14

USE YOUR WORDS

The modifiers just kept coming. We had a bank of impoverished words to further describe the children we were raising: oppositional, delayed, high risk, conduct disorder, self-harming, at risk, dysthymic . . . We needed a Punnett square to help parse the behaviors and motivations; is this a dominant emotion or a double recessive? The list was endless.

Our kids are missing some basic emotions. Most children with early trauma don’t experience guilt. They skip remorse and go directly to shame; they haven’t done something bad—they are bad. I am always careful to distinguish, “You’re a family girl now, you don’t need to steal anymore. You’re a great kid, you made a poor choice and now you need to take responsibility for that choice.” We wrote letters to the victims of our frequent thefts, “Dear Store, I am a bad girl . . .” Whoa! Let’s try that again. Language is important, especially when one poorly chosen word can derail a kid into self-loathing.

Some of our kids don’t experience empathy. It’s not their fault. My parent impulse is to ask, “How would it make you feel if someone took your stuff? Would you like it if someone hit you and called you names?” The very question is an insult to their reality. I should be asking, “How would it make you feel to be loved and respected? Would you like it if someone cared about you and told you how precious you are?” It’s a daily exercise.

We work on social cues. “When people are talking, you must wait your turn.” The kids want to know, “How long do I wait? How do I know when it’s my turn?” These are real questions, ones that are easier to practice than answer. I tell them families are where we practice appropriate behavior and making good choices.

We practice hugging, listening to our bodies, telling us when it’s time to let go. “Mom! It’s just like in music, when it starts to slow down, we know it’s almost over!” I say, “Hanging out like this, talking about stuff? This is what parents do who love their children.” I tell the kids when I am loving them, I make a point of pointing it out. Because they don’t feel or recognize love. Yet. Maybe never. Keep trying.

Our kids don’t know trust. I explain it, give examples, at times saying, “Just try it! Pretend you trust me and see what happens!” Dan says they have to learn to trust, and if they can’t trust us, we must give them an environment they can trust, a home for them that is predictable and consistent with clear expectations and clear consequences. I hang two whiteboards in the kitchen, one for our daily schedule, in fifteen-minute intervals, one for the weekly schedule, and a large paper calendar for our month, color coded by child. Planning is key.

If a child is acting out, I first ask myself, Have I done my job? Did they get enough sleep? Is their blood sugar high enough? Have they exercised today? Have they practiced piano? Have I hugged them and told them I loved them? If not, I will redirect, shape their day, take them swimming, feed them PB and J. If I’ve done all I can to prepare them for success, I will count them to three and I will put them in timeout. If they cannot control their bodies, I will control it for them. I follow through. Consistently. Every single time for every single kid.

* * *

Our children have difficulty taking responsibility for their actions. I heard a thump and a crashing sound and ran upstairs to find Susie standing barefoot in a room full of broken glass. I told her not to move and ran to get a broom. When I got back, she insisted that her light fixture just broke all of a sudden and that, “I ain’t done nothing!” I said, “Susie, your soccer ball is right there in the middle of the floor. I heard it hit the light and then hit the floor.” She said, “I tol’you I ain’t kicking no soccer ball!”

I like to take these opportunities to explain the double negative to my children. This is less about grammar and more about disrupting their habitual denials, deflecting the focus away from a guaranteed confrontation and making them think for a second about what they were actually saying.

After months of admitting, “I’m not doing nothing!” I finally got Jimmy to deny a travesty with, “I’m not doing anything!” Everyone knew Jimmy had thrown the board game on the ground but instead of a consequence for his behavior, I rewarded him for his grammar. “Jimmy! You’re a genius! Did everyone hear that? He didn’t use a double negative!” I hugged him, laughing, “Finally!”

Our children lie. It’s not their fault. They were trained to lie, taught to lie, told to lie or else be beaten. Lying can make them feel powerful and in control, if only for a minute. Some of our kids are better liars than others; some are excellent. Ruby was terrible. She had a thousand tells: frowning, looking away, stuttering, pretending she didn’t hear or understand the question. It was tricky. Confronting Ruby about her lying reinforced her negative self-view, so she’d lie even more because that’s what liars do.

“Time for bed, sweetie, did you brush your teeth?”

“What?”

“Have you brushed your teeth?”

“Huh?”

“Ruby, look at me, honey. Have you brushed your teeth?”

“T-t-t-tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Uh . . . yeah.” I take her with me to the bathroom where together we discover that her toothbrush is completely dry.

“W-w-w-well, I didn’t use that one.”

“Which one did you use?”

“Huh?”

“Which toothbrush did you use?”

“The one in my backpack.”

“You have a toothbrush in your backpack? I did not know that, but let’s go take a look.”

“Well, it’s not in there now. I left it at school.”

“You left the toothbrush you just used at school? You’re not a liar, babe. Tell me the truth. If you didn’t brush your teeth, just say so. You can brush them now and we can move on.”

“But I’m not lying! I did brush my teeth! I just, I don’t know!”

“Ruby. Brush your teeth and go to bed.”

“But I swear it! I’m telling the truth! I brushed them! Why don’t you believe me? You hate me!”

It was so hard to break through to these kids. I can remember on one hand the times my father raised his voice at me, each with a memorable effect. My kids, on the other hand, had been desensitized, inured to criticism. Yelling was futile and they’d already figured out I wasn’t going to hit them. I asked Ruby’s therapist about the lying to see if she had any ideas. “Do you have any suggestions?” I asked. She shook her head, “No. Not really.” Great.

I needed to find help. Lynyrd Skynyrd was not my usual go-to for parenting tips but in this instance, I could not deny the simple logic in their double on double negative, “Don’t ask me no questions and I won’t tell you no lies.”

“Ruby,” I said, “I can’t make you tell me the truth, but I can give you a break from lying. For two weeks I’m not going to ask you any questions. You won’t be able to lie because I will already know everything. For two weeks we will either be together or you will be in your room.” She ran errands with me, went shopping, helped me with meals, paying bills, and doing laundry. I went with her to lap swim, to the feeling doctor, to the library, and talked with her in the present tense over meals, just the two of us. She stayed home from school. I would check on her in her room and say, “Hi,” but never ask how she was doing. It worked. Two weeks, no questions, no lies. When it was over, Dan asked her, “How does it feel?” Ruby smiled. “It feels weird, but I like it. In the Bronx, I lied to keep from getting in trouble. Here, I get in trouble for lying.” Good call.

* * *

Our kids are defensive. They act tough and pretend they know everything. When we first took Jimmy and Ruby to the pool, they assured us they knew how to swim. Super! Proud and excited, they walked all the way up Columbus Avenue to the West Side YMCA wearing their new goggles and swim caps. When we got to the pool, they refused to get in. “But, I thought you said you knew how to swim.” They’d never seen a pool. Hell, they’d never seen a pond or a natural body of water. The first time Jimmy saw the Hudson River he thought it was the ocean. “Wow! Look at all that water!” The first time Jimmy saw the ocean, he thought it was heaven.

The problem with insisting you know everything is that you lose face if you ask a question and, without asking questions, it’s really hard to learn. I started talking over their heads in order to clue them into how much there really is to learn, maybe force a question or two and if nothing else, increase their vocabulary. It gave me no end of pleasure to hear Ruby ask, “Mom, can I get special dispensation to taste the cookie dough? Tasting is a chef’s prerogative, correct?”

We hung six ceramic camping cups on the wall in the kitchen, one for each Fox child, plus a spare. The kids asked about the extra and I told them, “That cup is for Elijah.” The children stared at me, but didn’t ask; to ask would have been admitting they didn’t know. The cup was actually for guests but I loved the symbolism of Elijah, our Old Testament prophet, turning the hearts of the children to their parents. That’s how I read it, anyway. Visitors asked about the cup and the children always answered, “It’s for Elijah!” One guest asked, “Do you think he’d mind if I borrowed it?” Ruby said, “He? Elijah is a man?”

* * *

Susie was suffering. I remembered my grandmother telling me that to know a poem by heart is to have a friend for life. “You will never be alone and your mind will have a place to rest.” Well, Susie needed a friend and her mind was also low on fuel and flying over the strangest seas. She needed a landing zone ASAP. We sat in the rocking chair and I helped her memorize Emily Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” It worked. Incredible. I gathered the other kids and told them, “This summer we are going to memorize poetry. Memorizing poetry is what Fox children do.”

I printed off some short poems in large, non-threatening fonts, and wrote a dollar amount in the upper right hand corner, their reward for learning it word for word. When they were ready, I would film them reciting it. Jason did William Carlos Williams’s “This is just to say”; Ruby did “Peaches” by Sandra Cisneros; and Jimmy recited “Quiet Girl” by Langston Hughes. To Anthony I gave the opening line to Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” I was shocked and delighted when he recited it verbatim; by the end of day, all the kids had memorized their poems.

I handed out the next assignments. By the end of the summer, I was out several hundred dollars and happily so. The kids had memorized a body of work: Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Gettysburg Address, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We held our first poetry slam and invited our neighbors over for readings, recitations, and refreshments. Loud and proud, the kids stood up and recited their pieces. They were incredible. Everyone applauded, duly impressed. Ruby’s “Invictus” brought tears, Jimmy’s moving recitation of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was unparalleled, but Anthony, our dark horse, pulled out of nowhere and stole the show.

I had started him on Hamlet’s soliloquy as a joke, more or less. Jimmy and I were reading Hamlet together that summer, and while the opening line of the soliloquy is short, it is compelling. Anthony wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to learn the rest of it. I printed it out for him, section by section, and by the end of the summer slams, he had memorized the first third of it. He was last on the program and when he got to “The proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love,” his little voice crescendoed with each line until it cracked with excitement on his big closer, “and THE LAW’S DELAY!” The crowd, small as it was, went wild. And Anthony, small as he was, felt his accomplishment.

Subsequent slams brought more and more lines. Anthony was like a dog with a bone. “Mom? What does Fardels mean? What is a bare bodkin?” He learned other poems as well, taking solo lines in the group recitations of “Custard the Dragon,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” He picked up poems from listening to the other kids practice theirs. But the soliloquy was his trademark conversation stopper. He recited it to his feeling doctor during one of his sessions. The therapist stared at him, then at me. “I’m going to have to rewrite his treatment plan.”

Memorizing poems was more than just making friends, it was more than a confidence boost in public speaking, it was actually changing their speech patterns. Our friends with kids were openly envious of our poetry slams, “I wish I could get junior to memorize poetry.” I’d remind them that junior had been read to as an infant and raised listening to vocabulary rich discourse. Our kids were just beginning to learn the power of language.