Elton John applied to adopt an HIV-positive infant.  The Ukrainian government refused him on the grounds that he wasn't married and that he's more than 45 years older than the child.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090914/ap_en_ot/eu_ukraine_elton_john

Sorry, I'm not buying.

Ukrainian law does state that people who want to adopt internationally must be married (Ukraine doesn't recognize same-sex marriages) and that they must be no more than 45 years older than the child they adopt.  However, Ukraine has historically bent or broken its adoption rules, especially when the child has special needs.  Kala and I were originally "certified" by Ukraine to adopt one or two children between the ages of three and six  When Kala and I got over there, we were told several times by several different people that neither of these conditions really applied if we were interested in adopting an older child or a child with special needs or more siblings.  Perhaps we might want three siblings instead of two?  It would be done!  We were perhaps willing to adopt a child with cerebral palsy?  Done!  Fetal alcohol syndrome?  Done!

Sasha was eleven--five years older than the age Ukraine originally gave us permission for.  But few people would be willing to adopt a child Sasha's age, and we were.  So it was done!

Elton John is a wealthy man, with access to enormous medical resources.  He isn't in a marriage recognized by Ukraine, and he's older than their laws allow, but he is willing to adopt an HIV-positive child which no one else wants.  (Ukrainian law also states that a child be available for adoption only to Ukrainians for the first fourteen months s/he's in an orphanage, so clearly no Ukrainians have stepped forward to adopt Baby Lev.)   The government should have sent his adoption request right through, just as it has for so many others who don't fit the legal requirements but who were willing to adopt special needs kids.

Why was Sir Elton dismissed?  In what way is he different from all the others?

Yeah.  We know.  And it's Baby Lev who'll suffer for it.

Mackie is well into the Fun Stage.  This is, supposedly, the point at which children are at their best, the age between about six and twelve.  It's when they have enough independence to release you from the chore of constant care but are dependent enough to still need you.  They still think parents are cool.  They say and do cute things.  They're big enough to be fun to play with, but they still want to cuddle or be read to.

This is a first for me.

Aran didn't have a Fun Stage.  This isn't to say I don't enjoy being with Aran or playing with him or talking to him, but all interaction with him is filtered through his autism.  It's the elephant in the room, except we don't ignore it so much as deal with the fact that it takes up so much damn space it's hard to get to the Wii.  And I still tend to think, "How can I get Aran to _______ more?  What if I ask him about ______?  Or to ______?  Maybe I should challenge him by asking him some more abstract questions."  Even a game of Lazer Tag turns into play therapy because I don't dare miss an opportunity to help him develop.  So while Aran's Fun Stage . . . isn't.  Quite.

Sasha, of course, was just coming out of his Fun Stage when we adopted him.  We didn't even get the usual "honeymoon phase" that most adopted kids give their parents.  Sasha challenged us on the first day we took him out of the orphanage.  Six months later, he became a teenager, and six months after that, he entered adolescence.

Mackie was three when we adopted him, but was developmentally closer to two.  He regressed a little when we got him, too, probably in an attempt to be a baby again and make up for the fourteen months of his baby- and toddlerhood when he didn't have parents and his care came from a series of only semi-personal orphanage workers.  He "forgot" his potty training, he hoarded food, he wouldn't sleep by himself, he became a terror in school, and so on.

All of this completely skewed my expectations of childhood development.  I never expected my children to be nice, or simple, or fun.  I loved (love) them, yes, but it always came with a "What crisis is coming next?" question at the back of my head.

Now Mackie is settling into this Fun Stage I've heard about but never expected to experience myself.  He's incredibly cute.  He likes hugs and still wants to be tucked in at night, but insists on independence in the morning.  He runs around the neighborhood with the pack of local children, but he still thinks Daddy is pretty cool.  He wants me to go on bike rides with him, watch TV with him, play video games with him.  I don't have to think about how to phrase my questions for abstract content or wonder if he'll suddenly shift moods with adolescent suddenness.

So I'm going to enjoy it.

We've been trying to find another counselor for Sasha for a while.  He saw one for about a year quite a while ago, but she went on maternity leave and never came back.  Over the last few months, he's been showing more and more signs of stress and difficulty, and we decided he had to see someone again.

We found one guy who didn't work out.  His version of counseling was to give lectures in psychology.  Some of what he said was useful, but it wasn't what Sasha needed, especially since he spent only about 10% of the time letting Sasha talk.  The other 90% of the time he talked to me or Kala.  He never saw Sasha alone.  So we ended it with him.

Wednesday Kala took him to another counselor, who seemed to work out rather better.  Kala said he responded well to her.

"Was he ever diagnosed with PTSD?" she asked at one point.

"Not formally," Kala said.  "But we kind of suspected, and so did his other counselor."

"Huh," she said.  I'll diagnose him right now.  He has PTSD."

I knew that insomnia, sleepwalking, audio hallucinations, and difficulty concentrating are symptoms of PTSD, and Sasha experiences all of these.   But Sasha has another habit, has since I've met him: he asks me to speak for him. 

One of the most common things I hear from him is, "Dad, tell Mom about that thing that happened," or "Ask Mom if I can use her computer," when Kala is sitting right there.  He'll ask me to tell his teachers things for him as well, usually when they're standing next to us.  I put this down to a strange version of shyness or low self-esteem, but it turns out this is a common symptom of PTSD in young people.

So now we have to see how best to treat it.

This article exactly describes Sasha's position:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/education/25ellis.html

(Requires free registration, but I've never been spammed because of them.)

New York City classrooms have long been filled with children from all over the world, and the education challenges they bring with them. But hidden among the nearly 150,000 students across the city still struggling to learn English are an estimated 15,100 who, like Fanta, have had little or no formal schooling and are often illiterate in their native languages.

More than half of these arrive as older teenagers and land in the city’s high schools, where they must learn how to learn even as their peers prepare for state subject exams required for a diploma.

“They don’t always have a notion of what it means to be a student,” said Stephanie Grasso, an English teacher at Ellis Prep, which opened this fall and is New York’s first school devoted to this hard-to-educate population. “Certain ideas are completely foreign to them. They have to learn how to ask questions and understand things for themselves.”

Sasha will graduate high school at age 21, though in my more scared moments, I wonder if he'll graduate at all.  There's so much he doesn't know that other seventh-graders take for granted.  Sasha came to us not knowing that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around.  He still can't add or subtract in his head.  He can't tell time and doesn't know how long a month is.

In high school, he'll be expected to complete four years of English, three years of math, and three years of science, among other requirements.  I don't know how he's going to do it.  It frightens me quite a lot.

Sasha has turned 16.  This is very strange.  It doesn't feel like he's 16 to me, mostly because he's still in seventh grade and he doesn't really act like a 16-year-old, and this is fine.  If he needs to slow down his childhood, we're happy to let him.  While it had good parts, his childhood in Ukraine was harsh in many ways.  We can let him slow down and rebuild.

No, he isn't getting his license anytime soon.  He isn't ready, and he doesn't want it, in any case.

Biologically, however, Sasha is 16, and there are flashes of the mid-teenager that show up.  He hasn't been my son for even five years, and he's moving past childhood.  It's like I've leased him or something.

At any rate, Sasha said that for his birthday present, he wanted to have a party with his friends at the bowling alley.  I called the bowling alley, and it turns out they do have a party package that includes two hours of bowling, shoes, a large pizza, and a pitcher of pop.  We asked for two lanes (which included two pizzas, etc.) and ordered an additional pizza and pitcher.  Sasha invited six friends, the max I said he could bring.

The weather on the morning of the party was dreadful.  Much snow, much cold, much wind.  We got a call from one parent asking if the party was still on, and we said it was.  By early afternoon, the bad weather had cleared out and the roads became rather more driveable.  We all piled into the new van and drove to the bowling alley.  Four of the invitees showed up--pretty good, considering the roads and cold.

The boys (including Aran and Maksim) bowled and played around.  The pizza came, and there was much munching.  We lit the cake (home-made carrot), and there was more munching.  More bowling followed.  It was a very good afternoon, really--a good way to get people out of the house after being confined for so long due to bad weather.  Sasha had a really good time.

I've gotten so many e-mails from people who have written to tell me horror stories about Hands Across the Water, the adoption agency from hell, that I finally created a Yahoo! group for them so we can all stay in touch all at once.

There is at least one lawsuit going on now.

So if any Hands Across the Water alumni are reading this and you haven't gotten a Yahoo invite, contact me!  I'll get you in.

The following is a report Sasha wrote about his life.  He wanted to write it in order to share it with friends and teachers at school.  He asked me to proofread it for him.  I corrected only his spelling and his grammar, not his word choice.  It's his early life, much condensed.

    About Me and My Life

    I have in my family my two big sisters and my brother and my mom.  My real father died of a heart attack.  I never saw him with my own eyes because when he died I was just a little baby.  Yeah, me and my sisters have different fathers.  My two older sisters, their dad left my mom, then she I think married my dad.  I don’t remember that good, but I remember that Dad was in the army.  My mom and grandma told me, and also showed me the picture of him in the army as young man.
    I also had four best friends.  Three of them died, and one was left.  One who died was in 9th grade.  The second one was an adult.  I don’t remember the other third one very well.
    So anyway, when I last saw my sisters they were 20 and 18 years old, but now the one who is 20 years old is now 23.  I don’t know old my sister who is 18 years old would be, but I know my mom’s age.  She was 43 years old, but now she is 46 years old.
    My little brother’s dad was evil.  I call him that because he hit me and my brother.  Before we came to the orphanage, he took my mom’s money so he could buy beer.  Well, the money that I gave mom so she could buy food--I had to work my butt off to earn that money--he took it off my mom’s hands and left.  If my mom wouldn’t give him the money, he would beat my mom up by kicking her and punching her.  He did that, and so I also remember he went to jail.  When he came home after that he was nice and quiet for 1or 2 days.  Then he became nastier than last time.  Later, the police took me and my little brother out of the house.
    So that’s how I became in an orphanage. I didn’t see my brother for 1 year and 3 months.  An American family came and adopted me and my little brother.  And I kinda like my American family.  If they didn’t adopt me, I would be history.  In the orphanage, I got beat up all the time.   I also didn’t eat much because of those bullies.  They always take my food when the teacher was not around.  I was hungry to death.
    So yeah, that’s my story about me.

Maksim got a Transformer toy for Yule, but it never worked very well.  It didn't "transform" properly, and it was hard for him to use.  He started seeing commercials for other Transformer toys, and there was one in particular he liked a lot.  "I wish I could have dat," he said wistfully.

"Well," I said, "you have birthday and allowance money saved.  Maybe you could buy it yourself."

This got him all excited.  "I could buy it?  When?  When could I buy it?"

"Let's see how much it costs first," I said.  I went to a toy-seller web site.  The toy in question was $20, and Mackie had $25.  "It looks like you have enough to buy it."

"When?" he asked.  "Can we go now?"

"No, honey.  It's eight o'clock at night, and it's almost bedtime.  But you don't have school tomorrow.  Maybe Mom can take you to the store."

Kala said she could, and this got him even more excited.

In the morning, I was up getting ready for school--the boys have a four-day weekend, but I don't--and at about six o'clock, Mackie's door opened.  He came stumbling out of his and Aran's room in his pajamas.  "It's tomorrow. Can we go to the store for my Transformer now?"

"Honey, it's six in the morning.  The store isn't even open yet and you should still be in bed."

At last, he did get to the store and he did get his big Transformer.  He likes it very much.

Yesterday Sasha announced that he wanted to make something in the kitchen. By this he meant, "create a recipe out of thin air."  Unlike Maksim, he doesn't like cooking with me and he won't follow a recipe in a book.  I was a little uneasy about this idea, but didn't say so in the spirit of encouragement and nurturing.

He wrote down a list of ingredients he wanted to use, at least.  They were:

1 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 spoons butter
3/4 cup corn syrup
1 cup sugar

I looked at the list and suggested that he add half a tablespoon of baking powder.  "Otherwise it'll be all flat," I said.

He mixed all the ingredients in the pitcher I use for pancake batter, then poured it into an oiled cake pan.  He asked what temperature he should bake it at and I suggested 350 degrees.  "Check it at 25 minutes," I said.  "But it has a lot of moisture, and I suspect it'll have to bake for 45 minutes or so."

"I want to put frosting on it," he said.  "And chocolate chips."

We had some leftover frosting in the refrigerator.  I had him get it out to soften and showed him where the chocolate chips are kept.  Then I left for karate practice.

When I got back, the cake was sitting on the counter in the pan.  Sasha had spread frosting on it before it had cooled entirely, so the frosting had melted a bit, and chocolate chips were encased in the mass.  Some was already missing.

"You have to try it, Dad," Sasha said.

So I did.  It was actually quite good.  The texture and taste were both fine.  A successful first outing for Sasha.  :)

Maksim was playing City of Heroes on the computer.  His avatar rounded a corner and almost blundered into a villain way too powerful for him.

"Holy cookies!" he exclaimed.  Then he turned to Kala uncertainly.  "Is that a bad word?"

She assured him it wasn't and he went back to playing.

I can't keep up.  I just can't.  Aran gets so many homework assignments, and he's unable to keep track of them, as you might figure of a ten-year-old autistic kid.  =I= can't keep track of them.  Every so often we get a printed progress report with highlighted homework assignments that he's missing.  His grades are low.  I'm at the point where I throw up my hands and say, "I just don't care anymore."

I've been doing research into all this homework.  More recent studies are showing that lower elementary students don't benefit from homework at all, and upper elementary students benefit from it only a little.

At any rate, Aran's homework assignments are supposed to be adjusted for what he can handle, but they clearly haven't been lately, which means we have to go in and formally meet with his teachers to remind them of this fact.  Again.

It's very tiring and discouraging sometimes.

Mackie has behaved fine for the past two days.

He'd better . . .