I'm Seeing Someone Else

I must confess Dear Blog, there is another I have been seeing on the side.  It's taken my attention, detoured my affections, compelled me in a new direction...*sigh*. We see each other every day, and sometimes twice a day.  It is good. Yeah. Real good. That good.

Moodchart.org. 

Thanks to Integrity Singer at Peace in Puzzles for sharing this valuable resource that has helped me objectively document the roller coaster ride of Bi-Polar Disorder.

In August, our family grew by two: a sweet little guy, age 5,  with Bi-Polar disorder and some BIG FEELINGS and his little brother, age 4, whose own feelings aren't nearly as little as he. 

Just as I have gotten the whole RAD thing down, we get a kid with Bi-Polar Disorder. Hmmmm. Now what do we do? How do I support him, but not his rages??? How do I set clear rules and consequences and still be loving, warm and welcoming???

I have been consumed with managing behaviors that seem, at times, to be unmanageable. Random screeching? Unfocused raging? Targeted kicking? Vengeful peeing? HUH???? What???

I am in unfamiliar territory. My nightstand is stacked high with books on parenting attachement challenged children: books like Parenting Children who Refuse To Be Raised, When Love Isn't Enough, etc. etc. But Bi-Polar? Not a stinkin'clue.

When I first came upon blogging it was in the spring of 2009. We were struggling to parent a young man with RAD who had been living in residential treatment for several years prior to moving in with us in 2008 in a pre-adoptive placment. He did not want to be adopted, and definitely did not want to be adopted by us. He amped up his RAD behaviors to help us all get the message. I was determined to understand his behaviors and help him settle into our family. I scoured the internet looking for resources and I discovered the wonderful world of blogging...that May, I started my own blog and after two or three posts forgot my passwords and how to access the darned thing..."Total noob fail" as my kids would say. I dusted myself off and started a new blog...and here I am today: 274 posts later. The young man would up reunifying with his bio-dad at the age of 12, having never lived with him before, and we would up learning much more about RAD than we originally set out to. I learned about it here - on the internet, on blogs...

I had no clue that help (and humor) was just a click away. I am grateful for all I have learned and the friendships I have forged typing away in my kitchen late at night.

I have a feeling I'll be blog surfing late into the evenings looking for other mothers' wisdom, some solid parenting ideas, and super-deluxe ninja mommy skills to help me be better meet the needs of these sweet liitle guys. 

In the meantime, I raise my cup of lukewarm tea and bow my head in appreciation to all you Moms out there who are loving and parenting challenging wounded kids...so as Eddy would say to Patsy on Ab Fab: "Cheers, sweety-darling"