One Child Left Behind

Summer vacation has reached it's pinnacle of "awesomeness" and is now descending into boringness. The kids are over it, Brian's over it and I've long since been over it! I am so ready for the kids to go back to school. I have been seeing clients about 15+ hours a week--which is definitely too much. Don't get me wrong--I LOVE my clients. I love seeing their lives change. I love hearing their stories and helping them find strength in their own life experiences. However, combine that many hours of work, case notes, a marriage and sex therapy class, being in the primary presidency AND having seven kids home from school, and it is all but killing me. So right now, I am trying to find a way to reduce the number of balls I am juggling and enjoy being with the children a little more.

So with my stress levels being a little too high--I admit that I'm a little on the cranky side sometimes. The other day I am pretty sure I exorcised a devil in the face of our doorman. We have had a lot of trouble with one of the men that is the security guard/doorman treating our family and our guests very disrespectfully. He yells at the kids constantly. He yells at our guests and a couple times has even kicked and hit our guest's car. We've mainly tried to avoid him, but Wednesday the crap hit the fan. I had sent all of the children to take out the food garbage, the recycling and the regular garbage. Giselle wanted to help, but didn't know exactly where everything went so she put the food garbage in the regular garbage. When the kids went to go back up the elevator the doorman came and grabbed the children and dragged them back to point out their mistake, yell at them, and then the man smacked Diamond so hard on the back of his head that Diamond was shaking with tears and terror.

My mother bear instinct set in on many levels. First of all, the man has long been a jerk to us and that was over the line. Second of all, I was quite certain that he struck Diamond because he is black. That seriously ticked me off. Koreans are pretty racist against whites, but even worse against blacks. As soon as Diamond came in crying and shaking, I jumped up and ran down six flights of stairs so that the doorman could not see me coming on the elevator camera. When I got to his office, I leaned down until my face was about four inches from his and all hell broke loose. I have never screamed at someone so loudly in my life. That man about jumped out of his cranky old man pants. I think I was pretty scary because he wasn't sure what to think. I wouldn't let him leave his security booth until I was done giving him a piece of my mind--fully aware that he couldn't understand anything I was saying. I was shaking with anger by the time I was done. To make a long story short, I made my realtor come over and translate. I told the man I was going to the police and I would do everything in my power to get him fired. I told him I knew my kids were noisy and naughty but we do not deserve to be treated badly because we're Americans--and he sure as hell can NEVER strike any of my children. Finally, he apologized. I started to cry because I was pretty upset, so he stood up and hugged me. He promised he would be kind to our family. So far since then, he has. . . but I guess he saw my demonic side and knows I'm a mother bear that protects her cubs. . . and I doubt he'd like to have another run in anytime soon. He only heard my roar and saw my teeth, I'm sure he doesn't want to find out about my lethal claws!!

(So I really did have a theme to this blog post, it just got temporarily buried by my life updates.) About a three weeks ago, our family made the choice to move our children from the international school to the Army school. The Army school is known for having some pretty ghetto problems. Plus, I see a lot of families that go to the school, so I liked having my children separated from my client families--just to keep everyone feeling a little more comfortable since it is such a small town mentality amongs Americans here. However, when I went to buy uniforms for the children, I just kept having panic attacks. Last year was a great experience for us, but it was really hard in a lot of ways--for me and for the kids. We were all ostracized because of our race. We were totally the "poor" family in the school (which if you knew how much we now make, you would find this an ironic statement), and my kids were very far behind in math and Chloe's teacher just wrote her off and ignored her. It was exhausting. As we thought about it, it felt that maybe we weren't ready for another round of being beaten down by Asian Tiger Mothers.

There were two factors that helped determine our decision. First of all, if Oakley attended Daegu International School he would be unable to attend seminary for our church (which most LDS 9th to 12th graders attend) and he really wanted to be part of that. Secondly, and probably the biggest clincher of all was Florence. We've known for awhile that Florence has some pretty substantial learning disabilities--but every year it becomes more and more obvious that something is seriously wrong. Florence just completed first grade again. She is at least three grades behind her chronological peers. Her reading is relatively proficient for a child who came from Africa--but her logic, deduction, reasoning and math abilities are undeniably stunted. We have been working on the same math skills such as counting by 2s, counting backwards from 20, 2 and 3 step story problems for 3 years now and I still feel like we are stuck at square one.

It is frustrating on so many levels because even Giselle is passing her up in emotional and mental maturity. Giselle is more responsible and world aware than Florence. I think that God maybe has protected her from her extreme life trauma by giving her a mind that does not process things adequately. Florence is always sweet and loving and forgiving--but she can barely remember things that happened four days ago. At age ten, she is barely starting to understand the concept of time and remember days of the week. The other day I overheard all of the four little kids talking. Sophia said something about, "Jesus knows our past, present and future--even things we don't know. . . . Well, I guess we know our past." Florence looked at Sophia, "I don't know my past. I don't even remember what happened last week." It was funny--in a not-funny-because-it's-way-too-true sort of way.

The farther behind Florence gets from her peers, and even her youngest sister, the more frustrated I become. I cannot figure out how she process the world around her. Maybe if she had a diagnosis, if I could have a clear cut understanding of how to proceed? Maybe if I could have support and a school learning plan with goals for the future? Maybe I would feel like less of a failure as mother for being so constantly and thoroughly frustrated with the child ALL the time? Anyway, that's my desperate hope and the biggest reason we are going to the Army school--to see if we can get any resources or specialists that will make our life raising a special needs child a little easier. . . and, if her parents feel less frustrated with her, my guess is that she will feel less frustrated as well. The international school had no special education resources because the only children that go there are Asian overachievers--but the Army school is supposedly well-equipped to deal with this sort of thing. We'll see. . . all I know is that it can't get worse than where we're at, so anything will be a step up.

In summary our summer has been a little less eventful than our normal high-paced, high-adventure summers because I am working so much. Out of guilt, I signed the older children up for youth field trips. They have gone to the Boryeong mud festival, indoor skiing up near the DMZ, water parks and fishing with their hands. In the next couple weeks they will do a zip line course in the trees, jetskiing in the ocean and white water rafting. Oakley went to EFY for a week and loved it. Recently, we've been to the beach and shopping in Osan. We're trying to make the best of monsoon season here. Seoul got severe flooding, but we've been lucky that it only rains occasionally. We are hitting the pool as much as possible and biding our time until school starts again.

On a side note, we just bought tickets for a two week getaway to Thailand and Cambodia for Christmas. My parents come in October when Diamond and Sophia will get baptized. So despite the fact that I'm way too busy for my own good, we're still managing to squeeze every awesome moment out of life that we can!