Definitions and Experiences

What a word means depends not on its inception or origin, but how speakers of language understand it.  Over time, words have a way wandering.  Definitions drift.  Meanings alter.

Most of us are aware that our early experiences shape and influence our perception of the world.  Even if we haven’t read the multitude of studies and research on the topic, we probably have stories from our own childhood that to this day we point to as to the “why I do this”.

Adopting two kids who suffer from in utero exposure, lived in long term foster care, experienced two “interrupted” adoptions and came to us from an emergency removal, we are quite familiar that their experience with the world is very different than ours.  This has without a doubt altered their comprehension of certain words.

We have sought to prepare ourselves as parents to figure out how these experiences have informed their understanding of the world and themselves.  We honor their resilience and carefully challenge inaccurate interpretations while helping them reconcile what they “know” with what could be, or even what is.

Yet changing our definitions is challenging work.  It takes time, patience, openness, flexibility, awareness and other skills which even as adults we don’t always access or possess.  So how do children who have experienced early childhood trauma do this kind of labor?

I have heard it said,

“it is not survival of the fittest, it is survival of the nurtured.”

Nurture: to feed and protect; to support and encourage; to bring up; train; educate.

Our nurturing journey as parents has led us to be curious about these definitions of theirs.  While my husband loves to battle semantics, with our kids, it is more about their “word relationship”.

What words and differing definitions have the biggest influence in the lives of our adopted kids’ journey?

MOM – not really a big surprise here.

Our eldest has referred to several different people in her life as “mom”, so I was pretty prepared that our relationship, expectation and even dreams about this word would be different.  I anticipated that this word would likely be used as an expletive much of the time, at least early on (and it was).  When I got pregnant myself (we didn’t think we could) and gave birth to our biological daughter the same year we finalized adoption of our older kids, well our differing definitions needed to be addressed, for her as much as for me.

As much as I would like to say this task has been completed, it hasn’t.  This word is still forming for us.  The biggest part of nurturing M in this area is to help her be okay with this as a process.  To embrace a new word or description as she shares one.  Willing to dig deeper myself as I share who she is to me.

During pregnancy and after I affectionately called her “my first daughter”, seeking to reinforce what was a fact for me, that she – M – made me a mom before pregnancy did.  Recently as we have been chatting together about definitions and “word relationships”, I have acknowledged that there is a difference being her mom, and being mom to her sister (our biological child).  Part of my definition is that M is my heart.  Part of her definition shared is that I am her key.

FAMILY – this is a tough one for them.

They didn’t really have a working definition for this.  Admittedly they called people family names – mom, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, grandma – yet didn’t know what these names really meant.  “I used to have a fill-in-the-blank” was a common way to talk about family.  What this did was reinforce their working relationship with this word that “family” was dispensable.  So every time there was a difference of opinions, an irritation, or an argument there wasn’t any reason to champion for connection.

As we seek to “win back” this word for them we use nature to help us out.  Both kids love animals and plant life, so we talk about those scientific definitions of family and ponder together how that might fit us.

And from day one, we told stories.  As we looked at picture books before first visits with extended family it wasn’t just a “this is Uncle Chris – mom’s brother” or “this is Grandpa Bruce, dad’s dad”.  With every picture we told stories.  Like the time driving across the bridge with the back window open and Uncle Chris told Uncle Jer to throw down his baby bear, which he did and watched it get sucked out the window, bounce off the car behind us and sail over the edge of the rail.  So, to this day we still talk about the octopus who sleeps with Uncle Jer’s bear.  Or how Grandpa Bruce made up this crazy game called “blanket man” which all the kids loved, and we should play it too.  Every story we retell brings them closer to believing they belong, knowing they are a part of a forever family.

SAFE – this one has tripped up M the most recently.

For the past 2 years as behaviors have escalated and included suicidal and homicidal ideation, property destruction, “running away” with our interventions including multiple 911 calls leading us to ER visits, psychiatric hospitalizations, residential facilities, and intensive in-home therapies, there has been a lot of “safety-planning” talk, exercises, strategies and more.  M participates in the planning, contributing ideas and thoughts, often impressing the therapists with her insight, only to find herself stuck and continuing all the challenging “behaviors” that were putting us into this crisis state.

The most recent episode reiterated that no psychiatric facilities had openings, waitlists were months long, and there was nothing else that could be done right now.  Discharge from this ER visit once again included the completion of a safety plan with M.  I had been having the nudge for a while now, so I shared that I thought that we needed to stop talking about “safety planning” with M.  I said that I don’t think M’s relationship and understanding of “safe” is the same as ours.  It seemed to me that she was trying to keep herself safe the only way she knew how.  She was stuck in survival mode.  We needed to find a different word if we wanted things to go differently.

One month later – not a single ER visit.

Nurturing an accurate definition of safe is a daily activity for us right now.  We have lots of chats, check ins, artistic/creative and physical/athletic interventions, humorous diversions, etc. to support M’s labor in changing her understanding of what safe is.

I guess we are accepting that change and variation are as natural in language as they are in other areas of human life.  And it is helping us help our adopted children heal.

What experiences have shaped your definitions?