Therapy

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:3-8

After our initial shock of coming home with older children who have some significant mental health special needs that were undisclosed to us, we jumped in with both feet to try to fix their needs. Looking back, maybe we were trying to fix our children to make them into more like what we were expecting they would be, sans special needs, learning disabilities, developmental delays, etc. After all of our diagnoses and attempts at helping to fix our kiddos, we have come to view therapy (psychological, speech, occupational, attachment, medication) as much less of a "savior" or fix-all than we did two years ago upon first arriving home from completing our older child/sibling group adoption.

There is so much push in the adoption and mental health world for therapy to support the child, and sadly many of these therapies end up pointing out for parents the child's faults and are aimed at fixing the child. Far fewer are aimed at helping parents learn to accept, embrace and love unconditionally the child God has for them. What I have realized is that many therapies focused on trying to help us attain a more lovable child only stir up discontent in my own heart. If our child was not becoming more lovable, more attached, less rage-ful and aggressive, then the therapy was not working, we were not working hard enough, our child was not working hard enough and there was disappointment all around.

Sadly, it was my focus that was off and I can't imagine how much added anxiety and pressure this brought to the entire family during those initial days of shock and adjustment. It is true that our big kiddos have endured a lifetime of hurt and came to us with diagnosable needs that I would never want to neglect. Sensory disorders, speech disorders, complex trauma (C-PTSD), developmental delays, each of these are real for my big kiddos (in different ways) and I would never want to deny my children the help they need to thrive. Similarly, I would never consider withholding medical care from a cancer or HIV patient. God has created good things through medical advances. However, for my big kiddos, all the therapy in the world will not heal their hearts if it is void of truly knowing the love of God and trusting in His good plan for them (Jeremiah 29:11-14). And most therapy is void of teaching God's Word.

So, we have been in the process of weeding out therapies that do not make the best use of our time in meeting the kids needs to know and understand God's love for them, our love for them, safety in our home, and God's good plan for them (understood through His Word). Disappointingly, some beneficial services (speech, OT) did not support our kids best because of their extreme anxiety. One of our sweeties has such a hard time trusting us that any time this child is separated from us and placed in a class or with a therapist, this child becomes fixated on the other adults/teachers and rejects any learning coming from us - especially hard when a therapist's methods of rewards are always perceived as better than whatever the child gets at home (candy, toys, etc.). It wasn't that the skills and therapies were not helpful, but that the actual delivery of the services was getting in the way of other, more important necessary learning for our sweet child. So, this therapy/service was not best for us at this time. It is hard and good to be discerning. We have found many ways to replace some of these services during our home school day and are working hard to implement more.

We have chosen to utilize an in-home therapist to work with one of our children and alternately with the entire group of children. This happens twice a week and is heavily and firmly guided by our input. We feel that the benefits of this service works to support our overall goals for all of our children; however, should there come a season when the time commitment does not benefit the family to grow in the knowledge of God's love and family stability, then we would reconsider this service as well.

Over the past two years we have researched, reviewed, tried and exhausted several sources of therapies, only to find our hearts contented and comforted in turning to God and His Word in the midst of teaching, training, and discipling our children. At times we have found some additional therapies helpful, but only when they are secondary to having a Christ-centered family.