Thursday, February 2, 2012

Neuro...what???

neurological reorganization    Kids, like ours, come from hard places.


 The other day when I was given an article by Zach's therapist. It was called "When Baby Comes Down." It was a scientific article about what we have believed all along. That Zachary's emotional and learning difficulties likely started in the womb and he was "born this way." Growing up in the orphanage for a year and a half only solidified his distrust and anxiety of the world. 
  Great, we have an agreement with a professional, a doctor of psyhology,  that our sweet son is dysregulated and dysfunctional on a neurological and biological level. Ugh, we forgot to talk about a treatment plan besides EMDR. Which is what is used for PTSD. How do we resolve PTSD from the womb or infant stages I ask? 
  So after reading, what seems like hundreds of pages of documents, about how kids get ADHD, attachment disorders, Asbergers I found very little about treatment methods. It was like saying, " my car is broken." Then not finding a way to fix the car. 
  Well on the billionth page of research I found of a treatment called Neuro Reorganization. It goes on the theory that the kids, like Zach, who have these problems are thinking in the most primitive level. A survival mode that causes us to have the flight or fight response. With kids like Zach the response is never ever shut off. Therefore his normal state of mind is what we feel like when we are in a severe state of stress. 
  Think about a time when you were driving down the road and a deer jumped out, or a car pulled out and you came a second from hitting it. What happens chemically is that our bodies go into a flight/fight response with adrenaline, epinepherine, cortisol and a few other crazy sounding chemicals. Our heart beats faster, breathing becomes shallow and rapid. We are unable to think clearly and completely. Study after study shows that orphanage kids, or early kids with early trama, have super high levels of these chemicals ALL the time. They were never able to shut the flight response off. This leads to learning issues, adhd, aggression and violence to name a few. 
  What the therapy does is allows the child's brain to relearn these "normal" responses. The damaged pathways will never heal in Zach's brain but hopefully with this movement therapy it will help Zach's brain find different pathways. It will help his brain work together, left and right, front and back. Right now he only thinks with the midbrain, the part that is needed for survival. 
   We have our first evaluation at the end of Feb. in Tulsa. 

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sometimes life throws a curve ball

Ok, so Scott and I have had our share of curve balls. We throw some of them ourselves from time to time, just to keep our life interesting.
 Miss Lydia, the one with kidney failure, has continued to seperate from our family. We love her, she loves us but there are some inner issues that she just can't shake. RAD, trama history, drugs, learning disability who knows what the cause to be.
  Most teens seperate a bit when they are in late teens. They grow and want more independence and less parental intervention. Rarely does an 18 year old have the true weight of their life placed upon them making good choices. She was to be a normal teen I suppose. Normal in respect to the life she grew up in. Unfortunatly we, as a family, came to a point where she could no longer live within our boundries and values. So she made the decision to move back to MN where her birth family is from. The place in which she grew up in.
   We miss her laughter and pray that she heals and will welcome her back when the time comes. 

New Year

Gosh, I felt like I needed to write something. It is toward the end of January and we totally missed posting about our Christmas adventures. Actually it was quiet and normal. This has not been the case for the last year or so. This was a nice treat. We woke in the morning, to early as one would expect with younger children. We opened gifts and every child who was sitting by the tree adored their gifts. It wasn't even that they got completely what they asked for but they appreciated the gift that was given.



                                                               This is what Santa left.



                                                        Always happy faces



                                                        Showing off new soft bathrobes 

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Rebuilding Joplin - A New Cuningham Park


On May 22nd, 2011, the EF-5 Tornado that destroyed about 1/3 of Joplin wiped clean what was once a park in the center of the city, Cuningham Park.  About 1 month ago, a large crew of volunteers came to Cuningham Park and made it into an inspired park that gives tribuite to the city and its people with a creative, modern design.

Below are a few pictures of the new Cuningham Park.







This is one of the new play structures.






One note about this picture, the building you see in the background is St. John's hospital, which was heavily damaged during the Tornado.
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