OmegaMom

I spent the day today with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  The Dotter is sick (again!  Oh, how I yearn for warmer weather, when the preschool has open windows, and the kids are outside a lot, and there’s less germ-sharing going on!).  When the fever medication kicked in, she was all charm and dancing and laughing and playing dress-up and enjoying a long, leisurely lunch with mommy where we held “races” eating our food, one bite at a time.  When the fever medication wore off, she was all, “Don’t TOUCH me!!  NOOOOOO!!!  Ow, ow, OW!!!“, weeping, alternating between shivering and being way too hot, and–in her instances of less misery–telling me I mustn’t touch her because “You don’t want to be this sick, Mommy!”

A throw-away line or two at the end of the birthday party post read:  “…she’s hitting that subconscious wall related to her birth and abandonment.  (Yeah, yeah, scoff all you want, but she goes into a tailspin right around now for a few weeks every year.)”

There was no scoffing.  SBird, however, asked me to discuss my impressions of The Wall, so here goes.

There’s a lady named Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound.  Her thesis is that any child who is adopted has a gaping psychological hole left by being abandoned by or ripped untimely from the birthmother.  I’ve never read the book, myself, but have read many recaps, summaries, references, etc.  Her premise seems to mire the adopted person in this psychological swamp that s/he can never escape (remember, though, I’ve never read the book).

There are people who have taken this idea and run with it, claiming that adoption is a horrible thing and should be outlawed.  Just google “anti-adoption”, and you’ll find them.

I don’t agree with the implications–that everything “wrong” with an adopted child is the result of that original separation from the birthmother.

However.

However.  There’s plenty of evidence that those nine months in the womb produce some very strong bonds.  Infants recognize their mother’s voices, smells, heart rhythms within hours after birth.

Imagine you are in the womb, warm and comfy and cozy.  Then, in a sudden flurry of pain and pressure and strangeness, you are thrust out of that warm coccoon into blinding light, piercing sounds, smells you’ve never smelled before.  But there is one thing out there (hopefully) that is familiar:  the body that you spent those nine months growing and developing in.  So you turn to the familiar, you cling to it as a foundation for exploring this strange new world.  You turn to it for food, for caressing sensations, for warmth, for that familiar sound, that familiar heartbeat.  It’s a touchstone that you learn very quickly to rely on as your senses are bombarded and your neurons struggle to organize everything.

Now imagine that, one week after that traumatic experience (which everyone experiences), you wake from a sound sleep.  Your touchstone has disappeared.  The sounds, scents, touches that have been your whole world for the past week–your entire life outside the womb–are gone, replaced by…?  You search for it, you cry for it, but it’s not there, and never comes back.

How can this not be traumatizing?

You don’t have conscious memories of this–it’s also well-established that the network of neurons making up conscious memory don’t really firm up until about six months of life outside the womb.  But there’s a helluva lot more going on in the human brain than conscious memories.  All of us have had moments where a momentary scent, sliding down the breeze, unlocks a complete snapshot of memory–emotions, pictures, “been-here-before” feelings.  Light can do this, too, at least for me–I can suddenly be transfixed by a particular angle of light, and know that the light was just this way at a certain time, and the emotions of that time wash through me. 

There are environmental cues to all the seasons, cues that we consciously learn, but that we also unconsciously pick up on.  So it’s not an arbitrary manmade calendar that brings things up–it’s a whole-body memory, linked deep in that primitive emotional center of our brain.

I was dubious reading about parents who adopted from China saying that their children always had emotional upsets around the time of their birth and/or abandonment.  “Oh, yeah.  Un-hunh.  We’ll see.”

But every year, right around the end of January/beginning of February, our dotter has…tantrums…night terrors…”issues”.

She always talks in her sleep, but usually it’s the typical pre-schooler type angst.  “Mine!” and “No, you can’t have it!” show up from time to time (har!).  But the sleep-talking she does right around now, and the tantrums she has right around now, center more on things like “Dadddddyyyy!  No!  Don’t go!” and “Mommy, mommy, don’t leave me!”

They pass.  I’d say two weeks?  She’s not crippled.  She’s her normal self, with some stuff busting through.  And it’s not something that will send her into a tailspin as an adult, unable to navigate her way through normal human relationships (like some people claim).  But I wouldn’t be surprised if she has problems around this time of year for a long, long time.

Perhaps I was primed to think this.  Perhaps I subconsciously passed this priming onto OmegaDad.  Perhaps, for all I know, I influence OmegaDotter to behave this way, because I expect her to.  But he notices it, too.

Technorati: Primal Wound, adoption, subconscious memories

All of us on Windoze machines have encountered it:  you spy an interesting ad on some website, hit the link, and suddenly pop-ups are blossoming like a million flowers on your screen.  You click and click and click, and, like a hydra, one window dispatched launches two new ones, until your screen is littered.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have hit a gambling pop-up link.  If you’re unlucky, you’ll hit a p0rn pop-up loop.  Your screen will fill with leetle images of leetle women with their legs asprawl, close-ups of men’s dangly bits, tongues licking lips and other things.  Even an old lady like myself can be…um…shocked and awed by the array.

I’ve had it happen once or twice myself; I’m a tech-savvy person who growls, hits Ctl-Alt-Del, and kills whichever browser it is that has spawned the window hell.  (These days, of course, I’ve got pop-up killers running, so that if I want to see any pop-ups, I have to explicitly say so.)

I’ve also worked on a computer help desk for a medium-sized university.  There are people all across campus who are whizzes with Word, but when told to change their password haven’t got the vaguest idea of how to do it.  There are people who can take electronic equipment apart in their sleep, but who, when faced with a computer, freak out. 

There’s a whole herd of folks out in the world who, when confronted with pop-up hell, freeze.

Imagine you’re someone who is a professional in the world, but who still needs help from your significant other to access your email and your favorite websites.  Imagine you’re at your workplace.  Imagine you click an innocent-looking link to something like hairstyles.com.  Imagine your horror when it spawns fifty kazillion p0rnographic images.

Now imagine you’re a substitute teacher, you’re using the regular teacher’s login, you’ve been told not to turn the computer off or log off, you were checking your email on your classroom computer, and there’s a whole herd of 7th graders who are sitting on the other side of the computer from you.  You don’t know what to do.  You dash off to the teacher’s lounge to get help.  No-one will help you.

Then imagine that two days later, you’re fired.

Then imagine that the police show up at your doorstep to arrest you for showing p0rnography to your students.

Then imagine you’re tried.  Your forensics expert’s testimony is severely curtailed due to a legal technicality.  You’re convicted.  Imagine that you face up to 40 years in prison for this fiasco, and you’ve lost your license to teach.

Sounds crazy?  Sounds like the script for a satire?

Yeah.

Talk to Julie Amero.

Technorati: Julie Amero, malware, high-tech justice