Brush Your Teeth, Please!

Who knew that brushing teeth could cause so much angst!? Seriously, we do it every morning and every evening - - - and EVERY morning and EVERY evening, it gets the same response: tears and tantrums.

Why? 

She doesn't have any teeth issues and knows how to brush her teeth very well.  When I do go upstairs with her, I just stand there and watch.  But I'm trying to get her to do it by herself so that the morning and evening runs more smoothly.  In the mornings, I carry her up the stairs (from our bedroom where she's still sleeping on the futon), but deposit her in front of the bathroom with instructions to brush her teeth.  I have to let the dogs out and will be back to help her dress after that.  Tears ensue.

I'm still trying to figure it out, but my guess is that Joy wants to tell me what to do, and this is the last ditch effort each day to accomplish that. She certainly wakes up with that in mind as well!

At least tonight, it felt like a control issue. I guess I need to find new ways of dealing with it. As she is stomping her feet on the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs and crying "mama" like she's being poked with needles, I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs, about 4 feet away from her going, "what are you doing?". I act like I can't believe she's going to be such a little girl. That doesn't work.

I tell her I'm going to ignore her until she stops. That only makes it worse. So, reluctantly, I start counting and taking away things she likes to do. That makes her explode into fits of hitting herself, hitting the wall and trying to hit me. That's enough, I decide, so I scoop her up and hold her, telling her I'll let her go when she stops screaming.

Thirty minutes later, she's still fighting me but calmer. After a bath, some soothing lotion, and a little bit of talking, I think we're fine. Then it starts up again over something silly. I told her new rules - when she is sassy and talks back, she'll have to do jumping jacks. She immediately tries that out and sure enough, she's doing jumping jacks in the bedroom.

It's really funny, in a way because she's screaming and tears are running down her face, and she's trying to do jumping jacks while I count them. If her arms don't go up, I don't count it and she screams louder but does another one perfectly!

We do that about 5 times, and I know she's dead tired, but she won't stop pushing the limits. Eventually, just about 2 hours from when we started, she's in the futon, almost stopped crying, with Tim trying to sleep in the bed.

One of the new rules is bedtime is going to be an hour earlier from now on. And no tv after dinner. I don't know if she got overstimulated and couldn't calm herself or if she was so tired she couldn't stop herself, but in either case, we've got to try to avoid the things that set us up for this kind of bedtime.

I'm writing this, not to show you how bad Joy can be, but because several people have told me recently how much hearing about the reality of life has helped them. Adoption is not for the weak or faint-hearted - you have to be able to stick it out when your child is out of control. And they will be.  They need you to be strong and BE there, no matter what! 

My thought on what's going on with Joy right now is that she's adjusting really well and very quickly. And every time she gets closer to us, relaxes a little more into our lives together and even realizes that she loves us very much, it terrifies her. It means she can't go back to the life she had before. Ever.

She's old enough to remember both life in her foster family and life at the orphanage. While she almost never talks about life in the orphanage, I know she was aware and watching, and wary, all the time she was there. She got in trouble a lot. She got in trouble for crying, for throwing fits, for doing what she's doing now. They were not always so gentle with her. She keeps expecting us to treat her the way they did. We don't. Part of her is suspicious of us because we don't spank her, I think. She even told me once that her caregiver at the orphanage spanked her ("hard", she said) and "she loved me". Yes, she did, and so do we. And we love you so much, we won't do that.

I'm sure that's confusing to her.

I also think that she was pretty much given her way in her foster family. Joy was so mad the first time she really realized that there were rules here and she had to obey them!! She still is mad, I think, and still testing to see if we mean it.

It is tiring though, to be tested every night!  Especially over something as silly as brushing your teeth ---

There are many more moments though, now, when Joy isn't testing us. She is enjoying life with us! And those are precious moments, when we get to see what a lovely, giving and loving child she is in there.

Now, if we could only find that child at night, when it's time to brush her teeth....