Independence

Over the course of childhood a journey is taken in the area of independence that is predictable and generally similar through (American) human history. Pre-mobile babies are completely dependent on their mothers not only for physical supplies, but even for things as simple as sitting up.  Once those legs get going, the toddler and three-year old kids have a kind of yo-yo effect:  being attached to the mother provides them unconditional safety to bounce out into their environment and explore.  They'll wander out into the room, or other areas of the house, or the accessible areas of a familiar place, and then rocket back to their mother for reassurance that it's all okay. 

By between late-three and six years old, a child is usually confident enough and independent enough to find excitement at the start of school, where they are able to create a surface attachment to the teacher for safety to explore the classroom and learning away from their mother all day long.  After that it's all a rush of data collection until the start of puberty, when these things begin all over again on a larger scale. 

We value independence, and so we rejoice to see our very young children accomplish previously impossible things.  We encourage them to be independent, to help with the chores, to clean up after themselves, to slow down and think, to recognize and talk about what they need so that we can teach them how to get it.  This is in a family where the environment supports normal development.

I grew up in that kind of environment, and so it's my instinct to encourage and support our children's learning in that way.  Most folk in the foster arena mostly agree, as far as life skills, and chores go.  But think about it: When a three year old comes into the family from a torn and traumatic situation already knowing how to gather all the elements from a kitchen and create a sandwich, is that because they were taught independence or because they've had to find their own source of food for so long?  When they are just three and already potty trained, is it because they were ready and supported in learning, or because they're smart kids tired of sitting in filth when no one would change them, or because adults screamed and hit when they made a mess? 

Some people think that it's helpful, at least at first, to do absolutely everything for the young child; in essence to start them over in infancy for a brief period of time so they can attach properly.  Providing basic needs for the child immediately every time, not to mention anticipating them, does wonders for healing children damaged in this way.  I used this method for the first few months with B. & L. and it was exactly the right thing for them.  They were desperate and scared.  W., on the other hand, seems simply confident, and so I do encourage him to help himself - sometimes.  The red flags start waving when his independence is coupled with a bossy attitude, and then we rein it in a bit and talk it over.

I guess the bottom line really is in how you view children.  A friend's perspective is that they're not raising children, they're training future adults.  And our young future adults are people like you, and deserve the respect and assistance that we would give to our neighbor or our coworker, with a lot more love and personal attention.  Parenting wisdom says, "Choose your battles", which seems to me as if we think it's a war.  Sure, sometimes it feels like it.  But if I go through my days always feeling as if I'm fighting with my son, it's simply not going to work.  And I realized that the days that felt like a war were either because someone in the family did not get a basic need met (sleep or food, usually) or because the adults are making unreasonable or unnecessary demands.

So the three of us, and anyone who visits, are a team, with four simple team rules:

1. Obey*
2. Be kind
3. Be safe
4. Have fun

*Hopefully it's obvious that Rule 1 is for the kids to obey the adults.  However, we have also agreed as a team that the adults will not command anything that is frivolous or unnecessary, keeping the instructions within the categories of rules two through four.  If there is resistance to a command, we explain which rule it supports and how, and in nearly every case, compliance follows.  If there's a problem with a broken rule we call a team meeting to discuss what should be done.  Sometimes the offender gets a chance to fix the problem, and sometimes there is discipline, agreed upon by the team.  Sometimes the adults call a team meeting to suggest alternatives to a previous plan.  Children may call team meetings too, though W. hasn't figured that out yet.  Parents also are required to follow the last three rules, and if we're not having fun or if W. feels that our words or actions lack kindness, he tells us. Then we get a great opportunity to model apologies, repentance, and a readjusted attitude (which we do grudgingly).

So what does this have to do with independence?  Everything, really.  One or the other of us is with W. every moment of the day except when he's sleeping. We do our own things alongside him, he asks us permission to accomplish some task, and we arrange the environment so that he can do it himself - as long as it fits within the rules.  If he wishes to do something that we feel isn't kind or safe, perhaps because he doesn't really understand what's involved, we can have a team meeting and discuss the procedure, or we can announce it to be a team project and work together. He can also spontaneously ask for "teamwork please!" if he's being independent and gets stuck.  Lots of things are team projects right now, which grown-ups usually call "playing together", but as he gets older that will happen less and less.  He can do what he likes, and be what he likes, and clean up the messes he makes, while still knowing that his needs are met and he is loved. 

So far he's thriving.  It's amazing what being treated like a person will do for someone.

Tentative return to blogging

And within a month, just before Christmas, we went from no contact with birth family to a family placement and empty house.  The chaos of the summer and autumn, and then the horrible gutwrenching devestation in the following months of winter, had the reasonable result of no blogging.  There was no way that I could put my feelings into words, nor could I really even think about any topics related to this blog that didn't dissolve me into tears or depression. 

After a bit of healing time, we were blessed with little Dubs, a new SU3.5.  He's resilient, and not currently in need of any additional therapies, which is a blessing.  He's also young and male and been through a lot, and we're constantly in odds with the opinions of others in his "care team", for lack of a better descriptive term. 

And that's about all I've got at the moment.  Hopefully I can think of more to write later.

Around the house

As a wise man once said, "Now for something completely different!"

Fun things that have happened lately

• The boys got their own rooms!  We spent the last couple of months spending an hour and a half each night trying to calm the boys down for bed, the bedtime routine that worked so well suddenly stopped working and our monkey boy (SU4) would lead the revolution against bedtime.  We got tired of yelling, time outs, screaming boys, the inevitable injuries from physically tantruming children.  So we split them up, moving Lanse's office to the loft, and converting the blue room into a perfect room for SU3.  They have their names on the doors, each got to tell Lanse where to hang posters on the walls, they are reveling (somewhat) in having their own clothes in their own closets and dressers, and - most importantly - the bedtime routine is back to twenty minutes now that monkey boy doesn't have an audience.  
• While the boys were mid-switch, we bit the bullet and hired our friends from church to tear out the cat-pee-soaked carpet and install wood laminate.  We finally got rid of the smell, (drenched the sub-floor with Nature's Miracle) and the rooms look fabulous.  I'll try to post pictures when I get them off my phone.
• SU3 is officially accepted for the Head Start program in August!  SUCH relief!  SU4 will be starting the public school 4K program, which is slotted for at risk kids, and they'll both be at the same amazing arts-infused school.  I'm so thrilled!  Oddly, due to differences in funding, SU4 will go to school for three hours every morning (standard half-day Kindergarten), but SU3's Head Start program is six hours - a full day of school!  I'm almost wondering if I can go unenroll SU4 and get him into the Head Start program as well, but I think there will be future benefits for him starting public now, as they'll get all his therapies on file while they're still (hopefully) with us.  SU3 is sufficiently adjusted that he won't be needing special services from public.
• We got ourselves a mew kitten from the SPCA!  Her name is Moonlight, aka Moony, she's black and sleek - extremely short haired - looks a bit like an enormous rat.  She also has huge eyes and ears and I called her Dobby for a while.  She's been microchipped, and it costs $20 to change a name on there, so we'll stick to Moony until we can't stand it anymore.  In three minutes we head to the vet for her first post-adoption check up.  She and SU3 have hit it off, which is a lot of fun to watch, though SU4 really doesn't seem to like her... though he tries.

Quotations

• SU3 "Where are we going?"  SU4 "We're going to the church nervous!" (service)
• SU3 (upside-down) "Momma, get me out of stuck!" 

Technicalities

It's easy to feel, most of the time, as though our job is simply to be parents - complete with everything you all know I mean by that.  In fact, quite often we struggle with anger for how vital we are in the system but how ill-treated we feel by those who require us.  Ignoring for the moment the personality quirks from each individual with whom we deal personally, (I have actually felt very encouraged and supported by the individuals with whom we've been working), the system as a whole is so amazingly broken that it's easy to feel that someone designed it to intentionally scorn those of us dealing incessantly with the emotional, behavioral, and developmental effects of someone else's crime.

Now, this isn't a pity-party post.  I understand that our social workers have 30+ hours worth of work to do in every 24 hour day, that there are not enough workers and not nearly enough money, and that this is a horribly heart-wrenching and exhausting occupation to choose.  I currently choose to believe that everyone directly involved is doing as much as they can for us, and that while my children are (obviously!) the most important creatures on Earth, each worker may have 10 or 20 or 40 most important creatures to care for who need much more worker intervention than our relatively stable boys.

That said, our job is not simply to be parents in the traditional sense.  We get to add a layer of administration and technicalities, that most parents don't.  The status of our children's living situation is at the beck and call of the gavel (though apparently gavels have gone the way of the caboose, judges here don't use them anymore) and we have the dubious honor of attending and - if the judge is amenable - having a brief say into proceedings.  Our first day in family court was at the beginning of March, and we had spent the prior month preparing ourselves emotionally for the boys leaving our home.  Surprisingly, there was what seemed to us a pretty basic problem regarding representation and the ruling was for a continuance in three months.  We received a call early May (not three months) that we were scheduled again; after a week of steeling ourselves and preparing, that appearance was canceled since it did not provide the three months required by the judge.

In early June we received another call: a new court date is set!  Three months?  Check.  Everyone appropriately represented?  Check.  That date was to be this Thursday (note the wording there...).  Due to a paperwork delay, one of the participants is unable to attend - which in this case is legally sufficient to cancel our court date.  Family court meets each Thursday; ten days are required for notice, so next week is out... then there's July 4 week where there's no cases, and due to that vacation, the 12th is booked solid.  There were a couple of slots left for the 19th, which they are going to try to get, but after the 19th.... wait for it.... one of the major players loses their representation and has to train in someone new.  Once we miss the 19th, all bets are off.

Not to mention that the addition of another month potentially changes the future plans for the children, as some things came in under the wire but without time to process them and now there's time.

We knew that this was a slow process.  Obviously, since we got the boys in October for a six-week placement and we're on month eight.  I had assumed it was due to the extreme working conditions placed on the social workers.  But for the entire legal system to be working (or not working) such that we are now on our fourth court date to set the complete life trajectory of these boys?  It's astonishing, and not in a good way.  Somehow, in some way, the foster revolution needs to overhaul this part of the system so that our children can receive closure and begin moving forward and healing while they're still young, so that they can heal and become amazing contributors to our world.

Foster Revolution

I'm coming to think that my role in this crazy world is to lead a revolution in foster care.  I'm not skilled at advocacy by any means, I just talk and write occasionally.  Despite my English degree work I don't know how to write a position paper, and I haven't the faintest idea of how to go about changing the world or where to start and it seems a losing battle.  If I could find myself a microphone and some foster parents willing to listen, I absolutely would; I'm quite sure that a great deal of them won't like what I have to say.  But as we move along I'm learning that my opinion of our job does not match the opinion of my DSS training, the Guardian ad Litem, the Social Worker, the birth parents, or even other foster parents.

You see, the problem is this:  we are to treat these children as if they are our own.  We are to be sure that we clothe them and feed them just like our own children. We have been told in training seminars and throughout home visits that we must be sure they have just as many life opportunities as our own kids.  Throughout our weekend of foster care training we heard statements like these in every session.  Now, I understand that these children legally belong to their first mom and first dad.  I understand that we are employees of the state, and that DSS holds the guardianship of them (somehow 'guardian' and 'foster parent' are different things legally, although here we have all rights of a parent except spanking.)  I also understand that my three year old already clearly knows that "foster kid" equals "not mine", and that the absolute bottom line thing he needs to recover from this is a firm and unbreakable attachment to parents.  And I am that parent.

So what is my stance?  From October of 2011 until the day they walk out this door with suitcases and boxes in hand, I refuse to treat these children as if they are our own... because they are our own.  Many families these days include more than one set of parents, and each of those sets claim the child as their own and love them and help them adjust to the split situation.  No one even considers the idea of telling the other that they're not a parent.  Our children have two sets of parents and right now, they are as much ours as theirs, if not more.  Right now, every time I stop and think, "Would I do this for my kids?" I am actively damaging my son's ability to connect and heal.  These children belong to us, and I will continue to hold that perspective as long as it is my job to raise these children through the chaos that is their past.



You see, the problem is this: when speaking with the trauma therapist, she asks me honestly why in the world we haven't taken them back to DSS yet because of his tantrums.  We have been 'comforted' multiple times by people within the system - DSS and therapists and foster parents - all telling us that it's completely okay to decide it's too hard, to be sure that we take care of our own needs and if that means sending the children back, there's no guilt or shame attached.

I had a short conversation the other day with an acquaintance, and her side went something like this:

"I walked into a church the other day, and you know?  All they talked about was faith!  And GOD!  I mean, geez, why're they wasting all that time and money on those things in church, when it could be fun and exciting?  Do you know if there's someone that will donate some money or maybe drive me around to other churches and fix this problem for me?  If not, I'm certainly not going to CHURCH again, cuz what's the point?"

All right, so maybe that's not how the conversation went exactly.  But just as a church is a formalized institution created with the original purpose of presenting the ideas of faith and God to the populace, the foster care system is a formalized system created with the original purpose of caring for children who have been abused or suffered trauma, the causes behind removal from the home.  So why is it that people go to a DSS office, go through 14 hours of intense training, sign up to be a foster parent, then - in shock and dismay - discover that their new children suffer from abuse or trauma? Seriously?  Did you not expect this?  This is THE PURPOSE of foster care.

So what is my stance?  It comes in three parts: general parenting, special needs parenting, and foster parenting.

Generally speaking, Parenting is hard.  I don't care if it's foster, step, biological, or godparenting, if you have a child in your care it will not be easy. While every age is tough in its own way, no one in their right mind would expect starting out with toddlers to be anything but a struggle.  Anyone who voluntarily signs up to be a parent and then gets annoyed that it's hard is clearly out of their minds.  On hard days some parents may joke that they'll sell their kids to the gypsies, but everyone knows they're joking.  Apparently there's some people in the world who haven't realized it's a joke.

Then there's the fact that pretty much every single person I know has something. I have dwarfism.  My brother-in-law has neurofibromytosis. My cousin had learning disabilities. One of my best friends' brothers was on meds for ADHD back in the early 90s.  Eight out of ten families that I knew growing up had something that required parents to fill out extra forms, attend extra meetings, sit in doctor's waiting rooms, hold back tears in pre-op or therapy, write the umpteenth appeal to insurance, and threaten school districts with lawyers.  This is normal life.  All of the things that I or family or friends have were genetic, and we lived with our supportive and loving birth families.  Every child in the foster care system also has something, it just has a different cause. Right now, we are their supportive and loving families.  We focus on providing for our children everything that they need to grow and heal regardless of the status of DSS support or financial backing not because they're poor damaged children and we feel sorry for them or are guilted into it, but because this is parenting.  When we say we intend to be parents, this is what we're talking about.

Of course, my final perspective comes when recognizing those different causes of the something that they have.  When I signed paper after paper saying that I will become a foster mother, I thought about the hours of training we've been through.  I thought about the photographs of children physically abused, I thought through the different scenarios of behavior shown by children who were sexually abused. I thought about my cousin who was adopted after years of being my uncle's foster daughter and all the chaos in their lives. We filled out the five page child factors checklist four times and update it annually, taking each behavior, each addiction, each genetic difference, deciding which ones we are capable of taking on.  With each mark of the pen, we created structure and guidelines to develop a foster care scenario with which we agree.  In business terms, we signed a contract designed to give us everything we wanted.  In heart terms, we accepted our children before they even walked in the door.  So - saying nothing of the fact that every child who is 2, 3, or 4 years old will throw tantrums - returning them is out of the question.  Like everyone in that training room, we were fully aware of what was asked of us and we don't just throw in the towel when it gets hard.  And now, of course, it has nothing to do with the training or the therapists or the other foster parents.  It has to do with what will happen to these children inside themselves if I strap them into the car and tell them that because (at three and four years old) they won't go to bed on time I'm dropping them off in the office to start a new life with new strangers.  The fact that this happens all the time should fill every single one of us with overwhelming shame.



There's more, but that's a start.  My revolution involves changing fundamentals.  It involves changing the language related to foster parents and overhauling the perspectives of our responsibilities.  It brings a paradigm shift to the process, hopefully ending in not just the best care that can be provided in the given circumstances, but in a new generation of foster children who are stable and washed with complete healing.  It also involves an awful lot of people unfamiliar with these ideas to pull together and support each other for the good of our children and our future.  Though I don't often get opportunity to blog like this, I hope that over time I'll be able to tell you all how we're working out solutions.