Saturday, September 2, 2006
We have returned, and it’s great to be home. It was a tiring trip. I was rather uptight the whole time and Alesia picked up on that and her behavior wasn’t great, either. We did get some interesting information, though, and overall I feel hopeful about the future.
Alesia was so excited in the airport she kept darting away from me, like she knew where she was going, and I really had to scold her. I wish I could’ve made her drop and do pushups, but I figured it would embarrass her too much. It works great at home, though!
There was an obnoxious little boy on the plane, traveling alone, about 7 years old, and he chattered incessantly. He sat two rows behind us. By the end of the flight I was ready to strangle him. He was rather funny when we got to Washington though. The plane was taxiing to the terminal and came to a sudden stop, with a lurch, and in the midst of the resultant silence this little voice piped up and said “Oh now, was THAT really necessary?!” – well, that broke everybody up. Then a minute later the lights flicked off, for a moment, then came back on. The little voice piped up again, “And God said, Let There Be Light!”
When got in Wed. night, I was exhausted. We just picked up hamburgers from McDonalds on the way to the hotel. The cab driver was accommodating about it. We were 30 minutes late because the plane sat on the tarmac in Atlanta waiting to get permission to go. So it was almost 8:30 when we checked in.
The Hampton Inn is a decided upgrade from the Holiday Inn Express, which I am accustomed to now. The Hampton has a better breakfast, with eggs and sausage, and it’s included in the room rate. They also have a business center with free internet access, but I didn’t have time to use it much. The mouse was also awful.
Dr. Federici [see www.drfederici.com for more info] and I met early Thursday morning, then he spent the day evaluating Alesia, then we met again late Thursday afternoon. His office is in an old house in Alexandria, not far from the hotel. Alexandria is a beautiful town, with lots of historic buildings. It reminded me a lot of the historic district in Charleston.
I had provided Dr. Federici [by e-mail] with a detailed 10 page summary of Alesia’s life with me so far, and what I know about her previous life. That pretty much answered all his preliminary questions, though he did ask me a few in the morning talk. We also discussed books, adoption agencies, different things. He is a very tall man, and very dynamic. I liked him. He speaks fluent English, Italian, Russian, and Romanian. He has 7 kids, all adopted as older kids. He also does all his own testing. I have a lot of respect for him.
Dr. F advised me to just go back to the hotel while Alesia got tested. He felt if I were in the office it would distract her. He promised to give her a lunch break. He told me later that his receptionist got Alesia a hamburger for lunch, and chatted with her.
I spent the day reading, watching TV in the room, napping. I was too restless to really relax. At lunchtime I got a sandwich at a little café across form the hotel. It looked like it was fixing to pour rain all day so I didn’t want to walk around much and get caught in a downpour. [Ironically, it didn’t rain the whole day, but it did yesterday.]
When I went back to see Dr. F Thursday afternoon, nothing he told me surprised me much, but I’m still processing it mentally and emotionally. I don’t agree with everything he said.
He started off by saying she definitely shows signs of mild FAE [Fetal Alcohol Exposure] but he doesn’t think there’s a lot of brain damage. The FAE causes her to have a lot of problems, which I can see in her every day. Kids with FAE have:
- great difficulty learning from experience, or grasping consequences;
- can’t think about a lot of different possibilities, only the here and now;
- a lot of difficulty with critical thinking and problem solving;
- difficulty with abstract ideas - they think about everything literally – like Forrest Gump;
- difficulty with short-term memory – ideas and words flow in and may stick, or may not.
Dr. F gave me some articles to read about FAS/FAE. FAS is worse; FAS, definite fetal alcohol syndrome, is a very difficult thing to deal with. Mild FAE means she has a good chance at a normal life. If she had full-blown FAS the picture would be pretty grim.
Dr. F said he thinks her IQ is around 85-90, the low end of “normal.” I hated hearing that. I think she has definite areas of brilliance, primarily in the creative sense. She is great at art, at composing photos, etc. It’s hard for me to accept that she is only slightly above Forrest Gump [he had 75 IQ] in intelligence. I think he missed the mark there. She isn’t really fluent in English yet, and her Russian is also poor, so how could he get a good IQ measurement?
He went on to say that she’s holding onto her Russian language and it’s impeding her ability to learn English. She still translates a lot of what she hears. The APD issues also impact that.
He said his testing showed she had had a lot of neglect, but no sexual abuse, thank God. I know about most of the neglect.
He opined that Alesia still is in “institutional survivor mode” – she’s slick and manipulative. She is not fully integrated into the family, not fully attached to me. I am not sure he’s right on that. He doesn’t know how sweet she is, or how relaxed she is most of the time. She was nervous around him, of course.
Emotionally, he felt Alesia is about 9 or 10. I agree with that.
Dr. F doesn’t think she has ADD. She has what he termed “secondary attentional problems,” caused mainly by language issues.
He recommended a book called The Dog Trainer’s Guide to Parenting. I described my parenting style, and he agreed with me. He said the pushups are good, the extra chores are good. He said I need to remember Pavlov, and treat her accordingly. If I remember my Psych 101 class from college, Pavlov trained rats by rewarding them with food pellets if they got the right answer, and giving them mild electroshocks if they chose poorly. After reading the FAS/FAE article, I understand why he says that. She isn’t capable of getting the cause/effect stuff right. It has to be more basic than that.
He said she needs a more strict behavior management program. I don’t agree – I’m pretty strict now. Alesia was bossy and aggressive at the orphanage. Well so what? I wanted to say. She’s a survivor. I admire that. We’re getting her straightened out behavior-wise.
Dr. F gave us a ride back to the hotel Thursday night. Alesia wasn’t in a great humor. Just before we left the office, Dr. F had said something teasing to her in Russian and she got ticked off.
When we got back to the hotel I called Mother and told her briefly about the day. I told Mother, we can’t tease her any more. We, as a family, like to tease, just affectionately, but it always makes Alesia mad. Now I know her FAE has something to do with why she doesn’t like the teasing.
After a stressful day on Thursday, we needed a break. My cousin Lisa Cox-Black lives a short drive from Alexandria, and she came in and took us to dinner. We had a great dinner at Landini’s, an Italian restaurant Dr. F recommended. It wasn’t cheap but the quality of the food was superb.
After dinner, we walked down the street to an ice cream parlor, very old-fashioned looking, very cute, and had dessert. Alexandria is very upscale but people were out on the streets, chatting and going in and out of stores, and it had a very small-town feel to it, very relaxed and nice. We walked to the end of the street and looked out at the sailboats moored there on the Potomac.
Around 9, Lisa drove us back to the hotel and got out to hug us. She whispered to me and said it was her wedding anniversary. I hugged her extra hard. She is going through a nasty divorce. Her soon-to-be ex is living in Rio de Janeiro with his mistress and has $100K he owes Lisa. I felt bad for her, having to go through this. Fortunately, there are no children, but she has had a rough time. She’s trying to re-enter the job market, and she’s over 50. She is having to take courses in Project Management to make herself qualified for today’s job market.
Friday morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and checked out. We went to Dr. F’s office, but spent the morning with Dr. Lucker, who tested Alesia for auditory processing disorder. I spent most of the time in the waiting room, though after the testing, I went in and chatted with him privately for about an hour.
I couldn’t read in the waiting room. I was so depressed about what Dr. F had said I just sat there and cried for a while. Thank goodness there was no one else in there, and it was downstairs away from the main part of the office.
I finally went in the bathroom and blew my nose, and went back into the waiting area. I reached into the backpack to get my book. Alesia had put her stuff in the backpack after her tote bag had broken, which was my suggestion. Anyway, I reached in there and felt something sharp, and pulled out a pair of scissors. Good Lord, I thought. Alesia had carried those things from Atlanta, and they went through the security screening and didn’t get detected!
I was so furious with Alesia for bringing scissors on the plane! Mother and I had talked to her [more than once] about what you and cannot carry on the plane. She had forgotten the talk – more direct evidence of the memory problems associated with the FAE. When she came out of testing I fussed at her about bringing scissors. I explained about me being accused of hijacking and maybe arrested. I put the scissors in the suitcase we were checking. Yikes. Close call.
Dr. Lucker, the audiologist testing for APD, is a delightful man, very cute. He is shorter than me, maybe 5’0. He was wearing a Mickey Mouse tie. Not surprising, as he surely has to buy clothes in the little boy’s department. He is a leading authority on Auditory Processing Disorder, or APD. Here is an article he wrote about APD and adopted children:
http://www.ncapd.org/php/articles.php?id=4
APD [auditory processing disorder] means basically that hearing is fine, but the brain doesn’t fully understand what it hears.
Here is an even better link, to a page describing how APD manifests in kids:
http://www.ncapd.org/APD%20Simulation/simulation.htm
Alesia did really well on some of Dr. Lucker’s tests, and really poorly on others. He said she clearly has APD. He suggested some therapies to help her, and said she should be able to improve significantly, with the therapies. They mostly are computer “games” which will help her process sounds.
So there are some therapeutic things we need to do for Alesia, which should help. Both Dr. F and Dr. Lucker gave me good suggestions. While Alesia was at the pool this afternoon I finally had time to do some research and see what I like. These are my notes:
Fast For Word
need middle high school version
I may not do the Fast ForWord, since I think it’s expensive and may be too tough to haul her there – I may start with this program at home and see if it helps –
www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=817
Lindamood Bell
www.ganderpublishing.com/homepage.html
Visualizing and Verbalizing – order Adventures with Ivan and His Cousins [$49.95]
Headquarters in
California (M-F, 8am-5pm) at 805-541-5523 or 800-554-1819.
This is the only CD-ROM Dr. Lucker recommended for her.
This is what I may order to help with memory:
www.learningfundamentals.com/products/product.php?id=40#
behavior book recommendation from Dr F.
I asked Dr. Lucker about the low IQ assessment by Dr. F. I admitted it had upset me. He said there are many kinds of intelligence, not to just focus on academic performance. He said Alesia may be able to handle junior college just fine. She’s unlikely to do more advanced academics. I was thinking she might become a veterinarian. Highly unlikely. OK, my parental ego needed to be taken down a peg, I guess.
Final Thoughts
I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be pretty stressful, with me trying to get Alesia the help she needs. Lesleigh said she would help with anything Alesia needed to travel to – I doubt things will be open after work hours and Mom isn’t driving much these days. Bronwyn will likely stick with the academics. I’m not sure at this point. We will have to plan everything and make sure Alesia gets the computer programs she needs to do the therapeutic exercises. Her brain can be trained to function better, that’s what I try to remember.
I just pray all the elements will come together to give Alesia a happier life. My confidence is a little shaken, just because of all these issues, and daunting tasks ahead, but I know we will manage.
I also plan to get my son evaluated shortly after he comes home, so I can put in place Dr. Federici’s recommended program for bonding and attachment, and we will know how to help him in school and behaviorally. I am a bit apprehensive about bringing up a boy, especially a 10 year old missing a hand. I feel encouraged that Dr. Federici will be able to help me with him, though.
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