Friday, December 5, 2014

He has made me glad

Our son Niko (12 years old, with us for a turbulent 3 years, adopted from an orphanage in West Africa) has just been homeschooled since September. His prior schooling in a small nearby Christian school provided some help, but in the end it was mostly a break for our family to have him gone those hours. His teachers were very kind and caring, but understandably unable to deal with Niko's vast issues in a classroom setting.


When things changed abruptly on the first day of school this fall, Niko asked us to homeschool him. That was such a shock, and an answer to prayer. I had just completed 24 years of homeschooling our other three children, with our younger daughter's high school graduation in June.  I had always hoped to homeschool Niko, but I had given up that dream in the early weeks after his arrival.  He barely came to terms with me as his mother; my being his teacher was unimaginable.  So to have him quietly asking me to teach him was something I never dreamed. The sudden need to homeschool him was daunting - and exciting. 

Niko lagged far behind his classmates in school. To be fair, it was not a level playing field. English is Niko's third language after Lingala and French (fourth, if you count a complex hand-gesture code that he had), and his limited understanding impacted everything he did. Beyond that, his horrific time at the orphanage has shaped him in ways I may never fully grasp.

Reading has improved during these three months homeschooling. When he is cooperative, he begins to grasp more phonics and sight words, and he realizes that homeschooling is working for him. But he has a constant battle with his past, and with reconciling it with his present.

Yesterday, he was to read aloud "The Gingerbread Boy" from a reading primer.  I had the lesson planned, and I was looking forward to seeing Niko's progress. 




The morning started, really, the night before - when he was very, very angry at the world, and specifically at me. (The current trigger is hockey, and the frequent losses of his favorite NHL team. But the anger comes from deeper wounds, and hockey is just where it has parked for the moment.) It was ugly, and I kept praying that God would allow me to remember the Scripture, "A soft answer turneth away wrath." I kept reminding myself to listen to the pain, not the hateful words. But I went to bed with a heavy heart - again.

The morning was no better. I prayed to see God's new mercies, and to trust that He would help. 10:00 came - Niko's time to start with me, but he walked past, ready to go outside to play basketball. "Time for our school, Niko." He lashed out again: more anger, more ugliness. I tried to talk to him, but I couldn't reason with him at all. He knew, though, that if there was no school, there would be no watching the hockey game that night. He said he didn't care, that he didn't care about a whole litany of things.  Consequences don't seem to matter to him in moments like that, and I am completely at a loss.

I felt my familiar defeat, that sense that things are not better, that they will stay like this, that there is little hope.  I fought the desire to argue with him, knowing things would just escalate.  Once again, I just didn't know what to do.  All I knew was that I needed some peace. 


I decided to do some housework, to go through the motions of something methodical, so I could think - and offer some praise to God. While I was folding laundry, the only song that came to mind was "He has made me glad," so I sang that quietly to myself. But I have to admit, I wasn't feeling too terribly glad.

About 45 minutes later, Niko came into the living room. "I'm ready for school - but I'm still mad." 


I prayed aloud to start our time, wondering how on earth this would work, and bracing myself for his bad mood. 

I got out the book and showed him where to read. He didn't take the book from me, he just stared ahead. 

"My brain is too mad to read." Fair enough, I thought. So I asked, "Should we do math?" He nodded, his face still very grim. I asked, in all seriousness, "Is your brain too mad for math?"

By God's wonderful grace, that struck him funny. He tried to stay serious, but he couldn't avoid smiling.  "I want to read."  So - he started in, but not until he asked me to 'sit closer, so I could help him.' (Thank You, God!)

With not much help, he read aloud the entire story. It was so comical to have him talk back to the story - to say things like "he should not do that" when the gingerbread boy ran away (what a moment it was to see this fairy tale, this morality tale, teach him a truth....especially when running away is something he's tried several times). He thought the story was interesting, and he was smiling as he read it.

Niko read all through the text: the gingerbread boy was running away from the old man, the old woman, the cat, the dog, the pig, the hen, and finally was approached by the fox. Niko told me, "It should have the...." and he gestured for the line with the period, the exclamation point, as he read with some real expression for the first time. I kept smiling, nodding, and praising every sentence.

And then he read, "You can NOT run away from the fox." His eyes widened as he read the next sentences. " 'I shall eat you.' And he did." 


How he laughed! "Mom!  The fox EAT him!"

Next thing you know, Niko was dribbling the basketball (he's the youngest, and I'm worn down, and yes, I let him do it in the living room), talking away about the story. 


"Mom, it should say 'To be continued'! Maybe he have a family to come to the fox." I just kept chuckling, "Niko, it's a COOKIE!" "Ohhhh! He is in the fox's tummy! He can't be continued!"

He kept dribbling, and talking on and on about this story. "He pass pig, dog, everybody. He did not think about the fox! Fox is very fast." He was so proud of himself. "Mom! I hear myself read faster - like a normal person!"

I pulled out a little whiteboard, and he was spelling some of the words for me, on his own: pig, dog, cat. He remembered and recited some of his favorite sentences, especially "I shall eat you." "Eat" is his favorite word in the world, he never takes eating for granted, from all his times when he went without food.

I kept showing delight (and relief, that this particular storm seemed to have ended), and telling him how well he read, and how well he is spelling. He talked to me as he dribbled - about the other school, how they were nice, but how I am really teaching him to read. 


And then he added, "Now I'm not mad now. All my mad is gone because of that story."

Thank You, God - and yes, an exclamation point should go there! The rest of the day went smoothly, including when we decorated giant gingerbread men (from a kit I got at Walmart. No, I didn't make a batch of gingerbread dough. Did I mention I'm worn down?) And the day was made even better when my husband arrived with a gift for Niko - a hockey stick for him to play indoor hockey at a local church once a week. 


It's truly counter-intuitive to parent this child, it's as though I have thrown out all I've ever done and relied upon. It can feel like I have entered some bizarre kind of opposite world. But what seems like rewarding bad behavior, I think, is really helping him out of a corner of anger he's backed himself into and can't get out of by himself. 

Niko proudly showed his 'art project' to my parents when they came for dinner. And last night - after a string of heartbreaking losses (truly, to Niko - he sulks and is angry for days over it, whether he's watched it or not), the New Jersey Devils won their game. Peace reigns, for now.

The best part, though, was him telling me again at night, "That was a good story, Mom."

Life with Niko means that we have not turned a corner, or that now everything will be OK.  But it does mean that God is with us, He hears our prayers, He is able - and He is safe to trust.  And next time - the next time that I know will come - I will remind myself once again of all of that. 





1 comment:

  1. God is WITH US!
    Oh, friend. Keep loving that boy.
    Keep turning conventional parenting on its ear and ignore all of the well-meaning parents who don't know a single thing about loving a heartsick child.
    You're doing such a good job.
    I'm GRINNING over here. Go, Nico! God has big plans for you!

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