"How is Katya doing", seems to be a very favorite question. It is also a loaded question because how do you really answer it? I can say that she is picking up on English very fast, or I can say that she is doing well in school - considering how far behind she was to start. I can say that at times she seems happy to be part of our family but other times I don't know...
Sometimes she has days where she almost seems to wish she were back in the Ukraine - living a life with her mom that she has built up to be Utopia in her mind. We went to a Save-A-Child concert a couple of weeks ago where she saw some of her friends from the Ukraine and I thought she would be excited. But instead it turned into a sad night for her, where she told us she missed her mom. I don't mind that she misses her mom because I am not naive enough to think that she would just forget her. However, I don't think that it is actually her mom that she misses but instead an idea of some great happy life with her mom where she doesn't have to follow rules and doesn't have siblings to vie for attention with. Katya was still in a brooding mood the next day and luckily our awesome neighbor, Yulia (who speaks Ukraine), happened to be walking by and sat down and had a heart-to-heart talk with Katya where she told Katya that she is lucky to be here and have the opportunities that she has.
It helped a bit until the Friday that Alex wasn't home when Katya got home from school and forgot to leave the house door unlocked. Katya got very upset, tore up a picture, Alex got upset in turn and I decided that I should go and pick Katya up from her tutoring, instead of Alex, since she was still very upset with Alex. When Alex had dropped Katya off, he had told Sasha (a 13 year-old girl that tutors Katya in math) and her mom that if Katya just wanted to vent today that it was fine - since both of them speak Russian. When I picked her up, they told me that the reason Katya was so upset was that she thought Alex wasn't going to come home. How sad is that. Of course we know better than that so Katya and I had a talk on the way home about how we will never leave her. She is our child now, just like Tony and Allie, and we won't ever abandon her. Katya told me (or at least tried to pantomime) some of the stuff that happened when she was little. Near as I can gather, she saw her mom get arrested and taken away when she was about five, her mom and dad used to beat up on each other, and her mom used to drink a lot. I want so badly for her to be able to tell me about how her life was so that I can help her understand that it won't be like that here. Does anybody know if a psychologist that speaks Russian?
For now, we are just taking it day-by-day. Somedays are better than others, of course :)
We haven't found a therapist that can speak Russian. We were going to wait till they could speak a little more English, but we are really struggling with Tanya. Last week I found www.wasatchfamilytherapy.com and spoke with Clair Mellenthin about issues with Tanya and she feels she is dealing with attachment disorder and post traumatic stress. We do have an appointment to see her (Fort Union area) then this week I came across touchstone therapy (offices in SLC and Layton). I left a message yesterday with the owner to find out more - I might go to them because they take out health insurance and Clair doesn't. What I like about these two are they work with attachement dissorders (which I'm reading that almost all adoptions from slovic coutries the kids suffer from some type of attachement) and they involve the family and they do play therapy. Most of their clients are from adoptions and the language barrier wasn't a problem (half the therepist I spoke with last week wouldn't see Tanya because of the language barrier or they asked us to hire and bring a translator.
ReplyDeleteI went away with Troy two weeks ago (kids stayed with my mom who they love, especially Tanya). When we got home she totally broke down and could only remember about 5 English words, after a long crappy weekend she started to pull out of it, but it took a good week for her English to return. Then to find out she hid a couple times from my mom (she hadn't done since running away in Kiev) and threw her books and homework at her, fought with Victor (nothing new), fell apart at school because she was speaking tooooo fast and teachers couldn't understand/help her (they even had a translator come in who couldn't understand her in her Russian/Ukrainian that she speaks). Even though we told her where we were going and when we'd be back and that she'd be with grandma, she just knew we had abandoned her. Victor did really well and seems really well adjusted and he loves it here. In fact this week he has been hugging us goodnight with out us asking/telling him to. Ana acted out while we were gone and got in trouble every day. When we got back she was really clingy for the weekend and then Monday her teacher wrote that she was glad we were back Ana was an angel. So I think we'll be getting Ana in to see someone too. Actually both places said they would end up seeing all three for a while, but our first issue was Tanya. Sorry to spill all of that! I'll let you know who we end up seeing in the next couple weeks and what I think or how it's going.
Wow! I didn't check on you for ahwile and you'ver got three posts! Whootwhoo!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, that abandonment thing is tricky. Last week I went to the temple early in the morning and wasn't home when Alex woke up. It freaked him out a bit. He's always worried I'm going to disappear. I understand your frustration in trying to get information from her about her past. I just want Alex to tell me it all. I just seem to get bits and pieces of the puzzle.
Soccer is over for us and I feel just like you do about baseball! I am not looking forward to the next sport and I think my kids will have to talk long and hard before I sign them up for anything else!
I love reading your posts. I wonder if you call Dr. Grazuius if she would know of a Russian therapist? She might.
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