the teacher. 

The boy's mom was also helping out yesterday.  I did NOT bring it up to her.  I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do or not.  I didn't want to get into a he said/she said situation with another parent on draft day.  And while I trust my daughter, I also don't know that he's just doing this out of the blue, you know?  She can be good at instigating, when she wants to be. 

And K doesn't want to bring this up to the teacher when it's happening. 

ON the up side, I did get a sense that the teacher is taking control of the classroom and overall has better control now.  She did confirm it's her first year, in one of the updates she sends home monthly. 

[Sam_2.0]

Dec 10, 2013 14:33:42 GMT -5 Wisconsin Beth said:

Yeah, I get what he's saying too.  I just don't know what I'm supposed to do in that situation and it strikes me as funny. 

Aly is still little, so I don't know if I am allowed to chime in, but she's been getting upset and telling us that she does not like us. We tell her it is ok to be frustrated and upset about not getting what she wants, but it is not ok to use unkind words. Now she says that her feelings are hurt and we acknowledge that, but she's backing off the "I don't like Mommy/Daddy" thing.

[raeoflyte]

I have a question about sibling interactions.  

Overall Connor (4 1/2) is very good with Evie (1).  He watches out for her (more than we would like it seems), does things to make her laugh, loves that she can play ball with him now, etc.  But...he can rough house a little too much by trying to pick her up, or grabbing her from behind and pulling her backwards.  A couple times I've caught him pushing her down when he isn't playing to be nice and just wants her away from him.  Evie usually LOVES it and is laughing throughout the whole thing, but...  The pushing especially frustrates me, but I'm not really sure how hard to react.  It isn't like Connor see's us pushing him or anyone else, but its pretty typical sibling behavior.  They are just far enough apart in age that we still need to police everything but at the same time I don't want to get into any bad cycles now that could be carried forward either.  

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

With rough housing I'd explain Evie is litteler than him and isn't capable of expressing when she's hurt very well so please don't do {insert whicher part of roughhousing is bothering you}.  

For pushing I'd tell him that that's not an acceptable way to tell his sister to go away.  Simply walk away and if she follows ask you/DH for help.  If you have a playpen or other confinment area if you're comfortable with him picking her up you can tell him take Evie there if he wants her to go away.

[raeoflyte]

We have that conversation about 20 times a day, times 365 days in a year... It isn't working.   He is very gentle with her, but it doesn't take much to really hurt a 1 year old and they're both too young to know where that line is.  

Evie weighs almost half of what Connor does, so he should not pick her up and can't put her in the playpen.  Even though they "share" a room, that space is truly his and his bed is lifted so he can escape there, but he doesn't want to be alone, he just wants Evie to not be around him.     Perfectly normal imo, just hard/sometimes impossible to accomodate.

I could send him to his room or take away privileges when he pushes her, but just the nature of being 1 means that Evie can be a pest, and I don't want to set up any premise (real or imagined) of taking sides.

I can't wait until I can say--figure it out and walk away.  

[Wisconsin Beth]

I need to stop letting Cabe crawl in with me at 5am.  He won't go to the bathroom and then he pees in his sleep.    And I don't really want to argue with him at 4am ish. 

[yogiii]

Dec 13, 2013 13:41:04 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

I have a question about sibling interactions.  

Overall Connor (4 1/2) is very good with Evie (1).  He watches out for her (more than we would like it seems), does things to make her laugh, loves that she can play ball with him now, etc.  But...he can rough house a little too much by trying to pick her up, or grabbing her from behind and pulling her backwards.  A couple times I've caught him pushing her down when he isn't playing to be nice and just wants her away from him.  Evie usually LOVES it and is laughing throughout the whole thing, but...  The pushing especially frustrates me, but I'm not really sure how hard to react.  It isn't like Connor see's us pushing him or anyone else, but its pretty typical sibling behavior.  They are just far enough apart in age that we still need to police everything but at the same time I don't want to get into any bad cycles now that could be carried forward either.  

rae, The same thing happens with DS (3.5) and DD (8 months).  He's more rough than I'd like but she loves it.  I guess she's tough.  Sometimes she'll start to yell so I've told DS that when he hears that it means he's being too rough and he needs to stop or that she doesn't want to play anymore.  As far as keeping it "fair", DD is a scratcher, so if I see her about to scratch I'll say "No DD, don't do that be gentle with your brother" and sometimes I'll just say that even if she isn't scratching just so he doesn't feel like I'm always picking on him.  In general it's annoying that they need to constantly be watched but I'm really grateful that he likes hanging around with her.  It's the better option.  That was a long reply just to say I think what you're doing is fine rae

[Wisconsin Beth]

I really need to clean out Cabe's sock bin.  It's got about 2 years worth of socks in it and he's finding the older, smaller ones and insisting on wearing them.  What's odd is that he was so proud to show off his new socks last month! 

[Wisconsin Beth]

I got proof yesterday that I'm an overprotective parent (not that I needed it you understand) 

I chaperoned my daughter's kindergarten class to our Museum.  We have a family pass to it so we go there on a fairly regular basis.  My daughter and 2 other kids were assigned to me and we were given some basic instructions that included "lunch is at 1100, don't be late" and were turned loose.  Not a problem. 

I poll the 3 kids and they want to start with the Polar Regions so up to the 3rd floor we go.  In addition to the Polar Regions, the 3rd floor has Central America.  And in this odd little 1/2 floor thing, we've got a diorama of Peruvian Pitt Mummies.  I ask the kids if they want to see real mummies.  They're not to impressed.  As we leave the mummies, one of the kids pipes up with "I see mummies in The Walking Dead" and the other says something about seeing them in a video game.  My daughter is clueless.  She's never seen Walking Dead as we don't watch it.  But by God, she knows that "real" mummies are in our Museum.    

I'm pretty sure we walked though just about every exhibit in the place.  We got home and K and I crashed on the couch with cocoa and cookies.  

[Wisconsin Beth]

I realized this weekend that Cabe's speech is improving again.  One of the issues raised a while back by his teachers was that he only uses 3 word sentences.  Not anymore.  And I'm understanding him much better lately too. 

And one of his Christmas presents was a book on finding animals.  So he's identifying the animals, sometimes the number next to the picture and then counting out loud as he finds the numbers.  It's tedious as a bedtime book but hell, it's got to be helping, right? 

[raeoflyte]

Jan 8, 2014 11:40:19 GMT -5 yogiii said:

Dec 13, 2013 13:41:04 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

I have a question about sibling interactions.  

Overall Connor (4 1/2) is very good with Evie (1).  He watches out for her (more than we would like it seems), does things to make her laugh, loves that she can play ball with him now, etc.  But...he can rough house a little too much by trying to pick her up, or grabbing her from behind and pulling her backwards.  A couple times I've caught him pushing her down when he isn't playing to be nice and just wants her away from him.  Evie usually LOVES it and is laughing throughout the whole thing, but...  The pushing especially frustrates me, but I'm not really sure how hard to react.  It isn't like Connor see's us pushing him or anyone else, but its pretty typical sibling behavior.  They are just far enough apart in age that we still need to police everything but at the same time I don't want to get into any bad cycles now that could be carried forward either.  

rae, The same thing happens with DS (3.5) and DD (8 months).  He's more rough than I'd like but she loves it.  I guess she's tough.  Sometimes she'll start to yell so I've told DS that when he hears that it means he's being too rough and he needs to stop or that she doesn't want to play anymore.  As far as keeping it "fair", DD is a scratcher, so if I see her about to scratch I'll say "No DD, don't do that be gentle with your brother" and sometimes I'll just say that even if she isn't scratching just so he doesn't feel like I'm always picking on him.  In general it's annoying that they need to constantly be watched but I'm really grateful that he likes hanging around with her.  It's the better option.  That was a long reply just to say I think what you're doing is fine rae

Sorry I didn't see this earlier Yogii!  Things have mellowed a bit, but I think dd is going to be a biter so all my worrying about ds hurting her are probably backwards. 

[shanendoah]

Pop Tart and her therapist are doing Copecakes in their next session tomorrow- the therapist is bringing in cupcakes, and they will talk about coping skills beyond deep breathing and visualization, which is what we currently do.

C and I will be meeting with her therapist on Friday to discuss some additional copecakes for us when things get really bad.

For the last week or so, we've actually been pretty good. We've had good bedtimes- as in asleep by 9 or 9:15, which is nice.

A few weeks ago, she did see an episode of Ghost Hunters at a friends house (she then wasn't allowed to go to that friend's house for a week, and now has the rule that if they are watching TV, she must come home). This resulted in one night of her having to sleep in our room, and a few more nights of not good nights in general, as her fear of the dark reappeared and she wouldn't even walk down the hall to the bathroom without a light on (or one of us walking with her).

In addition, her teacher was reading to them Sodaku(?) and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about a girl who got leukemia from the atomic bombs and died at age 11. (Pop Tart is 10.) So we had many talks about fear of death. I get that for "normal" kids, learning about other kids dying via a book is supposed to be safe and developmentally appropriate at this age, but Pop Tart is not a normal kid. If we'd known about it, we probably would have requested that she get sent to another classroom during the book reading time.

We have changed her diagnosis with her therapist. It is now generalized anxiety, which is right. We're hoping that the more coping skills she gets, the better.

[Wisconsin Beth]

It is Ghost Hunters she's not allowed to watch or is it all TV?  And it's easier to just have her come home than figure out what's good and what's not for her (and you guys?)

[shanendoah]

She is not allowed to watch TV at that friend's house, period. This is not the first time she's seen something inappropriate (for her) there.
She knows she does not want to watch the show, but on her own, she's not confident enough to say "I don't want to watch this, let's do something else" especially since it is her friend's 15 y/o cousin inviting them to watch with her. So instead, she now has a rule that she is not allowed to watch TV at that friend's house. If TV watching is what they are doing, she is to come home. (She also has strict screen time limits in general.)
Honestly, given some of the issues we have had with her going to that friend's home, we'd love to say that she can't play over there at all, that her friend has to come here, but her friend's parents have pretty much always had the rule that the friend is RARELY (as in has happened 2x that I can think of since the summer) allowed to play anywhere but at home. And since Pop Tart has very few friends whose houses she can get to on her own, we're reluctant to put a kibosh on the friendship altogether, which is what saying she can't play at that friend's house would do.

If she had more friends within a couple blocks of us, we would happily say she couldn't go over to that house at all. 

[Wisconsin Beth]

Thanks.  You answered what I was trying to figure out but don't think I asked correctly. 

Mine are very fond of "Wild Kratts" on PBS right now. 

ETA - so now we have our 4 year old son running around the house smacking himself on the chest and going "saving the world with creature power" it's fun to watch him. 

[Deleted]

DD loves Wild Kratts (and Zooboomafoo reruns)!



She wanted to write them a letter but they don't have a fan mail address. 

[Wisconsin Beth]

This is an old address.  I have no clue if it works or not.  I found it in the comments section at strayfoto.com/2013/07/09/wild-kratts-pbs-contact-address/

Kratt Brothers Company
PO Box 4515
Burlington, VT 05406

[Deleted]

Thanks! 

[Wisconsin Beth]

Please let me know if it works.  'cause I'm nosy like that. 

[raeoflyte]

Ds loves wild kratts.

Sent from my ADR6410LVW using proboards

[Wisconsin Beth]

The entire series of Wild Kratts is part of my Amazon Prime stuff.  So we're DVRing the stuff on tv but the kids know we can get it on the Kindle (and plug that into the tv so they don't fight as much)

ETA - or at least 4 seasons of it is.  Each season is 10 episodes and I have no idea how many they're at. 

[shanendoah]

Pop Tart is 10. 
I think she's finished the entire run of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (live action), but now, Clarissa Explains It All is free on Prime, so she's watching that. She also watches Wizards of Waverly Place, Jessie (which is AWFUL), Life with Boys and probably at least one other that I'm not remembering at the moment.
We are watching the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon together in the evenings.

Supah Ninjas was fabulous, but I think she and C went through all the episodes that were available free via Prime.
Friends with girls just a few years older than Pop Tart have recommended Kim Possible, but we haven't started that yet.

Our biggest problem is that she is very susceptible to anything with a little too much suspense/scariness/violence (even fantasy violence). At 10, she is no where near ready to watch most PG-13 movies. Though we did watch Pitch Perfect with her. Unfortunately, as a society, we think violence is "more ok" for kids than sex, so most PG-13 movies are way more violent than she is ready for. (As an example of how we draw our lines- she LOVED Labyrinth, but we won't let her watch Dark Crystal just yet. It's just that one step darker that she's not ready for.)

I need to figure out if Grease is available free somewhere. I used to watch that all the time, starting younger than her. Grease 2, too, for that matter.
And I bet I could start introducing her to the Molly Ringwald movies. Any excuse to watch Breakfast Club. (We have watched Ferris Bueller.)

[Deleted]

Grease is on Netflix and free with amazon prime. 

[Wisconsin Beth]

Jan 28, 2014 12:13:19 GMT -5 @beerwench said:

Grease is on Netflix and free with amazon prime. 

I don't know about Netflix but I know Grease is on Amazon Prime. 

You might want to check out Wrongsideof30's thread on movies, if you haven't been there.  I think her boys are around 8 and 10, give or take a year or so. 

[Deleted]

I know it's on Netflix because I added it to my queue! 

[Wisconsin Beth]

  So we got you covered.