We had fun today with some of our traditional April Fool’s silly activities.

Our favorite is the “Traditional Kitty Litter Cake”. A cake is baked in a new, clean kitty litter pan. Plenty of Oreo cookies are crushed into the frosting so that, when spread over the cake, it looks like kitty littler. Large Tootsie Rolls are softened in the microwave for 30 seconds so that they can be hand molded into kitty excrement (yum, huh?!?). New kids and guessed are always appropriately disgusted. Everyone else loves the tradition.

Honestly, I’d forgotten about the impending April 1st holiday until last night when one of my daughters reminded me that we needed to make the kitty litter cakes. If it were just me, I’m certain I could have done without the cake. But, for the kids, I knew it was hugely important. Family traditions of any sort are important, but for kids with shaky pasts, it seems to cement their belonging into the family. Not worth foregoing just because I didn’t have any Oreos. I headed out to the store at 10pm to get some.

The kids try to “play jokes” on each other. One might say “Hey, Nikki, you have a spider on your back.” When she checks for it, not seeing it, they will call out “April Fool’s!” As many of my kids love to try to play these jokes, not one seems to appreciate having one played on his/herself. Many of my children have FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome). Those are the kids that seem to least appreciate these sorts of jokes.

My kids that have FAS are the “what it looks like is what is true” kids. If they see it, then it is true. If you tell them about it, it isn’t really true. If they didn’t see it, then it didn’t happen. Very literal in their thinking. See = true. Everything else is a lie!

Most April Fool’s jokes then, to them, are lies. It makes total sense then to imagine their confusion. “Most of the time Jimmy gets in trouble for lying. Mom tells us lying is wrong. Now Jimmy lies, says April Fool’s, and Mom thinks it’s funny? No. It’s a lie – and now both Jimmy and Mom are against me. I must become more defensive.”

I don’t have great answers. I know that, here, I try to be very cautious to make our jokes be visual and to not target any person to play the joke on (like the kitty litter cake). It seems to work better and even the kids with FAS are able to enjoy the day.

Even so, it’s another day of the year that reminds me that some of my children really are different and that I need to be constantly “on guard” to make sure to watch feelings and help each of my kids grow to their own personal potential.

The Special Needs Adoption Blog today talked about more FAS/FAE issues.