Foster Care Meetings 7&8

The last two foster care meetings were excellent. We finished our classes the Monday before Thanksgiving, and then everything has been a little crazy for a while. Between NaNoWriMo and some family concerns, the blog kind of got put on hold for a while. I'm hoping to do better from now on...but I have said that before.

Goals are good to have anyway.

Meeting 7: Long Term Separation; Adoption Issues for Families

This was a very interesting meeting. One of the primary reasons that we are looking to do foster care is because we would like to adopt some children. However, the main thing that we've learned through all of our classes is: if children can safely be with their parents, they WILL do better with their parents than with you.

In this class, we learned why. For the first part, a teenager in foster care came and talked to us. I can't go into any detail about her situation or most of the things she said, but it was really impressive how far she'd come and how well she was doing. We were supposed to have a larger panel, but the other teenagers weren't able to make it, so it was just one girl. It was really neat to hear things from her perspective though.

Here are my notes from this class:

• The only way you adopt a a child through foster care is to have their family die. (Literally or figuratively. This was a tough one to hear. You want families to succeed, so in order for a kid to join your family, their family had to be so broken that there is no way they can return to their biological parents.) This point probably had the biggest impact on me.
• When teens start creating their identity, they want to know where they come from. 
• Plan how you're going to help your adopted children deal with their search for their bio parents.
• We DO NOT talk to the children in foster care about adopiton until reunification is NOT POSSIBLE.
• All questions and issues usually boil over during adolescence. 
• Validate children's feelings. Don't dismiss the things they feel or say. Especially teenagers. 
• Have open communication before an adopted child gets to the adolescent stage. They need to know EVERY aspect of their adoption story: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• If you lie about anything, to them, you lied about everything.
• If possible, and healthy, allow them to talk to their birth parents. Continue communication. Base your decision on what is best for the child, not you.
• Don't push the kids to say "I love you," and don't make them call you Mom or Dad. Let the relationship progress at the child's pace. 
• Don't be afraid to talk about their parents with them. 
• Treat them like your own children. 
• Children will test us to see if we really care. Don't give up on them, NO MATTER WHAT!
• If someone asks about foster children, don't introduce them as foster kids. Just say, "These are my kids."
• We are going to mess up. Just don't give up.
• Let the children guide the discussions. 
• Honesty is ALWAYS the best. 
• Don't wait for the kdis to bring things up. Talk about everything. 
• Foster kids ARE different. Celebrate the differences and help them feel accepted BECAUSE of their differences. 
• Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful for it.
• Children will go through the grief cycle. It may happen at any time adnthe children willtry to figure out what happened to them. 
• What would it be like to never finish your process of self-creation? To never know the final piece that tell you who you are, and why you act the way you do? What would it be like to have no idea where you came from?

It was a really eye opening class for me. Life after adoption isn't cake. Even when children are infants, there are consequences that come from trauma. 

Open communication is so important for children who are in foster care and who are adopted. I think a lot of these things apply to children who are adopted through other means as well. The fact that they want to find their birth parents, doesn't mean they don't love their adopted parents. They are just trying to figure out who they are, and your biological parents are a big part of that. 

Meeting 8: Transcending Differences in Placements

Our last class was essentially about culture. The way we do things in our home is a culture, whether we recognize it as such or not. When children in foster care enter a home, they don't know how anything works, and everything foreign is another reason to feel uncomfortable. We need to try and incorporate our children's culture into our home when it is safe and appropriate to do so. 

• What does your child like to eat?
• Reunification, tell yourself they're going home. 
• Build a relationship with bioparents. Ask them questions about what their children like and how to help them.
• Don't focus on the things you don't have control over (like the court)
• Save clothes receipts (Around $45 of the monthly reimbursement HAS to be spent on clothing.
• People shouldn't be able to distinguish between your biological children and your foster children by how you treat them. 
• Try and incorporate children's culture. 
• Teenagers throw everything out that they've been told, and then they begin cherry-picking and forming their own identity. 
• When children are given food they don't recognize, the brain's first reaction is to tell the child it isn't safe. 
• Ask the children what they like to do with their family, and what their family does for things like birthdays. When a child comes into your home, everything is new. Have a flexible culture. 
• Ask them what they want to do for their birthday, and then do it. 
• What matters to them, needs to matter to you.
• Am I aware of and sensitive to their culture?
• They will be thinking literally. Don't expect them to conform to your culture. 
• If you allow yourself to give up in team meetings, you eliminate your ability to help. 
• What you don't talk out, you'll act out. 
• Kids spell trust "t-i-m-e." 

For the very last thing that we did in our foster class, we watched the following video. The idea behind it is that "every child is just one caring adult away from being a success story."

I would highly recommend watching the video. I think it's applicable to everyone, even if they're not doing foster care. 

Here's the link: 

http://joshshipp.com/one-caring-adult/

What next?

We've had a few people ask us what happens next. Our goal is to have foster kids by Christmas. We can't do our home inspection until we get our background checks done, and we can't go in any sooner than our appointment next week. Until then, we need to get our CPR/First Aid class done, and try and get our home ready for inspection.

We've had some pretty neat miracles. For example, we finally found someone who would haul away our hot tub and other garbage for free! It is so wonderful to have the junk that was left by the previous owners out of our home.

Here's everyone loading up the trailer.

Here's the backyard without the hot tub!

 Things seem to be going well. Both brother-in-laws are trying to find an apartment out of our home too. We're not sure how everything is going to work out yet, but I know the Lord is involved in it, so if we're supposed to have children from the foster care system in our home by Christmas, we will.

Foster Care Meeting 2

Last night was an interesting night. We dropped Kevin off at my cousins' apartment on our way to the meeting. We left early, but rush-hour traffic still caused us to be late. We couldn't have left any earlier either. Grig gets home between 4:45-5:00. We left the home at 5:55. It was supposed to take 27 minutes, and it took 38 minutes. That was pretty annoying, but things got better when we got to the meeting.

While enjoying dinner, we began to learn about child development.

First we talked about age appropriate landmarks and then we took a quiz to see how well we knew our child development. I got about half of the questions right, but as I looked over my answers, I realized that I had gotten all the ones right that fell into my son's age group and under. Anything older than my son was much more shaky. I suppose that made sense.

One of the things I learned last night was that Kevin is entirely age appropriate at the moment. The instructor talked about how between the ages of three and four, children merge reality and imagination. He described a kid who he saw at the store who was dressed as Spiderman and who believed with all his heart that he WAS Spiderman. As he was telling this experience, I couldn't help but think of Kevin.

Nearly everyday right now, I'll ask Kevin to do something, and he'll say, "My name is not Kevin. My name is Superman." Just yesterday, he told me, "I have two names: Superman and Clark."

I asked, "Don't you have three names? Isn't Kevin your name too?"

He shook his head and said, "No. Superman and Clark Kent."

Depending on the day, and what he is wearing, his persona changes, but he is very rarely Kevin right now. Sometimes he is "Blue Man" or "Waterman," but usually he is Superman.

The instructor went on to say that this is healthy for this age and we shouldn't discourage it. They'll grow out of it, but right now they're developing key parts of their brain by pretending and it will make their minds healthier. It won't hurt them, and it doesn't hurt us. He encouraged us to let them pretend.

Next we talked about developmental delays. He told us that when people experience traumatic events, it puts their minds in a kind of freeze. The mind goes into survival mode, and stops developing mentally. Once the danger is passed, then their mind begins to develop, but it starts at whatever point it froze. He told us that most children in foster care have a developmental delay.

We were instructed that we needed to figure out where the child was mentally so that we could understand and be less frustrated with their behavior. If you know a child is 9, but mentally is six, it is much easier to understand their behaviors. It is also easier to have patience, and know how to help them. However, he cautioned us not to simply accept the current mental age. The idea behind foster care is to identify where they are at, and then to help them to grow. Once they enter a safe environment (our home) they can begin to age again, and we should help them to do so as well as we can.

The next section of the class talked about a reverse bicycle. He showed a video of a man who was dared to ride a reverse bicycle. If you turned the handle bar one way, the wheel went in the opposite direction. The man was confident that he could ride, but no matter how hard he tried, the bike would tip over. He discovered that the brain is wired a certain way, and you can't just tell it to change. So, for months he practiced ten minutes a day on the reverse bicycle. After about 9 months (I think that was how long, it might have been a little longer), something suddenly clicked and he could do it. He did the same experiment with his son who had only been riding a bike for three years, and it only took his son two months.

There were some important lessons to be learned from this example. One of the things was that you can't just tell someone to do something. You have to teach them how. It isn't easy to rewire a brain. Children's minds are more malleable, and they are able to learn new behaviors more quickly, but we need to have patience with them and their birthparents.

The goal of foster care is reunification. We are supposed to be trying to not only help the children, but their parents too. Only when that isn't possible are foster children adopted. As we were talking about that, I realized something.

The goal of foster care is to save families.

That was like a hammer blow in my mind. We are here to help not only the children, but their parents. If we have some children come and join our family, it will only be because after our very best efforts, things just didn't work out with their parents. We plan on giving it our best effort too. Studies have shown that when children can be with their birthparents and the situation can be improved, it is ALWAYS better for the child.

It is only when the child's safety is at risk and the birthparent can't or won't change their own behaviors that the children are removed permanantly. If the birthparent is showing that they're trying, they will extend the time that the children are simply removed until the parent's behaviors have changed enough. They won't take away the parent's right unless they are showing no improvements.

We learned some other interesting things last night about different developmental levels, and at the end we talked about teenagers.

We watched a final video from a man who studies the ways that minds work, and he told us that there are several reasons that teenagers act the way that they do. He told us that they have decreased dopamine levels and increased reactive levels. Essentially that means that the part that cautions them against dangerous things is reduced, while those chemicals that enjoy risk and excitement are increased. He explained that this was because teenagers were "preparing to leave the nest" and needed to have less caution in order to do so. They needed to be willing to change, take new risks, and challenge old perceptions.

He told us that we needed to be less critical of teens, and more compassionate and empathetic. We needed to allow them to think in new ways and to use their innovation. We also need to help impart some of the caution that they may be lacking.

I've really been enjoying these classes. He gave us some homework, and let us leave half an hour early.

We drove back to my cousin's apartment complex and parked the car. As we did so, I briefly thought, "I wonder if we need a permit?" However, we were only going up to get Kevin, so I decided not to worry about it.

We walked upstairs, talked to my cousins for a few minutes, retrieved Kevin (who was very happy and very much awake), and returned to our car, only to find it booted and a note on the window.

That wasn't a very pleasant end to the evening. After we had called the number, a young man showed up. I explained our situation. I told him that we hadn't been aware that you needed a permit to park here, we had just been here long enough to fetch our son, and if we had known, we wouldn't have parked in the parking lot. He was sympathetic, but their rules were firm. Evidentally, if you parked there after 9 without a permit, you were booted. There was no visitor parking. It was 9:30, so we were just out of luck.

Thirty minutes later and seventy-five dollars poorer, our car was freed and we were on our way home. Both of us were a bit upset by that. Honestly, my mind kept saying, "That isn't fair. We didn't know the rules, and no one warned us. We've been doing good things. Why did this have to happen tonight." It didn't help that we didn't get home until 10 p.m. and we had to wake up at 4:00 a.m.

Bad things often happen after good experiences, but it's important not to let the bad things sour the good experience. I feel much less frustrated this morning. I think it's going to be a good day today, and I'm really enjoying our foster classes.

One of my favorite things about them is that Grig and I are doing them together. It is really fun to sit with my husband for four hours and to be able to talk and learn together about something that is interesting to both of us.

We're excited for next weeks' classes!