I was unexpectedly blessed...

Sometimes blessings in life come in the most unexpected packages, from people and situations that we would least expect to see the hand of God at work in the world. I am no stranger to the incredible generosity of many, many good folk in the work area of my life. Working in the Public Relations/Recruitment/Development area for the children's home I am often amazed at the way people will reach into their pockets to help abused and neglected kids.

That being said, I was still unprepared for an experience that I had TWICE last Thursday. We were downtown at the central eating/shopping area during the lunch hour handing out fliers to the corporate lunch crowd about the Santa Sleepwear Drive that the local business association was sponsoring. It was hovering at 32* and we handed out over 400 fliers in a 3 hour period. The initial response was tremendous and hopefully we will see the fruits of our labors at the collection times that are upcoming.

Any time you hang out downtown you have a chance to interact with the homeless and the mentally ill. Thursday was no exception. We had the corporate executives in their business suits and cashmere overcoats as well as grimy, smelly, unkempt folk shivering in their meager clothing. As we were a diversion from the usual we drew any number of homeless who stopped by to chat and ask questions about our display. Most of them were interested in our giveaways, the ink pens, the post-it-note pads, the magnets, etc. And it was fine, that was what they were there for.

It was amazing how much compassion these folks expressed, any number of them revealed that they had grown up in foster care, and hoped that the children we served would have a nice Christmas. We were not specifically collecting money although we had our donation box out as we do whenever we have a display.

It brought tears to my eyes when two different homeless women, women with nothing to their name, women who were living on the streets, gave us a donation from their meager resources. The percentage amount that they gave to help another was incredible. I was reminded of the Widow's Mite, etc. But to see it in action, to see people who have nothing give to others that they perceive as being more needy than themselves, and to give with no thought of reward or recognition or compensations. It humbled me in a profound way. And it blessed me as well. To see the good of God in unexpected places is so the message of Christmas and to be able to be present before God's work was ... I am wordless.

Thanks be to God and may God hold the homeless in warm hands in the coming days.

Rain, rain go away

It is a rainy Saturday with an energetic almost 4 year old driving me crazy. I love having Dancing Baby Girl around but I think we have set unrealistic expectations for entertainment. Usually when she is with me it is go, go, go, to the zoo, the playground, walking and biking, hiking and exploring. But between the rain and my bronchitis it is not a good go, go, go weekend. So DBG is restless and being overly active inside.

We did go grocery shopping. Then we "napped", (Yeah right, screamed and fussed for 45 minutes is more like it) and then we played dress up, cooked cookies, cut with scissors and now we are painting. And it is only 3:30! Not sure what we are going to do for the next five hours. If it weren't hovering just above freezing we would go for a walk in the rain any way, but I don't need pneumonia on top of my bronchitis.

Life has a way of being real just when a little fantasy would be nice.

Last night I had the joy of attending the adoption party of my last foster child. (pictured above) I only had her for a long weekend before she transitioned to her foster to adopt home but I have remained the mentor for her parents even after I closed my home. It was a joyous celebration and a good time was had by all. Hers was one of several adoptions that our agency had yesterday on National Adoption Day.

She was a fun placement even though she came to me in the midst of her own inner turmoil from a disrupted pre adoptive placement that included abuse and severe neglect. I saw something in her that really drew me in and if she hadn't had a placement all ready I would have wanted to hang on to her. As I told her parents "She's a keeper." and it has turned out well, not without quite a bit of adjustment on both hers and the parents parts and none of us are naive enough to think that it will all be easy sailing from now on. But it was great to see her, so relaxed, so well looking (compared to the malnourished, anxious child she was) and so secure.

So I had a brief respite from 4 year old demands but now that the paint water has spilled on the floor and I have discovered that she has painted a few things besides her paper, I guess I had better go.

28 years

This is my friend Diane and one of her grandchildren and one of her foster children. Diane is one of those amazing people who are the backbone of the foster care system. She has been fostering for 28 years. She specializes in medically fragile children but will also take large siblings groups when she has room. She is also the go to person when emergency respite is needed.

The range of behaviors she has dealt with, the children she has touched and helped heal, none of those statistics can adequately describe the incredible person that she is. She has adopted also over the years, and now is grandmother to two fine grandchildren and another on the way.

She is just one of these wonderful people who care so deeply about the welfare of children.

One of her concerns was that when children come into care they often do not have the basics in clothing, toys, school supplies, etc. So she and 2 other foster parents go together and started a foster parent resource room which is stocked with donated supplies to help a child from age infancy to 18.

A tireless worker, one who will always try to say yes to the children's needs, a wonderful foster parent and a great friend. Wish we had more foster parents just like her.

College bound

I went to a party tonight to celebrate one of the only 3% of 18 year olds in foster care who is going on to college this year. C is going to a 4 year state school and we are so proud of her. She is feeling a little apprehensive, nervous, scared, excited, happy and sad, all at once but she really enjoyed her party.

I was asked to give the speech where I lauded C's achievements, but I also underlined that even though she was technically no longer placed with our agency as of Wednesday, we were all there for her whenever she needs us.

Not only were her current foster parents there, but two of her respite placements, her therapist, foster care specialist, head of the foster department and myself were all there to celebrate her reaching her goals. It really illustrated the concept of shared parenting. And each adult there made sure to let C know that they were there for her, giving e-mail addresses, cell phone #s, etc.

We are all proud of C, not only is she the first member of her family in any generation to finish high school, she is the only one she knows, who is not a professional carer of her, who has ever gone to college.

Her fps will take her down to college and get her settled in, then they will drive back down in 2 weeks and pick her up for the Labor Day holiday, only that time they will no longer be being reimbursed. They don't care, 2 weeks later they are picking her up again for their son's birthday party that she wants to come to. So C is getting a real clue that maybe we care about her as a person not just as a foster kid!

DBG's big brother

We had the delight of seeing DBG's older brother Spiderman at our church this morning. he was in respite while his family was on vacation and his respite providers are members of our church. They had called to check and make sure that it would be okay for Spiderman to come to church and since it was not a DBG weekend we were able to say okay. (DBG and Spiderman are not supposed to see each other, although occasionally we all run into each other, but with Spidey's foster Mom out of town this would not have been a good time to rock the boat, so I was appreciative of them checking).

Spidey recognized all of us, Doug doug, Sissy (that is what he has always called Kendra) and Daddy Doug. He sat right next to me through the whole church service and worked on his coloring books and then played me in awesome tic tac toe for a long time. Spidey gave great hugs and was very appropriate. It was obvious he recognized some people from when he used to attend church with us, but it has been so long that he wasn't comfortable talking to any one.

When church was over he gave us all big hugs again and went quite calmly off with his respite mom. That parting was my one concern, given that he was on edge about missing his foster mom already. But it was great to see him and to know that he still cares about us. Apparently he was telling his respite mom all about going places with me, as they live only about a half mile from us so he was going to the same grocery and the same swimming pool and the same church as he had when he lived with us.

I can't remember how much I have written about Spidey, not much I think since I just named him today in this post. Spidey has the unique distinction of being the only foster child in 20+ years of fostering that we have ever asked to have removed from our home. He came to us at 3 years old straight out of a month in the psych hospital. He had been bounced from family member to family member, been through foster care two different times, each time placed in multiple homes and he came to me for his 12th official placement, (I was DBG's 4th Mom at 9 months of age.)

Spidey is very RAD, has ADHD out the wazoo, anxiety problems, aggression issues, ODD, and OCD. Anyway he is a handful.

We could not keep Spidey because he was an extreme danger to DBG. Spidey was a drug baby, the product of multi generational domestic violence, not only his parents but also his maternal grandparents with whom he was placed for 9 months. He attacked not only DBG but also our large loving black Lab. Every evening in the bath I would find new bite marks and new pinches and new scratches on DBG, even though I was watching and protecting her with all my might. Several times he attacked her in her own crib. As she was learning to walk, he would pounce on her from behind and hold her face down in the couch or the rug trying to "make her stop breathing" was what he would say. If his aggression had been an overt expression of his anger I could have dealt with it, but he was sneaky and would also attack out of the blue even when you thought he was happy. The last straw was when DBG, at about 15 months, would run screaming from him when he walked in the house and hide herself somewhere and shake and shake uncontrollably. Basically DBG was being abused in my home by her own brother.

So Spidey went to residential treatment for almost 9 months and then I got to be his 14th placement again, because they threatened to move DBG out of our house so they could be placed together once he was released from treatment. Well that lasted from the end of November through to early March when he became so self-harming that he had to be put in crisis stabilization for 10 days and at the end of that time it was decided to split the sibs for DBG's safety and Spidey went to live with his current foster mom.

Then the state did an about face on termination and decided to place DBG back with her birth parents just as her Mom was having baby #3 and Dad was in jail again on drug charges. But they encouraged, no forced, Mom and Dad to terminate on Spidey, so that they could get DBG back. So Spidey has been with his present foster home for about 16 months now. And he is doing really well for Spidey. (I don't disagree with the TPR as there is no way that these young folks could have handled Spidey and kept his two younger sibs safe, it is just ironic)

The state is now pressuring this foster home to adopt him and although they want to, they are wavering because the state is refusing to provide certain evaluations and services, as well as some other issues. (And we all know how easy it is to get those things post adoption.) So Spidey is still in limbo, with no web to call home.

But it was sure nice to spend some time with him today and to hear from his respite mom that he has fond memories of the time he was living with us.

Memories

Using that picture in the last post brought back a flood of memories about one of our placements. It was a sibling group of 4 young Hispanic children who had been abandoned by their mother at the local shelter.



They were the most adorable children and we took them on an emergency placement the same weekend we were doing respite for 2 other little boys so we had a total of about 11 children all told in the home that weekend. When the supervisor came out to do the placement paperwork on Saturday, since I got them late Friday, she didn't stay long, she couldn't take the chaos. I was in my element having a great time.



The four kids were 2,3, 5 and 6 years old. Only the oldest girl had much English, the two babies had none. Luckily my husband is bilingual. They came in with bruises and marks that had to be photographed and before they even got a chance to have dinner they had to be interviewed by the cops and the SW. It was a difficult time for them. They should have been terrified of the whole process and of us, but they were actually happy to be somewhere where they would have beds and they were ecstatic over the toys. The 2 year old, that I had gotten the referral saying she was like a feral animal scratching and biting, throwing tantrums at the shelter, was a sweet, loving baby, wanting to be held and carried.



Of course they had lice and only came with the clothes on their back. I was able to arrange the sleeping rooms so that the three girls shared a room and the little 3 year old guy slept in an adjoining "nursery" so that he could be close to them. Every night they went to bed in separate beds, every morning they were like a pile of puppies snuggled together in the oldest sister's bed.



We had a blast that summer, went to the pool, to the zoo, clothes shopping, played in the backyard. They loved bubbles and catching fireflies and taking walks and riding bikes. We had some interesting "cultural" experiences. It never occurred to me that these kids had not eaten take out in a car before, I mean it should have because they were strangers to car seats and seat belts, but as middle class suburban family there are just some things you take for granted as universal experiences. (Live and learn, I guess) So we stopped at the drive through on the way to the soccer field from another person's activity and I ordered them all kids meals with milk. Well before you could say boo, there were french fries spilled and milk on the seats, etc. They didn't have a clue how to balance all that food in and around their laps. Now that is a skill most of mine developed before they were out of diapers, I regret to say as it reflects poorly on my feeding choices :-) It was just an interesting eye opener. And it was a skill they quickly learned as they had numerous opportunities to practice, again I regret to say.

Before we were able to settle into any kind of routine the system broke for these kids. Despite the fact that the grandmother had some neglect charges stemming from her own teenage daughter and that she had a 2 bedroom apartment with a disabled husband and said teenager already living there, the judge saw fit to return the children to the grandmother.



Now I am all for reunification and keeping families together. Our most joyous and proud work is mentoring parents and families into healing. But it was so sad in this case as the older girls expressed a great deal of fear about going to Grandma's. They asked the SW not to send them, they begged to stay with me. They spoke of the physical discipline Grandma used, the fact that the teen daughter always had lice and Grandma's house was smelly and dirty. They cried. But the judge saw fit to put them with the grandmother.

As I was transporting them all back to the SW's office for the last time, we got the call while we were at a bowling alley, I had a truly disturbing conversation with the oldest sister. She kept asking me what she was going to do, she was truly worried about the safety and health of her younger siblings. With tears in my eyes I coached her on how to call 911 if needed, how to tell a teacher or an another adult if needed, to keep telling until someone listened. But I don't think she had any faith in any of that, after all here she was going back into her dysfunctional family, sent by the very system I was telling her to contact. My heart broke on that trip.

So many times the foster care system puts these kids back, gives the parents and families way too many chances, and it is the kids who are destroyed. It isn't any specific post of Cindy's that I am remembering but some of her references to how her sibling groups lived and survived in their birth environments and how often an older sibling tried desperately to parent and protect the younger siblings. It is heartbreaking to realize the responsibilities these young children must assume. As a foster parent we often face such tough experiences through our kids and it is in situations such as these we experience most fully our true total powerlessness within the decision making part of the system.

I still love and pray for you L, Nando, C and S.

Support Group

Yesterday afternoon I went to our monthly foster/Adoptive Parent Support Group and it was a good experience. It is wonderful to spend an hour and half with a group of folks who get it! There was no concerns about how the folks in the room were going to react, everyone got the sad humor that gets us through and keeps us going. It was nice not to have to preface everything with long explanations and the whole dysfunction of the system was not something that we had to dwell on. Instead we could share some constructive ways to handle pressing behaviors and had a good talk about boundaries within the home.



A number of families have recently experienced the sorrow of having a long term placement move on and it was a safe place to express that grief. Losing a child is a very isolating experience, but losing a foster child is doubly isolating. Very few people can relate to the heartrending that goes on as a child is transitioned into their new placement, whether it is reunification or adoption. How to explain to your foster child, how to explain to your own children, how to explain to yourself that for whatever reasons the child can no longer stay with you despite the love you have shared.

We also talked about the inevitable pulling away or shielding of our hearts that occurs as the transition takes place. And how that impacts our parenting in the last few weeks of placement. We decided we need a group session on grief and loss for just those FPs who are involved in reunification.

A New Training Class

Last night I started a training for a new class of foster/adoptive parents. It is a small group after last time, only about a third as many participants. But it is a good class, there doesn't seem to be a lot of naivety, they were not shocked by the some of the stories and they asked good questions.

One question that is always asked is whether very young foster/adoptive children (not infants) have issues from the abuse and neglect that they suffered. And I have to explain that for many of the children the abuse begins even before birth when the mother is drinking or drugging and the long term effects on the baby's brain. People also do not want to struggle with the idea that small children are getting hurt by their parents and they would prefer to think that the children "forget" or "get over it" just because they are young.

I assure my families that I train that I do not sugarcoat anything, it is all painfuly real in my classes. That has scared away some folks but better for them to be scared away before they have a child in the home then for them to be one more failed placement for these kids.

Sometimes I even depress myself though, we are such a dark place with 2 out of our 3 adopted children living away from home in treatment facilities, and our last foster care placement ending in a traumatic reunification with the birth parents. I am not exactly the most positive person to be representing the foster/adoptive system right now.

I will try not to scare away this new crop of potential families as they are so desperately needed.

PS the picture doesn't have much to do with anything, just a happier time in our family.

Yearning for the old days

This is how our house used to look, lots of kids, all engaged in life together. Usually at least one cute baby and then olders with various issues. Since we often had kids placed with special needs we would have various peices of therapy equipment about. And the whole house was decorated with odd socks. Somehow none of the children who come to live at my house like to keep their socks or shoes on.

Now, though, we actually have a long weekend this weekend with no one at home! The permanent kids are all about grown, our youngest at 14 is on a high school field trip. We are on a sabbatical with foster care as our last placement was one of the most emotionally draining of our 19 year career. So it is just me and dh, and the cat and dog for the next few days.

In response to the unaccustomed quiet my usually very mellow and calm Lab has become hyper needy and demanding of my attention. The cat is just, and has always been, psycho.

I miss the adrenalin rush of answering the phone and getting a placement call. The mad rush to arrange sleeping quarters, make space in drawers, etc. And then the frantic first few days of doctor's appointments, school arrangements, clothes buying, and all that fun stuff. I miss getting to know new kids. learning how to help them adjust to their new life and our family. Mark me as very weird, but I do miss driving around in our 15 passenger van, with the kiddy songs cranked up, every body talking a mile a minute, some happy, some not so happy.

There are lots of things I don't miss all that much, the rages and screaming temper tantrums, the placements where we have had to be extremely vigilant so that no one, human or animal, gets hurt, the piles of laundry, dealing with state social services and the whimsy of their placement decisions, and the days when I haven't even had time to take a shower, let alone have any me time at all.

But lately as I have driven around in my "little" van with just me and NPR news most of the time, I am beginning to think that me time might be overrated, at least for me. Right now I am apparently the only one in the house who is anxious to get back into foster care. My dh is very not ready and my 14 yo daughter is enjoying having me all to her self right now. I have agreed that we are going to have a just our family summer and then I am insisting that we get back into some placements. I am going to up our youngest age, we are getting too old for infants, sleep has become too precious, we will be looking at sibling groups in the elementary range, we have done our fair share of teens and really aren't interested in those issues right now either. i know our agency will be mighty happy to have us back.