Thursday, July 22, 2010

filial: play therapy training

We are in progress for me to learn to do play therapy sessions with the boys individually. A play therapist (psychologist) trains me to structure a play session that allows a child to explore and play out most anything he wants within limits of safety. And it helps to name the feelings the child is experiencing.

The sessions also give the child a way to work out bottled up feelings and experiences from the past as well as to create better bonding to the parent. It is also revealing to the parent as you start to recognize themes in the play time.

Today we had a short session that included one of the boys, and then a short time for me to debrief with the therapist about what she was doing and what themes were coming out. Certainly a revealing process. The themes were not too surprising to me, but it was surprising to see how easily they came out in a totally new setting without using any words really at all.

We will be working on feelings of anger and intense issues for a while it seems.
And it will take a bit of convincing to get him to go back, but the therapist expects we will make more progress and I will get to see more by observing again next week.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

I like my birth mother

We take a break from the exciting experiences of the summer in pictures to something that can only really be relayed in words.

The last few days Erik crosses the barrier between a life in complete denial of the existance of a birth mother or another history before the baby house... to talking about his birth mother.

From time to time the boys make some comment assuming me as a birth mother and I have tried to gently mention that they did not start in my belly and remind them of when we met. But now for some reason it is becoming OK to think about. It started with watching a cartoon on PBS kids about babies being born. And Erik announced to me that he loves his birth mother and not me. Of course I told him it is OK to love his birth mother and he can love me too. It did not seem that this idea had occurred to him.

Then by yesterday after another opportunity to clarify for David that he did not develop in my belly, Erik said he likes his birth mother. And David repeated the same. And I said that is good. Then Erik asked what happened to her. Why? Where is she? And I answered in general terms the situation and that seemed to be enough for one day.

Seems like a big breakthrough after these 2 and a half years when Erik would not even allow me to talk about it, or read "his" story from the picture book we had created. There is a lot we do not know, and that is probably alright for this stage of accepting things.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Wilwood weeks













There were two weeks in Wildwood separated by a family reunion in PA with Sharon's extended family. The first week was with Sharon's imediate family where 14 of us were together. The second week, Gregg's side of the family was there as well as his sister Gwen's dog and Gwen's friend Donna.