Alex on Day 8

Yet another picture of Alex (aka Sasha) on the swing, his fav place to be.

Showing us how he can feed himself with a spoon.

The theme of today’s visit with Alex was: “Boy, this kid has really been understimulated!” We’re coming to an increasing awareness of the extent of his sensory deprivation over the past few years. The clues have been adding up over the past few days, but today we witnessed him engaging in some “stimming” (self-stimulation) behavior—basically, purposely banging his head against the wooden post on the playground equipment, several times, rather hard—and laughing about it. Pretty typical for kids raised in institutions; they get bored, understimulated, and compensate by banging their head. This explains the healed-over scars on his head, which we also noticed in the last photo of him that we received just after his transfer from the baby house to this institution. In that photo, the scars look fresher, so presumably that behavior has been curbed since he arrived here. Yesterday we saw his groupa, the room where he sleeps and presumably spends a lot of his waking hours, too—pretty bare-bones, other than a television (playing adult programming). No wonder he gets so excited when we come to get him.

More evidence of his under-stimulation…. Sometimes we see a five-year-old kid in those eyes—particularly when he has an extended exchange with the staff. But other times, he behaves much more like a two-year-old. Today we spent a lot of time playing on the swings, playing catch, sliding down the slide (with us holding onto him the entire time), and then we moved to a covered picnic table, where we took out crayons and then a magnadoodle. He did draw a little bit before playfully throwing the crayons and paper, at which point they went away. He drew a little with the magnadoodle, but mainly he was fascinated with dropping the pen (which is attached to the drawing pad with a logn ribbon) down into the crack in the picnic bench, and then retrieving it with the ribbon. He did this over and over, with quiet, alert concentration—laughing to himself occasionally, but mostly just figuring out how to get it into that space and pull it back out. If he never had the opportunity for that kind of learning, then that would explain his fascination with such simple spatial-mechanical tasks. We’re thinking of adjusting our play with him to be more like what we’d do with a young toddler—around 1 or 2. We also expect that between his siblings and his school experience (whatever that looks like), he is going to catch up quickly.



Something else we’ve experienced in recent days—we’ve had increased contact with the other kids, often in a group setting, but sometimes one-on-one. Yesterday (or Sunday?), three teens came over and watched us swinging Sasha on the swing. One of the boys looked to be 14 or 15 years old; he seemed very much like any other kid that age, right down to the cell phone he kept taking out and checking. He was very friendly and indicated that he was “friends” with Sasha and had played with him before (assuming that our understanding of what he was saying is accurate). Some of you may remember us praying for a playmate for Alex; well, apparently we met him. The kids in this institution are on a broad spectrum in terms of their mental abilities; what they seem to share in common is a deep hunger for contact with others, especially anyone from outside the institution. Some of the kids with more profound mental impairment will come right up to you and hug you, or smile and reach out their hand for a touch—and that is really all they want in return, is a smile and a touch of your hand. It seems to make their day. The older teens we have been seeing seem a little more guarded, but still very interested in what is going on. We have been careful about what we say to them, but I am willing to bet they wish they had parents coming for them, too. This week, let’s hope (and pray) that we (or RR staff) can get permission to take some photos of these older kids, so they can be posted on Reece’s Rainbow. If they can get that far, it is likely that they can get families, and wouldn’t that be wonderful?

We don’t expect any further word on paperwork until Friday, although we are hoping to be pleasantly surprised by an early approval from the department of adoption.