Another view

A friend took me out to lunch today. She wanted to tell me about how she'd found her foster-son from years ago on Facebook. He's 16 now. He still has the toy box she and her husband gave him when he was a boy.

He's eager to chat with her, and when she invited me to lunch she was ecstatic to have found him.

But by the time we got around to actually meeting for lunch, two weeks later, she'd actually talked with him.

"He's so...violent," she said in despair. "I tried, I told him, that's not how we raised you."

But he's living with his father, and the lessons of home are hard to break even if the child doesn't go back.

We talked, for the first time, about Jacob and about - let's call him D.

D. got kicked out of so many schools, she told me. So many. She can't remember how often she had to leave work to rush off and get him because he was out of control, hitting teachers and other kids.

It sounded a lot like Jacob, but worse. She had D. longer. For years. She tried all that time to fight for him to get help, and no one would let her get him anything - not counseling, not medicine, nothing.

By the time he was returned to his family, she said, a part of her hoped he would go.

"I didn't want him to go back to THEM," she said. "But I was just being terrorized. So there was some relief."

I told her a little bit about Jacob, and she told me she wouldn't blame us for "anything you decided to do."

Especially not with the baby coming. How could we keep the baby safe, she asked.

But I could not bring myself to say the words, "We sent him away."

It is still just too awful.

As I listened to her despair about trying to help D. now, whom she still loves, trying to guide him through Facebook conversations, I had to confess I hoped Jacob would contact me some day.

I hope he will forgive me.

How should we say no?

It's been almost a month since we packed up the kids, broke the rules to tell them what was happening, and managed on our own to create a smooth transition for them. I have grieved them almost every day since then. Our foster agency hasn't contacted us at all -- though the kids' new foster mom has twice given us updates on the kids. Because foster parents are decent people, unlike the people who run the system.

And then, today, our agency called.

Were they calling to see how we were doing?

To arrange a visit to help the kids avoid attachment disorders by knowing we're still around, still caring about them?

To do, perhaps, an after-care survey so they could improve their services, as many actual for-profit companies do?

Nope.

They were calling with a new placement.

Our agency homefinder started the message by cheerfully saying that she knows I'm about to give birth, and this placement might be more than what I want to take on at this time, but...do I want to take three kids?

Now I have to decide how to say no. There are just so many choices.

There's the simple version: Sorry, we have no rooms, my mother-in-law is moving in and we have a baby on the way. (Or, alternatively but still true: Sorry, I have no energy, I am 9 months pregnant.)

Then there's the contemptuous: After everything you did to us, to actively stop us from ever getting help and then making our good-bye with the kids as horrible as possible (until, admittedly, we broke the rules to avoid it), you DARE to...

Or maybe I should go the long way and explain why we are putting our license on hiatus for the foreseeable future. This should start with something like, "We do deeply believe in the needs of the children and we want to be there for them. We just don't want to work with you ever again."

Choices, choices. We had intended to write a formal resignation letter, but my wife is still pretty angry (OK, so am I) and so we have mostly been writing hate letters in our heads, waiting for time to smooth out the rough edges so we can write something professional. I feel strongly that no matter how terrible the experience, it's how we handle it that's important - and therefore, we should be professional and calm, even if they weren't.

But honestly, between getting ready for the baby and moving in my mother-in-law, we've been pretty busy. So I haven't done it. And now push has come to shove, and it's time to talk. I'll let you know how I do.

What now?

So, what can be done about the system we encountered?

The first unexpected problem that I think should be addressed is probably the most controversial: bio parents' rights.

I am all too familiar with the cases in which parents lose their children for ridiculous reasons. And I certainly understand that people's rights should be protected.

But.

If you're going to put children into another parent's hands, you have to give that parent the authority to care for the child. From little things, like sunscreen, to big things -- like medical care.

If a doctor makes a diagnosis and prescribes medication, counseling, running around the block, whatever -- the foster parent should be able to implement that therapy.

I'd be willing to compromise on measures that I found annoying but understandable. Yes, it seems reasonable to have the children keep their pediatrician or other regular doctors they were seeing prior to entering foster care.

But it does not seem reasonable to let the bio parents select other doctors for the child -- particularly when it can lead, as it did for us, to choosing doctors far from everybody just to make it more annoying for us.

Similarly, the foster parent should have the authority to make dental appointments, eye appointments and so on. Letting a bio parent veto those appointments -- for many months -- strikes me as a form of abuse.


Now, in our case we hit a tricky problem: a child with a probable mental health diagnosis. But long before that happened, the bio mom was using her rights to stop eye appointments, counseling, and anything else she could mess with, for reasons that appeared to be frivolous. In general, I think I could sum up her attitude as: Don't do anything, because I'm going to get my kids back soon, and then *I* will do it.

Except that most bio parents don't get their kids back.

And those that do, get them back 15 months later, on average.

Now, DSS has the authority to over-rule the bio parents, and one could argue that's enough.

Except we saw all too clearly that DSS is over-worked (and maybe burnt out and maybe incompetent). At the very end, our DSS caseworker expressed surprise to hear that ANYTHING was going on with Jacob...even though she had been included on every email, had been called on every crisis, knew about the doctor appointments and problems therein, and had spoken with us on many occasions about Jacob's behavior.

Did she forget? Does she have too many children to care about one small case?

She visited the kids a total of twice in the six months they were in our care, even though the law says she must visit monthly. Our family specialist got to us almost once a month -- we saw the FSP four times. But by the rules of our agency, she was supposed to visit weekly.

24 weeks. 4 visits.

This certainly indicates how busy they are, and I don't think it's reasonable to require them to be involved in every nitty-gritty detail of scheduling a medical appointment.

Perhaps the bigger question is: why aren't foster parents trusted with these rights? Why would the system trust bio parents, but not foster parents -- who have, after all, gone through months of training, rigorous background checks and inspections?

I suppose the system respects bio parents so much that legislators focus on them, not the foster parents. I'm not suggesting rights be taken away from bio parents, so much as I'm saying foster parents can't properly parent with both hands tied behind their backs. They need the ability to seek medical help for the children in their care.

I intend to make an issue of this, but I'm hoping I can make it a lot clearer than I've done here.

Saying goodbye

The hardest part for me was Tuesday night, when I sang them to sleep for the last time. I could barely get through Jacob's songs without crying, and had to leave Sophia's room twice to "wet my throat." I finally had to ask my wife to help me sing the last song. Then, with both kids blissfully asleep, we sank onto the living room futon and cried.
 
On Wednesday morning the kids asked, as they always do, whether it was Wednesday. Usually they ask with excitement -- Wednesday is Mom Visit day, and they love cheering when it is FINALLY Wednesday. This time, they burst into tears. It was Goodbye Day.

Luckily, it was also Sophia's big field trip for the end of summer camp. They were going to a zoo. She was excited about that, so we were able to soothe her and get her focused on the good parts of the day.

For Jacob, on the other hand, it was nothing but Goodbye Day. He was deeply depressed by the whole thing. He begged to come back with us while we packed the minivan, rather than going to the new foster mom for babysitting. I let him stay so that he could say goodbye on his own terms. He helped carry out the bags we'd packed, but quickly that turned into him throwing his shoes and running off.

I sat with him while he struggled to cope with the turmoil he felt. He agreed to walk through the house one last time, to say goodbye, and then go to the new house. So my wife stopped what she was doing, we walked through the house, stopping and crying together and talking about our memories in many rooms, and then we all went to the new home.

Luckily, since he's been there daily for babysitting this past week, he was able to fall into a routine. We unpacked the van and headed back to do the last laundry and take the decals off the walls so we could decorate their new bedrooms just like their old bedrooms.

By the time I finished work, my wife had finished everything, and Jacob met me happily at the door to show me his room. He had destroyed so many of the decals he'd earned at our house that my wife decided to simply put up all the decals she had. So there were all new Batman decals, and he happily showed me every one.

Remembering how difficult it was for us at first, handed a mixed garbage bag of clothes for both kids, Sandy had sorted and folded everything so that the kids' clothes were all organized by type. The new foster mom was happily putting the last of Sophia's clothes away.

Then we had to get Jacob into the car to go get Sophia and bring them to their mom visit. They knew the goodbye was looming, but we tried to stay happy, singing the songs they have come to love. We also talked openly about it -- we talked about how much we'd miss them, and that it was OK to be sad, but that we hoped they would love and be happy at their new home. Finally, we pulled into the parking lot. Sophia looked stricken.

"You can do this," I told her. "Be brave. Remember, Mommy said we can see you again. All you have to do is ask."

She nodded and bravely got out of the car. I'd been afraid she would stick to her promise of refusing to leave, forcing me to carry her inside screaming and have the caseworkers peel her off. I wanted a better goodbye than that. I wanted her to remember something less traumatic than that. So we hugged them goodbye and walked them in, them clinging to our hands. Remember how it was supposed to be a therapeutic environment, with clinicians there to help the kids transition?

In reality, they had scheduled a lengthy meeting with the bio mom, in which she screamed at them for two hours, blaming them for god knows what. She had also brought a movie for the kids to watch. There were no clinicians there. Very therapeutic. I am so, so glad we told them early!

We were kept waiting because bio mom was off screaming at the caseworkers, and someone was dispatched to try to wrap things up so the kids could come in. The kids were utterly silent and motionless. This was not a good way to start things.

Eventually a caseworker came and walked them back to the room for the visit. We went back to the car and unhooked the car seats and gathered up other stuff that the new foster mom would need, which we had agreed to leave for her at the office. Then one of the caseworkers came out, saying that we were wanted in the visit to say goodbye. We explained that we'd already said goodbye because we'd been told we wouldn't be allowed in the visit. Well, she said, bio mom wants you to come say goodbye.

Righty-o. One last time, we will do whatever the bio mom wants. So we went in, and bio mom instructed the kids to hug us and say thank you, as if any child should ever have to say thank you to people for caring for them. We hugged them, and bio mom said that when they came home, she would take them to a park to meet up with us.

We tried to ignore the implicit threat: and until then, you won't see them. We knew, going into this, that was likely.

But the kids know they have to ask. It is unfair, and they are too young, but they have to advocate for themselves in this.

The DSS caseworker came out to chat with us as we were leaving. She told us that after the events of Monday (when bio grandmother whispered something to Jacob that made him cry hysterically for 15 minutes, and which he said she told him not to repeat to anyone), bio grandmother is banned from visits, doctor's appointments and phone calls. Given that she has caused no end of trouble during those times, we took it as a very positive sign that things might be easier for the new foster mom.

The DSS caseworker also expressed surprise when we said we would not be fostering anymore. We were professional, but we explained calmly that we did not want to be involved in the system any more.

More on that in another post.

In the meantime, we went home. I went to work. My wife went to work. We had to just pick ourselves up and carry on, as if our hearts were not broken forever.

The Big Reveal

We told the kids Friday night, after it became clear no one was going to do anything about the "tell them Wednesday, say goodbye and leave" plan. (And, indeed, despite people promising they would call us "today," no one actually called us until Monday, when they were still intending to go ahead with the plan that they all privately agreed would be bad for the kids.)

Thank god we did it, because it really helped them process the news and come to terms with it. As we watched them slowly grieve and then heal over the past four days, we knew we'd made the right decision.

And we also learned (this week) that no clinicians had actually been scheduled to make this a "therapeutic" event, and also that communication was so poor that none of the three agencies involved knew where and when the event was to take place. One agency (the one with the supposed clinicians) thought it would be at the DSS office at 4 p.m., which is when and where visits were being held at the start of the summer. DSS thought it would be at their office at 3:30 p.m., because that's when the visits have been for the past month. But the third agency had actually told bio mom to come to their office in Malta at 2:45 p.m. So by the time the clinicians, if there had been any, showed up at DSS, the visit would have already been over in Malta.

It would have been horrible, even with clinicians.

So we told them at the end of dinner. This is how we did it. (All our statements are true, though they are not, as you know, the true reason for the move.)

I taught the kids how to converse at a table by explaining that each person should tell their "big news" from the day and then ask another person about their big news. So at the end of the dinner, we explained that our big news was that Sandy's mom is very sick.

They know her and have visited her in the hospital, as well as going on car rides and such with her. They got very quiet.

We explained that she is so sick, she must come live with us so we can take care of her.

And then we explained that they can't share a room with her or each other, and thus we don't have enough bedrooms.

They started to get a bit concerned at this point.

So, we said as brightly as possible, we talked with mommy and the caseworkers and they asked if there was anyone the kids really liked, who would love to have them live with them, and we said yes! They love Jacob's new babysitter!

And so, we said, we were very very sad but they would be moving to her house next week.

Sophia burst into tears first. It took Jacob a moment longer to understand, and then he burst into tears too. We held them both, rocking them and singing to them but not trying to stop them from crying. I think it's healthy to cry at big losses.

At first they both kept wailing, "Right now? Tonight?" in tones of despair. When we assured them it was not until next week, they kept asking, "Is it tomorrow?" But we counted the days together -- five days! -- and that reassured them. Thank god we didn't do this at the last minute Wednesday!

After awhile -- 15 minutes? 30 minutes? -- they calmed a little and we talked about ways they could comfort themselves. They both requested their comfort forts, so Jacob and I put his back together (he's ripped it apart many times) and my wife got Sophia's out and put it in the dining room for her. But just the act of doing that seemed to calm them, and then we got out all the toys that we had taken away from Jacob over the months because he hit people with them. All the big, hard, painful toys. That really delighted them and they played happily for a little while.

Then we went into the bedtime routine, and they took great comfort in that, and in being in their bedrooms, which they love. Both kids needed more soothing than normal, of course, but the reason we chose Friday was because we would both be there to do bedtime for as long as it took.

It took about an hour. Both kids fell asleep well.

Heartbreakingly, the next night Jacob asked me: "When we sleep at [new family's home], we'll still have dinner here, right?" He wanted to always hear my big news.

They have both repeatedly asked if they will see us again.

We told them we want to see them, want them to visit us, want to visit them, and have told every agency involved. But, we said, they have to ask. Not just once or twice. They have to beg everyone: mommy, caseworkers, law guardian. It's mommy's decision.

They know that mommy probably won't want us to see them. But so far she has not told DSS to have us stay away. So I'm hopeful. Even if we can just see them a couple times after the move, I think it will help with the transition -- they'll know we're still around, we still care about them, we didn't just vanish.

But just in case, I also told them how to remember the name of my wife's business, and told them that someday, when they're older, they will be able to use computers and phones and they can look her business up on the computer. Her website has her phone number.

Probably in a few months they will move on, adjust well to their new life and not think of us much at all. They are so young -- 4 and 5 years old -- that we will quickly fade in their memories. I remember almost nothing from that age. But if they do, if they someday want to piece together parts of their life, we will be here. Waiting. Ready.

Guilty thoughts

I'll update later with how it went, telling the kids, but overall it was a really good, therapeutic weekend.

Today was Part 2 of the psych eval. The doc convinced Bio Mom to let Jacob have the medicine that his pediatrician tried to prescribe months ago. This time she agreed, and signed the paperwork.

He also agreed with the pediatrician that there's more going on here than ADHD. He said there's some sort of anxiety disorder, and maybe other things -- but he's so young and so overwhelmed with impulses that it's hard to tell. But, he said, in his brief talk with Jacob he had to redirect him more than 30 times.

What he did not address was the times when redirection doesn't work, and Jacob goes into a violent rage.

Is that because he doesn't believe it happens? Does he think it won't happen once Jacob is on this new medication? Did we give up on him too soon?

He told Bio Mom that Jacob might seem like "an entirely different boy" after the new medication takes effect. We start it tonight.

This decision was so, so hard, and seeing the kids grieve has been so hard. And now I'm wondering...Sure, I can tell myself the following:
1. She still hasn't set up the counseling that the doc says Jacob needs, and which is court-ordered, and which she said she would set up weeks ago.
2. She could withdraw approval for this medication at any time, just like she did last time.
3. It might not address the rages at all, which the pediatrician said are not a symptom of ADHD.

But a part of me feels like a terrible failure for giving up. And the new family seems great at handling stuff like this, yes, but there are things the new foster mom says at times that worry me. Will he really be loved and cherished there?

Did we do the right thing?

Certainly I can say foster care in general was not the right thing for us. We are clearly not the right people for it. We care. We get attached. We advocate for the kids.

And also, we were clearly not the right people for these kids...the 4-hour medical appointments, once or twice a WEEK, were killing our ability to work. And the utter lack of communication was driving us batty. Only by directly asking a caseworker today, two days before the next mom visit, did we learn they'd changed the time of the visit again. This time they've decided it should be at 2:45 p.m. (It was previously at 4 p.m., except that they randomly change it.) I explained that Sophia's camp has a field trip, and won't be back til 3 p.m., and thus the earliest we can get the kids to the location they've chosen is 3:45 p.m.


I don't know how other foster parents who work full-time do it. But we can't.

And we can't raise children without loving them, and driving ourselves crazy beating our heads against the wall of bureaucracy.

So this wasn't for us, but we wanted to give the children our all anyway.

I just hope this decision is right.

Child abuse

Today we were informed that our agency's "clinicians" have decided it's best for the children to not be told of their impending move until it literally happens. They want us to bring the kids to their visit with their mom next Wednesday, and we are "welcome to be present" while someone else tells the kids they are moving to a new home right then.

Until then, we are asked to please not tell them anything.

I cannot, frankly, think of anything more damaging to do to a child -- except, perhaps, permanently physically injuring them.

I am literally shaking with rage.

So, tonight we're telling the kids. I recognize this might lead to the kids getting removed earlier, if our agency or the bio mom find out, and there's not much I can do to keep them from finding out. I figure we'll do the daily mom call early today, and then tell them, and try our best to keep Saturday's call short and focused. Possibly if we call while we're doing something really entertaining...I won't do anything as awful as telling the kids to keep it a secret. Never. But I am not going to let them be blindsided by their horrible mother and the spineless caseworkers who are supposed to protect them.

If it does come out, I might be able to excuse it as the kids figuring it out -- their mom asked incredibly leading questions last night. I thought she was going to give it away right then. Their new mom also gave it away a bit -- told Jacob "this is going to be your room!" when he came over to visit. And then our family specialist called last night while the kids were in the car and tried to schedule a time to tell the kids. We eventually gave up having that veiled conversation, took the kids home, and hid in the bathroom to talk. But they obviously know something is up. Sophia would not leave me today -- took me 30 minutes to get her to go play at preschool. She just wanted to cling to me.

So here I am again, at work, trying to get work done while spending the majority of my time advocating for the kids instead. It's just so frustrating.

"Transition" plans

So, at long last we have a transition plan.

We gave them essentially unlimited time -- up to three months -- with encouragement to do the transition in the next six weeks so that it's done before the school year. But then they found a family that's in the same school district, so they still had plenty of time for transition.

Then they held meetings and discussed and came up with a plan (without us, of course).

Ready?

Here it is: in six days, the kids will move in with the new family.

That's it.

That's the transition plan they came up with, when given all our support and all the time in the world to put together something.

And THAT, in a nutshell, is what is  wrong with the system.

To be clear: DSS came up with this plan. I can't blame this on our (incompetent) agency or the bio mom. This one is the product of the system.

Now, we do have some things in place that will help the kids. Jacob is going to be babysat by the new family for the next week, because he was expelled from his summer camp. So that allows him to get to know them, at least. That's really good.

We've asked for permission for Sophia to spend a day there too. We have not gotten approval for that.

We also haven't yet been officially "allowed" to tell the kids. Frankly, I'm gonna tell them tomorrow night (Friday). That gives them the weekend to process the news, allows them to focus on the things they most want to do for their last weekend with us, and gives them the maximum amount of time in our presence after they're told. If I wait for permission, they're going to say we can tell them on Tuesday or something. The kids leave Wednesday.

Here's the plan I would've recommended, following basic child development and child attachment philosophies:
1. Do not do an abrupt "break." Have the children visit the new family slowly, over the course of six weeks.
2. Have them spend increasing amounts of time with the new family, starting with short visits, then all day, then an overnight, then a few days.
3. Once they "move in," have them slowly leave our home -- first come back for a weekend after 5 days there, then come back for an overnight after a week there, then come back for a daytime visit.
4. Continue contact through respite care.

This is, in fact, what many foster parents have developed on their own. But the system prefers quick and dirty, and never mind how many children it hurts.

Sent home again

Jacob was sent home early from summer camp again today, this time for throwing rocks at the camp counselors. Miraculously, they will let him return tomorrow.

Yesterday, he took off his seatbelt and opened the car door while my wife was driving down the street. (It was in the new car that we'd just gotten -- I'd forgotten to engage the child locks, since it had been so long since he'd tried something like that. Apparently the lock was all that was keeping him from doing it.)

They are hopefully meeting the new family this weekend, at some point. Then they will go to that family next Wednesday for Labor Day weekend, while we go on our annual trip. No word yet on whether the plan is to have them move out at that time or come back and slowly move into the new home. Why no word? Because Bio Mom is losing her mind.

She announced yesterday that she wants us to not tell the kids, and just drop them off at next Wednesday's visit with a couple bags. Then, she'll introduce them to the new family at the visit, tell the kids she's decided they will live with the new family, and pack them off with no chance to have said goodbye to us first.

She also vowed to never let us see the kids again. She does have the right to decide that, although I think that's bullshit. While they're in foster care, their foster family should be able to decide who they interact with -- she shouldn't get to choose. Anyway, we plan to get around that by giving our friends' phone numbers to the new family, so the kids can pass messages if they want.

This whole thing is just such utter bullshit. Foster parents are expected to partner with bio parents, and even if they adopt the children, they're expected to maintain connections with the child's bio family. But bio parents are under no such expectations.

Anyway, I must admit I had assumed, based on bio mom's behavior with the kids' last foster mom, whom she declared they could never see again, that we would also be banned. But my wife is devastated.

Bio mom also told her that she would do her best to "erase" the kids' memories of us and of foster care. My wife was deeply hurt -- she's been making them a memory book. I was able to console her only by reminding her that it's very unlikely these kids are ever going back home.

We are making the memory book anyway, and giving it to the new family to take care of, add to, and pass on when the kids move.

Our agency, which has been ignoring our increasingly urgent calls on this issue, finally called my wife back and assured her that this whole no-goodbyes policy is not the agency's normal policy. DSS and our agency are now (finally!) planning the transition. Or at least saying they will plan it, which is progress of sorts.

These poor kids are trapped: surrounded by a mom who cannot think past her own emotions and caseworkers who are too overworked, incompetent or burned out to care.

I am so sorry to abandon them in that world. But I will be glad to escape it.

Maybe they just need clear instruction

Today, Jacob got sent home from camp because he went through a camp counselor's bag on the bus, found her wallet, hid all the cards under his seat, and hid the wallet in his backpack. It was only found when his counselor searched his bag, though he did then confess.

At first it looked like he was going to be expelled again (and really, who could blame them?) but the camp director relented. She seemed pleased that I came to fetch him right away and treated him firmly -- not angrily, but not with warmth. She could clearly see he would be disciplined, I think. So she said she thought he would be able to learn his lesson this weekend and try camp again on Monday.

However, I had a 30-minute drive to get him in which I didn't know if there was any chance of a reprieve. So I called our foster agency. Our homefinder didn't answer (and never calls us back anyway, though I left a message). Our family specialist is out with a broken toe. Her voicemail said to contact her supervisor. But that person's voicemail said she is out today, and gave me the number for HER supervisor. That person didn't answer her phone, but her voicemail gave me a main office number to call.

It took 10 minutes to get through all that, while driving, but eventually I spoke to a real person, who transferred me to the supervisor's supervisor. Except, of course, she dropped the call by accident. So I called back, and finally got to talk to her.

I explained that I had a crisis and briefly described the problem. Then I said, as clearly as possible, "What I need right now is to find a child care facility that will take a 5-year-old who hits, steals and runs away. It needs to be very structured and have no field trips, because that's when he really falls apart. And I need to get some possibilities lined up today, so that I can call them and try to get him into one starting Monday, because we both work."

Every other time there's been a crisis, I've asked for help in handling Jacob -- I've asked for counseling, advice, doctor referrals, etc. This time, knowing that he will be moving on (and knowing there's no way they will offer me help for him), I was just focused on the practical: we need a way to keep our jobs.

And, to my surprise, the agency was very responsive. They got right on it, coming up with possibilities and actually calling the places for us.

Then the camp director relented, so all is well. For now, at least.

Shockingly, Jacob's bio mom was also supportive of us -- I called her to talk to Jacob when he kept insisting he'd done nothing worth sending him home from camp. "It's not fair," he kept saying, arguing that it wasn't THAT bad because he gave the wallet back. When someone else searched his bag.

So she gave him a good talking to -- and, amusingly, said basically the same things I did. She told me that she would back me up on whatever punishment we came up with, and that if he threw a fit or otherwise misbehaved about it, to call her back and she would back us to the hilt. She has never before said or done anything like that. I was pleasantly surprised.

She was also completely in agreement with me on our planned punishment: he has to spend the rest of the day in his room (five hours, which you have to admit is a LONG time) because my wife is busy working downstairs and I'm at the office. And then, after dinner, while his sister and I go to the big outdoor presentation at the park of "The Lego Movie," he'll have to go to bed. In the past she's seemed unhappy if he gets any sort of punishment at all, including a 5-minute time-out. I'm not sure what's caused this about-face, but it's great. Maybe it's because she's happy to get rid of us? Though she might not know yet....

Because also today, DSS apparently told our agency that looking for a new family without telling the bio mom first is "sneaky." We didn't tell them to do it that way, but DSS is punishing us for it anyway. (Given that we've been told not to speak to the bio mom outside of kids' calls, how exactly were we supposed to tell her?) So DSS told our agency not to allow any respite until -- well, until further notice, I guess.

We have plane tickets for our annual vacation in two weeks. There is no way we are skipping that trip. They have known about it literally since the day we took in the kids, six months ago.

I guess the problem is that the respite family is the family that would take them. Ah, cannibals. You might have to work with them, but you can't trust them to have your back.

Jealousy and doubt

My Facebook feed is full of pictures of smiling children, sitting together, having fun in wide-open spaces. Of parents who went on these trips with these children and HAD FUN. And are looking forward to doing it again.

I am so jealous.

I ought to be happy for them. But really, a part of me sees those pictures and thinks: If only Jacob and Sophia could be like that!

Then I think, Well, they aren't saying it, but I bet they had to chase their child around too, stopping him from hitting other kids and stealing their stuff! ...No, probably they didn't.

There is a part of me that's mad about it. I want to say, hey! I didn't sign up for this!

But parenting is hard, right?


So how can I just give up?

Am I a failure as a parent already? Will I give up on my baby? Does this prove I'm not up to the task?

My wife says this makes us even more ready for children. But to me that sounds like saying that after a divorce, you're an expert in the marriage game. No, you're not -- you're an expert in NOT succeeding at marriage.

All I can say is: this thing is hard. Moving them to a new family feels just as hard as keeping them with us.

Psych eval

Today was the long-awaited, long-fought psych evaluation. Well, part one of it, anyway.

The doctor took us seriously, I think. At one point we told him that our foster care agency told us all foster youth act like this, and he looked down at his notes and laughed.

But it wasn't a collaborative, frank meeting. Bio mom was there for all of it, and started the session by saying that she sees nothing wrong with Jacob and has no concerns "except for your house" (meaning that we are raising him incorrectly).

We described the sorts of things we're seeing, provided him with letters from Jacob's two camps, and told him about Jacob's behavior in hitting kids at school.

I did also lend credence to bio mom's claim that foster care is what has caused all this for Jacob. I figured -- what the hell? It might be true, after all. Certainly, being ripped from one's family is a major trauma. I am hoping that the doctor will also be able to hypothesize that the things that went on prior to him being ripped from his family were also a major trauma.

Bio mom did seem to thaw a little...though she was also taking notes, probably for her next round of complaints about us. She did eventually say that she also thinks Jacob is unpredictable, with good days when everything is great at the visit, and bad days, where all he'll do is spit in her face and yell, "I hate you!"

She also said Jacob was diagnosed with ADHD at age 2.5, which surprised the doctor, who made a small comment about the age. (ADHD symptoms are pretty common behavior for 2.5-year-olds; it seems very odd that he could be diagnosed that way then, and certainly suggests it was a misdiagnosis. ADHD can often really be PTSD, anxiety disorder, and other such issues.)

He met with her alone, and with the caseworker alone, and then met with Jacob for awhile alone, and then gathered all of us adults again. He told us that Jacob could definitely benefit from talk therapy (that would be that counseling I've been begging for) and bio mom FINALLY seemed to acknowledge that. She said he "really needs it." So maybe that will go somewhere.

He also said he doesn't think increasing Jacob's dosage, as his pediatrician wanted and his mother opposed, would stop him from running away at camp. That suggests to me that he doesn't think anxiety is at the root of this -- but then he talked a lot about anxiety, so maybe...I don't know. He did say Jacob was on a "very low" dose and that he wouldn't want to increase it without waiting 6 weeks (which would be next week). So perhaps there's the possibility of improvement there.

Then he told us that we should all give him short commands, as if we don't already. I know bio mom is convinced we talk Jacob to death, and god knows we are talkers, but it was just annoying. I mean, I'd even told him how I'd told Jacob, "sit down and put on your seat belt," and he responded by throwing a cup of water at me. If that wasn't a short command, what is? But whatever, I'll look more closely at my words and try to shorten my commands...even though, honestly, ordering him around seems to get the worst results.

When we left, bio mom seemed to be wanting to partner with us again...she was saying she would work on getting Jacob to not run away by telling him that he could be taken and the stranger wouldn't know where to take him to see Mommy at the visits. She said at the visit this afternoon she would talk with him about why summer camp is fun (we'd told her it was the only place where he could go swimming, which he loves) and why he wants to not get kicked out.

Thankfully, his grandmother waited downstairs. But she overheard that last remark, as we walked down the stairs. Her comment, to bio mom: "Why? The camp would only be a couple more weeks."

Of course, I don't argue with these people, but I was stunned. Does she not care about how badly he feels when he gets kicked out? Does it not occur to her that it makes him feel badly about himself? Does she not realize that he loves camp? Does she not understand that since my wife and I both work, we need childcare during the day? And does it really, truly, not occur to her that by running off, he's putting himself at risk? In the last few weeks he ran in front of a car and nearly ran over a cliff.

These people drive me mad.

As much as I'll miss the kids, I will not miss all of this bickering and undermining and drama.

Sleep? What sleep?

I couldn't sleep last night. I just kept trying to figure out what Jacob needs. Why did he run away EIGHT TIMES yesterday at camp? What can I do to prevent that today? What am I going to do if he gets expelled again? Neither of us has any more leave, but one of us needs to take off work to be with him until I can...what? Find a camp that will take a kid who has been expelled TWICE for destroying other kids' art work and other anti-social stuff AND running away?

How do I even put that in an application?

How are we going to get through this month?

Sometimes it just feels like it's all too much. And then I lay awake all night. I watched the sun rise this morning...it was pretty. So there was that, at least.

This morning I had a new game plan. It occurred to me that yesterday was Monday. Maybe new kids joined Jacob's group at camp (they sell camp by the week, so each week some campers leave and some campers start). Maybe this was all anxiety?

He told me, upon questioning, that there were new kids and he made friends with them "anyway" -- an odd word choice. I queried further, which is always dangerous because I could end up feeding him an answer. He said he knew all the kids. But he also said there was one scary kid.

I pressed on with my plan anyhow. He says he trusts his camp counselor, who we will call Mr. Jack. I told him that whenever he feels "uncomfortable" (because what boy wants to admit he's scared?) he should go up to Mr. Jack and say, "I feel uncomfortable. Can I stay with you all day?"

Then I tried role-playing with Jacob. We all -- his sister, my wife, me, him -- acted out various parts, pretending to be a scary kid, Mr. Jack, Jacob. He took great delight in yelling at me and pushing me back to the group when I "ran away" when pretending to be Jacob while he was Mr. Jack. But then we went too far -- he decided to play himself one more time, and this time he went and hid, ran from place to place to keep hiding, folded his arms and yelled no and all the stuff we see him do during a classic anxiety attack.

My wife was like, "Is this what you do at camp?" He hid under a blanket. We looked at each other. No wonder they were upset, if he was doing this all day.

We finally got him to go to my wife, who was playing Mr. Jack, and say the phrase -- but he was so worked up he couldn't remember it on his own.

I tried to call the camp director to tell her about this, so they could give him cues, but she wasn't in and hasn't called back yet.

My wife thinks I made it worse by working him up like that. I hadn't intended to! It just got out of hand. It's hard, sometimes, for kids to remember they're pretending.

I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm blind-folded and stumbling through a crevasse, trying desperately to visualize the turns I've taken so I can find my way out.

He's going to be so upset if he gets kicked out again. He hated himself for a week after the last expulsion. And I tried to put it in his terms: there's no other camp that has swimming, so if he runs away, he's choosing to not go swimming anymore. He loves swimming. But he can't seem to hold it together.

Tomorrow is part one of the long-awaited psych eval. Please, let this lead to something that will help him. I know it won't be in time for me to see it, but please, just let him get the help he needs.

That's all I want.

Eight days

That's how long Jacob lasted at his new summer camp before we got our first warning of expulsion.

"He's been 'wandering away from the group' consistently and it's now a safety concern. If he doesn't stop, we won't be able to keep him at Camp."

Wandering away is the polite way to say "runs off."

Why does he run off?

Well...he runs off if he's told to do something he doesn't want to do (like, "let's leave this activity now and go to the next one"). He runs off when he sees something he would like to do, even though the group isn't doing it. He runs off when he's embarrassed, if other kids are teasing him or if something happens that he suspects will lead to kids teasing him. He runs off when he's mad, usually because he's been reprimanded for doing something or kids are teasing him. He runs off to get attention.

In general, the only way we've found to keep him from running off is to either give him constant attention (and I do mean CONSTANT) or keep him in a fenced area and sit in front of the gate.

It just makes me so sad. And so tired.

I tried to put it in a way Jacob would understand, tonight: "This is the only camp where you can go swimming. If you run away, you are making the choice to not go swimming. Because any other camp we send you to will not have any swimming."

Swimming is, he regularly says, the only thing he likes about camp. He loves swimming. And it's a physical thing in which he's grouped with people of the same ability level, and his developmental delays don't affect it, so he feels normal. He's not the last, the slowest, the worst. This is a big deal. At this camp they swim twice a day.

I have no idea where we could send him if this doesn't work out. But, having frantically searched for options last time (just a week and a half ago), I do know for sure that none of the other places have swimming.

He only just, this weekend, got over his feelings of disgust and despair at himself for being expelled from the last camp.

PLEASE do not let this happen again, Jacob!!!

In other news, our agency sent a clinician today to help "support us" and work with the kids. (Too little too late, but it is nice of them. God knows I'll take any help I can get.)

Her eyes widened as I described his most basic actions. And then he arrived...Honestly, he was pretty good tonight -- I had to redirect him every minute so he would stop slamming doors, screaming, jumping on people, throwing things, etc. But that's typical whenever he comes into any new situation. He feels anxious (or at least, I think so) and then he acts like that until we're able to reassure him enough that he calms down.

Let's hope that, unlike the last clinician, she actually comes back. (The first clinician came only once. And never called us again, never came back again, even though we had appointments with her...she eventually told us we were making mountains out of molehills but took Jacob to be evaluated by a mental health professional and was told, in front of us, that Jacob had very serious issues and should have been prioritized for help. We never got any help after that, either...and then she quit her job, two months later.)

So I don't have much hope for this clinician, but hey, you never know.

On Wednesday we have our big appointment with the Major Psychiatric Doctor. This is the appointment we fought for...and for which we were recently told we could not actually attend or provide any information. Luckily they relented...but I imagine the day will be full of confrontation.

Bio mom and DSS don't want to face the fact that anything is going on with Jacob. They don't want to hear the truth. They're worried about what we might say. It might upset bio mom. There might be a confrontation, they said. It might be difficult.

Bring it on. I am so, so ready to deliver a nice frank dose of reality to those people.

Guilt

We've had an up-and-down week, as I suppose every family has. Jacob completely lost it at camp, two days in a row, and then pulled himself together for two days, except that of course he keeps running away from the group and that it's difficult to diffuse/refocus him.

Yeah. Tell me about it.

On the plus side, the structured, frankly highly-regimented atmosphere is working well. His counselor is always able to get him back into the group. So that's good.

But then there's things like last night...he went into time out for dropping toys into my wife's water glass, sat down calmly, and then screamed as loudly as he could (clearly trying to get my attention). I continued to talk with Sophia, so he grabbed the nearest item and threw it at my head. Luckily it was a plastic tube.

It wasn't a big deal. I refused to react, so he didn't get the attention he wanted, and instead he had to go directly to bed. He took this well, unlike the last time I sent him to his room -- when he climbed out onto the roof.

But it was just tiring. I wish things weren't always such a fight. I want to be able to play with him and show him cool things and have interesting conversations instead of these battles.

Sure, I know it isn't always like this. But it seems like it is like this every day, for at least a portion of the day. And I would just like it to stop.

I feel guilty about sending them away, but at moments like this, when he's trying to throw things at my head, I am looking forward to them being gone. And then I feel even more guilty.

I feel guilty for wondering what would have happened if he'd picked up something heavier, as he's done in the past. I feel guilty for wondering what could happen if he did that while a baby was laying next to me.

I feel guilty because my wife and I agree that if these were our children, OUR children for keeps, we would not have chosen to have a third because it would be too much to manage.

Then I feel guilty for looking forward to our baby. Who I'm choosing over these children.

My whole day just feels laced with guilt. When they're great and happy and fun (or even just not horrible), I feel guilty. How could I send these sweet children away? When Jacob is actively trying to hurt me, or is running in front of cars on purpose, and so on, I feel guilty for thinking, "Only a little longer...you won't have to deal with this forever."

It would be so nice to just look forward to the baby. To just be happy. But even that thought makes me feel guilty.

Laugh or gasp?

Oh, Jacob. Last night he lost control -- destroying things, throwing things, refusing to go to time out, etc. I sent him to his room to change into his pajamas. Shortly thereafter, he came down to tell me he'd climbed out onto the roof. He was ecstatic. What a cool experience! And also very much hoping that this would get my attention.


Well, it was a real dilemma. Should I laugh and think: boys will be boys!

It would be a lot easier, I must admit, if he was MY boy, if I didn't have to answer to an agency and DSS and his mother if he fell off the roof and broke his leg.

I wanted to laugh. I did. I wanted to find joy in his youthful exploration.

But instead I kept thinking about how, when we tell him not to do something because it's not safe, he races off to do it. If the oven is hot, he has to open it. When he is told not to run into the road, he deliberately does so...and on Sunday, even waited until a car was coming and then darted in front of it.

Is he getting a high off risky behavior? Or is he,  as I suspect, looking for anything that will get that gasp of horror?

It seems to me that he has been searching for that since the beginning...at first he could get it from throwing something. Then we got smart and stopped reacting, so he figured out that shredding books got that reaction. Now any sort of destruction gets no gasp from us...but being incredibly physically unsafe does.

So last night, I just sighed and said, "Now I can't trust you to be in your room anymore." I got him into his PJs but made him sleep on the futon downstairs so we could keep an eye on him. Then I nailed his window shut and got him upstairs to bed.

This morning, the first thing he did was to try to open that window. He unlocked it and got one of the two nails out.

I tried not to react to this either.

Unfortunately, he's also figured out that if he destroys his sister's things -- -shredding her art work, for example -- he gets that gasp. So now he's doing that, too. And his mother encouraged him, last week, to shred papers when he felt scared. Since then he's become a destruction machine, ripping and breaking everything he can find, and saying, "I feel mad," as an excuse whenever we ask him why he's doing it.

The situation is getting more and more intolerable. And I am now desperately afraid he will somehow manage to hurt himself -- and it will be my fault. I don't know how much more I can do to keep him safe.

the deceptive leading the blind

Several months ago, we began a fight that eventually led to Jacob getting an appointment with a noted mental health professional, who would spend hours with him and eventually come up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan. The first day of evaluation is next week.

In preparation, we were asked to fill out a lengthy packet on Jacob, and the professional wants us to answer questions for about an hour at the appointment. He needs to know how Jacob behaves in the morning, at bedtime, at school/camp, when visiting new places, when visiting routine places, etc. In other words, he needs to know exactly what we've been seeing, these last six months.

So I asked DSS how I was to handle that appointment, given that we are to have no contact with Jacob's counselor.

His caseworker wrote back to say that it would be best if we did not attend or offer any information to the professional. Besides, she added, he might not even be in our care anymore next week.

I spent a good while writing things and deleting them before finally deciding to ask her to call the professional and explain the restrictions to him.

I added that we've said we're willing to take care of Jacob for the next three months, although we think it would be best for him to move before the school year starts, so that he doesn't have to switch schools. And our agency has not yet found a new family, so it seems likely he will still be in our care next week.

In the meantime, I would really like to get [Jacob] set up with professionals who can help him...I feel like he's shouting for help when he does the things that got him expelled from summer camp, landed him in in-school suspension for the last day of kindergarten and led to him being so out of control on a field trip that even a one-on-one chaperone couldn't rein him in. He is a curious, imaginative, delightful boy who desperately needs...something. Counseling, in my opinion, but I just don't think a counselor could be effective unless someone tells the counselor about his behavior.

This was as tactful as I could absolutely manage, after several tries. I did not say: letting his mother, who is in severe denial and who also LOST CUSTODY OF HER CHILDREN, tell the counselor what the problems are is ridiculous. She hasn't lived with him in months and claims that he would NEVER act like this at home, believes that he is just for some reason being driven insane in foster care, and believes he can't remember any of the abuse he endured because he was 2-4 years old. Also she refuses to tell anyone about the abuse, and has tried hard to train the children to never tell anyone.

So, what did the DSS caseworker say to my tactful email?

Her response, in its entirety: That sure makes sense!!!  Let me think about the information you shared and talk to [person I don't know].  I will get back to you….

I soooo wanted to write back, WHICH OF THE THINGS I SAID MAKES SENSE? 

She doesn't read emails, she just sort of scans them...she had no idea Jacob had been expelled last week, even though I'd emailed her about it. I have been trying to cut my emails shorter and shorter, but invariably she only responds to the last couple lines. Even if there's just two lines, she only responds to the second one.

So I am assuming she thinks it makes sense for counseling to be ineffective without information. But who knows, maybe she's referring to my first sentence, in which I asked her to call the professional. Or something in the middle.

So we're left with poor communication leading to confusion, as always. And as always, we're the only ones actually advocating for Jacob.

"Counseling"

Today, Jacob's DSS caseworker called us to say that his bio mom is arranging counseling for him, at long last. But, of course, nothing is that simple. There were rules.

1. We cannot communicate with the counselor in any way.

2. Bio mom communicates with the counselor for everything -- what should be worked on, past history, scheduling appointments, etc.

3. If we have any concerns that we want the counselor to know, we must tell DSS. (How is uncertain, since the caseworker has told us not to put concerns in writing, but also to only email her because she's too busy for phone calls.) DSS will decide what, if any, of our concerns get passed to the counselor.

Now how exactly are counselors supposed to be effective if they have no idea what's going on? Bio mom (and DSS) don't see Jacob's day-to-day behavior, and in fact have no idea what's going on with him. Despite my email last week, they didn't even know he'd been expelled from his summer camp. (They don't read emails at DSS.) They have no idea how he behaves at home. Bio mom is convinced that his only problem is that he's still in foster care.

It is just so sad -- and deeply, hair-pullingly frustrating -- to watch a child fall through the cracks because of willful denial (on his mother's part) and a lack of willingness to stand up to the mom (on DSS' part).

I am so glad we are getting out of this situation soon, because watching this child drown is more than I can take. It's torture to stand by helplessly. I have to say this has been the worst experience of my adult life.

All I can hope for is that the counselor eventually sees one of Jacob's fits. Or that the school sees the way he behaves and understands enough to react with internal counseling or something, rather than just suspension. But it is hard to not want to punish a child who is defiant, violent and destructive and just won't back down. He's so wonderful so much of the time...but if you catch him at the wrong time...yesterday while he was being babysat during our childbirth class, he kept running into the road. The babysitter said, "If you do that one more time, we'll have to go inside." His reaction? To run to the road, wait for a car, and then run into the road.

It's not that he wants to get hit -- he has no comprehension of that. He wants to get that big "oh no!' reaction. No matter how much positive attention we give him, it seems he still craves negative attention.

It's the sort of thing that a counselor could help with....if the counselor knew what was going on!

Decisions

On Sunday, we sent the following email to our agency.

Hello everyone,
As we have worked with [Jacob] on his behavior, it has become clear that we CAN manage him...but it takes all of our focus and energy. The only trouble is that once the baby is born, we won't be able to give him all our focus any more -- and that's what he needs. We've been hoping he would improve through counseling and/or medication, but efforts to get that help are not leading to fruition, and we have this massive deadline of the baby's arrival. That's not fair to [Jacob] -- it's not his deadline! -- but since he is not improving, and there is no reason to hope that medicine or counseling will create a change within the short time we have left, we have been forced to conclude that we won't be able to give him the care he needs at that point.

While we can of course care for the children until the baby is born, we think it would be better for them to be in a new foster home at the start of the school year so that they don't have to switch schools. We're also hoping we can create a smooth transition, where we could explain our tricks & techniques to the new family in advance and so on. We absolutely love them and saying goodbye will break our hearts, but we can't pretend that we will be able to manage him and a newborn at the same time.

Of course, we are very hopeful that the kids will go home to their aunts after the Aug. 14 hearing, but since nothing is certain, we wanted to let you know as soon as we had come to a conclusion so that you could begin a search.

This did not say any of the things we REALLY wanted to say.

We wanted to say: you have refused to take Jacob's needs seriously, refused to provide us with training, refused to support his many doctors when they unanimously said he needs medication and counseling, and just kept telling us we should learn to manage him better. In other words, your message was: it's not him, it's you. Well, you know what? You have screwed this kid over with your attitude, and now we can't handle him and a newborn, and it is ALL YOUR FAULT for being blind, weak-livered, incompetent fools.

It is not just us.

The public school had to put him in in-school suspension for hitting other kids.

His summer camp said they couldn't handle him during field trips, after he threatened to jump off a cliff. Wasn't he a danger to himself? Which is exactly what the doctors said...

And then the camp said they couldn't diffuse him at all. He's cut up the other kids' paintings as they hung to dry, he's kick off their lego creations, he's broken their toys, he's kicked and spit at them. He wouldn't do what the adults told him to do. So eventually they just expelled him altogether.

Do you blame them? No. In every single way, this five-year-old is screaming, "I need help!"

We want to keep him. Desperately. But we can't just endure this forever -- not when we have a newborn who could be in the crossfire. And we won't be able to spend all our focus and energy on managing him when we also have to spend all our energy on a newborn. And it's also not fair to that child, to grow up with a child who is out of control.

If they would give us ANY resources with which to help him, we would keep giving it our all. But they've given us nothing and just shrugged at us. When we report his problems, they've threatened to take the kids away...which still makes no sense. Seriously, when we pushed for counseling for the zillionth time, we were told, "Don't make mountains out of molehills. You've already almost lost the kids once."


"Losing" the kids will make our lives infinitely easier.  The horrible part is that the kids will feel terrible. Abandoned, rejected, pushed aside. From such things are attachment disorders born. I want to somehow write Jacob a letter, explaining things so that when he's older he'll understand. But of course I can't.

They have bonded to us. They love us. They come running every time we pick them up from school, they are delighted to see us every morning, they cry if I have to go to work at night and can't sing to them at bedtime. And we are taking all that away.

I feel like a monster.

Yet I see no other path.

And then things got worse

We searched for new summer camp programs for Jacob on Friday, and we thought we found one.

The YMCA has a good program in which they think he'd do well. Then it turned out our agency had never paid a past-due balance to the YMCA last year, and since our agency pays for summer camp, they wouldn't accept payment until the other bill was also paid.

Our agency didn't confess this to us til today - the day before the next field trip.

Now, we can pay the YMCA ourselves and our agency will reimburse us, so that could work well. But because we didn't find this out til now, we needed special approval from the YMCA to pay for a partial week and get him in at once. The YMCA agreed to call at 1:30 p.m. to set that up...and never called. We called twice; no answer.

At the same time, Jacob was at his old summer camp...where he apparently went out of control when "traveling athletes" came to visit. Running around, refusing to even sit down, and being rude and generally awful.

The camp called and told us to take him home NOW. For good. Forever.

Now our childcare problem is even bigger.

So our agency called another foster family to see if they could take him for the day tomorrow. They could! Hurray!

But, the agency said, they can't pay the family since it's not a full day. So we'd have to pay them directly.

Alrighty. We get $17 a day for Jacob. We offered the entire amount to the other family.

Their response: that's not even 70 cents an hour! (It's actually $2.83 an hour for the six hours we need, but who's counting?)

They want "the going daycare rate," whatever that is.

Meanwhile, Jacob continued to act out at home, and told us he was doing it on purpose because now he wants to go to the YMCA camp. Uh huh. Buddy, I know you're actually embarrassed and upset about the expulsion, but this attitude is really not going to work for you. Especially since we don't have any options for this week -- no respite and no summer camp.




So Jacob is going to spend tomorrow and Friday in his room, while we take turns going to work.

With all this, DSS and our agency and their bio mom still feel that there's no urgent need for counseling or the medication adjustment ordered by his doctor, which they told us not to follow because bio mom objected to it.

They said they see no reason why he can't wait three months til another doctor (Jacob's fifth doctor) considers his case.

No urgency. The child is screaming for help -- in his own way. And no one is listening.

Temporary Children

The night before Jacob and Sophia moved in, I called my cousin (who has children of the same age as Jacob and Sophia) to ask her an urgent question.

What did she pack in their lunches?

Her answer included the advice that I label the children's lunch box containers. She uses pre-printed labels that don't come off in the dishwasher but she recommended I simply use tape and magic markers.

"I have labels because I have permanent children," she said. "You have temporary children."

Her point was that I might want to use those containers for some other child in the future. But I've come to realize that, to DSS, our children are so temporary that they wouldn't even bother with containers. Why not just use plastic bags? It's not like they'll need it for long.

When the children arrived, we were told they would be with us only six weeks, until the next parental hearing.

The April court date came and went with an extension to July. But, we were told, they would DEFINITELY be going home then.

Nope. Another three weeks, we were told. If not that, then they'd be absolutely going home in December.

This is the reality of the foster system, and I understand that it has to be that way, as DSS waits for the bio parents to sort themselves out.

The trouble comes when people begin to believe that each date really is when their responsibility will end.

Suppose you're babysitting your friend's child tonight. If the child puts up a fuss about eating vegetables, would you really fight it? I think you'd be likely to think, "It won't hurt them to skip veggies, just this once."

If you're taking care of a 4-year-old for a few hours, would you practice the alphabet and counting to prepare her to start kindergarten a year from now?

If a child with problem behavior is just going to be with you for a short time, would you bother getting training, reading books, arguing with DSS for treatment, and otherwise trying to find solutions? Or would you just endure, waiting it out?

Let's be honest. You would just endure. It's not going to be very long, after all.

This is the danger of being a temporary child.

We have tried very hard not to treat Jacob and Sophia like temporary children. But DSS has continually delayed Jacob's much-needed medical treatments because he's so temporary.

"It can wait; he'll be going home soon," is the constant refrain.

Well, it's been six months now. A LOT could be accomplished in that time, medically. But only for permanent children.

Expelled from summer camp

Jacob, 5, was expelled from summer camp yesterday.

This is for the behavior that our agency pooh-poohed, saying it was "typical for our foster youth." When we asked for assistance in terms of training for us or, medical help or counseling for Jacob, DSS told us we were "making a mountain out of a molehill."

Their mother said the problem was us -- our house must be "too chaotic" and we should just "let him be a kid."

Never mind that he got in-school suspension on his last day of kindergarten. For hitting another child so hard that it left an immediate bruise and a cut on her face.

Never mind that we got repeated notes home about him from school...and then from summer camp.

It must just be us. All of us.

And then came today.

We had arranged, after much fighting, for our agency to send someone with Jacob to his field trip (because his behavior is far worse on field trips). Somehow, despite her, he ran around touching everything, coloring on other kids' artwork, doing various things to get responses from his peers (licked a pole, ate grass), and finally his coup de grace: running away from the group to go under a rope fence and head down a stony embankment to a vacant paper factory.

Afterward, we were told he could no longer attend the weekly field trips unless one of us is with him.

Of course, the reason he is in summer camp is because we both work. We can't take off once a week to chaperone him.

They had also warned us just that morning that they might have to kick him out altogether. He's been cutting apart other kids' artwork as it hung to dry, kicking down their lego creations and laughing, spitting, dropping toys in the toilet or the garbage, and running off.

In other words, typical Jacob stuff.

So, we clearly needed to find a more restrictive environment for him -- one with doors and set activities, rather than the free-for-all of multiple choices that his former camp offered, and counselors who could manage kids like him.

And we definitely need to find it before next Thursday -- field trip day -- because neither of us can skip work that day.

I called his pediatrician about this, and he immediately prescribed a change in Jacob's medication. Bio mom immediately nixed this change, so we're not allowed to do it.

There's no movement on the counseling yet either.

My wife and I really got a wake-up call by the expulsion. Although we quickly interviewed several places and found one where they seem confident that they can manage him, we can see the writing on the wall.

What are we going to do if he gets suspended from school in the fall?

We've both used up all of our leave for the YEAR caring for him already during the many days he's been sent home, as well as the weekly visits to mom and various doctor appointments. Both of us have jobs in which we can't simply stay home for a week if he gets suspended.

And if we can't get him the medicine or counseling he needs to improve, he's heading in that direction.

Complicating the issue is that both of us have major, unavoidable surgery scheduled for this fall. We had planned to use respite during that time -- there are families that could take them on the weekends, and the one of us who is not recovering from surgery can handle getting the kids to school & picking them up from after-care, doing dinner and bedtime. But the one who is recovering definitely can't handle Jacob home all day.

Should we give them up?

If we are going to give them up for months this fall, we ought to do so NOW so that they don't have to switch schools. So we have to make a decision soon.

We have some hope: a family member is asking for custody, and she might get it at a court hearing in three weeks. We are so hopeful. That would be the best outcome for the kids: going back to family, but not living with their mother until/if she pulls herself together. And it would resolve our problem.

We know giving them up would devastate them. But as Jacob becomes more and more needy, and his mother blocks more and more of the medical/psychological options, we become less sure that we can give him what he needs. It would be better for him if he were with someone who could care for him fully than getting iffy care from us.

But would another foster home give him the care he needs?

Would they love him the way we do?

Would they recognize and nurture his curiosity and imagination? Would they reassure him? Would they do more than just keep him fed and clothed?

So many foster homes are not much more than boarding houses. Jacob and Sophia need PARENTS.

It's a hard decision and it would be much better if they can just go back to family, like they've always wanted.

What's really best for the kids?

Jacob and Sophia were ordered into counseling by a Family Court judge two years ago. They never got the counseling until they entered foster care.

But for various reasons, their first counselor dropped them. We would have simply found another counselor, but....in come the "helpers!"

DSS picked out a counselor who works an hour away from us. After several months, the bio mom signed paperwork for the kids to go there, and only then did DSS bother to ask that counselor whether he accepted Medicaid.

He doesn't.

So here we are, with two traumatized kids who desperately need counseling. Jacob has had a total of two counseling sessions in his life. Sophia has had a few more. Jacob's doctor has strongly recommended that he get counseling, as have two psychologists and his teachers. He's been having severe troubles that need addressing.

And it turns out the counselor DSS picked out will counsel him -- but not Sophia, due to tiny differences in their type of Medicaid.

So you'd think that we would whisk Jacob off to the DSS-selected counseling, right?

Nope.

DSS today wrote to tell me that they feel it's best for the two kids to see the same counselor. So on Friday they'll discuss it with bio mom and look at other options.

It's best that they see the same counselor? This is probably best in the same way that it was best for Jacob to not get an eye exam in April, when the school district wanted to determine whether his reading struggles were developmental (possibly dyslexia) or simply an eyesight problem. Bio mom didn't want him to get an eye exam, so he didn't get one. Because that's what's best for him. Uh huh.

Similarly, it was best for him to go to summer camp with no coping strategies for his trauma other than what we could dream up on our own or get from google. So now he's not allowed to go on field trips and is sometimes restricted from other activities too -- because his coping methods aren't effective. In school, he was getting in more and more trouble too, and missing out on recess, movies, etc. But get him to a counselor? Nah. Waiting is what's best for him.

Sometimes I wonder if they even remember they're talking about a small boy who is utterly lost and desperately in need of help.

Do not administer the first dose

Our foster son has been having difficulty with what appears to be severe anxiety.

Here is how "the system" cares for him:

Ten weeks ago, his counselor (whom he'd seen twice) said he'd need a psychologist. She then REFUSED TO SEE HIM ANYMORE.

However, his biological mother refused to sign paperwork to let him see a psychologist.

So, the court-order counseling was ignored.

We took him to his pediatrician, but his biological mother can also attend all appointments and she came. She refuted the things we said we'd seen, blamed it all on us, the foster care system, and DSS, and refused to disclose any information about what he had been like prior to foster care.

The pediatrician, faced with all this, said that the boy probably had a "mood disorder" and referred him to a psychiatrist. He also, helpfully, gave the biological mother information on how to help him...but didn't give the packet of info to us.

She refused to sign papers to let him see a psychiatrist.

But the pediatrician had prescribed two meds, which she did approve, so we gave him those. They did nothing (except, arguably, make him worse).

Today was the follow-up appointment, one month later. Biological mom had somehow forgotten about this appointment. No one was there but me. I had a calm, frank conversation with the doctor about what we're seeing and what the DSS deposition we just got says happened to him at home, and gave him a note that we got from summer camp regarding what they're seeing.

He said the child clearly needs counseling for PTSD and abuse. (Duh!) He also said that until we can get counseling for him and see progress with it, we should treat his anxiety with a new medication, getting rid of the one that isn't working. He said he'd give me the packet of info on how to help him at home, too.

EXCELLENT. Now we are communicating and getting somewhere.

My wife called our agency, as always, to inform them of the change in medication. Their response: Do not administer the first dose until biological mother says it's OK.

It is this sort of thing that makes people want to give up on foster parenting. I went to the doctor she wanted -- which is more than an hour away, each way -- and I explained, to this licensed doctor, the very serious things going on. He came up with a potential solution. Now we have to wait and see if the mom will approve it? Is she a doctor?

And what about the medicine that might be creating such bad side effects? Should we NOT discontinue it, even though the doctor said to stop giving it to him?

Who is in charge here? It's certainly not us! And this is what drives me mad -- this powerlessness. I watch a child so destroyed by fear that he can't sleep, can't enjoy any separation from me, can't avoid punishment at school or home when he is nervous or worried about a new situation. I'm supposed to just watch him suffer. It's the worst torture I have ever endured.

"But they're not your kids!"

When we talk about some of the things we're going through, some of our friends are horrified.

"I'd send them back," my brother said.

I had to explain in terms of puppies and kittens to get him to understand. These are REAL children. Does the system suck? Yes. Does it absolutely abuse us foster parents? Yes. Is it the kids' fault? NO.

We made a commitment to these kids, and of everything that has happened, the kids have been the least of our problems. The system, which makes everything more complicated or downright impossible, is the cause of much stress. (Or was, til we realized we had crash-landed on our own private island, and stopped expecting any help.)

But sometimes people don't understand that. So when I complain about not being able to travel with the kids, and the heartbreak of forcing them to go to strangers for "respite" while I do something crucial, like buy a car, they tell me this is crazy. I should just get rid of the kids.

After all, they say, it's not like they're MY kids.

No. They are.

Are they mine forever? Probably not. Are they mine in all ways? Nope. Do they even think of me as "mom" or as family? Definitely not.

But they are still my kids.

I plan activities based on their desires, I buy toys they will love, I wake up with them in the night and comfort them when they're upset. I feel happy when I see them enjoying things, and I feel their pain when they're devastated at the separation from their mother. We stay up late talking about the kids, about their victories and mistakes, about how to improve our parenting and how to keep up what's working. I worry about them and miss them when I'm at work.


They are my kids.

If my kids threw a fit and spat in my face, no one would suggest I give them up. If my kids woke me up three times a night with accidents because they aren't quite potty-trained, no one would suggest I call up DSS and hand over my kids.

Yet with these very same issues, good friends have told me to do just that.

They, like DSS, see me as a paid babysitter, and they think this is just a job I could quit. It's only when i put it in perspective for them that they understand...if they ever do. There's a part of them that just won't let go of the idea that they're not my kids.

Not by blood. But mine nonetheless.

Too old

The bio mom continues to not let us take the kids anywhere, so while we went to a great town for a mandatory business conference, they had to go to respite. It was such a shame; we could have taken turns being at the conference and the kids could've spent the entire weekend exploring the amazing museums, parks and cool events with the person who wasn't at the conference.

They were deeply upset about having to go to respite -- Sophia clung to me, screaming, "I don't want to go!" as I tried to get her buckled in the car -- but when they came back, they were beaming. They'd had a great time: they'd gotten to go swimming twice, which made anything worth it to them.

The foster mom indicated to us that they had behaved in their typical, traumatized way. We thanked her devoutly for creating such a great weekend for them, and off we went.

Two days later, our agency told us that family never wants to have them again.

"I think they're just too old," the agency worker said.

"You mean, they never want to see them again?" my wife asked.

"Pretty much," agency worker replied.

Too old...the new euphemism for "I don't have to put up with this shit."

 So the agency has decided to always use the family that the children hated -- the family that they begged us to never send them to again.

This raises several issues.

1. They have clearly called the respite families to ask them how it went. Wow. They've NEVER asked us that.

2. Now, not only will we have to push our screaming children into car seats for respite, but we'll have to do it knowing they're going to a family they HATE. Oh, that makes everything so much better.


3. Given the difficulty in finding a respite family that will work with them, why aren't they pushing harder to let us just take the kids with us?

Depressing and disgusting.

Desert island

Well, we picked ourselves back up and decided we need to stop getting so upset about the utter lack of help (as well as compounding problems) of Agency and DSS and birth mom and so on.

The kids need stability -- so we need to stick with it.

So we developed our own analogy for foster care:

We crash-landed on a deserted island, somewhere, and the only survivors were us and these two young kids.

Cannibals visit the island occasionally, and usually cause strife. They sometimes seem to be helpful, but y'know, you can't rely on cannibals. They might suddenly try to eat you.

We have no idea when we'll be rescued, or whether the kids have family on the mainland.

So until that time, we just have to muddle along as best we can, on our own.

A case in point: Jacob and Sophia were sexually abused. We have no idea what special techniques/therapies/disciplinary methods/etc. we should use, in light of that. (We just found out last week....it's apparently why they were removed, but no one actually told us. Sigh.) The only in-person training offered by our agency was offered to us with less than 24 hours notice, and our babysitter wasn't available. (She's the only one "approved" by the agency so far.) So we couldn't go.

But there are tons of online trainings! Some cost money, some don't. I don't mind paying! I just asked the agency trainer, who had offered to find me online trainings, whether she could recommend any of the links I'd found.

Her response was, basically: don't talk to me, talk to this other person.

Other person doesn't respond to phone calls or emails.

So, you see? We're on a desert island.

A threat?

Well, my days of being a foster parent may be coming to a close.

After Jacob's violent episode the other night, I wrote an email (which is what DSS and our agency prefer) asking yet again about getting him into counseling.

As our agency had trained us, I also documented the various things going on that day in an attempt to pin down what might be at the root of the problem. I listed about five possibilities. One was that Jacob had just learned his mother would not be going to his graduation, but would be going to his sister's. I wrote that he was very upset about it, and asked if there was any way for anyone to give bio mom a ride after her court hearing (since I know some of them will be there too).

I got no response, of course. As usual. And today, my wife got a call from DSS to say she was confused by the email because she thought we could schedule the counseling appointment. (She and our agency both told us we could not, two weeks ago, but now she thinks we can? If only she had TOLD us this before now...) So she's going to call and get Jacob in with the counselor she prefers. Great! But she added that we shouldn't send emails suggesting "favoritism" again because it might get back to the bio mom.

What??

She went on to say, "You know, you already almost lost the kids once."

Apparently bio mom wanted them to stay with the respite family that they hated so much last week.

This left us feeling quite conflicted.

On the one hand -- these kids are a HUGE amount of work. We are sticking with this solely because we committed to the kids. It's bad for kids to get moved from foster home to foster home. It's very traumatic for them. So when we took them, we agreed to stick with it til the end.

Will we miss them when they go? Yeah. But man, oh man, we will probably never do foster care again and we will not think back on these months as being wonderful or even great. These are high-needs kids to whom we are giving all we can. Being told they could be moved to another family if we keep trying to figure out what is upsetting Jacob to the point of violence is like saying, "If you keep trying to solve this really hard problem at work, by God, I'll give it to another worker instead!"

It's like, um...we know that would deeply hurt the kids. But it's not really a threat, you know? It sounds like a reward. But it would hurt the kids badly, so we're opposed to it. But if they could go home right away, which would be great for them, we would be OVERJOYED.

And yes, we'd miss them a bit. I do love them. But a kid who repeatedly kicks me in the stomach, saying, "I want to hurt the baby," is not high on my "please don't go away" list.

So I don't know. The DSS worker told us, "Don't make a mountain out of a molehill." So...his serious mental illness that leads him to commit violence is a molehill?

And I have to admit I'm puzzled by her comment about the bio mom wanting the kids moved. Since when does DSS move kids based on the bio mom's desires, when DSS knows it's bad for the kids and is also filing a deposition in court saying the mom is unfit?

It's all so confusing. I'm left feeling like I'm doing something wrong in trying to help Jacob. All I can guess is that what they want is for foster parents to be seen and not heard -- in other words, just keep the kids alive, don't mention any problems and certainly don't ask for help.

My wife called me after the conversation with DSS, telling me she is "so done" and wanted to tell DSS, "just take them." She didn't. Because we know it would hurt the kids. But we're doing this for them, not for DSS or the bio mom or our agency or anybody else. We are providing them with consistency because that's what they need. We are giving them love, attention, discipline, broadening activities, all the educational help they need, tons of fun, and most of all, stability.

We buy them everything they need and many things they want, we go to all their special events and make sure to invite their bio family, we plan weekend activities that they want to do...we treat them, in all ways, like they are our own.

Yet I am left feeling I am doing something wrong.

What makes a parent?

I've written a lot so far about what we can't do as foster parents. It all adds up to one thing: foster parenting is not "real" parenting.

I can't give schools, summer camps or anyone else permission for anything -- not even sunscreen, for pete's sake. Forget about permission for field trips, watching a "PG" rated movie ("Frozen," in school) or attending the "good touch, bad touch" program (also at school).

I can't make any medical decisions -- not even to make a doctor's appointment. In an emergency, I can drive to the ER, but only if I call my agency first. It took a bit of explaining for the agency to understand that if we were going to be driving the children to their doctors' appointments, we should be able to set the time and day, so that we could make sure we were available. Nonetheless, I have three times gotten in trouble for setting a doctor's appointment (but the other eight times, it was OK...so go figure).

We cannot chose a doctor, call a doctor for advice on a medical problem or talk to anyone else about the children. Not even for non-medical issues. We are to not speak to our friends about ANYTHING regarding the children. (This is part of our agency's theory that "no one needs to even know you're a foster parent," which is isolating and extremely strange.)

If we choose to do something with the children, such as teaching them how to ride a bike, read a book, etc., the bio mom may complain, and we can be ordered to not do it. We had to ask permission before starting swim lessons and before buying Jacob a bike.

We cannot cut their hair without permission, and if we style their hair in a way the bio mom does not like, she can complain and we can be ordered to stop doing it. I am not kidding. Ditto for how we dress the children. Apparently, short-shorts that say "sexy" on the butt are OK for a 4-year-old, since that's what the bio mom buys for her, but letting her wear play clothes on the playground with a small stain at the very edge of one pocket of her shorts is The End Of The World. The bio mom's mother reported us to CPS for that.

We cannot travel anywhere with the children -- not even day trips. We cannot sleep anywhere but in our own house. That means: no camping trips, no sleepovers, no going to the great children's museum, the zoo, the water park, etc.

And our parenting decisions are constantly being scrutinized and questioned. Although three different medical professionals have separately, unknown to each other, decided Jacob has a serious mental illness, the only support DSS and our agency have offered is to suggest that surely there's something about the way we work with him that is causing his breakdowns. The bio mom treated us to an hour-long diatribe about how our house must be "chaotic" (although her kids are the only people there, other than us, and the only time their schedule is interrupted is when SHE insists on it), and we must be overwhelming Jacob by, for example, reading him a book about violins and then pointing out a violin when we see it during an event. (This was literally her example.) Yet we are not the ones who lost custody of the children.

DSS and our agency sat through that diatribe without ever saying a word in our defense. They implied afterward that they think she's crazy, but words of praise to us? None. The doctors, meanwhile, have all said we're doing a wonderful job and that other foster parents would have given up by now. Which is nice to hear, but when we want to get him the counseling they recommend, they say -- not til the bio mom signs paperwork allowing it. So until then, we just try to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else, and hope for the best. Powerless. When any REAL parent would be running to a counselor.

In what way ARE we parents, then? We're the ones who hold them when they cry, who reassure them when they're scared, who stay up with them at night and get up with them in the morning. We're the ones who help them with the day's difficulties and cheer on their victories. We're the ones who stay up late trying to figure out why they're behaving a certain way and what we can do better to help them.

We're the ones making up games to help Jacob learn letters and sounds, getting him to school on time, communicating with teachers, packing healthy snacks he loves, working with him to help him love school. Yet on graduation day, the birth family took his graduation certificate before we even got a chance to see it.

Sometimes it feels like we get all the hard parts of being a parent, and none of the fun parts.

Respite: "You sent me away"

In foster-care classes, we were taught that respite was this holy arrangement, in which other foster parents would care for your foster children while you got a much-needed break from dealing with trauma.

The model was one of foster parents helping each other stay sane and refreshed to give these children our all.

Now let me tell you how my kids experience respite.

Because their bio mom will not allow us to travel with them, even for day trips, outside of a roughly 30-min radius, they have gone to weekend respite twice in three months. And they'll be going to respite again next weekend. Plus, our agency sent them to respite once to give us a "break," and they went to friends for all-day babysitting twice. In other words: it's been a lot.

We cannot tell the kids that this is because of their mom. So we tell them "the rules" won't let us take them, but we'd love to, and we miss them.

This has not worked at all.

After the last respite, the kids flew out of the house, shoes in hand, and ran barefoot to the car to buckle themselves in. They did not want to say goodbye, they did not want to help put their toys in the car, they wanted to GO HOME NOW.

It started slowly. They missed their beds. They missed their rooms. They missed the cat.

Then the real emotions came out.

Sophia: "I hate weekends."

Jacob: "I want to stay home with you."

Sophia: "You sent me away!"

Sophia cried and raged for most of the next two hours, through dinner and bedtime routine. The next morning she spent two hours sobbing inconsolably on my lap.

The bio mom told us that kids had a great time at respite and added, with a bite, that Jacob didn't misbehave there AT ALL. (The obvious implication being that we are the cause of his diagnosed mood disorder.)

The kids, meanwhile, begged us to never send them to that family again. Sophia was mainly upset because the family had other respite kids too, so she didn't get as much attention as she was expecting. But it's hard to feel like we're not abusing the kids when they come home crying and begging us to not send them away again.

The agency tells me I need to be a "partner" with the bio mom. But with each of these respites, I feel like the bio mom is forcing me to hurt her kids for her, is using me to get at them, and I just feel sick. We've canceled almost all of our summer plans to avoid respite, but some things can't be canceled. The agency thinks we're being ridiculous to think the kids are harmed at all by respite, and proposed "regular respite" to give us a break. They don't understand why we were like, OMG, no!

I could do without any more pathetic cries of "Please don't send me away again!"