Sensational Sophomore

Frustration; It Is Not Always Rosy, Redux

This is a previous post, revisited and edited because the ending is different.

As mentioned in a previous post, Wynn went for a week to Christian summer camp. When she came back, she was initially happy and chattered the whole drive home about all the wonderful things at camp.  Once home, she quickly became angry and sullen, especially at me, and by the end of the day, she had resorted to fully giving me the silent treatment.  She did not speak a single word to me for more than a week.  She is not afraid of commitment!  She was even willing to forego privileges (like going out with Mandy) because I told Mandy yes, but that Wynn had to ask me for permission.

As nearly as I can figure out, the problem was this:  While Wynn was gone, Ariana played with her iPod, primarily using it to watch Angelina Ballerina on Netflix.  Apparently, though, she also played a game on it and messed up Wynn's score or virtual awards Wynn had collected.  I believe that Wynn was angry that I did not protect her things.  Worse, I wasn't very sympathetic.  I told her not to leave her things out.  She has a room of her own, and each child has a safe for money and "valuables."

After just over a week, I finally had currency that led her to find her voice.  It was "payday" for chores.  She had not totally warmed up again, but she was begrudgingly talking a little, so she was allowed to go to my mom's and my sister's (and back and forth) between summer camp and Cameron's birthday.  While she was gone, she talked to me on the phone, texted me, communicated on Facebook.  All seemed fine.

When she returned, almost instantly, she went right back to silent.  This one puzzled me.  I had learned my lesson from the summer camp week.  I kept her door locked the whole time, unlocking it with a key to enter and feed her fish.  This time, I didn't know why.  I even peeked in her room to make sure her fish was still alive.  Maybe I killed her fish or something.  I finally began to get an inkling that the problem was this:  She erroneously believed that the younger children had been in her room stealing her TV tokens while she was gone.  I told her that her door had been locked the whole time, and if anything was missing, it was from before she left, and I would help her find it. She seemed to begin to thaw.  It was a slow thaw.

Finally, the last few days, she has been our happy, giggling, squealing, helpful, fun, and funny girl.

Today, I ticked her off again.  She was angry at Gabrian.  In her defense, he was being extra rowdy and obnoxious, like a 7 1/2 year old boy.  She forced him outside and locked all the doors. This is against the rules, which they all know. (They get the idea from me because Ari does get put outside the door on the enclosed deck when she has a meltdown.  That girl knows how to tantrum! But siblings are not allowed to use this technique on each other.)  I let him back in.  (Primarily because I had just gotten out of the shower and was bare naked in my room and quite startled when I looked up to see Gabrian trying to open my window in my bedroom.)  Wynn was furious. "Why do you let him in?!!!"  I said, "It's against the rules to lock anyone outside,"  and she yelled, "I don't care about your stupid damn rule.  You just spoil him!"  And from that moment, we're back to the silent treatment.

  

I understand how frustrating it must be to try to deal with Gabrian and Ariana all day.  They (Conor and Wynn) have to have something to motivate good behavior or Gabrian and Ari resort to "You're not the boss!" and totally obnoxious behavior.  Wynn has a hard time understanding boundaries of how roughly she can treat the other children.  Both in anger and in play, she very often (more than daily) pinches, hits, twists ears and leads children around by them, uses handfuls of hair as a leash.  She is frequently reprimanded for this behavior and always angry about it.  (We do see this kind of discipline/incentive given to children on some of her Chinese TV shows, so maybe this is an accepted way of relating to children in China.  Nonetheless, it is not OK in our home.)

Understanding that help was needed, today, I re-implemented the "star strip," a behavior tool from the past.  The children get three stars, which can be removed for misbehavior. At the end of a specified time period, there is a consequence if all stars or gone and/or a reward if there are stars remaining (carrot and stick both stated in advance).  This used to work for Cameron; he hated having a star torn off his "star strip" far more than he liked earning a token reward.  Anyway, today I made "Star strips" and made sure that the young hooligans knew that Conor and Wynn were authorized to remove stars.  Loss of all stars would result in early bedtime.  I also gave Conor a couple extra TV tokens that he or Wynn could use to reward good behavior or as out and out bribes.  When I got home, Wynn had destroyed the star strips, tearing them up and scribbling all over them.  The silent treatment continues.  Dinner was skipped.

Throughout these incidents, I have tried so very (very) hard to give no reaction.  I continue talking, from "Good morning, Sweetheart.  Did you sleep well?" to "Good night.  I'll see you in the morning."  There's not a lot to talk about when met by stony silence and emphatic exit, but I still address her when outlining the schedule for the day, upcoming family events and plans, offering smoothies, and asking her preferences on those items/events in which the kids get a say.  Pause to see if there's an answer (no) and continue with no reaction.  I did not want to teach that this strategy is a powerful or even effective one!

The original ending to this blog post explained how I had decided that the ignore / don't assign power technique was not working.  I had decided that if someone decided to not behave like a civil family member, she did not deserve all the privileges that the kids get.  I was taking away her iPod, internet access, and computer account.  (Her favorite pastime is watching Chinese TV online.)  Privileges would be restored when polite behavior was restored.  But . . . my husband convinced/reassured me that any negative reaction would add fuel to the fire, and consistent non-reaction was the way to go.  Sigh.

Later, it also occurred to me that a young lady who has to try to integrate herself into a strange and already established family unit has every reason to withdraw.  In addition to that, she is probably operating within a reasonable paradigm to test the limits of family love and tolerance to see if it really is immutable.  What she needs is consistent acceptance and love, even at her grumpiest.

And she really is a lovely and lovable girl!

Update:  And our happy, chatterbox girl DID come back on the very same day this was posted.  She is such a joy!  We will continue to love her and hang in there when she is unhappy and unable to talk about it.

Good To Have My Girl Home

Wynn left us for a while.  First, she went to Camp Pinecroft at Pend Oreille Bible Camp for a week.  Just barely back from that, she left to go stay with Auntie and Uncle Eric (and most importantly, Ben) for a few days.  She went from there to stay at Nana's, visit cousin Rose, and go camping with Uncle Matt and Amanda.  Then, she went back to Auntie's. . . then back to Nana's . . . and finally, home for Cameron's birthday.  THEN, she slept for a couple of days.

It is very good to have her back!  We all missed her.

With friends at Pinecroft.

Rose, Mandy, Ben, & Wynn

Back home finally!  Getting ready to go to a wedding.

Happy

Bunnies!

A week or so ago, we were talking about how Gabrian and Ariana used to like feeding the bunnies when they were little.  Wynn was surprised to learn that we used to have rabbits.  (I was surprised she hadn't noted pictures on the blog.)  She wondered where we put them, and when I said, "In the rabbit run," she didn't know what I meant.  I explained that the wire pen below the deck was for rabbits and how it was made with wire under the dirt so the rabbits don't dig out.  I suggested that it might be possible to get more bunnies (Yeah, twist my arm!), and she was really excited.  I said we'd have a lot of work to do because we haven't had rabbits in a couple of years, and we'd have to dig out the run (which was completely overgrown with morning glory).  The next day, she was out cleaning the run.  She requested that I take pictures of her working for the blog, which I did, but I can't find them.  (Sorry, Daughter.)

The next step was looking at lots of pictures of bunnies to decide if she wanted standard ears or lops, as well as pictures with people to scale the rabbits so she could decide if she wanted a large or small breed.  She settled on lops, and I think she'd have been OK with any size, so it was just a matter of which variety became available first.  First available were 8 week old Holland Lops.  SO CUTE.

These little guys created a little work in a couple of areas.  First of all, we have had French Lops and Mini Lops, but not Holland Lops.  These will be smaller than our other rabbits, so we dug the whole rabbit run out, down to the wire, and I am in the process of lining it all with smaller gauge wire before we put the soil back in.  (I am scratched to bits from sharp bunny nails and working with wire.  Cuddling a bunny when a Great Dane comes along to sniff isn't gentle on the skin of the upper chest.)  No hurry on the rabbit run project, though, because, for now, the bunnies live in a 2'x2' cage on the deck until they are "potty" trained and desirous of handling.  They are very friendly actually, the grey more than the black, but I won't put them out where they could dig or hide from people until they consistently come to people and want picked up.  Otherwise, we'll have shy bunnies who bolt underground instead of coming to us.

In addition to housing, we had to come up with names.  Wynn tells us that in China, animals were not given names, and trying to think of names was a strange and difficult task.  She liked that their colors matched the cats' and thought maybe their names should match, too.  Over and over, then, she asked to be reminded which was the grey cat and which was the black one.  I think it's funny that she's been here a year and a half and doesn't know the cats' names yet, but it does illustrate how "animals with names" is a hard concept for her.  Our most recent three rabbits were Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato.  We thought these should have philosophers' names as well, but these are does. We found names of female philosophers that were associated with Socrates and Plato, but the names are just a mouthful.  (Examples:  Perictione, Lastheneia, Diotema, Aspasia.)   We thought maybe we should just go with female names from Greek mythology, but that wouldn't be parallel anyway.  (I also suggested Twilight for the grey and Eclipse for the black and got a satisfying round of wails from Andrew, Mandy, Conor, and Cameron.  lol)  Finally, Andrew said, "This black one has a white streak in her hair," and I knew what we should name her:  Polgara!  And Polgara's twin sister was Beldaran.  This was met with enthusiasm by Andrew, Mandy, and Conor.  (David Eddings characters if you are one of the rare and unfortunate people who have not read the Belgariad and the Mallorean.)

Look at Wynn's smiles!  Project well worth while!

More pictures, just cuz:

Fish Tanks, Then and Now

This was the first time we saw Wynn in Kunming, before we officially met her.

This is at the Rainforest Cafe on a trip to Seattle to visit a friend from Kunming.

A Milestone of Sorts

I just went to translate something, and for the first time in 18 months, Google Translate is not one of the thumbnails of my most-used pages on my web browser.  I realized that means we haven't been using it . . . When Wynn doesn't understand something, we've been explaining it to her IN ENGLISH, and she has been explaining herself in English, too.  She calls me her translator, as I'm usually able to put context to her circumlocutions and say, "Oh, you mean . . . "  How great is that?!

Visiting a Friend

You might remember Wynn spotting a picture of someone she knew in her foster village while I was blog surfing.  We had an opportunity to go meet this family as they were visiting relatives in Washington State.  Wynn was very, very nervous about going alone, so she brought her brother/best friend Conor along with her for a cross-state drive and a mini vacation in an econo-hotel.

We visited the International District in Seattle, which had some great shopping opportunities but didn't seem to impress Wynn.  It was truly disappointing that we were unable to find books.  A large Asian bookstore had only one small, partial shelf of books in Simplified Chinese.  Wynn's friend and her mom turned out to be just as wonderful in person as they seem online.  :)  Very, very nice people.  Wynn reacted, as she does whenever stressed or uncomfortable, by shutting down. She interacted minimally with her friend, which was very disappointing to me.  I do know that forcing the issue -taking away iPod, trying to require speech (ha ha)- would only make her withdraw more and become surly.  It was very similar to the way she handles holidays:  talks about them with enthusiasm and anticipation for weeks, and then sits by herself and rejects interaction when the day comes.  Stress at the dichotomy of her expectations and the reality?  I don't know.  Sigh.

Regardless of the fact that they didn't put their heads together and chatter away in two languages, I am so glad that she got to see her friend.  (Hmmm.  Talk about a dichotomy between hopes and reality, Lora?) I am grateful for every fragile tie to her past; I hope that she can see that we appreciate that she had a life before Nortonhood, and that our respect of it is helpful to her.

Holidays are Hard

Holidays seem to be hard for Wynn.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are better than others, I think because they do not compete with any memories of Chinese holidays.  Both of the birthdays that she has "celebrated" with us, one in China and one here, have been touchy.  Mother's Day, birthdays (all), Chinese New Year . . . She becomes rather sullen and is unwilling or unable to tell us what's wrong.  It appears to be a combination of the holiday not living up to her imagined celebration, and (I am totally hypothesizing) the comparison to the "right" way to celebrate things in China.  At least this time, for Chinese New Year, when I asked if it had been all right, she said, "No, not really.  But I know you tried, Mom," this with reassuring smile.

Wynn Has A New Cousin

Wynn with her new cousin, Benjamin.