Looking Back to See How Far We've Come

When we first adopted a friend of mine suggested that I begin a journal. She thinks that someday I should write a book. I don't know about the book, but I did take her advice and began to write down just the normal happenings of the day. I'm so glad I did because sometimes it's hard to tell how far you've come until you look back.


My last blog was about my "graduates" and today I found myself reading some of my journal from 2005. Wow! My little RADlet has come soooooo far!!


In 2005 we moved to a new city and state. It was tough on the kids.....especially the RADlets. Even after the rest of the kids had started to make new friends and settle into a routine our RADlets just kept showing their anger. By the end of the year they had literally torn holes in their walls.


Today I read about a time when my littlest RADlet had been given socks to sort and was watching TV instead. I took her and the sock basket to her room and told her she could come out and join us when the socks were sorted. I thought if she wanted to sit and look at them until she decided to fold them that was fine. While she was in her room she decided that there were too many socks so she began to stuff the socks into the hole in her wall. I didin't even notice it at first. A couple of days later we were looking for socks to wear and one of the other girls said somethings about socks in RADlets wall. When we finally went ot investigate we found 138 socks in her wall. She had to do a push up for each sock found (not all at one time...over a period of a couple of days).


The next time we asked her to do socks she was put in her room and told NOT to put them in the wall. (Funny, I never, ever dreamed I would have to tell a child of mine not to put their socks in the wall:) This time she put them in her air return---160. More push ups.


She also once took the register out of the floor and threw it at her teenage brother who was babysitting her. He took it away from her but the cat got into the air duct. When I got home we ran throught the house lifting the vents and calling the cat. We tried milk, string, food. Nothing seemed to work. He was lying just out of reach, watching us call him and purring very loudly. Finally the teenager stuck his arm into the air duct up to his shoulder and grabbed the cat which now looked like the worlds biggest dust bunny!

I can laugh about all this now, although it was anything but funny then. How much we have grown since then!! This little RADlet is one of my "graduates". Praise God!! I can't imagine her doing any of those things now. She has made such a turn around.