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.