I Want YOUR Quote in My Book.

Photo by Tekke

I’m writing a book (and have three publisher appointments this month).

Goals: 

a. present an accurate view of foster care

b. inspire people to step up and foster (or if they can’t foster, to support those who do)

I’d appreciate your input. Comment below to answer all or some of the questions (or write whatever you want). Be as detailed or as brief as you like. Alternately, send your response to casey@hypervigilant.org if you’d rather. 

Also, if you’re willing, please repost this to your blog or other outlet directing people back to https://hypervigilant.org to post answers so I can collect them.

THANKS for your help!

*In your response, please include a name (pseudonym is fine) for quote purposes. 

1. What is your experience with foster care?

2. Is foster care important/necessary? (please explain why/why not)

3. Was your experience positive or negative, and what made it so?

4. Who should foster?

5. Other than the obvious (e.g., people with legal or abuse issues, etc.) who shouldn’t foster?

6. What are legitimate reasons to foster?

7. What are not legitimate reasons to foster?

8. What do kids in foster care need most?

9. What do potential foster carers need to know?

Prayers Appreciated

Tomorrow, I’ll stand before a group of professionals and explain why I think our son should transition to another facility. Some will want him to step down to a group home instead. I disagree.

I’m NOT trying to pawn my kid off or keep him from coming home. He’s not showing the level of progress for which we’d hoped.

He’s had three incidents (in three days) of kicking and punching walls, doors and windows because a peer or adult disagreed with him…if he did this in school, he’d end up expelled.

I love this kid and am doing this to protect him; if he throws a chair and hits someone—even if the contact is unintentional— he could go to jail. Odds are not in his favor.

He needs something else—something he’s not getting. I’ll elaborate later, but for now, I appreciate your prayers for calm nerves and clear communication.

The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

H E Double Hockeysticks

 

Photo by Patsy Wooters

Since June, I’ve wanted needed to write about what’s going on but felt I should wait for perspective.

Some words should stay in my head. 

In June, I was ready to toss in the proverbial towel. Actually, I wanted to fling the towel. And maybe some other things.

At my kid.

We’ve found that when he’s in line of sight of a parent, our guy tends to have great behavior.

The problem starts about thirty seconds after we’re gone.

We can’t leave him alone with other adults (he won’t listen) or kids, and he simply does whatever he wants.

The first week after school ended, our son was scheduled to attend Scout camp for a week.

I was concerned; he’d been generally out of control the entire school year. After a 45-minute explanation of our boy’s background and behavior, the Scoutmaster assured me of his ability to wrangle uber-hormonal psycho creatures (aka pre-teen boys) and made me feel a bit silly for doubting his superior ability to handle our kid.

In hindsight, I should have listened to my misgivings; he’d been to camp before but never without his sister or Hubby. In this case, he was surrounded by older boys, most of whom he’d annoyed at some point. Although he brings it on himself in most cases, being “targeted” (in his mind) by older boys sparks flashbacks, which feed his aggressive behavior.

Upon arrival, he found that his expected tent mate would arrive a day late due to incomplete paperwork. To prevent any possible new bunk mates joining him, he urinated on the wooden tent platform.

Although it was his own doing, sleeping alone in a tent in the dark woods left him disgruntled. By the time his pal arrived, he wanted revenge.

He started a game of Cops & Robbers (that’s still a thing?) but got upset when two “officers” slammed our little “cat burglar” against a tree for resisting arrest. He then suggested a dirt clod fight (which the other boys were enthusiastic to join). Our guy became enraged when his intended tent buddy, in a clear betrayal (at least in our boy’s mind), hit him in the head.

“I’m going to kill you!” he yelled, before running a quarter mile into the woods.

Upon returning to camp, he found that it was his turn to wait tables at dinner and he would have to serve the table including his turncoat Brutus. Screaming obscenities, he ran back into the woods.

A week of camping turned to three days, as the seasoned Scoutmaster called to inform me he could not adequately provide supervision for our child.

I understood.

Unfortunate timing, as I was out of state with our daughter, five hours away. I’d intended this to be a week off for Hubby to take some time for himself after months of non-stop projects at home and work.

When I called Hubby to relay the news, he was almost home. He works 20 minutes from the camp. We live an hour from the camp. He turned around to retrieve our son and sat in accident traffic. For FOUR hours. So much for time to relax.

If only the boy could have had his incident an hour earlier…

 

 

So began the summer from h-e-double-hockeysticks.

 

Bad

I live in a room

The door is locked

My mother is on the other side

I have a blanket

It’s okay

I’m okay

Sometimes I sleep

Sometimes my mother brings me food

So I eat

Sometimes I poop in the corner bucket

Mostly I wait

One day, strangers open the door

One is a lady

This is bad, she says

Very bad

Very very bad, the others nod

I look around at my room

My room is okay

Do they mean me?

Am I very very bad?

Police come to my room

Police get bad guys

This is bad, they say

Very, very bad

And then they get me

I never knew I was bad

They don’t take me to jail but almost

There are other kids

The lady screams at us

BE QUIET!

BE STILL!

STOP PULLING ON THE DOOR!

She sits on me

I’LL TEACH YOU. BE STILL!

I bite

The stranger lady comes back

She takes me to a new place

No biting! Be good, okay?

Biting is bad.

Very, very bad.

This house is cold

I don’t know these people, another strange lady and a man

The man is loud and big

I hide from him

Come here, let’s see who they brought!

The lady laughs

Poor thing.

Why does she think I’m poor?

He reaches under the table

I swing my fists and crawl away

He grabs my foot and drags me out

He is laughing, too

Tough little man, we just want to see you.

I kick my other foot and uh oh blood everywhere

He stops laughing

She yells and brings ice for his nose

STAY under there, then!

Ungrateful brat.

The lady comes back, rolling her eyes

At the next house she says

Watch out he kicks and bites.

He’s wild, like an animal.

There is a big boy here

He says he’ll kill me in my sleep

I scream and scream

His mother says

SHUT THE HELL UP!

He hits my head every day

For months

He pinches

And touches

And makes me

NO

He will kill me if don’t

Or if I tell

This is too much

I slam his head into a wall

And kick and kick and kick him when he falls

The stranger lady moves me again

She says

This one’s violent.

Watch him.

I don’t understand any of this

These people are strangers, too

They smile and try to hold my hand

I just want to be safe

Don’t touch me.

I will not be sat on

Or dragged

Or hit

Or touched

Or scared

I will keep them all away with my spiky mean

No one will ever hurt me again

I am bad

I am very, very bad

 

***

I wrote this one day as I tried to imagine early life through our son’s eyes. He was a wild, screaming child when he and his sister arrived.

He came to us terrified and determined to keep himself safe, a need that still causes him to struggle to interact with others, to sleep and to feel secure.

As he grew more able to articulate his memories, much of his behavior became understandable, even when apparently unreasonable.

Hubby and I work hard to soothe his terror and tame his PTSD.

Misadventures in Eating

Photo Credit: Chris Piascik

The photo may seem incongruous. Just wait…

During our first year, our girl ate like a wild thing. She and her brother were undernourished, so I allowed them to have seconds and sometimes thirds.

Since “thirds” seemed to help them feel secure, I made portions smaller once they reached a healthy weight—they were eating the equivalent of maybe one-and-a-half helpings. As they settled, third helpings became unnecessary.

Then, one school day she neglected to finish her lunch. I mentioned she needed lunch to fuel her brain for the afternoon. She asked lots of questions. We spent about thirty minutes discussing nutrition.

I thought we’d made a breakthrough; it was our first real connection. The inaugural Mother-Daughter Conversation of True Meaning.

The next day, she’d eaten even less, but then we had another great conversation.

By the next week, she’d stopped eating lunch.

Within a month, she barely ate anything. Every meal was a struggle. Some days, we actually resorted to spoon-feeding her to get her to finish a meal. She was eight.

We went to the psychiatrist and pediatrician and ended up in a Children’s Hospital feeding program (outpatient) after six months. By that time, she was emaciated.

I was terrified she was developing an eating disorder. Foster children are at high risk for eating disorders; one study found a quarter of the foster children monitored engaged in “aberrant” eating behaviors.  Others show similar numbers.

Their psychologist is an understanding genius. She helped me understand what I’d done, though inadvertently, to foster the behavior—and how to reverse the process.

Ignore the negative behavior and make it inconvenient for her. Reward ANY move toward positive behavior.

She patted my shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know. But you can’t EVER give attention to a behavior unless you want it continued. It’s her way of controlling her world.”

She recommended that we ignore her eating issues altogether and substitute the worst-tasting Ensure-type product I could find. Give her only the meal substitute for a few days, then put both a meal and the bottle in front of her.

“Tell your daughter, ‘we don’t have a preference for which you ingest; either way, whatever you eat needs to be finished within half an hour. If you are finished when I return, you can go to bed five minutes later.’ Walk away,” the psychologist said, “then come back in half an hour and remove anything left over, without comment.”

Our girl was eating again within a week.

This was only the beginning. Now, I am always on alert…hypervigilant, if you will…in my quest to protect her from scheming against herself.

As parents, it’s easy to make mistakes. Here’s the great secret: almost no inadvertent mistakes cause permanent damage, as long as you make changes.

The best way to avoid those mistakes:

• Surround yourself with individuals who are experienced with similar situations.
• Find a mentor in an adoption professional you trust.
• Talk to a counselor (either the child’s or a separate one for you) about your tactics. Ask them to be honest about whether they recommend what you’re attempting. Beforehand, make sure the counselor is experienced with foster/adopted children and their issues.
• Read blogs and articles and medical journals and social work websites.
• IGNORE (or be selective* in taking) advice from anyone who has never adopted or fostered. *Instances may occur in which one of these individuals brings an epiphany.
• Don’t allow others to guilt you into anything (e.g., “She fell down AGAIN? And you didn’t pick her up to soothe her? You totally missed a bonding opportunity.” No, in my case, I prevented seventeen more falls).
• Go with your gut: as you learn this child’s triggers and nuances, you’ll know when to avoid certain situations or try a tactic others might consider ridiculous. If you think it will work, try it. Trust yourself.

And finally, if you have been through the wringer, SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE. Someone needs help.

Yes, you. Right now. Start typing. 

Can’t wait to hear what you have to say. Add your advice below.