What does "doing well" mean?

S's BioMom confuses me. That's not hard to do, because I still fall into the trap of thinking that bioparents will behave in ways I can imagine behaving if I were in their situation...

The first visit S had with her mother was not handled the way visits usually are in my area, mostly because of the time crunch.

The visits are supervised, and the supervising person picks the child up and takes them to the visit, then brings them back.

S's first visit was squeezed in around some routine medical appointments that had already been scheduled before she came into care, and I was just keeping those appointments instead of making different appointments of my own for initial health checks. Since Mom had scheduled those visits, she obviously knew when and where they were and I was told she intended to come. That's good.

So, the supervisor picked S up and took her to a visit and told me that she'd meet me at the 1st doctor's appointment with S. She assured me that S would ride with her and that Mom would just have to follow in her own car.

Except, it turned out Mom didn't have a car. So, the supervisor let her ride in her car with S and herself. I suppose because the alternative was to essentially tell Mom that it was too bad she wouldn't be at her daughter's doctor's appointments after all.

At the doctor's appointment, I let Mom answer most of the health questions--I'd only had S a week, so I was still figuring out a lot of the answers myself. I was surprised to hear that this 10am appointment was during naptime. I was also surprised to hear S described as a "picky eater", and felt compelled to add the comment that she will eat some things from every food group. (To me, that's not a "picky eater.")

The dentist came next. That's when I learned that Mom didn't have a car and she "guessed she'd just ride with me." OK. I wondered at that point if I was going to have to take Mom home after all this. I didn't; she had her mother come pick her up at the dentist's.

Both visits went well -- S is in good health, although there's some dental work to do. Mom strikes me as a reasonably good parent, although I think she may baby S a little bit. (She carried her everywhere, for example.) We scheduled the next dental visit together, so Mom knew when it was and made no objections to that date and time.

S screamed bloody murder when it was time to go, though. She kept crying that she wanted to go with Mommy and there was no good answer at a 3 year old level for why she couldn't. Up til then, S had been repeating that Mommy was in jail. I think S had understood that as the reason why S was at my house. Seeing Mommy out and about and unescorted by anyone rocked that assumption. Clearly, Mommy is not in jail anymore, so why can't I go home? Mom didn't know what to do -- I wouldn't have either! -- she kept trying to talk S down, but S wasn't having it. Finally, Mom asked me for advice and I told her she was going to have to walk away. After a few more minutes, she did.


It was heartbreaking.

Since then, S has had another visit with Mom, where the supervisor transported both ways. The artwork S had brought to give her was still in her backpack, so I don't know if Mom ever looked at it. (S said they didn't play with any of the things in the backpack, which were all things S had wanted to take with her; It's quite likely that Mom thought the backpack just contained an emergency change of clothes, diaper wipes, etc.)  Caseworker has said that Mom is doing well on her case plan already and it seems likely she will get S back, eventually.

Then came the follow-up dentist visit. I thought surely Mom would be there. She wasn't. I told S that she might not be there because she might have had to work. No idea if that's true or not, but it seemed like a reasonable explanation for the 3 year old.

Then an officer of the court charged with collecting background information on S called me to ask what I knew about her and mentioned that Mom was avoiding his calls.

Another visit coming up. And a meeting with caseworkers. I just get so confused to hear that Mom is "doing well" and then have her not complete what seem like fairly easy steps.....hope I'll understand more after the visit with the caseworker.

Update on "sibling" separation

I was nervous about the days following D's departure.

How would S take it?

Would she revert back to crying herself to sleep, as she did the first week or so that she was here? Would she search for him in the house? Would she demand to know why he got to go to his daddy and she had to stay?

None of the above.

She barely blinked. She commented once about "when D comes back" and I gently reiterated that he wouldn't be coming back, he was going to stay with his Daddy until he could go back to his Mommy's house.

Other than that, it's barely registered.

I don't know whether they weren't as close as everyone thought (just friends who knew each other, which felt better for them than not knowing anybody in the house?) or whether there's been a lot of people coming and going in her life or whether she's just a roll-with-the-punches kind of kid or whether she really doesn't quite understand or believe that he won't be back. (Watch: just when I get her convinced, he'll get pulled back into care and come back!)

I had noticed that, in the two weeks or so that they were here together, S had shifted from looking for him when he was at school to looking for everybody. And in all cases, being easily reassured by my answer that they were "at school." So, maybe, having him here for the first few weeks helped her transition here, but now that she's settled, his leaving wasn't such a big deal?

I don't know. But I still feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Toilet Training again

I hate toilet training.

I have always hated toilet training.

I trained my 3 bio kids.

Then, I trained O.

Now, I have to train S. She knows how to go on the potty, but she "don't want to" as she says whenever I ask her to try. I have not yet found the carrot that will motivate her. Stickers? Not interested. Candy bribes? Exciting for 1 day, then over it. Toy reward? Says she wants it, but doesn't go. Can't go to school until this happens? Doesn't care. Picked out her own new underwear at the store, but can't wear it until she stops wetting the boring training underwear? Shrug.

The worst moments are when she tells me with a smile! that she peed or pooped her pants. Again.

Makes me want to throw punishment in there, even though I know that "all the experts" say not to.

(She's not phased by having to wear a diaper. If I tell her that she can skip her nap if she goes in the potty, but that "babies who poop in their pants" take naps, she tells me she wants to be a baby and takes a nap without a fuss. When I stopped asking if she needed to go and started just telling her to try -- for more than 2 seconds --  it led to crying for Mommy or Daddy "because they love me.")

I hate toilet training.

Gone

As far as I can tell, there's no legal reason D's Mom and Dad can't have contact. But there could be something no one is telling me. Domestic violence is not a part of this case, but I'm well aware that doesn't mean it hasn't happened in the past.

The day after D's marathon day of visits with Mom and Dad, both cases went to court.

I spent the day doing mindless things-that-need-to-be-done. I did the grocery shopping. I caught up on the laundry. When I hadn't heard anything by about 3pm, I began to assume that they weren't going anywhere for a while because the caseworker had said he would call me if they were leaving, but would just email me an update of what happened if they weren't.

Then the phone rang. And I realized my cell phone had been in the car for the last few hours and I hadn't been on email in about the same amount of time.

Agency caseworker had left me a message at around 1:30. D was going to Dad, S was staying "for at least a few more weeks."

An hour later, I was driving him to meet his family in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, hoping I hadn't forgotten to pack anything important. Thankfully, I had a state-approved babysitter already lined up for something happening later in the evening and she was able to come a little early. So D said his goodbyes to everyone at the house and S did not have to watch him reunite with family while she does not.

And I just sent the rated T game home with him, without ever getting into the fact that he wouldn't be allowed to play it here, even if we'd had a system he could have used for it....

And now...I am fostering only one child, which is a new and strange experience for me! (Guess I'd better give them their own labels now...)

First Visits - Part 2

Part 1 is here.

After some scurrying, we squeezed S's visits in that week. Visit with mom was Friday morning, before her doctor and dentist appointments, which Mom then attended, so Mom got to spend a long time with her. And with me. That's another post for another day.

We got S's visit with Dad scheduled for early Saturday morning, so that we could salvage a portion of the planned family day. Ms F would come get her at 7:15am.

I got a phone call from D's supervisor asking if he could have his visit on Sunday afternoon. He has two hours with Mom, two hours with Dad, at the same location, but with a half hour in between "so that Mom and Dad don't see each other." Wow.

Knowing as I did now that the visits had to be this week, I agreed, although it would mean he'd get back from the visits after bedtime. (I couldn't ask for it to start any earlier without risking his not getting to eat lunch after church. And as it turned out, he walked in the door at bedtime, so it wasn't too late.)

We got up early on Saturday, planning to be ready to head out for our family day as soon as S got back from her visit. Ms F got here on time and buckled her into the carseat. S was excited to see Daddy. Ms F asked me quietly if we were going to be at home; she'd called Dad to confirm and he hadn't answered, so she was afraid he might be a no-show. As I was assuring her that we wouldn't go anywhere, her phone rang. Pleased to recognize the number as his, she answered it. Immediately, she looked less pleased. Her eyes got wide. She turned to me and mouthed, "he's in jail!" Then she started explaining to the woman on the phone that S was right here, but that she couldn't let this woman talk to her. She could have let Dad talk to her, but "you're telling me he's not there, so there really isn't any way I'm giving her the phone." Ms F told S that her daddy wasn't feeling well, so they weren't going to see him today after all.

Side note: I hate lying to children. But I went with the "not feeling well" for a while, because what else could I do? When it turned out that it would be weeks before he was out of jail, I had to change the story..... 

S was confused, but handled the schedule change and the disappointment surprisingly well. We started our family day early.

D's visits went pretty smoothly, comparatively. He came back with a video game (for a system we thankfully do not have) rated T which appears to be about who can beat someone else up faster. At the time, I left it at "we don't have anything you can play that game on." He got here right at bedtime, as it turned out, so we got ready for bed and he went to sleep smoothly.

The next day was court, when we would have the next review of possible family placements.

First Visits - Part 1

When it came to the first family visits for D and S , I had to resist the temptation to spout that "bad attitude" quote I used to have on my wall when I worked in an an office full-time. The one that said, "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

They were separate visits, with separate people. Two visits for each child, one for mom and one for dad. The caseworker told me that each child would have a different supervising person, from separate agencies, because she wanted to keep the actual cases as separated as possible in order to prevent either family from successfully directing all blame to the other one. She also insisted to me that the visits should be scheduled at my convenience, not the parents', and that there was nothing I needed to do about visits until I heard from the visit supervisors about scheduling them.

So, I waited. The kids had been in my home for nearly a week when I finally heard from S's visit supervisor. I'll call her Ms F. Ms F called on a Thursday morning and asked if Saturday would be OK with us; I confessed that we had a family day planned that would make that hard, but we could cancel it if that was the only day that would work. (Clearly, I'm not very good at insisting on things being done "at my convenience.") Friday was out because S had pediatrician and dentist appointments scheduled. Ms F said we shouldn't have to cancel our family day and we scheduled S's visits for the next week on Tuesday.

I merrily sent off an email to the agency caseworker (I don't have any contact info for the county one), letting him know the date and time of her scheduled visit.

It set off a hailstorm of texts, emails and phone calls.

I'm sorry, but the law says they have to have a visit this week. Is there a reason they can't have a visit til next week?

A reason? Other than the combined facts that a) it's currently Thursday, b) the child has medical appointments on Friday, and c) you told me to schedule it at my convenience? Oh, and I still haven't heard from D's visit supervisor, by the way, so don't know how his visits could happen this week!