At court last month, we proposed being her legal guardians. Have I mentioned she came to us as a result of a disrupted adoption? Adoption carries different meanings for Pumpkin. Her adoptive mother voluntarily placed her and signed off on her rights. Adoptive mom said she didn't want her back until she could be "fixed".
Anyway, at court, the hearing master said legal guardianship was not a permanency plan! She wanted Children and Youth to place her on the adoption network and begin having visitations with prospective adoptive families! I heard this from a paralegal who was drawing up the paperwork. I told her to stop, that we WOULD adopt her. I feel like they twisted my arm, but I do care about this girl, and want to help her.
A couple of days ago, she didn't brush her teeth properly. I saw the toothpaste spit in the sink, no water in the bowl. I sent her back in. She started to argue. I told her she could go sit on the bottom stair until she was ready. She went to the step, and proceeded to bang her head on the stairs and wall. I sat near her to speak quietly to her. She raised her hand to hit me. I grabbed both her hands and said "No Pumpkin, we do not hurt each other". She called me a "mother fu****".
So, as we await a court date to adopt this child, she is becoming anxious. She is reactive, and on top of it all, she is on her cycle. She gets very emotional right before her cycle. I mark a "boom" on my calender when she gets emotional, and 2-3 days later she will start her period. I am so angry at this system, the adoptive parents who think they can fix a child, and judges who won't listen to the foster parents. Pumpkin will never be able to function on her own, she will never drive a car, she may never even bond to us 100%, although her drs think she is bonding to us. She trusts us though. In the 1 1/2 years we have had her she has not been put in a RTF, not once. When we are processing inappropriate behaviors, she tells me that her adoptive mother would have put her in the hospital for hitting the wall, or banging her head on the floor. ( She's telling the truth. It is documented that out of the 5 years she lived with adoptive mom, she spent half the time in RTFs). I tell her "I do not put children in the hospital because they act like that". I give her "time in", meaning she gets to stay near me for a short time after acting out. I put her on "zero", which means she can only play with coloring books, puzzles, and games. She cannot touch our pets when she is emotional.
How, I want to know, was she supposed to handle getting moved from home to home for visits until a family agreed to take her?
It floors me the amount of ignorance.. or maybe it's more unwillingness to know about the emotional needs of these kids. And I've only read and heard about it. I don't live it like you and other foster parents do. I just feel like there needs to be an advocacy group for these children. I'm not talking about the organizations that provide supportive treatment and training to families but a collective of some kind that works towards changing laws or rules - training for professionals in this system - including schools, insurance companies, judicial system even. To me it would be extremely proactive and save the government tons of money. Maybe there already is one, but I've never heard of it.
ReplyDeleteI see the actions and end results from the adoptive mom as another result of the system and it's willful ignorance. If she was trained, or had better resources, and maybe, dare I say, some screening, she may have been a good home for Pumpkin. I know that the two times I had admitted my child, I didn't know what else to do. Now I know. There was a time I was about to take her back but her attachment therapist talked me out of it helping me address the specific issues. For Penelope, she was starting to use the hospital as a means to run away - to get away. We nipped that in the bud.
I will say I have been fortunate - knock on wood - so far to not have a potty mouth in my house. Cussing is a sin, as she says when I slip once in a while - I guess one positive of spending a lot of time with a woman down the street from her dad's who put the fear of God in her based on her religious beliefs. You know, where if you don't go to church your going to hell kind of beliefs - but not just any church, her church - and not just her denomination, but her church at the corner of Middle and Nowhere, Indiana.