In this post I revisited National Adoption Month, sighting adoption as an option for children in foster care.
I was a disappointment, incorrigible, ungrateful, unappreciative, needy, defective, and generally hopeless, a throw away kid…written off and thrown away at 11.
What do I have to say about attachment? I am not an adoptee. Nor am I an adoptive parent. Me? I’m just a former foster child and the daughter of a former foster child/adoptee. I think I may have a thing or two to say about attachment.
On Wednesday I work during the day. Mr. Sunday has to work and the big girl has had summer school. I bring the two little ones to work with me. They do day camp while I coach. Well, Amélie does day camp and CoCo sits off to the side and watches everyone else play…that is the way it has been going all summer.
But, this week was a big week. CoCo walked a crossed the big squishy mats (she usually crawls or insists on being carried).
She got into the pit (ok, on a mat in the pit)
and the biggest surprise…she got on the “jump-o-lean” (got on…not jumped).
That may not seem like much, but for that kid it is huge…and I am one proud momma.
We told him it's okay to feel the feelings that will come up.. he can be angry, sad and happy, reiterating as we always do that it's not their fault. Their mom loves them dearly she just can't keep them safe. We talked about me being adopted and my family, as well as their older brother (9 year old "Freckles") and what it all means.
Full Circle: The Talk August 6, 2011
I meant to link to this post a week ago when Melissa first posted it…I think it goes a long way in explaining the complexity of emotions that surround foster care adoptions. And ya’ll know I DO support adoptions from foster care, and the amazing parents who work hard to help their kids through a sometimes ruthless system, and lasting losses.
But today I am linking to this post because last week Melissa was blogging about The Talk and loss and today. She tweets:
fullcircle_melMelissa@FullCircle - Headed to the mortuary to make arrangements for my beautiful husband's services. Pls say a prayer for all of us-Is this really happening?!
Life can change on a dime. If you are the praying type please remember Full Circle Mel and her family today.
Sometimes you just have to stop to smell the roses..Or watch the biggest spider you have ever seen kill and eat stuff.
The pictures really don’t do her justice!
You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself If I could walk around
I swear I'll leave. Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin
The thing is there is no house that built me. There is only a collection of places I never really belonged. They say you can’t go home, but I don’t even know where that’d be.
Yes, it has been that kind of day, if I had a home I would have gone there.
“Under proposed legislation named Fostering Connections, I would have been able to enter an independent living environment, where I would have had access to a variety of resources. Additionally, DHS would have helped me establish a support system, sent a caseworker to see me, aided me with my job search, and helped me with other services. If I'd had that help, I would be in a different situation than I am in now.”
As a sixteen (about to be 17) year old going into my senior year in high school I was granted independent status by Michigan’s Family Independence Agency (DHS). At the time that decision was made there were no independent living programs in the state. I was seen as too old and independent to live in a foster home placement, I had out stayed the usefulness of my group and RTC placements, and going ‘home’ to one of my parents was not an option. I was in school full time, getting acceptable grades and I had had the same job for a year, I seemed pretty stable on paper. So the decision was made that I would receive my own foster care payments, keep my state medicade and move in with a group of college students in the area I had been living in placements in for years.
While my roommates were a great group of girls and did their best to keep me from getting myself into too much trouble, as sixteen and seventeen year old on a university campus I did a fine job of finding plenty on my own. While the decision to allow me independence was rare, if not unprecedented…I was in no way shape or form ready to face the world alone. I got myself into a lot of jams, I made a ton of mistakes and it took me YEARS before I even felt like I was treading water. And the day I turned eighteen what little support I had disappeared, as some kind of magic happens that day that makes one a responsible adult. It does not.
Legislation like this Fostering connections proposed here in Michigan could go a long way to helping foster children reach true independence and avoid many of the pitfalls that I myself and so many of us who have aged out of foster care find ourselves drowning in.
Please become an advocate for continuing support and services to foster children here in Michigan and your home state. We don’t stay children forever and we deserve a fighting chance for a stable future.
You know that thing our husbands do where they do something so bad that you would be an idiot if you ever asked them to do it again? Well, my 13 year old girl is apparently trying that strategy on for size…
Because this is her idea of how to put dishes away and….
Yester day:
“This bathroom is STILL not clean”
“I have told you I cleaned it three times and you keep saying it is not good enough. Maybe if you want it done right you should do it yourself.”
“Maybe if you wanted to do anything other than clean the bathroom today, you would have done it right the first time.”
I mean I tried everything I could think of to get that kid to just turn in her work. I begged, I pleaded, tried empathy, I remained calm, I lost my cool, I threatened, I followed through, nope, it wasn’t gonna happen, she would do her work but she would NOT TURN IT IN. I emailed the teacher, I set her up with a tutor, I took her to a professional tutoring place, both of which informed me she didn’t need help…she completely understood how to do it. But still she would not turn in the work. I called the school counselor (many times), I meet with the other school counselor, and I took her to a private counselor. Still she refused to just turn in the mother freaking homework we watched her do!
It always came back to it wasn’t her fault and my big girl insisting that she didn’t belong in that class in the first place.
I would pull out the letter from her 7th grade teacher explaining why the big girl had been placed in 9th grade Algebra, rather than 8th grade math. I would show her where the letter outlined the test score and grade requirements; I would show her where it showed her grades and her test scores and how hers were well over the minimum requirement to be placed in the advanced class. But she could not be dissuaded from her insistence that she was wrongly placed in the class.
I knew that her belief was at the root of her lack of effort…But, It. Made. No. Sense! It was a mistaken belief, and I had no idea where on earth it came from. I was very worried, that she had somehow lost confidence in herself for no apparent reason, with no logical explanation.
That is until Mr. Sunday and I went to school on the day before the revoked Chicago trip to see if our big girl had turned in her work, which she hadn’t. Me being me, I looked the teacher in the eye and said
“I just don’t understand what is going on here! Does she understand the work or not? She has always loved math and excelled in it until this year. Did she hit a wall or something? ”
“I have no idea, she doesn’t speak in class and she refuses to ask for help.”
At this point my big girl chimes in crying with, “I keep telling you that I DON’T BELONG IN THIS CLASS IN THE FIRST PLACE!”
As I start with “No, honey we have been over and over this and that is just not TRUE”
Her teacher, that she has had all freaking year interrupts me with,
“No she is right. Mrs. So and So put a LOT of kids in this class who don’t belong here because she was retiring and she wouldn’t have to deal with the fall out.”
I was stunned…Me stunned…into silence…yes, I am sure my eyes were bugging out and the vein in my neck was popping…but I could say nothing. Oh, My Goodness, so this is what she has been telling her class all year. This is why my daughter who easily qualified for the class was insisting that she didn’t belong, and all of the king’s horses, tutors, and counselors or mommy could convince her otherwise.
Now, I clearly understood what had happen and how, but I had no idea how to fix it. I had no idea how to give her love of math or self-confidence back, or how to combat a solid year of being given the message that some of them weren’t good enough and didn’t belong and her willingness to internalize it and take it on as her truth. Oh what a mess.
I’m not sure they ordered my big girl’s warm-up big enough…
I am not even sure it will even fit her as a senior…four years from now.
Because it fits ME…over my clothes.
