Week Six at High Top Ranch

Proverbs tells us that understanding is to be our intimate friend, and if we take this advice as a personal quest, it becomes obvious that without understanding of what drives our personal behavior in a social environment, our emotional growth is limited. There are times when we feel driven to act out certain destructive behaviors and we do know why, even though we do not want to continue in that behavior. Paul, one of Jesus’ great disciples proclaimed his puzzlement about why he continued to perform some of his own questionable behavior. And, if you ask people who have spent time in prison, they will almost all tell you that it was not their intention to commit the crime and will proclaim that something unknown drove them to do it.

Modern day behavioral psychologists believe that 80% of our behavior is conducted from the hidden depths of our unconscious. Therefore, much of the behavior that we display to others is driven by circumstances, events, and the pain of the early years of our life that may or may not have conscious memories associated. And because there are no memories and no understanding, it becomes a difficult task in changing those destructive behaviors that continue to cause repeated themes of chaos in our lives.

In order to understand the hidden root causes of human behavior, scientists and psychologists have looked to observing other types of God created systems such as behavior in animals and nature. Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments use clever analogies to compare our turbulent human emotions and erratic behaviors to that of blind sheep, stubborn mules, shifting sands, and the highs and lows of waves in the ocean. If God can make our association with similarities in nature, then we can most definitely learn the “whys” about ourselves as we observe how nature reacts and transpires around us.

Jane Goodall, an internationally acclaimed anthropologist who intensely studied animal behavior is the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees. In 1961, she entered the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa where she closely observed chimp behavior for more than a quarter of a century. She lived in the chimps' environment and gained their confidence, allowing her to observe their most intimate and personal behaviors. The insight she gained from her close observation and research created a revolutionary inroad to the world’s scientific understanding of human behavior.

One of the first chimps to enter Jane's camp was a chimp she named Flo, an amazingly extraordinary adult female. Flo's charming appeal and vivacious personality kept research interesting not only to the researchers, but to other chimps who, over decades, continued to follow Flo into the researcher’s camp.

Jane documented Flo’s life and the birth of her five known offspring named: Faben, Figan, Fifi, Flint, and Flame. Flo's high rank in her social environment, along with her social assertiveness, positively influenced the social status and position her offspring developed as they grew to adulthood in the jungle environment. Her son, Figan, with the support of his brother Faben, became top-ranking males and her daughter Fifi, went on to become a top-ranking female within their social system.

Flo was a wonderful, supportive, affectionate and playful mother to the first three offspring, but at the age of 50, when she gave birth to Flint, she had begun to show signs of aging and she was not the energetic mother she had once been. However, Flint was a strong willed male that demanded her constant attention. As her strength was diminishing, she found it more difficult to discipline young Flint as she had her other male offspring. And, as her strength decreased, Flint’s strength and demanding nature increased causing an imbalance in the family dynamics. Flint rapidly became a spoiled, demanding young chimp with behavior that was uncordial and uncontrollable for Flo to handle.

When the time came to wean young Flint at the age of five, Flo gave birth to Flame, preventing her from having the necessary strength to break Flint’s suckling bond. However, at the age of six months, Flame died causing Flo much grief. After Flame’s death, Flint became increasingly more abnormally dependent on his old mother. He began to hang on her back and shoulders even when he was too big and heavy. He continued to demand his mother allow him to be coddled and treated like an infant. Due to her lack of emotional and physical strength, she stopped trying to push Flint away to become independent to follow after the males as all other male chimps were doing at his age.
There came a time when Flo became too weak to resist Flint’s angry demands and the stress and strain of his hidden anger proved to be too much for Flo. Three years after Flames’ death, she died when Flint was 8 and ½ years old. Her death angered him and he punched and prodded at her dead body for hours. Because he was unable to cope without his mother, he stopped eating and showed no interest in interacting with other chimps. Flint was showing signs of severe clinical depression. And, within 3 weeks of his mother’s death, Flint's immune system became too weak to keep him alive. He died of starvation and great grief because he did not have the desire to live without his mother’s help.

When Vale came to me in April, 2001, it was evident that he was an overcommer. His existence as an orphan alone in this world made him rely on his own skills and abilities as a very young infant to get his needs met. In the orphanage, controlling cries, and manipulative demands provided him the attention he wanted that would get his needs met with being changed, fed, and held.

All babies cry to get the attention of their parents, but when their cries are met with the loving attention of their mother, who time and time again reinforces to their baby that their needs will be met, a sense of trust sets in for the baby. However, a baby in an orphanage may cry for long periods of time and not get their basic needs met. Their frustration turns into a lack of trust and for strong willed infants, strong manipulative traits of behavior begin to set in that are not replaced with healthy expectation. However, this un-natural strength that is developed centering around the infant’s ability to manipulate and control his environment and the people that are there to care for him. There is no trust, so the infant must develop his own self-parenting skills and ways to get his needs met.

In 2001, I didn’t understand that Vale’s strengths were masked in fear and mistrust of adults. Beginning at 16 months, I regularly gave into his spirited demands and crying fits believing I was filling a need that he had missed as a helpless orphan; a conclusion that most loving mothers would derive(?). However, little did I understand at the time that I was trying to fill a bottomless pit that only fed his fear and unhealthy expectations.

What he needed was love with strict boundaries and I waited too many years to recognize the problem and implement a solution. By the time his father died when Vale was four, I had a little Flint on my hands, but by then I was deep in my grief over the loss of my husband.

Week Six at the Ranch; Learning to become Strong and Independent:
Vale is finding that his current method of coping to get his way with others is not working. Staff members and teachers are all clued into his manipulations for they are trained to recognize the signs, and he is struggling to find his way with those he is depending on for his very survival.

He is learning to fish and care for the ranch. While learning the importance of being responsible for the tasks that he is assigned, he walks ahead of the tractor to pick up big rocks and sticks that might come in the way of the mowers blades.

Each time he tries to manipulate his way out of a task, he is required to give 5 pushups for his infraction. This is said to help build not only physical strength, but emotional and mental strength that will build the confidence and endurance he needs to succeed and endure through life’s trials.

Please pray for Vale to find new strength and new and healthy ways of coping with difficult situations.

Week Three at the Ranch

I remember my first Mother’s Day with Vale in May, 2001. He was 17 months old and had been in the US for only a few weeks. Since we barely knew each other, there were so many new adjustments for the two of us. He clung to my neck like a scared little baby monkey refusing to let me out of his sight. Plastic table ware was a novelty for Vale. He called his juice cup, “appa”, the Romanian word for “water”, and downed several gallons of apple juice each week. He also insisted he sleep with his novelty cup and “appa” instead of a cuddly stuffed animal. I weaned him from his Romanian babysitter, American Music TV, to Christian children’s videos and music from which he immediately loved and learned to speak English.

In those early days, Vale watched me put on my makeup each morning and mimicked my actions by dabbing a powder puff on his cheeks. He was thrilled to help me select my ear rings and other jewelry I should wear for the day. He enjoyed brushing my hair,always being eager to please.

I’ll never forget that first week of summer during one of our trips to Randalls when he proudly confessed to the grocery store cashier that I was his Mommy! He was proud of his new mother and I was very proud to have such a spectacular son! We were meant for each other and it was obvious to everyone in our world that he was a very special child that had been given a second chance at life. If he had remained in Romania much longer, his fate would have been sealed to remain forever an orphan. It was just 2 weeks after we arrived home from Romania, their government began to announce their impending decision to discontinue all international adoptions. They wanted to improve their economic trade situation with Europe and the European Union did not favor the fact that Romania could not take care of its orphans. To this day, Romania remains closed to international adoptions.

Week three at the Ranch: On Monday, I called Justin to find out about Vale’s weekend. He said he had not been at the ranch over the weekend and he would find out some information and get back with me. Within two hours, he was calling me to let me know he had spent time with Vale during lunch. When Vale was told I was asking about him, his eye’s teared and he said that he missed his mother and home very much. Justin reported that Vale was looking forward to our first phone call on Friday and further explained that many of the boys at the ranch are so disconnected from their feelings and have such severe attachment disorders that they are not eager to re-connect with home and many of them show few signs of being homesick. He reassured me that Vale had a great desire to talk to me and re-connect after three weeks of being separated.

On Tuesday, Tad emailed me pictures of Vale on one of the High Top ponies being prepared to be ridden by students. Seeing Vale sitting on the horse with a big smile was a terrific encouragement to me. I could see that he is doing well.

Friday evening I received a call from Vale’s new case manager, named Dave. He is assigned to Vale to ensure his immediate needs are properly addressed. He reminds Vale to brush his teeth, put on his jacket when it is cold, and takes special interest in his general well being. He told me that he has enjoyed getting to know Vale. He said Vale is respectful to him and has a big heart. Dave mentioned the daily chore Vale has been assigned is vacuuming. He won’t be able to progress to more popular chores like feeding the animals until he has mastered the art of vacuuming and so far he has been working at it for three weeks.

When Vale got on the other end of the phone, I could tell he was choking back the tears. He said he missed us and wanted to come home. He told us there were 3 incidents of earthquake tremors over the last weeks. However, several weeks ago, I noticed on a web page of Koosharem’s history that earthquakes rating a 4.0 are common for the area.

He wanted me to remind him of why he is at the ranch. I don’t think he is quite certain as to the reason, but the longer he is there, the more apparent it will become to him. He told me they cut his hair short and complained that his school wasn’t like Stanley. He requested more books because he said he has read all the ones I initially sent him and asked that I would write more letters to him. I reminded him to read his daily Bible devotion and he said he would do it during free time since they were not allowed to read in bed before going to sleep.

It was good to hear directly from him and from now on, as long as he doesn’t have any infractions for the week, he will be able to call home on Friday evenings. We are excited to see how he will continue to engage in the program and learn from his time at the ranch. So far, so good!