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.