A Baker's Dozen: Daily Life in a Large Family: FASD

You know you have a large family when...

...your children feel sorry for families with only six or seven children.
...people ask if you're competing with the Duggars.
...even your friends aren't sure how many children you have.
...your family no longer fits in a 15 passenger van.
..complete strangers feel welcome to comment on your fertility and contraceptive methods.
...two of your daughters go for a walk...and get asked by a neighbor if they're foster kids.
...you have to carry three health insurance cards in your wallet- because that's how many it takes to fit everyone's name.
...you take the wrong child to the dentist...simply because your handwriting on the calendar was messy and both started with a "j".
...grocery shopping for 30 children and 12 adults for a two day camp constitutes a "small" shopping trip for you.
You find yourself relating some small incident to your husband and starting with the words, "Well, I only boiled twenty-six eggs for breakfast..."
...you buy a 40 pound box of bananas intending to make banana bread and freeze a bunch for smoothies...but your children eat them all first.
...you find an afternoon root canal relaxing.
...it takes you twenty-three minutes on the phone to schedule your children's dental appointments.
...you've given up on using your toaster entirely and make all of your toast under the broiler in you oven.
...you are seriously tempted by the stacking cribs you see at Goodwill for $19.99.
...you find yourself thinking, "Wow, the house is so quiet and peaceful with only nine children".
...you have enough children to constitute not one, but TWO large families.
...you have a laundry basket devoted entirely to lonely socks seeking their mate.
...when you got to buy your children those cool "spin toothbrushes" because you think they get their teeth so much cleaner...but the store doesn't carry enough styles/colors for your children to each have a different toothbrush.
...when you can't take all of your children to the doctor's office at the same time because the waiting room has only 10 seats.
...when you still have seven children that are required by law to sit in a carseat or booster seat.
...you call the doctor to get your children tetnus shots, and they tell you they don't have enough in the office and need to order more from the health department.
...you take up more than one entire pew in church.
...you take only half of your children to the library, and STILL get asked if they're all yours.
...you go to fill your children's flouride prescription at the phamacy and you clean them out of every pill they have...and it's still not enough.
...you spend sixty dollars on socks...and not everyone gets new socks.
...you go shopping at Costco and the cashier asks if you're having a soccer barbecue.

May 11, 2011

Living With FASD

I didn't intentionally leave it out the other day...or if I did it was subconscious. When I was blogging about my struggles with Mordecai I was focusing on his educational needs and how I could meet them, not what the root of the problem is. And to be honest, I've spent years trying to "protect" him. I don't want him to be seen as "that boy with FAS".... But the reality is he was diagnosed at age 2 1/2 with Static Encephalopathy Alcohol Exposed. In plain English, that means: permanent brain damage due to alcohol exposure...in older language he would have been diagnosed with "Fetal Alcohol Effects" as opposed to full-blow "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome". They have since updated the terminology even more and now put it all under the umbrella term: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. He was evaluated down in Seattle by the experts in the field. These doctors know more about FAS than anyone in the world.

Unfortunately, being an expert in FAS or FASD doesn't mean they know how to teach him. It's a bizarre world inside Mordecai's brain, I'm sure. Somedays are good. He has self-control. He remembers things. Schoolwork comes together...more often than not though, he's struggling to retrieve the right word, he can't remember how letter sounds go together to form words, and his anger and rage get the best of him....he's always half a pace behind...

Behind Jubilee, who is two months younger. Behind Hezekiah, who is a year and a half younger...and on many days, behind Tucker, who's three years younger. It didn't used to bother Mordecai, but as he gets older I'm pretty sure he notices these differences more and more. He can't read his Cub Scout book and rarely has the mental endurance or patience to finish the requirements for a badge...

Day after day, Mordecai struggles to keep up through a fog...I appreciate all the resources you blog readers gave to me when I blogged about Mordecai last week...one quote I read from one of those blogs was something like: a baby with FASD will grow up to be a kid with FASD who will grow up to be an adult with FASD. And that statement, no matter how true it is, makes me sad. I want him to outgrow it. I want him to have a healthy brain and a fair shot at life.

But life of course, isn't fair.

No one really knows how to help these kids...if I knew of a program that worked specifically with kids with alcohol damage, I'd have him there in a minute...

Instead we wait.

Wait for someone to come up with a great, new program that works.

Wait for him to finally "catch on" to reading.

Wait for him to remember the difference between "breakfast" and "lunch".

Wait for him to learn the difference between "13" and "31".

Wait. Wait. Wait.

And hope that someday, by some miracle, he is a successful, happy adult.

10:38 AM in Adoption, FASD | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack (0)