Playing the Victim

I was once set a meme on facebook that said

“Some days it feels a little bit more like Hostage Negotiating with a band of drunken Bi-Polar Pirates than actual parenting”

I laughed hard and agreed, liked the post that had been put on my wall and I walked away.

Later, that day I suddenly started to feel like a victim of parenting, yes, a victim …. Crazy, right?

It seems ridiculous typing this out.

Where was my normal parenting experience, why was I the one dealing with schools, doctors and other people’s judgement when it was clearly not my doing, I had in no shape or formed created this but here I was dealing with everything.

I wanted rainbows and sunny smiles but instead I got lies, stealing, punches, kicks, destruction and verbal abuse.

The crazy did not feel normal, and someone needed to take responsibility for the crazy in my life.

I would blame myself for their bad behavior, I would blame myself for their destruction of their own property and others property.

I would blame myself for their defiance of me and wonder why others couldn’t see it.

Then when they did behave badly at school or out in public I would also take on that responsibility.

I punished myself when I lost my temper, going nose to nose with a child screaming my lungs out, I told myself I was a bad mom that they would be better off without me. It scared me that I was capable of so much rage and anger.

I felt like I was the person who was putting everyone else’s mistakes right

I once verbally spoke out to a friend that I truly believed that in the small hours of the night they would get up and decide who was going to play bad child and who was going the play good child, that they purposely went out of their way to ruin a perfectly good day.

Sometimes you must break the cycle of self-criticism  , and it can take all sorts of situation to bring you to that point for me it was my oldest screaming at me that I was no better than her. It took me a few minutes to realize who her was but when the penny did drop I understood who he meant – Bio mom

That stopped me in my tracks, I didn’t know her really our only encounters where when I would either hand the kids of to her on a Friday or in some cases tell her the oldest didn’t want to go with her and I wouldn’t be making him, yes, I did that on many occasions, but that is a subject for another time.

So, who she was as a “mother” I had no idea, but what I did know was I didn’t want to be that person he saw her as.

My thinking had to change and it needed to change quick ……

I didn’t want to sit on the steps of the deck outside at night and cry

I wanted to stop hiding in the bathroom wishing the whole world would just be quiet

I defiantly wanted to stop moaning to my husband when he got home at night that HIS kids where monsters and he needed to deal with it.

And the shame needed to go away and the temper

Time to stop being the victim

I needed to look at them as children who were hurting, traumatized and feeling alone and I needed to see myself as the person who was going to love them through it all.

I couldn’t fix all their problems in a day but I could manage to make their day a little brighter just by realizing I wasn’t the victim here

I told myself repeatedly (until I believed it) this didn’t happen to me it happened to them, they were the ones hurting and I blaming myself, feeling sorry for myself and raging all over the place wasn’t helping … time to step up and be the adult.

Easier said than done, I know

The hardest bit is feeling like you are being the parent and she (bio mom) is getting to be the Disney mom.

Can you relate?

Maybe you can maybe just as a step mom with children who don’t display any problems. Maybe as a mom who is raising her birth children you can relate.

Or as a foster parent with a child with RAD or other attachment issues you can relate.

I think we all can relate … I’m not a special case, I’m just one case among many who has felt like a victim on this road of rising children in whatever shape of precious form they come in

We are not alone, there are others out there that feel like I do and how you do. It’s just not all of us say it, we don’t admit to it for the fear of being judged and shamed for not being the prefect parent.

And if you are by any chance the prefect parent could you please give the rest of us some advice on how you manage it all. I know I for one would love to hear from you.

So, to all the imperfect, amazingly flawed, beautifully inappropriate, angry stomping victims, who can confess to being out of control mother’s, I applauded you and salute you ….

You are my super hero’s

Grace makes beauty

The song “Grace “by U2 always comes to mind when I think about how I’ve raised these two children.

Grace finds beauty

In everything

And I have, they are beautiful in every sense of the definition, but they have had and still have their ugly days, ugly minutes, ugly seconds, weeks and months.

Then you must add into to their lives teen brain and hormones. So, at any given point you just don’t know if its RAD or teen brain, someone will abruptly erupt and you are left wondering where this is going and where will it end.

My first instinct is to sigh, then my second is to step in, then I normally step out because there is this thing called conflict resolution, and we all need to learn it.

So, whether they are fighting with each other or fighting with themselves or just fighting with an object or me or their dad I feel it’s important to step back and watch (bit hard to do if they are fighting with me but I try to keep my mouth shut if that’s possible)

Conflict Resolution is a skill, it’s not something that comes naturally to anyone and certainly not a child or teen with RAD … and not someone with teen brain and RAD, cause teen brain is just as ugly as RAD most of the time.

Even I’ve had to learn conflict resolution, which wasn’t easy cause I’m a self-opinionated woman at the best of times, so even I have my ugly moments and can act like a child if something doesn’t suit me or please me or just racks me off in general, so if I at my age struggle with this then how in the word am I to teach it to children/teens who have RAD.

I’m not, …. because it’s something you learn yourself with a little bit of guidance ….. once a suggestion has been made … or its just comes naturally because your brilliant. We are not all brilliant so hence we need guidance.

They say it’s an “ability to successfully resolve conflict depending on your ability” … sounds like a contradiction of terms to me.

So, when I say it’s something you learn yourself, it really is. Think about it, think about the guidance you had as a child …..

“Walk away”

“Go play with someone else”

“Count to Ten”

“Use your words, not your actions”

“Take turns sharing”

So, what is guidance, its ideas planted in your mind as a way to deal with something or someone you don’t like.

I read a good post about this last year,This post is so helpful and I think even if you don’t have kids you should read it because the inner child in most of us still needs a little bit of guidance in the times we live in.

5 Steps to Help Kids Resolve Conflicts

So, we have all used these pointers at some time or they have been used on us.

Do they work? For the most part, they are good guidance tools for any parent, teacher, child worker with a child who is NOT displaying RAD symptoms, that’s right I said NOT because sadly these don’t work with RAD kids and don’t be fooled into thinking they do.

I tried them all, none worked and every time I tried them I wondered why they didn’t work. Then it came to me (after some time that is, wish it had been over night but sadly it wasn’t) they have no consequences to their behavior even though consequences where set up they didn’t matter

You can’t say to a RAD kid

“Did you…?” “Why did you…?” “What could you have done differently?” “Do you remember…?” “What did you say?”

Nine out of ten times they will reply with “I don’t know” or they will compose an eloquent answer that means nothing at all and won’t make any sense to you in the slightest … it will just be plan ugly and you will be left there wondering what your come back should be. There is no come back they just won the battle of conflict resolution their way.

Now you are wondering so what should you say?

Well that is a good question, and if I’m honest (which I am) it took me a long time to get this right, I would reach for the 5 steps before reaching for the RAD steps. It took me a long time to work out that what I was doing or how I was doing it wasn’t the right way and this was with guidance from a therapist, seriously the penny took a long time to drop with me, and I’m a fairly intelligent person, but RAD has a way of making you stumble when you need to be standing up right.

Let’s go to the steps…. And I’m not going to fully explain them because this blog post would go on for days if I did

Belief vs truth – Explaining the difference is helpful

Challenging beliefs – Rather than challenging the belief directly which to be honest is rarely effective ask the child to flip the belief into its opposite then speak it out

Choice – Choice is an idea that is very often absent with RAD children’s thinking.It needs to be and must be pointed out that we all have choices good and bad.

Consequences – To our choices and actions, clear structure more so then the average child, They will often see the consequence as a way to humiliate them because of the lack of trust they have towards adults, which will then result in sabotage of performance or compliance, the main point is that you should not give up with setting consequences because without that mechanism in their lives that are going to be RAD adults and that can lead again to all sorts of problems.

There is loads of other steps you can take … but I would be here all day

And like I’ve stated before I’m not expert I’m just a mom who has raised RAD kids to teens and I’m still learning to.

So if you or someone you know if struggling with RAD or had a recent diagnosis I’d recommend a book to you to read or pass along. It is called “When Love Is Not Enough: A Guide To Parenting Children With RAD”

Nancy Thomas the author is an amazing lady and her books and website have been my savior for so long now I feel I have her on speed dial… well at least her website is and her facebook page.

Well sorry that was just a long post but it felt good to write it all down….

grace really does make beauty out of ugly things