Ah weekends!

Most people look forward to the weekends for relaxation and a break from the hectic rushing around and tight schedules Monday through Friday. . . But not me. I actually dread the weekends because the dramatic change in our daily routine is more like a major, emotional disruption for my middle daughter Cierra. To say that she does not handle the weekend change well would be a vast understatement. This kid crashes, and she crashes hard.

I think I figured out a long time ago that our kids, meaning all children who have been placed for adoption, do not adjust to change as well as non- adoptees. The level of difficulty really varies from child to child, also depending on many other things like personality, physical and mental health issues. For my 5 year old a birth history that includes some metal health issues, behavioral disorders, and prenatal exposure to drugs, means that she has the deck stacked against her to begin with. Change is something that can throw her already precarious senses into a major tizzy.

For me the typical weekend means being trapped in the house to begin with. If we do not get up early enough to be ready to basically go out the door (except for getting Cierra ready) then we seldom make it out at all. Once she wakes, off the normal schedule, she begins screaming, raging, and manipulating all the rest of us so we have little time to do anything but fend her off. It makes doing anything fun as a family very difficult and frustrating, and you can’t plan very well, because you never know when you will be able to get a jump on her and be ready.

On the weekend every little thing seems to set off my daughter’s siren like scream. She wants something, she lost something, she needs candy, she wants to color, she wants to go outside in 30 degree weather in her underwear and play in the sand box. Of course most of these demands are met with a solid reason why it won’t be happening and then she goes into a major rage. All of this is so emotionally draining for all of the rest of us. Long gone are the days we got up on Saturday morning and went out to do something fun together, now we have resigned ourselves to simply be held hostage in our own home.

The weekends were not always this way. There was a time when even Cierra would be able to get out the door and venture off to do some fun things with us as a family. I really wish that I could get her to understand that the result of her choices now, the screaming and angry fit throwing, is really keeping her from doing the things that I think she would enjoy. But she is making her choices, and does not appear to be phased by the consequences. I read the latest over at Nancy’s blog, and it seems like that is not an uncommon thing. Our wounded kids throwing salt into their own gaping sore, instead of taking the healing salve that we are trying to hand them. Weekends should be for relaxing, and I feel so sad and frustrated that my daughter prefers to turn them into a war zone.

So for me Mondays have become my respite, my relaxing break. I can hardly wait to send the girls off to school, and have some time to come down from the increased stress of the weekend. I don’t like feeling that way. I wish we could have more time to enjoy being together as a family on the weekend. Until my daughter also feels that way, and decides that enjoying our family time on Saturdays and Sundays is more of what she wants (and not the chance to throw a fit), I suppose we will be spending our weekends at home.

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