Because You Said, "It Shouldn't Be Done"

Whether we foster or adopt some of you tell us we shouldn't do it.  You tell us we are asking for trouble.  You tell us we won't be able to handle it and that we are harming our existing relationships by moving forward with this ill-conceived notion of ours.  Obviously we think we can handle things if we are moving forward, but you are right in one way.   In reality this lifestyle is full of unexpected curve balls for the uninitiated.

You have frowned as some of us have taken on sibling groups.  We see the reality, sibling groups need placements and homes too.  One thing that greatly saddens me is that it seems that some of you who seem so ready to applaud if a family adopts 1 are the same people that will condemn the same choice if it is a sibling group that is being considered.

I want you to know that when you condemn a family who is considering adopting one or multiple children you aren't just condemning that family's choices, you are actively advocating against a home for an orphaned child.  Have you thought of that?  You are playing ball for the other side!  You think that there are "others" who will mysteriously appear to meet the needs of these children, but if all adoptive families took the advice you are handing out who would care for the children?  Children desperately need homes and they need families that are just crazy enough to think they can do it.

If you are planning on trying to talk a friend or family member out of an adoption are you willing to take their place and provide the home?  Are you willing to be the home to a sibling group?  If you are not, then you need to keep your opinions to yourself.

As soon as you tell me, or anyone else that you don't think this is a good choice for our families you firmly place yourself outside of the circle of trust.  I know I can never call you and tell you about the really awful days.  I know you will smugly feel right about your assessments of my family's ability or lack thereof.  I don't believe you really care, and I will drown before I call you for help.

There were many days in the first few months of this placement where I knew I couldn't do this work.  I knew I had made a terrible mistake.  I felt overwhelmed, grief stricken, futile, angry, and disillusioned.  You were right when you told me 3 traumatized children was just too much, but I made it because of those who did support me and some days on prayer power alone.  Through one of the biggest storms of my life I did not call YOU.

Those who say a thing cannot be done are not soon forgotten by those who do it anyway.

My boys are still here and we are still a family and we are building a beautiful thing together. I do not know what the future holds, but I know God brought us all together.   Maybe it would all be even better today if you could have been there for me in the beginning.  As it was, I avoided having a real conversation with you.  I still, I do not trust you.   I believe you are waiting for me to fail.

Maybe you are reading this and you have told a friend or family member that they should not adopt at all, or you have proclaimed they should not adopt beyond a certain number.  I urge you to go now and apologize.  God can use you to support this family who can't do this big thing. 

You can do your own part helping that new foster mother or adoptive mother adjust to her new life by bringing her dinner,  picking up her kids from school, making a grocery run for her, or by simply bathing her new family in prayer. Aiding widows and orphans in their distress is more than just adoption.  You can serve the Lord by being a blessing to those who go to the front lines even when God has not called you to that exact place yourself.`

Fostering a Healing Relationship

Liv and Tyke have a difficult relationship right now.  They are growing together, but that has been a slow build.  My Liv is one who remembers a hurt.  I am working with her, but she is quicker to mistreat Tyke than any of the others.  When he first came she was so excited about the babies.  She sounded like a little Mommy to all of them, but unexpectedly (for her) Tyke lashed out and hurt her physically many times in the first couple of months. She got bit hard several times, she watched favorite toys be broken in anger, she experienced countless "hit and runs,"  not only with hands, but with hard objects.  Tyke would jump on her back as she lay on the floor and he would often pull her long hair.  These things are mostly memories now, but  she doesn't trust him and jumps on everything he does that even seems questionable because she is just sure he is up to no good. 

I am worried about my girl and I discussed the relationship with the therapist today.  The therapist reminded me that no only did she get hurt when she opened her heart and home, but she was the baby, and she lost her place x 3.  I have worked hard to keep the special mommy daughter thing going but she still is struggling.  I am sure some of it is age appropriate.  She still prays nightly (without me telling her to) that the boys will stay forever.  I know she loves them, but teaching forgiveness is a hard concept.  It is one thing to say you forgive, but it is quite another to trust again.

 Liv never handed out her trust easily.  We used to laugh at the differences between her and Cy.  Cy never met a stranger and everyone he met was assumed to be wonderful by him.  He would smile for anyone who made up to him. If Cy got hurt he seemed momentarily confused and shrugged it off.   Liv was a beautiful baby girl and so many tried to engage the pretty baby in check out lines or at church.  As soon as someone spoke to her she would give them a dirty look.  No, she did not look afraid or start crying, she had a chubby baby stare down going on and she gave anyone who presumed she would speak to them or allow them to touch her an angry scowl.  If she ever got hurt, even if she hurt herself she would react in angry tears an lash out at whoever was closest. I remember one time as a toddler I heard her screaming in anger.  I knew she'd been hurt and I rushed to her.  She was sobbing and she pointed accusingly at a nearby wall and said angrily, "DA WALL GET ME MOMMA!"  She has outgrown indiscriminate scowling and volatile anger accompanying boo boos, but she has not outgrown the immediate distrust of someone who has dared harm her.

i need to help her in this area, so I am blogging mostly to be able to help myself with ideas for her continued growth.  I am hoping to be able to teach her that forgiveness is not a feeling that she will carry around magically.  Forgiveness is an act of faith that shows our trust in God's ability to heal us, it is not something we can make happen on our own.  We forgive those who have hurt us as we place them back into our prayer-life by seeking God for their well-being  and we forgive them as we consciously shove them back into the compassionate side of our brain when we'd rather lash out again. God has given me plenty of opportunity to practice this for myself.

My mission is to figure out how I can break this down into a 6 year old level.  I will encourage her to pray for him and I will encourage her to think about how things might be hard for him.  I will encourage her to give him a chance to be close to her so God can bring the ultimate healing where forgiveness no longer has to be a conscious choice for her, but it can be a given in Tyke and Liv's relationship.  I pray God helps me in this.  If you have any ideas for how I can teach my lovely Liv I would love to hear them.

Dreams, Mother-in-Laws, and Ignorance

I feel like I haven't rested.  For the last 2 nights I have had dreams where I am trying to get things done and I just can't.   In one dream I remember feeling a sense of satisfaction that I actually completed one of my tasks.  My own face appeared in the corner of my dream and said roughly, "Yes, but what are you going to do about your complete inability to maintain your home."  That wasn't very nice of me to say.  I think my subconscious needs to give me a break.

I have been trying to keep lists lately.  I decided I will not go out and get a job, so I make a list of all I need to get done everyday. I am treating my family and home as my job and trying to get serious about doing it the best I can.  I will admit once I begin the list it becomes very important to me to check it all off.  I have been feeling frustrated.  I actually get everything done on my list and look around at the end of the day and I have more jobs left to do because 5 children cause so much disarray.  I knew I was irritated about it, but I think it is really silly for me to be irritated at me.

I spoke with my MIL this weekend.  I really love her and we have a good relationship, but she informed me that she thought it would be best that we only adopt one of these boys.  It felt like a punch in the heart.  Which one?  She has the personality where she worries that things will go wrong.  She is glass half-empty and I am glass half-full.  I told her that at this point in the process we have absolutely no say about whether they will go home or if they will become adoptable.  I also told her that the caseworker would not want to split the boys up.  I don't want to split them up!  I didn't say that part.  I should have.  I am one of those people that has my greatest comebacks about 3 hours after the incident.  I did not say much, but I felt hurt even if she did not mean to hurt me.

They aren't puppies for crying out loud!  They have a dynamic with us and with each other.  It has been a part of their healing.   Once again I am back to this place.  I don't know what the Lord has in mind for these boys.  I know what I think he will do, but I do not know for sure.  I cannot be any part in causing anymore ripping and loss in these boys lives and hearts.  God, knows this about me.  I pray he will do his will in the boys' lives and I will go along with whatever he chooses whether it means joy or pain.

The quiet whisper in the back of my heart is maybe she just doesn't want to explain her differently colored grandchildren.  She has always been sweet and supportive to them, and I imagine she always will be, but the area they live in is not diverse at all.  We had talked about possibly moving back that direction someday, but diversity will be a huge consideration for me.  I need a place where all of my children will feel a sense of belonging.  Right now we are in that place.  I am digging in my heels until this process completes itself one way or the other.

I talked all of this over with Ryan and he and I are of the same mind.  To the best of our ability we will not cause further loss to the boys.  We hope and pray that all family members will be accepting (so far they have shown that), but if any family member becomes a anchor on our children's ability to thrive they will be cut out. Seems harsh when I type it out that way, but it is the truth.  Ryan and I don't take this stuff lightly.

Speaking of taking things lightly... A woman at the soccer field was very curious about my boys and asking uncomfortably nosy questions.  I tried to answer very quickly and simply and end the conversation, but throughout the game she kept initiating conversation again.  She asked me about my daughter's nickname after she heard me cheer for her that way.  I smiled and said, Liv has the most names of anyone in the house.  She replied, "Oh my boy does too!  I can't say em' here though.  He's half black so we call 'im n__ and n___jagger."  I was shocked. My mouth literally dropped open.  She calls her son the "n" word and allows others to do it as a NICKNAME?!  I guess I was supposed to take that lightly?

Some people are so ignorant and they shine it like a badge for all the world to see.  I am going to try and spot her before games from now on and sit on the opposite half of the field.  As I said earlier, I just don't have comebacks for people.  I don't think that quickly when I am reeling.  I feel so sorry for her boy...

A New Kind of Child Welfare

WARNING!  This is a long one.

I know the point of child welfare is to reunite children with their birth families, but I want to make a very clear statement here.  It is my belief that the point of child welfare is completely wrong.  Child welfare should be about... GASP!  Child Welfare!


I understand that biological parents deserve second chances to rehabilitate their lives and reunite with their children.  I even applaud this effort.  Families should stay together when a child's welfare is reasonably safe, but I have seen that whole reasonably safe part get tossed to the side repeatedly while children are sent home so the almighty goal of reunification can be met.

I understand social workers want us to help the children that come into our care to have healthy attachments.  They believe that the young child will not really remember us anyway and as long as they were attached to someone as babies they will not really experience the loss of us because these little babies won't remember us.  We are asked to accept that a young infant or toddler is terribly harmed by the loss of the person who carried them for 9 months, but told to disregard the loss that child may feel when cared for by another adult for 12 - 18 months.  This kind of thinking is incredibly insulting to all parents biological and adoptive.  It is an attitude that YOU really don't matter, YOU are replaceable. With this attitude it shouldn't be long before foster parents can be replaced with soft and snuggly human look-alike robots.

The child protective system seems to believe these little human beings just don't exist with real meaningful feelings until they reach an age where they can remember.   Look at your little ones.  Look into their sweet trusting faces and tell yourself its okay to disappear on them because as long as they attach to someone they will be FINE. No decent human being could do it, but many within the system buy into this heartless notion daily.  The sentiment seems to be Don't worry about the kids, they'll get over it.

I have heard the argument that termination cannot happen because there are not enough families to adopt.  That is completely absurd.  There are far more families willing to adopt in the United States than there are children waiting to be adopted.  Thousands of people gladly pay $30 - $50 THOUSAND dollars to adopt outside of the United States because our system is a convoluted mess!  Many of them alsoadopt children older than 2.

Yes, if I adopt from China it will take a lot of money and time, and headache, but if I meet qualifications (which are clearly spelled out) I will get to adopt.  I will get to make a difference in a child's life and they will make a difference in mine.  There is a standard process in place and all applicants get funneled through it and the process, though slow, is doable.  When you bring your child home they are yours, all the highs and lows belong to your family because you are... A FAMILY.

Contrast that with the US system.  We are asked to be willing to adopt.  We inquire into it and are told, "If you really want to adopt and have kids with you sooner you should foster."  This was the main point I took away from the state required adoption class.  Some of us foster, and we risk our hearts and lose these children.  Sometimes the loss is so unbearable we completely lose heart for adoption.  Some still stick to their sentiments and say they only want to adopt.  They are then contacted with Legal Risk placements, this means that the case will probably go to termination, but that the child could be taken at any time at the whim of a judge or caseworker.  When a family is finally contacted about an actual adoptive placement it often appears that no one even read the family's file before making contact.  These problems have caused so many families to either give up on adoption completely or take out the 2nd mortgage to adopt overseas.  At least then, these families, with hearts to adopt can actually make a positive difference in the life of a child.

I have been told by a social worker that kids often aren't available for adoption until they go home and are put back in the system, she said, and I quote, "by the time we are able to get them placed for adoption they are a mess."  Do you seriously NOT see the issue here?  Because the system doesn't exist for a child's best interests, many of the waiting children are older and extremely troubled.  They have been in and out of the system.  Although there are some families that sign on to do the hard work of adopting and raising these children many more families are completely terrified of what all those abbreviations attached to a name could mean in their own life, and rightly so.  The traumas effect everything and minimizing that does a disservice to the foster adoptive family and the traumatized child.  I contend that if parental rights were terminated sooner, so additional trauma could be minimized AND the system got an actual process in place many more children would be successfully adopted.

Let me say again, that yes, the parents of these children were once hurting children too, and they 100% deserve the chance to rehabilitate and bring their kids home, but they Do Not deserve to have 12 - 36 months of taxpayer supported, rehabilitation.  Those funds would be much better put to use supporting the NEXT generation.

One of the reasons children end up growing up in foster care and bouncing around placement to placement is because the system does not treat foster families with dignity.  Foster families are not given meaningful support when the chaos comes into their home.  Did you just take in a sibling group?  Managing that HUGE LIFE CHANGE is completely up to you.  Don't complain, or the kids will be taken.   Did you need some respite from 24 /7 madness?  Its up to you to find someone to take on the work.  Did you see something, hear something, or experience something with a foster child that reveals more than the original abuse allegations?  When you report it you need to accept that you will be treated like a liar.  You will be coached how you should have handled it differently.  Everyone will question your motives.

Another argument is that foster and adoptive children go back to their original families even after adoption.  The reason teenagers often go back to "old" families is because the system does not terminate soon enough when children can attach and adapt at younger ages and when that kind of change is easier.  I know many adopted children and they all attached with their adoptive families.  Even my mother, placed at 3 years old, and abused by her new parents, attached herself more to her adoptive family.  Although she met her biological family, and cared for them she never decided she would detach herself from her adoptive family and she still maintains relationships with her adoptive siblings to this day.

Some advocates of bio-family first often cite the fact that adopted children grow up wondering and questioning why they couldn't stay with their families.  Although this question may haunt some adopted children this is not the worst thing that can happen to a child.  One of the rights of adulthood is looking back and questioning why.  Many of us, if not most of us, have a question about a big thing that happened to us.  Many of us spend our adolescence and early adult years wrestling with this question.  It is through these backward glances that we decide if we will follow the paths chosen by those before us or if we will forge a new way.  Of all of the adopted people I know this question has not stunted their ability to live their lives.  The traumas associated with past abuses have, in some cases, stunted these people, but not the question "why."  My adopted friends and family members include successful business owners, college graduates, amazing stay-at-home Mom's.  None of these people were broken by their adoption.  Those who had some issues were mostly broken due to ABUSE.

  If birth parents are serious about changing their lives there should be major progress toward this after 6 months of intervention.  First they should be required to acknowledge there is a problem.  Drug tests should always be taken and always passed,  parenting classes should always be attended, and visits should never be missed except for serious illness.    Food, clothing, and shelter should be sought with intensity.  I am not saying that after 6 months every problem would be solved, but serious birth parents will work hard to reunite and not let the system do all the work for them. It should not be up to the social workers to show they have turned over every stone to help a family to reunite.  If you want your kids back someone else should not be doing the hard work for you!   If there has been major progress all children should go home at 6 months or sooner.  If less than half of the criteria have been met rights should be terminated.

I know this may sound heartless to birthparents, but I am not at all heartless in this regard.  I met my birth grandfather and he was wonderful to me.  He was a good man, despite his stay in jail in his younger years.  I am told my Grandmother did everything she could.  She even kept copies of all of the court records, and evidences of how she complied with court orders, including the cancelled checks from the bank for payments the state required her to pay for child support.  She kept all of these things so she could prove in court and to her children that she did not walk away from them.  Families that work hard to stay together should NEVER be separated. That is so wrong.  However, even with that sad story, my Mom is a functioning and wonderful human being.

The next generation of abusive and neglectful parents will mostly be culled from those who are abused and neglected without rescue.  Adoption does not break children, abuse and neglect does.  The system needs to stop spending billions of dollars trying to rescue parents that don't really want to be rescued.  Our entire society would be better served if the system spent that money rescuing the children instead.

Seriously?

After visit time is notoriously difficult amongst Foster families.

I was informed it was a bad visit.  Tyke came in reporting he got sat on again at visit.  This is weird.  I reported it a g a i n, not that I expect someone to come to his rescue.  He said Bio-Mom sat on him "as hard as she could."  He said visit supervisor was in the car.  I am lost at this point.

All of this is probably contributing the the fact that they have been home a very short time and although we tried to go on as if all was right with the world, they just... cannot.  It's not their fault really.  Still its hard to be so grateful they are home and have to go straight to no nonsense Momma.

"I will not be scared!'

Today the visit supervisor showed up to get the boys.  Tyke ran to her exclaiming, "I can go to see S______, I will not be scared!  I am not scared, so I can go see S________"

He has been talking about being afraid during visits.  We (the therapist and I) have been reminding him the visit supervisor will keep him safe.  I guess he is starting to believe that.

It is so surreal to watch a 3 year old excitedly say after nearly 8 months that they aren't going to be scared of their Mom today.  Weird.

3 Bad Guys

I wish they were ours.  I wish there was no question about their future.  Even if they cannot be ours I wish that they could NEVER face the return to the abuse they have left.

I got a visit from the advocate Friday.  He told me they were planning on filing for TPR in October.  I know I should be all excited, but instead I just felt nauseous and agitated.  When there are no caseworker visits, no advocate visits, no bio-parent visits I can almost forget they are in limbo.  I just hate being reminded that their entire future hangs in the balance. 

I saw a movie today, and in it, were 3 young men, all portrayed as thugs.  I felt for a moment that these characters could be my boys if they had continued to be raised in the gross abuse they had been suffering.  These characters in the movie were without charity, without remorse, and without conscience.

This part is new for me.  Seeing a "bad guy" on a movie and knowing that life made him that way.  That someone did not love him enough and protect him enough.  I know the producers are not intending that I look so deeply, but I cannot help it.

My insides are a mess right now.  I want to know they are safe!  I want to know they will not be tortured again!  It is NOT FAIR that we still sit here and wonder if we have enough evidence.  It is NOT FAIR that I have to send them on visits with their abuser.

I found out that the visit supervisor is writing about how well bio-Mom is doing at the visits because the boys' behavior is so much better.  Their behavior is better, because God is transforming them.  We sat in therapy and Tyke poured out his fear of visiting with Bio-Mom, while we comforted him that he was safe at visits because the visit supervisor is there. The therapist is a Christian and once she learned I was praying with Tyke and Tot and telling them that God was big and strong and he could keep them safe she started reminding them of this as well.

The therapist has been listening and helping him with this fear for a month now.  Ahhhhh!  I am just so tired of this whole thing.  Bio-Mom should NOT get them back.  Everyone involved should know what she has done so everyone involved will stop working towards their reunification.  The caseworker knows, the advocate knows, the therapists know, the doctors know, and I know, but we don't tell the visit supervisor because why???  We don't bring it before the judge because why??? 

I am sorry, but if I could just come right out and lay it all out here I would, but I can't.  So today I am just upset because I saw 3 bad guys on a movie.  Whatever. 

God,
  Please set these boys free.  I can't secure their future, but I know you can.  Lord, please cause this situation to move in a way that I will no longer have to fear that Baby is the next in line to be tortured.  God, you are bigger than my fears, and you are bigger than DC$ and bigger than that family.  I know you allow some kids to go back, but I am begging you, please don't let these boys go back.  Please...  Amen.