Last weekend my husband was working, but I fearlessly plowed ahead and took Sunny and Sprout to the Finger Lakes Chapter of Little People of America’s holiday party.
Let me start this by praising this organization. I’ve written about them before regarding a baseball game we took the girls to during the summer. Being surrounded by a crowd that includes a lot of little people, including kids, is so crucial for my two kids who are themselves little people. I watched Sunny’s confidence grow in that setting, and as she utilizes the step stool they’d thoughtfully put in the restrooms, she proudly observed, “even grownups sometimes have to use a step stool.” Normalizing size differences is just huge for a kid with dwarfism!
Mind you, I also discovered she’s squeamish about the word “dwarfism,” and that’s something my husband and I need to work on, clearly. Sunny said at one point “I’m taller than some of the grownups here!” And I said “Yep! That’s partly because there are different forms of dwarfism.” She flashed embarrassment at me and hissed, “Don’t say that word!” I replied, “What, ‘dwarfism’? There’s nothing wrong with that word!” She angrily replied, “Yes! THAT word.”
So we still clearly have a long way to go to achieve acceptance and comfort with her condition.
Anywho, the party was lovely. They did a nice job for the kids especially. The food was kid friendly (chicken strips were among the other amazing Italian options), they had gift bags for each kid, and kid-friendly gift cards as prizes for Bingo (though Sprout chose a Starbucks card over a Build-a-Bear card, to the amusement of all), and crafts. They even had the Benedict Cumberbatch version of the Grinch playing in one of the rooms.
Sunny chose that day to be, erm, challenging. This is not an infrequent occurrence. When she gets anxious, she gets obnoxious. It happens at doctor appointments, with big changes in her schedule, and at public events. It sometimes happens with her therapist when she knows she needs to tell her therapist something big that’s going on for her. It’s her default when her anxiety is up.
I can speculate as to why it happens. For the first eight years of her life, Sunny relied on attitude, pushiness, loudness, and sulking to get her needs met in a chaotic household with a Mama who was often distracted by other things and struggling to navigate our society. To a large degree she was raised by her big sister, who being only a few years older, and not having a good parenting role model, just caved to Sunny’s behavior. So, when Sunny’s anxiety goes up, she reverts back to her old behaviors that got her needs met through her early life.
But attitude, pushiness, loudness, and sulking are a challenge to deal with at all, much less in a public setting.
She knows it, too, and sometimes I swear pulls out the ‘tude in public because she thinks I am less inclined to crack down on the behavior when there’s an audience. This is hardly something unique to Sunny. Lots of kids try that trick. But dang is it frustrating.
I need to do a few things. First, I need to adjust my expectations. I am an eternal optimist and always assume every event will be super fun. I need to go into kid events knowing Sunny could get anxious and act out. I need to remember that, and still take them to stuff anyway. That’s a challenge for me because I get discouraged, but I can’t stop giving the kids life experiences just because I might be embarrassed.
And on the subject of that embarrassment…
As a society, we automatically assume that every child’s misbehavior is a sign of the present parent’s incompetence at parenting. And I hate that. I hate it for the parents and for the kids. Sometimes it’s the case, sure, but a hell of a lot of other factors are at play too.
I prefer going to events with other foster kids because there the parents are more inclined to get it and be unfazed by my kid’s sauciness. “Misbehavior” is often a symptom of trauma, as is Sunny’s case. But Sunday, it was all families with bio kids in tow, and dang it, every single one of them was well behaved.
When I’d ask Sunny to do something like, for example, throwing away her plate and napkin after she ate, she gave me a quick loud response of “No.” It was automatic. It wasn’t something she was thinking about before delivering it. Sunny was just sitting there feeling uncomfortable and defiance was her default to being asked to do something. It makes sense as her Mama used to ask the kids to do almost everything for her in public because she doesn’t speak English and isn’t comfortable with our culture. Sunny resented it. I think all the kids did on some level.
Anyway, I then gave Sunny a withering look she refers to as my “evil eye,” and she loudly and stubbornly whined “I don’t want to.” The evilness of the evil eye intensified and I gave her a warning “[name], now, please,” in a low fierce voice. At that point she caved and did as I’d asked originally, but her volume was loud enough that the whole table heard the dispute before she finally got up and threw away her plate. We got surreptitious looks, or else I imagined them. Either is possible.
The folks there don’t know Sunny is in foster care. I assume they think she’s adopted since she doesn’t exactly resemble Seth and me? I find people don’t assume foster care for Sunny and Sprout because they’re Asian. When we get asked questions about our family the standard question is “are they adopted?”Please note the uncomfortable fact that when we had Black kids, folks would ask if they were in foster care all the time. That’s a topic for a whole other blog post!
Anyway, much of our day was tense exchanges between Sunny and me, or her asking for impossible things that she knew were impossible just so she could sulk when I said “no.” She whined through Bingo. She sassed back at every opportunity. She pretended she was about to swear loudly by starting to say the word but petering out while looking at me for my reaction. It was just A DAY.
When we got back to the car we discussed her behavior. I told her I got that she was anxious in there, which she admitted, but that her behavior was, on the whole, unacceptable. She didn’t get her iPad on the way home or music. The hour ride was passed in cranky silence, peppered by cheery random observations from Sprout, followed by sour snaps from Sunny.
It was an invaluable experience because being with little people is crucial for the kids. But it wasn’t a fun day.
As is so often the case, I’ll work with my own therapist and Sunny’s to see if there are better ways for me to respond to her behavior when she’s acting out because her anxiety is up. I could always do better. I’ll work with my therapist, too, on the mortification I feel when Sunny acts out publicly because I feel a lot of folks are giving me shade because of it, thinking I’m just a shitty parent if she acts that way.
I’ve got lots of work to do. I hate having to do it. When it comes to Sunny’s behavior generally, I’m just tired. I even have found myself wishing she would get sent to live with her relative (which the county and the lawyers and the judge are considering) just so the daily grind of coping with her attitude would relent. But that’s not likely to happen soon, isn’t fair to anyone, and won’t be the basis for any decision-making regarding her future.
I guess I’m just human, and sometimes want a breather. When raising a challenging kid, breathers usually seem gloriously unattainable.
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