on the joys of motherhood, adoption, life in Korea & Japan & small town USA, simplification, homeschooling, sewing, quilting, and much more........
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The cherry blossoms have almost come to an end, but we are savoring every moment that we can with them. The kids (and I) have wanted to take walks and take pictures every chance we get.
I was able to quickly snap photos of this beautiful elderly woman enjoying the blossoms. When I see elderly Koreans, I can't help but wonder at the difficulties and heartbreak they must have seen in their lifetimes - being conquered by the Japanese, having their country split in half and devestated by the Korean war and the evil of communism, the destruction of their cultural heritage sites, cities, and farmland, and the decades of economic devastation that followed.
The Solbridge International Business School Campus (where Brock works) is comprised of this single tall building. I took the photo while the kids were playing on teh playground.
The view from our balcony now that leaves and blossoms are appearing. It was a hazy day, but still lovely.
The cherry blossoms (Sakura in Japanese & Peojggot in Korean) have been the most wonderful surprise. They came earlier than expected, and are much more abundant than we expected. There are cherry trees everywhere. We don't see the huge, ancient cherry trees like we did in Japan, here they are fairly new, young trees, but they line the riverways, fill our parks and playgrounds, and make us very happy.
Sunday after church we went for a walk in the perfect weather, and enjoyed the blossoms.
We begin our homeschooling each morning with journal writing.
Little man has decided to write his journal entries in the style of a chapter book (his spelling left intact):
Feb. 13 ~ Feb. 14: Chapter 1: The plane
As I boarderd the plane I felt a weird feeling of sorrow and excitment.
sorrow for my friends and excitment because I havn't ridden on a plane in a long time. So as I walked in that small plane, I found my seat and made myself comforble.
I then heard the engine roar, and the next thing I new I was in mid air next to my younger sister Susanna....
Every day I am reading more about Tourette's, and gaining great understanding of my boy, and myself, and our family dynamics.
It is healing and painful and enlightening and humbling and liberating and frustrating.
I am realizing how much self control our little guy actually has. And how much patience he has had with us and our impatience.
:Waiting to play his violin with the Nauvoo Community Orchestra in his first performance - you can see in his face how he is struggling & focusing so he can hold still:
We have been very confused and frustrated over the years about the issue of why he can hold still in school and church, but not at home. We have honestly never had a family prayer, scripture study, family home evening, or even a conversation that hasn't been interrupted (usually repeatedly) by him, since he came to us at 4 days old. But as I shared in my first post about Tourette's, he can hold still and not interrupt in church and school. We have asked him over and over in exasperation why he can't do it for us at home. And now we have an answer. "When a child with Tourette Syndrome is trying to suppress several tics during the day, say at school for example, he will be using up a lot of energy and this becomes exhasuting for him. This will build up to a feeling of frustration......and the tics and pent up energy will need to be released when he gets home."....Tics and Tourette Sundrome: A Handbook For Parents and Professionals
I read years and years ago that it is a good sign when children act up home, because it means that is where they feel safe, and it is the same with Tourette's - he can't suppress the tics and urges and energy all the time, and he feels safe to do it at home. So that is good. But I feel so guilty that I haven't understood it until now.
The book I referenced above also says, "It is a sad but realistic thought that every day there will be a chid with a tic disorder in a classroom somewhere who will be reprimanded for his tics. It is not uncommon to hear about children given detentions or extra homework because the teacher assumes the tics are done deliverately to annoy him/her". Thankfully, I am not aware of this happening to our son. He has been blessed with very good teachers. And I think he has also worked hard to suppress the tics at school. I am so grateful for the wonderful teachers he has had at school and church. I just wish I could also say that I haven't reprimanded him for his tics. But I am coming to realize how much I have reprimanded, scolded, reminded, pleaded, and even lost my temper & yelled over things that he probably had little or no control over - like touching every single thing he passes in the grocery store aisle (which happened again yesterday, and I started to scold him, just like I always have) . It is very humbling and heartbreaking. And somehow he still loves me sweetly and patiently.
I have learned again and again that our children offer us every opportunity to overcome our weaknesses, if we will be open to learning those lessons. It is difficult and painful. One of my great weaknesses is that I am easily overstimulated. And so living with the constant movement, noise, confusion, and chaos has brought out the very worst in me. I have felt completely frayed and frazzled for almost 10 years. But I also have the opportunity to let this situation make me into a better person than I could ever otherwise be. I am continually faced with opportunities to be kind and patient and understanding in spite of feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. Probably every child offers this to every parent. But for me and my boy, the scale of this offering is enormous.
I love my boy more than I can express, and am so grateful that we get to journey this life together.
I was expecting to focus mainly on our experiences in Korea as I've starting blogging again. But it turns out that I have an additional reason to blog. We have discovered that our precious boy has Tourette's Syndrome.
We don't have an official diagnosis, so it may seem hasty to make such a pronouncement. But a diagnosis is extremely difficult to get. Most doctors haven't really learned about Tourette's in medical school, and there are not definitive tests that give you a positive diagnosis. And now that we are in Korea, it would be much more difficult to get a diagnosis. But after repeatedly feeling strong impressions to research Tourette's, we have found that it explains everything that this little man has struggled with, seemingly from birth.
Because of media representations, most people think of someone shouting obsenities when they think of Tourette's but that only happens in the rarest of cases. The onset is in childhood, and it is almost always accompanied by other challenges like ADHD and OCD.
Tourette's explains the entire list of things that our little guy (and consequently we too) has/have struggled with, including:
severe sleep problems, including sleep walking
extreme, debilitating anxiety
lack of impulse control
difficulty with fine motor skills
obsessive thinking
repetitive behaviors
facial and vocal tics that are increasing in severity
inability to hold still
the need to touch things
irresistable urges
constant (and I do meant constant) question asking
and the list goes on......
The tics have been going on for years now, and seem to be continuing to worsen - eye blinking, grimacing, shoulder shrugging, neck twitching, etc. With Tourette's they generally worsen until puberty, and then usually start to decrease. At first I didn't think he had vocal tics (which are a basic part of a Tourette's diagnosis), but after researching, I realized that he did. Repetitive throat clearing, sniffing, and similar patterns fall under vocal tics.
Our boy is so sweet and good and extremely intelligent and talented. As we've tried to talk to others about our concerns and struggles, we have almost always received responses along the line of something like this - he is a wonderful boy, and we must be blowing things out of proportion, OR we just don't have realistic expectations of a boy (he has 4 sister and no brothers), OR that we are causing his problems by putting too much pressure on him or treating him like a girl, OR that we are just a little crazy.
One reason for this is that people with Tourette's can control their problem behavior at least somewhat when they are in public. But eventually they have to let it go. (One way to understand this is to compare it to blinking. You may be able to aviod blinking for a while, but eventually you have to give in and blink). And so he has been fairly good at forcing himself to hold still in public - church and school settings, but that causes additional pent up energies and urges that then get acted out at home. So unless you live with him, you don't get a realistic idea of what he/we is/are facing. We once had someone in our home who was shocked by his behavior (and disgusted that we weren't controllig it better). He was literally bouncing off of walls and ceilings. We tried to explain that he was always this way at home. She gave us a disapproving look and said sternly, he isn't that way in primary (our church program for children). At the time, it really caused me to question myself, and I would stand at the door and watch him in primary. He was indeed able to hold still. Why not at home? What did it mean? What were we doing wrong?
As time has gone on, school has become increasingly difficult for him. He has gone from being a straight A student in the gifted and talented programs to consistently bringing home D's and F's. It has been becoming more and more difficult for him to hold still and focus at school. And that has been making him feel badly about himself. So the homeschooling that we are doing in Korea has come at just the right time. I had felt that confirmed to me even before we realized that we were dealing with Tourette's.
We have known that something was different for him since he was a baby. We could tell he was very intelligent, and a remarkable child (and an unbelievably cute one). But something was different. He had jerky repetitive behaviors even as a small baby. And extreme, heart-breaking anxiety no matter what we did to make him feel secure and loved.
He is truly such a good boy, and never wants to disobey or do anything wrong. And when he does, through lack of impulse control or through uncontrolable urges, he is confused and feels so badly about himself. Poor little man.
And of course we feel badly about all the times that we have been impatient - the times that we have scolded him or punished him or raised our voices at him for doing something that he probably couldn't control. And then there are all the times I've asked him in an exasperated voice to STOP clearing his throat or blinking his eyes, or saying the same thing over and over again.
But it does feel good to have a reason for what has been going on, and to be able to find some answers about what we can do.
One book I have been reading had this simple statement:
"Looking after a child with Tourette's Syndrom can be extremely exhausting".
Those few words were so validating. We have been so exhausted for almost 10 years now, and not able to figure out exactly why. We have felt badly about ourselves. We have blamed him. And then we have felt even worse about ourselves for blaming him. He is the son we prayed for and hoped for and dreamed of. We do love him so and are so grateful for him, but we are almost always so tired - especially during his first 3 years when he rarely slept for longer than 30 minutes at a time, day or night. The book then went on to talk about the stress it puts on a marriage and on siblings. Yes, we've all felt that too.
But I am finding peace, and a renewed energy to do whatever we can to help him. And I'll share what we learn on our journey.
i love to sew for my kids, and i can dream up endless opporutnites to sew for my girls, but very few for my little boy, especially as he gets older. one little man can only wear so many different pairs of pajamas. so i was delighted to find this pattern for "little guy ties" by "my little londyn". i easgerly started sewing them, and couldn't stop. my little guy is not the proud owner of 4 little ties, his dad has a matching tie, and we've also made one for a friend. i keep thinking of new fabrics that would be perfect to use.
his old ties were stained and snagged. i love that these are more washable and un-snag-able.
i thought he would like thing 1 & thing 2 the best, as they fit his personality so well, but excitedly picked out a print called "japanese words"
as his favorite. i asked him why he liked it...."i like the way i feel when i look at it". (he is japanese).
hopscotching while wearing the cape Mia made him for Christmas.
Little man (turned 6 last month) was pondering in the kitchen yesterday before church.
"I know why Heavenly Father and Jesus made us!", he said, "so they can have fun watching us." (well, yes Noah, i'm sure they do have fun watching you....we sure do.)
Later in sacrament meeting (the family meeting in our church where we partake of the sacrament and renew our baptisimal convenants), Noah needed to use the bathroom....."Dad I know I won't get any ice cream (yes, we bribe our children to be good in church with ice cream - it works! they are supposed to use the bathroom before the meeting starts, and sit reverently through the meeting), but I think that it's more important that I take care of my health."
After returning from the bathroom, with all earnestness in his face, he rushed in, sat down, and said "what did I miss?" This was particularly hilarious to us, as we are quite certain that he has yet to be aware of anything that has been said or done in sacrament meeting.
my dear friend sarah gave birth yesterday, her eighth child and first boy! and i realized that everyone that i personally know who has had a baby this year, or who is expecting and knows the gender, is having a boy. so i have deemed this the year of the boy.
raw edged flannel burp clothes for my two new nephews: baby owen - born last month, and baby peter - born last week.
always in search of fun projects for our hand made (or written, or second hand) christmas, i am looking for cozy pajama projects to use with this selection of flannels from my shop:
i love vintage, and feel blessed because that's just about all that's available in pajama patterns now. i'm considering some of these options i found on etsy for my littlest girls:
it would be so fun to live closer to my mom (for many reasons! including:) so that i could raid her vintage pattern stash for the perfect nightgown, like i did for easter dresses in 2008.
i love this idea for little man,
but i'll use my own jenbei pattern i bought in japan to make summer jammies for my little japanese babes.
my 17 year old took matters into her own hands and informed me that we were finally going to paint the stripes on little man's wall two saturdays ago (the saturday after pageant ended - more on pageant to come). i had originally planned to make these stripes vertical, but after separate input from both gloria and traci (who both have amazing decorating sense) i realized that horizontal would look great (and be much easier - yay!). back in february brock and i had painted his walls blue, added the vinyl letters and maps, and hung the roman blinds (the blinds were all brock). the cans of paint for the stripes have been waiting in his room since we moved in a year ago, and the painting supplies have been waiting since february. his room still needs so finishing touches, including the quilt i have cut out (shhh, don't tell him, it will hopefully get done in time for christmas).
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