AN EXPLANATION

earlier today a very dear friend of mine emailed me privately regarding my previous post about our gymnastics experience.

she expressed the thought that we should leave the girls in the class and allow the coach to coach the way he wants, because our kids do need to get used to life not being fair, and accustomed to different types of teachers.


NOW -if you comment, please don't roast my friend! it took a lot of guts for her to write me and voice a disagreement. :)

What her email did is make me think there might be others who read my blog who don't fully understand why we feel so protective of her and her environment..and why we are doing what we are doing.

also-let me say, if Elizabeth wasn't in the class, I would still disagree with the coach and his philosophy, but I wouldn't nearly have the same reaction to it. If it was just Becca in the class, I'd probably leave her in it and not worry. But Elizabeth is involved. And Elizabeth isn't your "typical child".

For Elizabeth's sake and for her privacy, I want to be very careful of how I address this..but I also want to be honest for those friends and family that might be reading this...and for others who might be going thru what we are/have gone thru.

I have alluded to this in the past, but life with Elizabeth has not been easy. Her little personality, combined with the damage done by growing up in an orphanage her first 21 months, has made life quite difficult quite a bit of the time. She has a deceptive and manipulative streak that is far beyond her almost 3 years.

When she first came home, we would have 4-6 week stretches of her being so willfully defiant it was exhausting.

Honestly, I would often wonder "what did we get ourselves into?!" it's awful to think back on, but it's honest.

As time has gone on, those stretches of disobedience have become shorter and shorter, and fewer and fewer. We just went thru a 7-10 day stretch of her being very disobedient...to the point of John and I being crazy frustrated and at our wits' end. I remember laying in bed this weekend just sobbing because I was "done'. just so tired of constantly disciplining her for the SAME things over and over.

Praise God He knows just how much we can handle...cuz it looks like we're out of the woods again.

It used to be 4-6 weeks of bad behavior with 2-3 weeks off and then another bad cycle...now, I'm guessing it'll be about a month before we get another "bad streak".

and now, instead of her being defiant all day long, it's just a few hours of it, and then like a switch being thrown, she is back to being compliant.

she is making strides. slowly but surely.


for Elizabeth, consistency is the key for her. consistently praising her for even the tiniest things (she THRIVES on this!), consistently disciplining her for doing wrong -every time, not letting one single time slide or else we feel like we start all over, consistently loving on her and building those ties to her little bruised heart, consistently enforcing boundaries that we have given her, consistent...consistent...consistent

Because Elizabeth's tendency is to manipulate situations, we feel it's important we continue to control her environment as much as possible, so she learns she cannot manipulate people. it's hard. it's exhausting. often times I feel like I'm being mean...but I need her to learn NOW that she cannot manipulate before time goes on and she's a teen ager or adult trying to manipulate people and things.

Yesterday, when she refused to comply with her coach, I could TOTALLY see it..she was manipulating him. All he needed to do was make her obey 2- 3 times and she would have readily complied for the rest of the class. because his philosophy is to have no set boundaries and to allow the children to do whatever they want, this is actually detrimental to the progress we've made with Elizabeth...those small strides of teaching her about obedience.

That is why I asked the coach to go against his philosophy and give her firm directions a few times, so she learns to respect him and obey.

for those that think we're being overly protective..we might be. and that's Ok with us for right now. :) Elizabeth still has some healing to go thru. Another sweet friend of mine told me once that it typically takes twice as long as the child was IN the orphanage, to get the orphanage out of them. that's roughly 42 months for Elizabeth. we're only 15 months in. Our family still has a ways to go.


....but we're getting there. slowly but surely.


there are going to be setbacks. and frustrations.

but there are great joys. and fun times too.

it's like "two steps forward, 1 step back".

if you hung in thru this whole post -thank you. I think I needed to write it more than anyone really needed to read it!