We were pretty lucky that our boys are fairly sweet-spirited and were not displaying a lot of anger when they arrived, at least not outwardly. The eldest, Nathan, was pretty sullen and withdrawn though, and didn't miss a chance to challenge us. He was presented to us as a boy with an intellectual disability and had been pretty much discarded by the system. Both bio parents are intellectually disabled and he has a lazy eye (unrelated to any other issue) so he appeared to be a kid who's not quite with it and no one in foster system did anything to find out what his capabilities actually were. We knew right away that he was a lot more intelligent than given credit for, and thankfully when we enrolled him in our school district his new teacher recognized this as well.
We found out right away Nathan was a problem solver, though not in a particularly positive manner. One of his first tricks was to swap the door handles on the doors to his bedroom and the bathroom. He had asked for a locking handle on his door (he was SEVEN at the time) and we of course said "no." Not one to take "no" for an answer, he got up in the middle of the night and went into the garage, got a screw driver, and disassembled both handles and then REASSEMBLED them on the doors the way the he wanted them. Needless to say we put a new lock on the garage door that required a key on both sides! Another time we caught him stacking furniture in the bedroom with the attic access so he could open the panel, IN THE DARK!!!
He was also very obsessive, mostly over an odd collection of items, including the access panels to the attics, batteries, nightlights, fans, heat/air conditioning registers, and smoke detectors, but also had a strange preoccupation with death. He would randomly ask strangers if their dog/mother/friend/almost anyone had died. One of our neighbors was asked if his mother died and the poor guy's mother had actually recently passed away! Talk about awkward, so we took them a basket of coffee as a token of appreciation for the gracious way in which he handled Nathan and the situation.
One other oddity was his preoccupation with certain tattoos on my arm and AH's shoulder. He would show affection (kissing, sniffing, etc.) to the tattoos as a means of showing affection to us while hugs and eye contact were generally avoided.
As we've worked with him to gain his trust through providing boundaries, structure, consistency, and love, his obsessive behaviors have diminished greatly and he has become a much happier child who is fairly easy to redirect. He can still make Eeyore seem like an optimist at times, but he is light years from where he was. He still steals and gets into stuff he's not supposed to, but to a much lesser degree, and he still shows affection to the tattoos although his affections are now more openly expressed.
His teacher has worked with him as well (and with us) to tap into his intellect that had to that point been sadly overlooked. When he came to us he had no academic baseline and was in a classroom for the severely disabled, in a poorly performing school, in a poorly performing school district, in a state ranked 42nd in education. He was in second grade and had no skills and no motivation to learn. His new teacher challenged him academically, engaged his social skills, and demanded presence and participation. We chose to keep him with this same teacher through his third grade year since she taught 1st - 3rd grade special needs kids and he was doing so well. We also enrolled him last year in the Kumon reading program to supplement what he was getting in the classroom. One other resource we took advantage of was having him see a renowned Neurologist which was paid for through AH's medical insurance. Diagnosis: Moderate Autism with developmental delays likely caused by his environment. All genetic testing came back normal! Armed with all of this, we were recently successful in arguing our case to have him moved to a higher functioning classroom environment next year which will be at our home school with the other two boys.
As the improvements in his sense of security developed, he began discarding his first name in favor of "Nate," and eventually settled on "Tracy." We can only surmise that "Nathan" (and "Nate") were too closely associated with his past and that he was seeking to distinguish this new life from his old life. We have no clue where the name "Tracy" came from, and he can't tell us how it came to be, but he has insisted on using the name for nearly a year now so when the adoption was finalized we changed not only his last name, but gave him "Tracy" for a middle name.
So Tracy it is, and all we want for him to be is the best "Tracy" he can be. We're overjoyed at his progress and boy that he is becoming!
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