Jordon started O.T today.& Parenting special needs children!!

Jordon started O.T therapy with Bella today. Jordon gets to do O.T after Bella , but Bella doesn't like to share Dixie our O.T. friend. So Bella keeps going back to Dixie when she is working with Jordon. Bella is starting to like being a big sister to Jordon . I try to help Bella hold him now. She will get the biggest smile on her face. She just lights up with Jordon in her arms. That really is a big change for her . Bella didn't even want to look at Jordon for the first few months of him being home. She really liked being the baby of the family. She is adjusting now very well. She is very stubborn and most things she will do on her terms only. Unless mom is working with her, she knows mom means business. That she needs to feed herself or she needs to go potty on the potty chair. Oh sweet little Bella can pull the wool over her Daddy's eyes. She acts like her arms are broken and can't feed herself for her daddy. Boy this little girl knows how to work her daddy. She knows how to get to daddy's heart. She will give her daddy big lick kisses, all the way up the side of his face. It really is cute, but my skin crawls when she tries to give me a lick kiss. They are cute , but not for mom.

Ok: The O.T.~Dixie and i were talking today about parenting special needs children. Dixie and her hubby have one adopted daughter with some special needs. So she knows how it is with the sreaming fits and forgetfulness. Anyway we were talking about how when i was younger i had 3 children that were stair steps , each 2 years apart. Now i have 6 adopted children in the house at all times, plus many grand children. Most of the time we have 10 or 12 children in the house. But as i get older i really have lots more patients than i did when i was in my twenties with just three children. God must have know i could only handle three children then. BUT I AM SO THANKFUL THAT HE SEE'S THAT WE CAN TAKE CARE OF 6 OR MORE CHILDREN AT ONE TIME. Many with special needs, but then i really think we all have some special needs .

When i was in my twenties , everything had to be perfect. The house had to be clean all the time. The dishes had to be done before i would leave the house, and the fridge had to be organized. Everything in it's special place. Yes, i was a neat freak,but now i look around and think what the heck happened to my house. It really is great , our house is so full of love and laughter . Yet, it is not so organized any more. I really do try , but it is hard to keep up with 10 or 12 people at a time. We thank God for everyone of our children !!!!!

Ok: Back to Dixie and i talking today. We talked about how most people don't understand how to parent special needs children. You really don'.t parent them the same as non~ special needs children. Every child is parented different. They all have different behavior issues and many different special needs. So each need a special way of parenting them. But nobody can really know how to parent your child unless they have walked a mile in your shoes. Dixie and i both have seen many children with many many different special needs. There are some children i could not parent either. Even though Gary and I have parented over 40 some children. Most of them we loved dearly , but there was a few that we couldn't wait for them to move on. Some children just don't fit , in every family. Some we just clash with, i remember one blonde little girl. She was so beautiful , she looked like she was one of our homemade children. Oh she loved to fight with me. She would wait until Gary and all the little ones were trying to sleep . Then she would blow up and start screaming. I really think she just liked to be moved from home to home. I was really sad that she didn't fit in with our family. I really had high hopes that she would. But by the time she left i was so glad to have my quiet house back . Most of all the stress of the fighting with her was gone. Do i or we miss her. Why yes, we miss most of the children we parented. But boy i couldn't have kept them all. We just hope and pray they learned something good and loving from us. We did foster /adopt for about eight years. Boy it was tough, my heart got ripped out many many times. Sometimes i really felt helpless and hopeless. Letting some of the children leave, but then we really didn't have a choice in the matter. But it was awesome to watch a child go to a home that they were really going to love them for who they are. That is what kept me going and the hope of helping as many children as we could. I really think this has helped make us so much stronger.