7/23/08 accomplishments

I got a lot done in the basement today and also built a bunkbed in my boy’s new room. I was relieved and grateful to hear that my former in-laws will be driving my daughter to school in a few weeks. Her departure falls during my first week of classes, and I was planning on putting her on a bus and bringing her stuff to her over the weekend. So having grandparents drive her up is a better solution. Tonight I will read through some of the LEEWS materials and perhaps put in one cassette.

I had a few interesting dreams last night. In the first one, I was dropped off at a college dorm far from home and all alone. I was having a problem engaging with my classmates and found myself in my dorm room alone, where I met my roommate who told me she had been in her room crying for two days straight. Nothing looked right. It seemed like a bed in a strange place. I was needing to make it mine. And then I woke up. The second dream was stranger. There was a mascot walking around that I assumed was a man in a lion costume. The lion took an interest in my man-friend, who later returned to tell me that the lion was actually a woman who had attempted to seduce him. When I saw her later, she wasn’t wearing a costume at all and just resembled a lion. It was strange. Very strange. I hardly ever remember my dreams, so when I do, I like to write them down. What this has to do with law school, I’m not sure. But remembering dreams is a definite sign of anxiety.

So…I’m getting off the computer early tonight. Purposefully planning on reading and going to bed early as these are two things I will need to do more regularly. Thanks to all my readers and I hope you have a sparkling day.

Sad crimes and my life

I got a lot done today. I am off to law school and committed to living every day of my life to the fullest, realizing I could die any day, same as the rest of you. There is usually no forewarning. But certain things can be predicted. I predict that if we continue to abuse and neglect our own children and fail to recognize that simply giving a child a new family does not solve their problems, we will continue to see some of these children commit crimes as adults. Two different crime anniversaries have been in the news this week, and both cases involve adults adopted as children. 

Edwin Hall kidnapped, raped, and murdered an 18-year old Kansas girl just over one year ago. Today he pleaded guilty and offered that he thought the girl was twelve and had nice legs. This man was removed from his adoptive home as a teenager after threatening harm to his adopted sister.  Why? Because there is a mental and emotional disconnect. If a person is unable to connect with their mother and father, unable to feel connected to other people in the world, there is no sense of decency necessary. There is no understanding of decency. Learning the standard expectations of society is like learning a foreign language without having any expectation of needing to use it in the future. Even if the individual is able to recite the rules of appropriate language, there is no internalization behind it. Considering my son was removed from my home after threatening to murder our entire family, and considering a few years before that he pulled a knife on his social worker and attempted to feed my two-year-old a large assortment of his own medications, I think I have a right to be concerned about it. This could be my kid in the news ten or fewer years from now. It is my greatest fear.

In the second case, the home invasion in Cheshire, CT happened exactly one year ago today. A mother and her two innocent daughters were raped and murdered while the husband was severely beaten and left for dead in the basement while his house was set on fire. It was a terrible crime committed by two men. One of those men was adopted as a child, and his parents claim that he was always “distant” and “unconnected”. The word for this is Reactive Attachment Disorder. It is the pre-cursor to sociopathic behavior. It is real, and it has a preventable cause. If there is one study I would like to do during my lifetime, it would be to research how many of our jailed criminals had a history of being placed into foster care, adoption, or other situations where they were separated from their biological parents.  These criminals were not necessarily born bad or even born different. It is their life circumstances that have contributed to their behavior. And it is our society that allows those life circumstances to exist.