This blog is my place to vent and share resources with other parents of children of trauma. I try to be open and honest about my feelings in order to help others know they are not alone. Therapeutic parenting of adopted teenagers with RAD and other severe mental illnesses and issues (plus "neurotypical" teens) , is not easy, and there are time when I say what I feel... at the moment. We're all human!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Writing sample


This is a really old writing assignment. I'm not sure how old, but at least a couple of years (so he would have been 14 or 15). Bear HATES writing, and this is probably the longest thing of his I've ever seen written. This was handwritten, not done on the computer. It was really hard to make myself type all the misspellings!!


I got grounded becasue I got lipy and cock a adutud (cocked an attitude) and did'tn stop when you tould me to stop and I also cersd (cursed) over and over agin. I also got grounded for not listening to you and I thretend to run away, and sead I hated gramal (Grandma), Sead I wish I never moved here, Sead I wish I was (forgot the word "dead").

(Not a new paragraph, but obviously written at a different time and otherwise this gets even harder to read- )
I should have sead that I was not having a good day, lestened to you when you sead stop, I also should not have cersd over and over agin, not have got a aditud, also should not sead I wish I was dead, never talked about gramal, I also should not have sead that I (forgot the words "wish I") never moved here but sometimes I can't help my self it's all my falt me and (spelled Kitty's birth name wrong here) don't live with my B.O. Mom. (I have to laugh at this way of spelling biomom!) I geus what Im triing to say is if I would have never got in chruble with the law my sister and I would still live with my B.O.mom but evre time I got in chruble It got wers. When time's come up like this I just don't want to axcept what's going wrong with my life. When I was 7 I thought I was grwon because my B.O.mom never payed atinchon to me I raised all of my sisters and me. My B.O. mom gave birth to me she was on crack I was a crack baby (this isn't actually documented and is actually probably not true according to Biograndma) so was kitty (spelled right this time, but not capitalized). I never lived in a nice home where some one cared about me It's to much to take in at one time. I never had people love me or take care of me the way you gueys take care of me. My Whole life my gole was to get put in prison and Jale, and be a thug It wasent (I wasn't) like the rich kids I didn't want to a good kid or get a job. I never seen my self being welthy. It's just not like me. I geus we cant always get what we want. If I was In the millitary and cocked a adutud with some one I would get dischared (discharged) or have to work exchra.

Love,
Bear

He really appears to have a lot of insight into his life here, but know that he was so "therapized" that everything he wrote was like this. I'm not sure how much is true insight and how much was just repeating what he'd heard for years. Considering his age I'm assuming it was mostly stuff he'd heard a million times in therapy.

It's really weird hearing therapy stuff coming out of little kids' mouths. Listening to a young Kitty saying, "I need to work on my anger management skills."

4 comments:

Jeri said...

Are you sure that boy is not a few years older than they say? Good grief, he looks like a twenty year old and he was fourteen? Geeessh. If only they'd actually believe what they write,huh.

Mama Drama Times Two said...

Have a blast this weekend Mary - soak in all the warm positive vibes and store em up like a solar battery to use on a cloudy day! Wishing we could go - but glad you are going in our stead...

Anonymous said...

I learned from something off the NeuroNet list that bad spelling (which I also have!) is the result of learning how to read before your brain is ready -- before your corpus callosum is strong enough. One half of your brain handles reading by sight, the other handles reading by piecing out the letters. Ideally, you learn some sight word stuff, then work on the phonics, but your brain has to be able to communicate well enough, and that usually isn't until you are, I think, 7-8 years old. Once you've become a "good" sight reader, you can't really go back and re-train. Being a sight reader means you (I) don't see all the letters in a word, which clearly makes recognizing spelling mistakes quite difficult. (It also makes pronouncing words in foreign languages very hard!)
The more I read and experience, the more I know our school systems are doing it wrong. (But accountability! We must have accountability!)

Can Bear toss a ball from one hand to the other? So many things go back to the beginning ...

Miz Kizzle said...

I thought the same thing about the thoughts he expressed being "therapy-ized." It sounds like he's saying what he thinks you want to hear and also like he's repeating what he's heard counselors tell him.
On the surface, it sounds insightful but I'm not convinced it was how he really felt. He probably didn't want to get in more trouble than he was already in and so he was trying to con you by sounding pathetic (a crack baby!) and flattering you and your hubby (nobody ever loved me before you guys! I'm not used to living in such a nice house!)
Whatever. Clearly, Bear is much smarter than his grades indicate.