Let's Look a Little Deeper

Explore the Relationships Part 2

Allee

When Allee moved in, as I have said, we all thought she would one day go back to the family who'd committed to adopting her. In the mean time, she'd spent time with us in respite care, and we'd grown to love her in a different way. It was almost like it was safer because nobody had any expectations of it being a long term parent-child relationship. I had fun with Allee, playing games and joking around. I felt an instant bond with her. We talked about anything and everything. She was more like one of my friends than a child I should be raising. I don't know if any of you out there have ever felt this way about a child...teenager...of your own. But as time went on, it became obvious she was never going back to the adoptive family. Their relationship was becoming more volatile, not getting better...and how could it get better? They weren't even in the same state. She and I became closer and closer. She started doing better in school, and we began working on getting her caught up. (She was a year behind.) I felt like this was the relationship I'd always longed for with a daughter. What I began to realize was that I loved her so much it almost hurt. I didn't want her to have another family, I wanted to be her family. But knowing the plan, I never expressed this idea. Until one day, she said it. She asked me to adopt her. She didn't want to leave, she felt at home for the first time in her life. I can't even tell you how excited I was. I called the case manager, and found everyone was on board with this. We'd all seen a change in Allee. She was less deceptive, less manipulative, she was settling in, and doing well in school. She'd been in foster care for 10 years, and nobody had ever seen her doing this well. Just after her 17th birthday, I adopted her. We went through tough times, she resisted me, tested me, tried to get me to give up on her like everyone else had in her past. But I couldn't. I knew I could never let her go. There was something about her that I needed. Don't get me wrong, please. I didn't love her more than the others, I loved them all differently. I had just as strong a feeling of mother-daughter to Kneesaa, who I was also planning to adopt, it was just different. Allee was like an addiction. I needed to be her mother, and I needed her to want me to be her mother. And she was the same way. We needed each other. My relationship with her almost makes me shy off from new relationships with kids. You'll understand that more if you keep reading my story.

Allee is hard for me to talk about, so I'm done today. I'll come back tomorrow to talk about Lainie and Annie. Thanks for reading!

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

Lainie Storms In

She's Not So Bad...

When Annie came home, and the two brothers left to live with a relative, she became quite close to Hank. She was teaching him so much, he was starting to talk, and he began walking. It's amazing what older siblings can do to help teach their younger brothers and sisters. Just playing with him, she gave him so much. And she loved playing with him! If you've never heard the sound of children laughing hysterically and spontaneously in your house, you're missing out!

Hank was making so much progress, and we were all becoming so attached to him. It looked like that case was headed to termination, and then we got that call. They'd been to court, and to every one's amazement, the judge was sending Hank home to his parents. I was devastated, I was losing another baby! I called the Regional Director at Health and Welfare and cried on her shoulder. I just didn't understand how they could send him home when the parents hadn't done anything to get him back! She had sympathy, but there was nothing she could do. In the end, all decisions are made by the judges, and this judge went against the recommendations of the department. She gave me the number of another foster parent who only took babies, so she had a lot of experience letting babies go, and might be able to help me. I never did call her, and maybe I should have, just to have that connection, that support. Instead, I internalized, and started developing my own way of getting through the letting go phase...ask for more kids!

So I got Lainie. She was 13, and a troubled girl. They told me I could expect trouble from her, and that she was a poor student, and that they hoped it would work out in our home, but nobody expected it to. Wow, what a way to meet someone, having all those preconceived notions...and this was the first of many who would come to me this way, with me expecting the worst. I don't know if that's good or bad.

When I was in college, one of my professors often quoted one study they'd done with teachers. They took a 40 kids who were all at the same level academically, and behaviorally, and split them in two groups. They told teacher A she was getting a class of high achievers, good kids. They told teacher B she was getting low achievers with behavior problems. Teacher A tried new teaching strategies, and challenging lessons in her class, and concentrated very little on classroom management, assuming she would have no problems anyway. Teacher B focused on classroom management and social skills and kept to the outlined curriculum for the class. In the end, teacher A's student excelled, and teacher B's students performed lower than normal. The point of this was that people perform to your expectations. So is this any way to bring a new child into your home? I don't have an answer. On the one hand, you do need to know their behavior history so you won't be blind-sided if they continue that behavior in your home. On the other hand, the kids do perform, quite often, to our expectations. Like with the twins...we didn't know they were still strictly on a bottle, we assumed at their age they'd be on solids and using a cup, so that's what we gave them, and they began to thrive.

Back to Lainie...we'd never been given a kid and told to expect trouble, so we treated her like any other kid in our home. All the same rules applied. She wasn't being watched closer than the others, she was expected to do her best in school, and she was expected to participate in the family. Her first week there, she told us she hated little kids, but she still played with Barbie dolls, and she had an excuse every night for not being able to help clean up the kitchen.

Well, we just let the "I hate little kids" thing drift off in the air with no response. It didn't take long before she was playing Barbies with Annie. In fact, she got quite close to Annie, and protective of her. With the cleaning thing, we let her get away with it the first night, but the second time she did it, I just kind of shrugged and said, "that's OK, the bathroom is close to the kitchen if you need to vomit. You were well enough to eat, so you should be well enough to put the dishes in the dish washer and wipe the counters." She tried a few more times with the same response, then gave up and did her job with no complaints.

Right after she'd moved in, we sat down and had a family meeting of sorts, and went over the house rules. The other girls helped, and so it was more of a discussion about expectations than anything. The girls actually did most of the talking. They were the ones who stressed to her that school was a big thing. They knew we expected them to try hard, do their best, and ask for help when they needed it, and if they didn't do those things and came home with bad grades, they lost privileges. One of those was the TV in their room that they all shared. So they were good at helping each other out during homework hour every day, and keeping their grades up to the best of their ability so they wouldn't lose their TV. (It only had an antennae on it, so it's not like they'd lose much, but it was important to them.) So what do you think Lainie did? She got straight A's. Everyone who'd known her before was shocked. We didn't even do anything, she was just naturally good in school, never asked for help, and did quite well. You know, two years later when she moved to an adoptive family, they asked her what made the change in her academics, and she told them it was simply that suddenly people believed in her.

After that, I became even more conscious of how we treated kids when they came, and tried to make sure we always kept our expectations high and positive rather than sitting around waiting for them to display whatever bad behavior we were told they'd have. Most of the time, this works.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

To Quote My 3-Year-Old

"OK, OK, JEEZ!"

I'm back to continue my story. Is anyone out there reading it? I guess, at the very least, this has been very therapeutic for me. So where were we...Annie just came back. Imagine this, she's three...she left eight months earlier...really, before that, she'd only lived with us for four months. I thought there was no way she'd ever remember us. But when they brought her home, she ran into my mom's arms (I was at work) and lay her head on my mom's shoulder and stayed there for 20 minutes. The case worker was in tears. Annie was home, where she belonged. Granny then brought her to me at work, and she did the same thing with me. I was in tears, my friends and co-workers were in tears. Kneesaa was bawling. Stacie had tears in her eyes. Even Allee, who had never met Annie, was in tears. My baby girl was home. I don't even know how to convey what that feels like because most people don't go through this, their child leaving for good, then unexpectedly coming back, all at the age of three. I always felt like Annie was supposed to be mine, she had so many traits that reminded me of me at a young age. When they took her away, I was genuinely shocked, and my mind and body couldn't fathom how they could take away a child who was so obviously meant to be with me. So when she came home, I knew she was meant to be with me forever.

Now, Health and Welfare was looking at this in an entirely different light. There's this called the Adoptions and Safe Families Act designed to keep kids from hanging around in foster care for years and years with no sense of permanence. I'll try to explain how this works...when a child comes into foster care, basically, a clock starts ticking. When that child has been in care for 15 of the last 22 months the buzzer goes off, the court and Department of Health and Welfare are supposed to seek a permanent placement for that child, which often means terminating parental rights so the child can be adopted. In fact, they are only supposed to forgo termination if they have a compelling reason not to terminate.

When Annie was in my care the first time, the buzzer had gone off, and it was time to terminate. Part of that termination was posting in the newspapers to inform the father, who had been unattainable the whole time she'd been in care, so he had a fair shot to fight termination. Unexpectedly, he finally came forward after not coming forward for nearly two years. Because he suddenly came forward, he had an opportunity to work a case plan and get her back. She went to live with him under protective supervision, and when he showed that he also could not protect her and care for her, and he endangered her life, she came back to us. But she had been with him just long enough, we had to reset the clock, and wait another 15 months to start the termination process again. Basically, what this did was put her chance for permanence off for two more years.

So 15 months later, when she was five years old, a termination hearing was scheduled. The dad was terminated immediately for abandonment. The mom was fighting it. And she fought hard. Even though she hadn't worked her case plan, and after the things she did to Annie when Annie was only a toddler, just over a year old, this woman was fighting, and expecting apologies and such. It actually came down to the fact that it had been so long, and the case so drug out, the ADA and H&W were starting to feel like she would win her case. I was in denial. There was no way this woman could get my Annie after what she did. Then, a year later, after several court dates, and months of anguish, termination was granted. Annie was now six. However, the birth parent has 42 days to appeal, and she did.

The appeal was worse than the termination. There were no court dates, only silence. Basically, the case file goes to another judge who reviews it and makes a ruling. Sounds simple enough. But appeals for termination cases don't seem to take priority over...well...ANYTHING! Every month I would ask our case worker, have you heard anything? Every month she'd tell me no. She actually started to get defensive with me about it after a while. When we'd been waiting over a year (Annie was then 7) I asked one day, and this is what she said. "Our judge is very busy. He's handling the case where that guy cut off his wife's head." Now, I'm not cold hearted or uncaring about others, but this was my response, "She's dead, she can wait. That just happened, and we've been waiting over a year to go on with our lives. How is her death a priority over a little girl's future?" That didn't go over very well, and the case worker ended her visit about then.

Well, here we are, October 2006. Annie will be 8 in two and a half months. She's been in foster care since she was 18 months old. Last month we finally got a ruling on the appeal...it was in our favor. We've been holding our breath for 34 days now, hoping birth mom doesn't appeal. We have 8 more days. If we get through the next week with no appeal, I finally get to adopt her, and bring some closure to all this. She needs this, wants this, and is now worried something else will happen to crush her dream. She only really knows me as her mom. I've been there for her since she can remember. She knows about her other mom, and who she is, but she also knows what her other mom did to her, and that when the time is right, we will find her again, and she can ask her why and whatever else she wants to ask. But right now, my little girl needs to be safe and secure, and know that this home is for sure and legally her forever home.

Now I realize that I skipped ahead to give you the details of Annie's wait in foster care, but I think it works. Next time I'll go back to when she came home and give you more about what was happening within the Angel Retreat. Thanks for continuing to read on.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

Bringing Up the Past

This is Harder than I Thought it Would Be!

I finished writing my post yesterday thinking I'd be all psyched up to continue the story today about getting Annie back...what a happy memory! But instead, I'm having trouble getting myself to go back to the story just yet. See, right now we are at a good and happy time, but knowing what I know, it's very hard for me, as you will see later down the line. I love my girls, and I miss them, and I love thinking about them, and it puts me in quite a melancholy mood.

When I got home from work last night to house full of chaos: screaming, fighting, tantrums, and outright defiance...well, it was a tough snap back to reality I guess. I'd spent the day rejoicing in thoughts of days gone by, and wasn't ready to leave it all behind. For the first time in my life, the chaos brought me to tears. The memories were too vivid at that moment, and my mind couldn't handle the present.

Please don't get me wrong...I love my kids dearly, I wouldn't be adopting most of them if I didn't. Just, some days, I long for the fun family of teenage girls who lived with me four years ago. I know we will get there again someday with this gang...they have quite a bit of growing to do first, and I cherish all the moments of their babyhood, childhood right now. But there are just days when I wish instead of going to soccer practice to watch Annie act like a monkey down at the goal rather than play the game we were settling down at the kitchen table to play a long drawn-out game of Phase 10, or talking about Homecoming plans.

I guess this is the dangers of parenting in the foster care system...especially when it's the only kind of parenting you've ever done. I did it backwards. First I had the teens and high school drama...now I have potty training, terrible two's, soccer practice, swim lessons, and learning to read.

I don't mean to whine...I always say, don't whine at me, talk to me like I'm just another human being...I just got caught up in the memories. And my mind also knows whats coming in the story, and I may be a little reluctant to get there, to drudge up that pain again.

I did want to say this though, I'm finally there in the story...right after we got Annie back, we decided to name our home. I don't even know why. Granny and I had gone back to NM for a friend's wedding, and we were driving around, visiting old haunts, seeing the sights again, and as we drove down one of my favorite roads, full of huge old haciendas, horse ranches, beautiful scenery, and reading the names of these places, I started thinking about our little home in Idaho. I thought about how my kids were like Angels finding a place to land in our hearts...and I burst out with, "We should call our home the Angel Retreat." And ever since, that's what we are. Oddly enough, we even get junk mail now addressed to the Angel Retreat. (I;m not sure how that happened.) I'll try to get myself prepared to continue with my story when I get back on Monday...see ya then.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

The Brady Bunch..Sorta

Summer 2002

By the middle of summer in 2002, we felt like a family, and I felt like I'd been doing this forever, not just over a year. We developed a game to play with the girls to give them an opportunity to earn rewards. See, we're big fans of two reality TV shows: Survivor, and Big Brother. So we started giving the girls Big Brother Challenges. Like, for instance, we obtained chop sticks from a local Chinese restaurant, and played Egg-Foo-Young...first they had to hold an egg with their chop sticks and run a specific pattern in the yard, handing the egg off to the next like in a relay. Then they had to use their chop sticks to tie their shoes (which rhymes with foo), and last they had to hold a piece of sidewalk chalk with the chop sticks and write their name on the driveway (they are young). All this had to be done in a certain amount of time. For this they earned dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

I guess, in going back and writing about my life as a foster parent, it's making me look at all the things I did with my girls that made our house a family rather than just a foster home. Like I said, I often look back at these times with my girls and wish it were still like that. I long for my family, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that our time together was so short. And never since that time have we had that same feeling of family in our home.

So that summer, we were blessed with three more kids...boys. They were younger, one a toddler, Hank, and the other two brothers, 6 and 8, Owen and Ivan. Of course, the girls and I instantly fell in love with Hank. It's really hard not to immediately fall in love with the babies! And I suppose that's best, because they are at a crucial developmental stage when they learn to love and be loved, and they need their caregivers to do just that. The brothers were a bit more of a challenge. They'd been in another foster home who couldn't handle them anymore, and the deal was, they were waiting for all the red tape to be gone through to get moved to a relative in another state. We took them and were told it would be for about a month.

Owen and Ivan have a place in my heart that probably nobody else can go. They were very special boys who needed so much! And yet, they were near impossible to handle. The younger one, Owen, would get in so much trouble, the year before while he was with his last foster parents, he'd been kicked off the school bus indefinitely...on the first day of school. And he was only in kindergarten. Ivan was different, he was a charmer. People thought he was an angel. But if you listened at their bedroom door, you could hear him telling Owen to do things that would only get Owen in trouble. You could hear him saying things that would send Owen into a rage. Has anyone seen the Omen? J/K J/K

Anyway, a month turned into two, and suddenly we were registering the boys for school. Hank was doing well, catching up...he was nearly two, and we had to teach him to eat solid food, walk, and start making talking sounds. Allee especially fell in love with him, and worked with him a lot. I think he was as good for her as she was for him. Owen and Ivan were starting to wear our patience thin. We actually had to start putting them in respite care almost every weekend towards the end of their stay with us. By mid September, I was hounding their case worker almost daily to see where things were with getting them to their relatives. (They were with us into October.)

This brought about a new feeling for me. I loved these boys, and I still think about them often. I hope they are well, and have found their place in the world. But I found myself needing them to move on, and I was conflicted...how do you feel that way about someone you love...about a child? The mom in Florida, who wants to unadopt her adopted son...I understand that. When you have kids who are emotionally and physically destructive, you have to start thinking about a bigger picture. You have to think about everyone in the home, and what's going to be best for all. Owen and Ivan needed a smaller family, people who could spend a lot more one on one with them. Not all kids do well in large families, and we would always be a large family. Some kids are going to need special care that will involve therapy, even psycho-therapy, and medications, and a house full of people will only over-stimulate them and hinder any progress they could make in a less populated house.

Now, to add to my feelings of conflict over finally getting these kids moved to their relative, in the years since, I've kept track of them. They eventually ended up back in Idaho in foster care because the relatives used corporal punishment, and probably went a little further than spanking. Then I found them on Wednesday's Child, looking for an adoptive home. My guilt grew because I knew the chances of them being adopted at their age was slim, of staying together even slimmer. But I have to keep telling myself I did the right thing for my family...they were never going to stay with us permanently anyway, I just pushed to speed up the process of getting them moved to their relatives.

But before they left, something very exciting happened...Annie came home. She'd been gone 8 long months, and that August, she was home again. I'll tell you more next time.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

Spin the Revolving Door

Time for Another Change

Later that Spring, it's now 2002, Carly was being moved to a relative who would be very good for her. We were happy to see her finding a permanent home with someone who loved her and wanted to do what was best for her. At the same time this was happening, there was a 16 year old girl in another foster home who we had had in respite several times. We'd grown close to her, and always loved having her spend time with us. The foster home she was in was having troubles, and the kids were all being moved out, so we took Allee.

This was an interesting placement for us. Allee came to us with the understanding that she would one day be moving back to an adoptive placement in another state where she had been with some of her siblings before being sent back to Idaho. The idea had been that she and the adoptive family needed a break, to get a breath and a better look at things, and Allee would bring up her grades in school, then they would try again. So we knew when we got her that it would not be forever.

Stacie and Kneesaa were excited for Allee to move in. They also had enjoyed the time they'd spent with her, and were looking forward to living with her. Of course, being friends living in different homes is a lot different than being sisters living in the same home. It didn't take long for the girls to settle into sisterhood with all that comes with it. Territory disputes, clothing trauma, petty bickering, and good old sibling rivalry. But at the same time, they were protective of each other, they confided in each other, they were like real sisters. When I take time now to think back on my years doing foster care, this is the time I think back on the most, this is the time when I felt like we had a real family.

The girls became so much a part of me, and vice versa, it was like they'd always been there, and that they'd always been sisters. Our relationships with each other were dynamic and real. Granny and I wanted to share them with everyone, so we planned a trip to Arizona to meet our extended family. We had so much fun taking them to all our favorite places, and introducing them to everyone. They took lots of pictures, and to this day they still talk about that trip.

We were able to integrate these girls into our family, and make them a part of the lives of ALL our family, and I think that made a difference. It made them feel like they belonged, that they would always have us, and I felt like a need to be a mother was beginning to be satisfied. It was good for everyone. One thing that most foster children go through is a sense of isolation. They have been taken from everything and everyone they know, and put with a house full of strangers. Most often, they never feel a sense of belonging. They feel like an outsider, even when they live with one family for years. My whole family has been so great and supportive of my work with kids that they help me help the kids. They accept them and make them part of their lives too. Most of our kids are able to find at least one person within my family to form a bond. By forming that bond, they attach themselves in a permanent sense of belonging, because after that, no matter where they go or what they do, they know that bond is there. All people need to feel that. It's what makes us belong. Otherwise, we'd all be floating around out there, not belonging anywhere, feeling lost and alone.

I have to say, my girls made me feel like I had someone to live for as much as my family did that for them. As foster parents, it's not all about being a saint and savior to a bunch of poor souls who'd be lost forever without us. It's about making our own connections and finding our way in life too. I learn just as much from my kids as they do from me. When I think back to how I got started in all this, I have to wonder where I'd be and what I'd be doing right now if it weren't for them!

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.

Trying Something New...Again

beta Blogger...sounds like a diet pill...

Anyway, I thought I'd mention it. I guess I switched my blog over to beta, and being only somewhat computer savvy, I have no idea what that means. I was actually scared to do it. I thought for sure, with my luck, it would throw everything out of wack and I wouldn't be able to fix it. Afterall, there was a warning that you can't take it back, once you switch, it's for good!

Something else is on my mind. Being somewhat new to all of this. I notice a lot of people will occasionally mention sites they use to gain traffic on their blog. I use Blog Mad and Blog Explosion, and I like them well enough. Is there some rule I missed, though, saying you have to mention these once in a while? If so, here goes.

Blog Mad is awesome!

Blog Explosion, what a gift!

Don't forget to donate to the cause. We're poor, and our kids are hungry! :-)