for those that have children that were born in Haiti, do you notice a lack of problem solving skills, areas, ideas, actions that seem so common sense, if you only thought about it for a second, seems to not be obvious to my two daughters born in Haiti. It is like they can't connect the "dots" ideas together in their heads. Then once I take the time to explain it in length with great detail, almost exhaustively so, they still don't retain it AT ALL. Plus their short-term memories are terrible at best. Mim refuses to write things down so now she is on a check system with me and at school, but her memory is still bad at home and I'm working on what to do with her there. Some sort of accountability system for her to write things down. She thinks she is too old for this, though I model it by having several planning calendars around, one very prominent by being on the refrigerator. This is just one example of her stubbornness. Something we deal with almost nearly every day in one shape or another.
Now for Ve, I still believe will some day be diagnosed with a learning disability, and her short term memory is as bad as Mim's.
To be honest, this is has been one of the most exhausting areas for me in this whole adoption process, the daily teaching of the exact same things...every day..it reminds at times of the movie "Fifty first dates" or something like that, except I am not always as patient as the characters in the movie.
It worries me too, because if they don't develop a strategy to help with their memories or problem solving skills, I fear they will struggle with employment some day. I can't imagine an employee allowing for some of the mistakes made by my two forgetful daughters.
I wonder is this just an English learning thing, a bonding thing, a malnourishment thing, is it permanent or temporary. Is it just a maturity thing, will they outgrow it and do I expect too much, but then there is Tuki who at times functions at a much higher level than Mim when it comes to problem solving or decision making. Believe me this causes a great deal of friction between the two, who BTW are very similar in personality.
Mim hopes to be driving soon because in few short weeks she will be turning 16, but she won't be because she just isn't mature enough to handle it nor is she aware enough of her surroundings to handle it. I tell her this and we duke it out, yet again, her pushing against the confines of the family and me holding her to them and telling her that once she shows me that she has the maturity and sense of responsibility to allow for driving, we will discuss the possibility of her learning to drive.....I fear this won't be for sometime.
Case in point we usher at church once a month, I am the head usher for our team. Mim and I have been on this team ever since she has been home. We need 5 people for each service and about half way through the year our fifth quit, so I had been getting a filler volunteer every time we ushered. So I finally asked the head usher of all the teams if I could trade off every other month with Ve and Tuki as the fifth. He said that he thought that as long as they could handle it, why not. So today I had Tuki do it, yes before Ve, because honestly I wasn't sure if Ve could handle it, but I knew Tuki could. It took Mim many tries, many tries before she could handle it seamlessly.....why, she wasn't observing the others as they were ushering and so not picking up the little nuances (problem solving and observation) of ushering. That is why I had Ve watch this week and hopefully with a little training in a month she will have retained how to do it. Tuki notices all these little things, all of them sometimes to the point of annoyance, but notice she does, and learn she does...so yes she pulled it off perfectly today...So one could say, they are different people and you can't compare kids to kids, and that is correct, but Ve's personality is unlike the other two, and she exhibits the same issues that Mim does, and Tuki's personality is very much like Mim's and she exhibits none of the same issues as the other two, so I have to think it is somehow related to their birth country of Haiti..but how exactly..this I don't know..so any suggestions or ideas are welcome. Thanks for reading my rambling.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
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4 comments:
My two children are the exact same and are not adopted from Haiti, though are adopted - they were 7 and 8 at adoption. They lack executive functioning, planning, memory skills, self-control and being able to organize and motivate themselves. Much of the challenges you describe, I find myself nodding to because we have the same thing. Their specialist team says common with chronic neglect, deprivation, older age at adoption, trauma and learning difficulties. My children forget the most basic things that are done every single day. They are such a joy to me and I hope we can make some significant gains because I worry about them in the adult years.
Two books I found helpful: Raising A Right-Brained Child In A Left Brained World and a book about parenting traumatized children (talks a lot about their lack of organization, memory etc.) that I can't remember the title of at the moment.
I actually understand and feel your situation. This is something that We struggle with Ella on a daily basis. her problem solving skills are non-existent. I think it’s the institutionalize mind/behavior where everything was planned/given lack thereof to them. perfect example, Sunday I decided to clean my car and had Ella help. her job was to wipe while I vacuum. I handed her a towel and told her to dust the car ( know that I also talked about taking the car to the car wash for the exterior wash after. where to me it makes sense to wipe/dust the dashboard, seats, Ella was dusting and wiping the OUTSIDE of the car and I too am not the patient type and was upset that it didn’t make sense to her that I would never ask her to wipe the outside of the car. Now both my husband and I are Haitian born. I was 13 when I migrated to the US, I don’t think there’s a cultural component to it. but IT DRIVES ME CRAZY…
We struggle with this tremendously, though country of origin is Ethiopia. I have an appointment next week to go over the results of the psychoeducational evaluation. We also have a diagnosis of inattentive ADD this year. Meds for that have helped a lot (as in the first or second day in school on the medication, she came home and said, "I don't know what she did differently but she explained it so much better today.") Reading and math facts are still a struggle but slowly improving. I worry about the lack of problem solving and what it means for the future.
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