What about the Honeymoon

“Okay, it’s time to go to bed. The movie is over and we have to take you back in the morning.”

It was a month after visits driving back and forth ninety miles each way that we finally got to have her stay a weekend with us. We had from Friday to Sunday to spend as much time as we could with our beautiful daughter. We chose to keep it low-key and stay home, play games, watch movies, and go for bike rides. It was a great weekend. We felt like a family. I knew the emotions were beginning to get overwhelming the closer we got to bedtime. She had mentioned many times that weekend that she was ready to just stay with us. I had told my husband privately how I was ready for her to just stay with us. I knew it was going to be hard to drive her back and leave her there for another week.
It was Saturday night and we had just finished a movie when I said to her “Okay, it’s time to go to bed. The movie is over and we have to take you back in the morning.” It was a matter of fact sentence, one similar to something every parent has said to their kids at some point. It was the last straw of her being able to hold back what she had been trying so hard to hide for the last several weeks. In that sentence the battle lines were drawn and only she could see them.

“I don’t wanna go to bed, I wanna watch another movie.” was her reply.

“Well, that isn’t going to happen, it is bed time.” I replied back

“I wanna play another game then.” The demanding voice was hard not to hear.

“Honey, it is bedtime. we have a long day tomorrow and we need our rest.” I was pulling from the training, I knew this was a test. I was ready to pass it. I had been prepared for this and I knew it was important to do this right. I did not think it would blow up too badly, after all we were in the “honeymoon” phase.

Every adoptive family has talked about the ” honeymoon” phase. It is a time when all the kiddos placed into forever homes try desperately to make their families see them as adorable little creatures. The length of every honeymoon varies. Much like a honeymoon you may have taken when you were married the length of it depends on how much money you have, time off of work, and where you go. Well, our kids honeymoons depend on how much hurt is built up, how many times they have been promised this is their forever family, and how capable they are to hide the fear of being let down one more time. Our hurt little girl wasted no time to begin the testing of our promise. We were her fourth family that had promised to adopt her. She was in three different foster homes  in between. There was a lot of hurt to test out on us. That was the first night we had a rage, but definitely not the last. She screamed at us that we couldn’t make her go to sleep and stomped up the stairs. My son looked at us bewildered, saw the looks my husband and I were giving, and curled up on the couch next to my husband.

“I got this, I don’t think it will last that long.” I naively said as I walked up to her room. I couldn’t calm her. She was wild with anger and rage. Her window was open and so I walked over to close it which only angered her more. “Well, if you need to scream I don’t want you annoying the neighbors” I said as if she wasn’t remotely bothering me. I closed the door behind me and was so glad I wasn’t in the same room when the pitch of her scream went ten octaves higher as she threatened “You’re going to think annoying when I SCREAM ALL NIGHT LONG!” Oh it was on. The sarcastic, competitive, control freak woke up right there. I opened the door and asked her one more time to go to sleep, her eyes were locked on me with a smirk like that I’ve only seen in movies, and started to scream “You can’t make me, I am going to stay up all night screaming!” I don’t know where it came from, but I looked at her and smirked right back and yelled down to my husband, “Honey, can you put a pot of coffee on, looks like we are in for a long night!” I still cherish the look of confusion that crossed her face. It did the trick, I had changed the rules of engagement that night. She had to rethink how to win this war, she needed to see how to hurt me before she could win. She gave in, until the next time. I closed the door and stood there thinking to myself that I had this it was going to be as easy as baking a cake to help her heal and trust us. Little did I know she was on the other side of the door telling herself that she had this, it was going to be as easy as it had always been to flip this house upside down and bring us to our knees.

That wasn’t the last rage we would see, that wasn’t the last of threats to make us lose our minds, she wasn’t done demanding control of our home. No, we would see what real rage was in the months and years to come. We would be tested on our promise every day. We had not even scratched the surface of her behaviors and we had not even a clue as to what was waiting for us on the other side of the mask she wore. I would soon disappear from society, lose many friendships, lose myself, and lose the calm of our home. No amount of training can prepare you for that, and so I write………………