Benjamin stood and looked at the floor.
‘At least he’s not screaming,’ I said, and tried to smile.
Amy came over. Apparently when it comes to difficult children, she’s a miracle worker. She’s got a degree in child development and she’s read every book that’s ever been written on how to deal with difficult kids. She tried talking quietly into Benjamin’s ear. She was patient. She coaxed, but there were twenty children in the class and she wasn’t supposed to be working one-on-one with Benjamin. At some point, she had to give up and concentrate on the other kids.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘Maybe he wants to try some other activity?’ she suggested, and so it seemed, because while I’d been busy apologising, he’d got up and taken down his pants and pooped on the floor.
Comment (1):
Dear Caitlin, I laughed and cried in equal measure reading this post. You really are a good mom, standing beside Benjamin for what are likely to be the toughest days of his life. I don’t think I’d have found the courage to turn up on Day Two, but you did and you should be very proud of yourself.
Comment (2):
I wasn’t going to comment, but honestly I can’t help myself here. Do you really need to shame your child by telling everyone that he pooped on the floor? Can’t you see that’s a symptom of his distress, not something that he’s doing wrong? I have been following your website for a few weeks now, and all you ever do is complain. Why don’t you think about what your poor child is going through, instead of whining about your problems? It seems very obvious to me that Benjamin has a condition that needs to be treated, something like autism or Asperger’s. You keep saying it’s to do with him being adopted but it can’t be. It must be more than that, and you must know it.
Chapter 26
The (Alternative) Book of Benjamin
Hello, and welcome back! To me as well as you. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything, but recent events have told me that it’s definitely time to post again.
I’ve decided to call this post ‘Nobody knows anything’ – and that includes me!
Benjamin has now been with us for more than three months, and although I’d like to say that he’s really settled and that he’s bonded with me, that just wouldn’t be true.
The truth is, his behaviour is extremely unpredictable and very aggressive.
After his failure to fit into the local pre-school, I suppose it got to the point where I decided to take him to see a specialist paediatrician, to have him checked over for any serious problems not associated with him being adopted. It took a little while, but I finally got an appointment with somebody who is supposed to be good – let’s call her Dr Roth – and I was really pleased with the idea that a professional was going to take the time to examine him.
Given the problems I’d been having since bringing Benjamin home – thrashing, fighting, screaming, long periods of silence, no eye contact, no smiles, no cuddles, no willingness to follow direction – I knew it was going to be a stressful visit, but I was eager for answers so off we went.
Just like with so many doctor’s offices, there was a basket of toys on the floor in the waiting room. I remember, before we got Benjamin, that I used to cry when I saw kids at the doctor’s on their knees playing with the toys in the basket, wondering if I’d ever get a chance to have a child to play with the toys.
Now I’ve got Benjamin, but any fantasy I had about him sitting down to play quickly went out the window. I tried to encourage him. I put him down on the floor on his knees near the basket. There were wooden trains and books and building blocks. Benjamin didn’t go for any of them. He stayed exactly where I left him, on his knees with his chin stuck to his chest.
I felt embarrassed, so I picked him up and sat him next to me. We waited and waited. Another mother came in and her little boy got straight down to play with the basket on the floor. Unlike me, she said, ‘Don’t play with the toys, Will. They’ll be covered in germs.’ Then she picked her boy up and sat him next to Benjamin.
Of course, Will wanted to play. He was kicking his legs, trying to get Benjamin’s attention. It didn’t work, so he ducked his head and tried to get a good look at Benjamin’s face. Benjamin never looks up, he always looks down. Normally, there would be some mutual curiosity, right? Benjamin would look up, and they’d look at each other, and they might be a bit shy at first, but then you’d get, ‘My name’s Benjamin! What’s your name?’
I’ve got the problem of Benjamin not speaking English very well. He is certainly getting better, but that does make things more complicated, because the way he looks – he’s not Chinese, for example – people expect him to be able to speak English. So, I have to say, ‘Benjamin’s adopted. We’re still working on his language.’ I’ve got no doubt that he understands more than he says, but the words I really want to hear – ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ for example – have not been forthcoming.
I tried to get him to engage with the other little boy, saying things like, ‘Oh, look, Benjamin. Another little boy. Look at his T-shirt! Do you know who that is on his T-shirt? That’s Ben 10! You’d like Ben 10, Benjamin. It’s nearly the same name as yours.’
It was all pointless. He didn’t look up.
Finally we were called in and Dr Roth was very excited to meet a little boy from a Russian orphanage. ‘Well, well, well, how wonderful, you must be over the moon,’ she said. ‘Okay, let’s have a look at this lovely boy of yours.’
Benjamin just stood there, like a statue, staring at his shoes. There were lots of interesting things in Dr Roth’s rooms – pink models of the human heart and so on – but nothing caught his eye. He was mute.
Dr Roth lifted Benjamin under the arms and put him on the cotton pad on the examination table. He immediately wet himself. You wouldn’t have known from anything he said or did, but we both saw the puddle spreading underneath him. I said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Dr Roth, I sat him on the toilet before we came in,’ and she was very lovely, waving it away.
‘It’s alright, it’s fine, Benjamin,’ she said, and took him under the arms again, then lifted him onto the floor, and went about replacing the pad.
Of course I knew she’d be expecting me to change Benjamin’s pants and I was dreading it.
‘Here you go, nice and clean,’ she said, smoothing the new sheet out, and then she turned to see me trying to get Benjamin’s shorts down. We’ve had such trouble with his toileting that I’ve taken to carrying spare clothes and underpants and even Pull-Ups in my purse, and we went through the normal drill, where he wouldn’t stand with his hands on my shoulders like a normal child, and he wouldn’t lift one leg so I could get his shorts on and off. He just stood in the middle of the room with his head hanging down. After I finally got his shorts off, he stood there with his uncircumcised penis – the longest, thinnest penis I’ve ever seen – hanging limp in front of his spindly legs.
I gritted my teeth and held out a pair of corduroy shorts.
‘Come here, Benjamin,’ I said, ‘let’s get these on,’ but he wouldn’t lift his legs. I was already down on my hands and knees, but I shuffled closer, trying to coax him into the pants.
‘Let’s lift your feet into here,’ I said. I was holding the shorts out with the waist open, like a bowl, but Benjamin didn’t make a move to step into them, and in the end I had to lift each of his feet and get him dressed that way. The minute I’d pulled them up, he peed in them again. I saw the stain spreading on the front of his pants and I bit my lip, trying not to cry.
Dr Roth stepped in and said, ‘Okay, this is obviously very stressful for him,’ and stripped him out of the shorts – he didn’t resist so much with her – and put him up on the examination table, naked from the waist down, with his head still down and his chin still stuck.
‘Look at me, Benjamin,’ she said, trying to lift his chin, but Benjamin would not look up. Dr Roth looked in his ears and took his pulse and tried to look in his throat.
It must have seemed so strange to her because he simply didn’t react – or interact – at all, except towards the end when I saw his little stomach starting to suck in and out, and I knew what was coming: he was about to lose it.
The scream when it came out of his mouth sent Dr Roth flying back towards her desk, saying, ‘Oh, wow!’
I could imagine the people in the waiting room looking up from their magazines and exchanging worried glances with each other. There was a knock on the door. It was the receptionist, saying, ‘Is everything okay?’
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ said Dr Roth. She was trying to calm the situation, but Benjamin would not be calmed. He was a kicking, wailing, screaming, drooling mess. He knocked the skeleton model off Dr Roth’s desk and writhed around on the floor, and it got so bad there was nothing I could do but carry him out – still naked from the waist down – and put him back into the car seat. Dr Roth hurried behind us, saying, ‘Okay, okay, we can do this another time, Benjamin.’
I strapped him down, closed the car door and leaned against it, facing away from Benjamin. I knew without looking that his face would soon be purple with anger.
‘He’s very upset, isn’t he?’ Dr Roth said. ‘I mean, as far as I could tell, from that brief examination, there’s nothing physically wrong with him – he’s probably too thin, but I’d expect you to be able to correct that over time – but very clearly there’s a problem with his emotional development. I mean, if his behaviour today is normal – that sullenness, that uncontrollable screaming – well, it may well be that Benjamin is still suffering trauma from being raised in the orphanage, and he may be having some difficulties bonding with his new family. My suggestion is: take him to see a psychologist. Or even a psychiatrist. There will be a way through this. It’s going to take some patience.’
A week or so later, I received her bill: $300, to tell me nothing I didn’t already know.
Comment (1):
Oh, Caitlin, it’s Sandi here, I only read this post today – we’ve had a few issues of our own, helping Masha settle in to her new school – but I wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you – all of us in the group are thinking about you – and please let us know if we can do anything to help. God bless you! And little Benjamin.
Comment (2):
I was reading this post and nodding my head, thinking, yes, yes, yes!!! That’s exactly what it’s like. We as parents go to get help and end up with a bill to pay! Of course it’s going to take patience. Blind Freddy could see that.
Comment (3):
We have walked this road and we know it’s not easy. I realise it’s hard to accept, and I can see how hard you are trying, Caitlin, but your doctor is right. Our children haven’t grown up with a sense of attachment, and we are only just starting to understand how that affects their development. If you don’t get onto it early, it could get much, much worse.
Chapter 27
The (Alternative) Book of Benjamin
Hello, everyone!
Well, it’s now been four months since Benjamin arrived in our life, so I suppose it’s now time to update everyone on how we’re progressing. Short answer: not very well!
Some of you will remember that when I went to see Dr Roth – not her real name – she advised me to take Benjamin to see a psychologist, but I really wasn’t convinced. The reason I wasn’t convinced was that I have spent a bit of time – and a lot of money – in therapy and I’m not sure that it’s all that helpful. In fact, I recently gave my sessions away (something my husband isn’t happy about) because honestly, I’m not sure these people know as much as they want us to think they do.
Anyway, my idea was to get Benjamin some more practical help, such as with an occupational therapist – somebody who can assist him with the basics, like sitting on a chair, and using cutlery.
We had our first appointment yesterday with a therapist who looks at things like co-ordination, and tries to link their physical problems with their emotional ones. I won’t use her real name; let’s call her Dr Silber.
We went through the usual routine of dragging Benjamin from the house and into the car and out of the car and into the doctor’s office, and we sat through the predictable long wait, and then it was our turn.
The first question Dr Silber asked me about Benjamin was, ‘So, what can he do?’
That was actually a nice change from people asking me, ‘So, what’s wrong with him?’
I thought hard, and then I said, ‘Well, he loves TV.’ And that’s true. He’s obsessed with the television. That has been our godsend, the fact that he will stand there – not sit, but stand – and watch just about anything on television. Doesn’t even matter what – he can watch the shopping channels. He has picked up quite a bit of language from the TV, which is definitely a good thing. He can – and does – now say quite a few words, almost always to himself and never really to me. He doesn’t want me to join in. He just wants to stand and stare, usually with the volume up incredibly loud.
‘Alright,’ said Dr Silber. ‘What else?’
Well, there wasn’t much else to tell her. Benjamin is particularly good at resting his head against the floor? Benjamin is good at wrecking toys? Benjamin is good at scuttling into corners to get away from me?
Anyway, we went through a range of different tests, which were supposed to show whether the two sides of Benjamin’s brain are working in harmony. If not, we have to coax them to work together, or else he’ll just get worse.
In the first test, Benjamin was given a long roll of modelling clay and he had to pinch the clay along its entire length, so that it would end up looking like the back of a Stegosaurus. But the key thing was, he was only supposed to use one hand to do it. He found that very difficult. He very much wanted to pinch the left side of the clay with his left hand, and then finish off the right side with his right hand.
Dr Silber was very excited.
‘There are two sides to him,’ she said, ‘literally two sides, working not in harmony, but in dispute.’
I wasn’t sure about that, but then, I’m not the expert. So I sat there while we did a few more tests. Benjamin was given a small cardboard box, with a slot cut in the top, like the slot for a money box. Then he was given twelve plastic coins. Dr Silber scattered the coins all over the table, to Benjamin’s left and to his right. She wanted him to use one hand to pick them all up – one at a time – and put each of them in the box, through the slot. He wasn’t allowed to swap hands. And just as Dr Silber predicted, he couldn’t do it. He picked up all the coins on his right side with his right hand, and when it came time to pick up the coins that had been placed to the left of him, he tried to use his left hand.
Dr Silber was sitting right back in her chair, nodding and smiling, like she was finally seeing something she’d read about, but had never actually seen in a patient.
‘It’s so fascinating!’ she said.
I was thinking, ‘Maybe for you! But what does it all mean?’
I don’t mean to sound horrible, but I was really resenting everything about her: the slim figure, her lovely wool jumper, her shiny ponytail, her easy life, watching other people who had problem kids.
‘Let’s try something else,’ she said.
From her cupboard, she took a flat trolley – it was no more than ten inches off the ground, with small wheels at each corner – and she asked Benjamin to lie face down on it.
‘See if you can propel yourself along,’ she said, making the hand movements.
To my surprise, Benjamin gave it a good go: out the door and into the hallway he went, but instead of going straight down the hall, the trolley kept veering to the right. Dr Silber followed behind, lifting the front of the trolley whenever Benjamin went too far to the right and threatened to run into the wall.
‘Okay!’ she said, as if this was the most fascinating thing ever.
She picked up Benjamin and managed to get him to sit in the chair beside me. ‘I will make out a report for you, but I can say now, your
son is weaker on his left side than on his right. The two sides of his brain don’t communicate as well as they should.’
I don’t know if I’m being stupid, but the way she said it, it sounded like a breakthrough. I leaned forward, keen to know what we could do about this problem. Part of me was actually thinking she was about to say, ‘So, now I’m going to write you a prescription and once you start giving him the pills, Benjamin will be fine.’
That wasn’t what she said.
What she said was, ‘Benjamin should be given a bike to ride. You should encourage him to steer the bike in a straight line. That will force him to use the left hand as much as the right, and in the process get both sides of the brain working together.’
I was gob-smacked, so much so that I don’t really remember leaving Dr Silber’s offices. A week or so later, I got her bill. You guessed it: $750, to tell me to get my son a pushbike and to encourage him to ride it.
Comment (1):
Oh, Caitlin, I just had to write and say, you have my sympathy. It must be so frustrating to be out there looking for help and paying good money for it, and then hearing things like this! But I commend you for your drive. You are like a warrior for Benjamin! Go girl!
Comment (2):
You might not want to hear this, but what your ‘Dr Silber’ said actually makes a lot of sense. There has been a lot of research done in recent years which shows that children who grow up with abuse and neglect – and that includes children from orphanages overseas – develop differently, both emotionally and physically. And you can’t have a healthy child, emotionally, when the pathways in the brain are all confused. So you really do have to think about what physical activities you can do with Benjamin that will encourage his co-ordination and get his brain working properly. This is not meant to be a criticism, just an observation. Don’t give up! You are doing amazing things.
Can You Keep a Secret? Page 20
