Tough parenting

I hear it all of the time.

"Do you think she does that because of her trauma?"

"Doesn't her past explain that behavior?"

" Poor thing. She doesn't know better."

The truth is that yes, she does act out due to her trauma. And yes, her past experiences, like watching her mother threaten to kill herself every time she got in a fight with HER parents, has had a effect on my child.

And yes, there are a lot of behaviors that she has never been told are WRONG.

None of this, however, means that I can let her get away with anything.

It has become alarmingly apparent that little miss Snow White is an expert manipulator, twister of truth, and white liar.

She lies about EVERYTHING!

Some things are a direct link to her past. I honestly believe that she was trained by the excuse for human beings who gave birth to her (who are homeless again) to never expect to get what she needs.

She has learned that the only way to get what she needs, like food or attention, is to manipulate, pitch a fit, or lie.

For example, she has the weird habit of telling me that her tummy hurts instead of telling me that she is hungry and would like breakfast. I honestly believe that when she was with the bios she would wait all day long for food if she didn't lie about a tummy ache and whine about it until they relented and gave her food.

Lies like this are extremely frequent.

However she is also 6 and smart enough to figure out how to "work the system" to get what she wants. Or to get out of trouble. Skills she also learned from her parents.

Despite all of this, despite her trauma, her experiences, and her life lessons so far, there is something worse. Are you ready to hear it?

Are you ready to read everything I say instead of calling me a "bitch" and going to another website?


The truth is, when it comes to parenting her and teaching her, her past doesn't matter.

 It doesn't matter that she is mad because she was abused, she can't punch hole in my wall.

It doesn't matter that she misses her mom a lot, she can't use it as an excuse to sneak out of bed.

It doesn't matter she hates foster care, she can't scream in anger at the top of her lungs while I am driving 70 mph on the interstate bridge.

Your foster child has to be taught all of the lessons that you would/do teach your own. Every child has an excuse/reason for their behavior, but that does not make that behavior ALLOWABLE.

So we give her consequences, talk about trust, tell her we love her no matter what, praise her when she shows improvement,  and give her more consequences when she backslides.

We tell her that it is ok to be mad. To hate foster care. To hate her abuser. To want to punch something.

But we have to teach her how to channel it, because if we don't do this she will end up being one of the stats. Like the stats that tell us that 70% of the prison population is made up of former foster kids (over 90% of people on death row).

The Green Pole

Every day I get to walk my little munchkin to school. We arrive at the front of the building where other parents are waiting in the car line to drop their kids off. All along this walkway, leading to the front door, are different color poles marking where parents can stop their car.  Usually we stop at the end of the walkway, at the orange poll which is the furthest from the front door.

However, Thursdays, which are visit days, are different.

On Thursdays we walk to the green pole, the closest to the front door. It isn't that I can't let her go, it's that she asks me. Perhaps this is the only way that she can tell me that she will miss me. Maybe this is the only way that she can let me know that she wishes she was going home with me instead of getting picked up by a transport worker.

Maybe I am kidding myself.


I sure do love my extra long hug and kiss on the cheek by the green pole though.

It is the only thing I look forward to on visit day.

Adoption

Have I mentioned that we are adopting?

Ya... that's happening.

Husband has been wanting to adopt for forever. Well, not forever: since Royal Family Kids Camp. He fell in love with my two 10-year-old campers (I did too) and has been wanting to adopt a child around that age ever since.

The sad fact is, once a child reaches about 8-years-old in foster care, their chances of being adopted by a family drop dramatically. A lot of times, that 8-year-old will spend the next 10 years of their life in foster care and be kicked out the minute they turn 18.

We decided to" just go for it" about 6 weeks after Ariel left our home. He absence created such a hole in our lives, and the fact that we live our lives not knowing from one week to the next if our babies will be taken from us became to "real". The fact is, if I am going to survive foster care, I need an anchor. Something permanent in my life. I need a daughter that I know will be with me forever. That I will fight over clothes with, teach how to drive, will hold when her first love breaks her heart. I need all of that, and I need to KNOW that I will get it.

So we are adopting. Last week we had our home study done, and we expect to be licensed to adopt in about 3 weeks. Once the license is complete, we will start getting packets of information on children that meet our criteria (and whose criteria we meet). Once we get a packet that we like, we will meet her and (hopefully) start her transition into our home.

It's exciting. It's crazy. It's just another normal in the middle of our insane world.

I can't wait to meet her.

 I wonder what her "blog" name will be?

addendum: Just read our homestudy, along with our references and Snow White's interview.  It is so humbling to read what people wrote about us and their faith in our parenting. I don't know that we live up to the hype, but I know that I will try my hardest to be the woman described on that document for our new little girl.

It's the little things

Today I was walking Snow White to school and she was skipping next to me. She started singing "I love my Mommy, I love my Mommy". She paused, huffed, and said to me "Come on! You have to sing back "I love my daughter, I love my daughter". So that is how we walked to school. Her singing to the world, "I love my mommy" with me echoing back, "I love my daughter."

Tomorrow there will be a visit and someone else will be the mommy that she loves. But this morning as she skipped to school without a worry, she wanted to sing about loving me.

Foster care is a roller coaster. It is the moments like this that keep you sane and strong enough for tomorrow.

Court

Sometimes court changes everything.

Other times there is a continuance because the bio parent's car "broke down."


Now we wait until April 6th.

Mother of Many

  There was a time when I thought I would never have children.  Last March, we had just gone through a futile year of trying to become pregnant. Every month waiting…. The few days of hope, and then the crushing disappointment. 

I had given up. Mother’s Day was a few weeks away, and there was no hope I would ever celebrate that holiday. Then, one morning, the following words popped into my head: “A Mother of Many.”

Wonderful words.

 Now for some reason this thought, wish, premonition, word from the Holy Spirit (whatever you want to call it) was completely comforting to me. It has been something that I have held on to even when I was sure that foster care wasn't for me. 

 I am only 28, have been a foster mom for 8 months and have been a mom to two children.

 Now I am not very good at math, but if this average keeps up over the next 20 years or so I will have had more children than I could ever ask for.  

Mother of many, indeed.  

Last month, I got to sit behind a fellow “mother of many” at an event for Foster Families.  She was a talkative woman, and shared her life story, including her struggles getting pregnant with her first son, and almost losing her second. She told me of her heartache over the fact that she would never have a big family, and her worry that her two boys would never get to experience having sisters.

 However, life is good, and she proceeded to tell me the names of all of her children… I don’t remember them all, but I remember that there were 16 names. She is a mom in a group home, and from what I could tell they viewed her as their mother.

One of the reason I love these events is I get the opportunity to get to meet other parents who go through what we do. More than our shared experience of being foster mothers, I felt that this woman and I  shared a deeper understanding. The understanding that while we sacrificed biological children, we gained more than we could have imagined.

I have no idea if I will ever give birth to child, but now just one year after deciding to become a foster mom…. It doesn't matter. I have had... and will have… children aplenty.

I can’t wait to meet our next one!

Update

On Monday, March 16th, the TPR process will officially begin. The agency will ask the judge for permission to change the case plan to adoption. The judge will accept this request, and will set a date for a TPR trial.

There will be a pre-trial, the TPR trial, and then  the parents have 30 days to appeal. They will appeal.

All of this could take anywhere from three to six months.

All during this time, there will be a search going on for extended family who would be capable/willing to adopt Snow White and Brother. That search can take about six months since a lot of her family is out of state.

After the TPR trial, we are expecting Grandma to attempt to do a private adoption. This will get very sticky and take a while. However, this is beyond a long shot for her and I am confident that it will fail.


Last week we held a team meeting without the parents. Needless to say this was the most productive meeting that we have had to date. Both therapists were there and were able to give us an accounting of where both children are emotionally. Brother's therapist would like to see the children reunified. Honestly I see where she is coming from and I can see why she believes that this is the best thing for Brother. Snow White's therapist, on the other hand, feels that while reunification could work, reunification doesn't really need to happen, and if things went her way, Snow White would remain with us: brother or no brother.

We were asked by the GAL office if we would be willing to take in Brother as well. It was difficult to say no, but ultimately we don't believe that this is best for Snow White, and Brother would prevent us from fostering/adopting in the future.

We got the sense that while everyone would have wished we could have answered differently, they understand that Snow White is in a good home, and the focus should be on finding Brother a good home as well.

The end result is still that everything is uncertain. Snow White will probably be with us another year before anything is done. Hopefully the length of time will work in our favor, and even if they find random family members, the judge will recognize that she has a life with us, and we are the best place for her.