I think I finally found my answer to the people who respond to the news that L and O are leaving us with a concerned look, a gentle hand on my arm and a soft-spoken, "but how are YOU doing?"
This is how it's supposed to work.
These two children spent over a year in my home. I've taken them to school, I've scheduled their appointments, I've soothed their fears, I've cleaned up their vomit. I've documented and reported every nightmare, every difficult question, every inappropriate comment made on a phone call. I've raised them for over a quarter of O's life. And I will miss them when they go.
But, from the beginning, I have known that there was family out there that loved them, that wanted them, that was fighting for them. This was never a potential foster-to-adopt case, no matter how frustrated I (and the court) sometimes got with the family.
Is BioMom a perfect parent? No. But if children only stayed with perfect parents, there wouldn't be an intact family in the world.
Will she continue the work we've done to teach L that she's not O's parent? Probably not. I suspect that L will spend the next ten years or so of her life being Mom's babysitter. She won't be the first oldest-child to do so.
Can BioMom and BioDad continue to work together to provide their kids with everything they need once they know that DFCS isn't watching every move and hearing everything they say to the kids? I don't know.
But none of that is appropriate for me to share with the well-intentioned souls who have loved these children as members of my family and who are now questioning how I will feel about "letting them go." And they will be safe. And loved.
This is how it's supposed to work.
At the root of it all, I am at peace with their return home. I hope and pray that this year of not having her kids with her have helped BioMom grow up some and get her feet under her more firmly. I trust that God has a plan for these kids and their extended family and I try to be confident that I have fulfilled the role He had for me in their lives. I wonder, somewhat wistfully, whether the image of the relationship Mr D and I have will ever surface in L's teenage or young adult mind when she's faced with choices about what kind of man she wants in her life; I'd like to think that, somewhere, she will decide that she wants what we have -- stability, respect, support -- rather than what her mother has had to struggle through on her own. I want that for her.
But what I want is not at issue here. What is "best" for the kids may not even be at issue here, depending on how you define "best." As arrogant as it sounds, they would get better parenting with us. They might have more opportunities for extra activities that cost money and take time with us. But those are not reasons to remove children from their families. BioMom has worked hard to fix the parts of her life that were reasons to remove them, and she has succeeded. It's time for them to go home.
This is how it's supposed to work.
The case isn't over. They are returning home, but the case will remain open. County CW will be dropping by their home unannounced, as will the CASA. There are provisions in the court order that will make it easy for CW to pull them back into care if certain changes BioMom has made are not maintained. If that happens, I am certain they will call us to take them back. I don't yet know what we will say, but that's another post for another day. For now, I am thinking positive, cheering BioMom on to continue the improvements she's made in her life for their sake, and only saying one thing:
This is how it's supposed to work.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Successful Hurdle Leaping!
A few hours after my last post, I got a phone call. It's not all the answers, but it did tell me that BioMom has successfully crossed the last "t". It was safe to tell the kids the transition plan.
And it was safe to begin transitioning their possessions back to BioMom's house with each visit. (They have a lot of possessions, so knowing we'll have 4 or 5 trips to get everything moved is reassuring.)
Doing the Happy Dance.
Everyone asks me if it isn't going to be "so hard" to "let them go."
Maybe it will be when the real day comes.
But, right now? Right now, I am so excited for their BioMom, who has worked her rear end off for months and never missed a chance to visit with her kids. Right now, I am thrilled for these children who have wanted this whole year to "go home" even though "home" was never a place to them--it was a person. Right now, I am ecstatic for my own biological family, which has been wearing thin and needing a prolonged break from the behaviors of L and O.
Right now, I am dancing in the streets.
And it was safe to begin transitioning their possessions back to BioMom's house with each visit. (They have a lot of possessions, so knowing we'll have 4 or 5 trips to get everything moved is reassuring.)
Doing the Happy Dance.
Everyone asks me if it isn't going to be "so hard" to "let them go."
Maybe it will be when the real day comes.
But, right now? Right now, I am so excited for their BioMom, who has worked her rear end off for months and never missed a chance to visit with her kids. Right now, I am thrilled for these children who have wanted this whole year to "go home" even though "home" was never a place to them--it was a person. Right now, I am ecstatic for my own biological family, which has been wearing thin and needing a prolonged break from the behaviors of L and O.
Right now, I am dancing in the streets.
"A few days"
Yeah.
It's been a week since they said "a few days". Now they're saying "maybe by the end of the week."
And I still can't tell the kids anything.
And I still can't plan for anything either as a foster family or as a biological one since I don't know exactly when these transitional visits will be.
And I still have kids jumping out of their skin because they don't know what's going to happen when and I can't tell them.
And the caseworker is ignoring me when I ask for status updates of how that last thing BioMom had to do is going.
And I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and HATING THIS SYSTEM!!!
Grr.
It's been a week since they said "a few days". Now they're saying "maybe by the end of the week."
And I still can't tell the kids anything.
And I still can't plan for anything either as a foster family or as a biological one since I don't know exactly when these transitional visits will be.
And I still have kids jumping out of their skin because they don't know what's going to happen when and I can't tell them.
And the caseworker is ignoring me when I ask for status updates of how that last thing BioMom had to do is going.
And I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and HATING THIS SYSTEM!!!
Grr.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Word choices
Fostering has changed some of my basic language. There are things that I never used to say that I do now and things that I used to say all the time that now I don't. And I'm not talking about the obvious cases, like the lingo of acronyms and court terms. I'm talking about subtle stuff, like....
- Instead of "going home" from school or errands, we "go back to the house."
- I refer to myself in the 3rd person a lot more.
- Instead of saying "I have 3 kids", I say "there are 5 at my house right now."(This one will probably vary from placement to placement. L is heavily resistant to having anyone think she is my child, so I fell into this phrasing in order to claim her without calling her "mine.")
- I refer to my husband by name a lot more (rather than "Dad.") (Again, will probably vary from placement to placement, as I imagine we may have later placements that want to call us Mommy and Daddy.)
- I refer to the children by their ages or names a lot more. (Instead of "my son" or "my daughter", it's "the 7 year old", "the 5th grader", or "Peter.")
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Reunifying! Maybe...sorta...probably, soon?
Court happened.
After court, I was told the plan. We were reunifying with BioMom. But since we've only had one home visit, we'll have a couple more of those -- supervised -- then an all day visit -- unsupervised-- then a few overnights and finally move them officially home.
All told, this will take about 6 weeks.
With the official return date being the weekend before school starts here. BioMom lives in a different county and school will start there a few weeks later, so they won't be going the weekend before L starts school, just the weekend before all 3 of the other school age kids here at this house do.
Oh, but this is all dependent on one more hoop for BioMom to jump. And we won't know whether she's jumped it successfully for "a few days", so we aren't to tell the kids anything has changed. (Although L knows they went to court because BioDad told her they were. So she's asking me what happened and when she'll go home and if this was the "last court" for them. And she is --thankfully -- a smart girl who can understand when I explain that I don't want to tell her something that might not happen, so I am telling her all I know are "might happens" right now.)
And yes, that's the way I was told about it. "We're reunifying, here's the transition plan, but it all depends on this thing happening, so . . . don't tell the kids."
Right now, I'm feeling frustrated and angry and selfish and bitter.
Essentially, we are still in limbo land--because it could all fall through if BioMom doesn't leap over this one last hurdle. So we can't tell the kids it might happen. But if she does do what she needs to do, it will happen, so we can't tell the kids that it won't, either. We just can't tell the kids anything. For "a few days." And I may still be a newbie foster mom, but I know what "a few days" means in caseworker speak. And it certainly doesn't mean we'll know in 2 or 3 days, like it means in the normal world.
Once the hurdle is jumped though, we still need a month or 6 weeks to transition back to their mother? To the woman they've been seeing regularly throughout the time they've been in care? To the person who was their full time caregiver for most if not all of their lives prior to coming here? (For the record, I was in favor of a long transition to Paternal Aunt's. They've never lived with her and O didn't seem certain of who she even was. But going back to Mom seems different.)
And -- here's where I get selfish -- the timing of this means there will be no time for any sort of just-the-5-of-us-again vacation between the time L and O leave and school starts. Nope, it'll be all-about-them -- getting them packed up, slowly moving their things to Mom's house over the course of a month, dealing with the behaviors that are sure to come as they try to cope with moving back and forth between us over several weeks -- until it's time to get ready to catch the school bus in the morning again. And yet, I don't feel like I can ask for a few respite days when they're in the middle of transitioning, so there will be no such family-bonding vacation this summer. Just like there wasn't one last summer, when L and O arrived 2 days before the intended one and we spent the rest of that summer expecting a call to send them home every week until it was too late for a vacation. Take L and O with you, you say? Well, you see the timing of all of these transitional visits is going to change week-to-week based on BioMom's work schedule. So I can't plan anything in advance because I won't know until "a few days" before which days they are going to be with her. (And that's the BioMom's version of "a few days" which seems to mean at best the day before.)
Yes, I would like some cheese with my whine, please.
After court, I was told the plan. We were reunifying with BioMom. But since we've only had one home visit, we'll have a couple more of those -- supervised -- then an all day visit -- unsupervised-- then a few overnights and finally move them officially home.
All told, this will take about 6 weeks.
With the official return date being the weekend before school starts here. BioMom lives in a different county and school will start there a few weeks later, so they won't be going the weekend before L starts school, just the weekend before all 3 of the other school age kids here at this house do.
Oh, but this is all dependent on one more hoop for BioMom to jump. And we won't know whether she's jumped it successfully for "a few days", so we aren't to tell the kids anything has changed. (Although L knows they went to court because BioDad told her they were. So she's asking me what happened and when she'll go home and if this was the "last court" for them. And she is --thankfully -- a smart girl who can understand when I explain that I don't want to tell her something that might not happen, so I am telling her all I know are "might happens" right now.)
And yes, that's the way I was told about it. "We're reunifying, here's the transition plan, but it all depends on this thing happening, so . . . don't tell the kids."
Right now, I'm feeling frustrated and angry and selfish and bitter.
Essentially, we are still in limbo land--because it could all fall through if BioMom doesn't leap over this one last hurdle. So we can't tell the kids it might happen. But if she does do what she needs to do, it will happen, so we can't tell the kids that it won't, either. We just can't tell the kids anything. For "a few days." And I may still be a newbie foster mom, but I know what "a few days" means in caseworker speak. And it certainly doesn't mean we'll know in 2 or 3 days, like it means in the normal world.
Once the hurdle is jumped though, we still need a month or 6 weeks to transition back to their mother? To the woman they've been seeing regularly throughout the time they've been in care? To the person who was their full time caregiver for most if not all of their lives prior to coming here? (For the record, I was in favor of a long transition to Paternal Aunt's. They've never lived with her and O didn't seem certain of who she even was. But going back to Mom seems different.)
And -- here's where I get selfish -- the timing of this means there will be no time for any sort of just-the-5-of-us-again vacation between the time L and O leave and school starts. Nope, it'll be all-about-them -- getting them packed up, slowly moving their things to Mom's house over the course of a month, dealing with the behaviors that are sure to come as they try to cope with moving back and forth between us over several weeks -- until it's time to get ready to catch the school bus in the morning again. And yet, I don't feel like I can ask for a few respite days when they're in the middle of transitioning, so there will be no such family-bonding vacation this summer. Just like there wasn't one last summer, when L and O arrived 2 days before the intended one and we spent the rest of that summer expecting a call to send them home every week until it was too late for a vacation. Take L and O with you, you say? Well, you see the timing of all of these transitional visits is going to change week-to-week based on BioMom's work schedule. So I can't plan anything in advance because I won't know until "a few days" before which days they are going to be with her. (And that's the BioMom's version of "a few days" which seems to mean at best the day before.)
Yes, I would like some cheese with my whine, please.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
"Permanency Hearing"
So, in a few days, we'll be having a permanency hearing on L and O's Case.
They're just a week shy of having been in care for 12 months, and great care was taken to ensure that this hearing would be before that 12 month anniversary.
At the last hearing, the parents were sternly told that they needed to have done xyz by this date and that they were lucky there was family to be considered at the permanency hearing because otherwise they'd be looking at TPR if they hadn't done said xyz.(That family is Paternal Aunt, by the way, who no one has mentioned since.)
I'm told they will most likely not be sent home the day of the hearing, even if the judge decides at the hearing that it's time to reunify. (We have yet to have a visit longer than 2 hours or a visit that isn't supervised.) I'm told that there will be transitional visits, with the goal of having them home full-time by the time school starts. But I've heard that plan before with the move to Paternal Aunt at the end of the school year.
I'm told no one thinks BioMom is ready to handle parenting 3 children on her own. I'm told that's not a good enough reason to keep the kids in care because there aren't any "safety concern" reasons. (Her drug tests are clean, she's maintained employment, taken all her required classes, obtained housing....) I guess having a single parent that no one thinks is ready for it isn't a "safety concern." I suppose we have to hold our breath and wait to either be proven wrong or watch her fail. (BioDad is out of state and has been denied as a placement. He's still showing up to court every time it happens, but he is not a serious contender for custody and the relationship between him and BioMom is not one of mutual support for the good of the children.)
I'm told--by several different people involved in the case--that they won't be surprised if the kids end up back in care again in a few weeks or months. But that's not a "safety concern"?? That's "permanency"?
I don't know what to expect from this hearing. I don't know what to hope for. Some days I think BioMom has worked so hard and so clearly loves her kids that it's time to get them back to her. Other days I think they deserve permanency that will last and wonder if Paternal Aunt would be better at that. On really bad days, I wish they could have a clean slate and an entirely new family to get them out of the drama circus that appears to touch every single extended family member we've every heard of.
Mostly, I'm trying not to hope for anything specific and just wait and see.
They're just a week shy of having been in care for 12 months, and great care was taken to ensure that this hearing would be before that 12 month anniversary.
At the last hearing, the parents were sternly told that they needed to have done xyz by this date and that they were lucky there was family to be considered at the permanency hearing because otherwise they'd be looking at TPR if they hadn't done said xyz.(That family is Paternal Aunt, by the way, who no one has mentioned since.)
I'm told they will most likely not be sent home the day of the hearing, even if the judge decides at the hearing that it's time to reunify. (We have yet to have a visit longer than 2 hours or a visit that isn't supervised.) I'm told that there will be transitional visits, with the goal of having them home full-time by the time school starts. But I've heard that plan before with the move to Paternal Aunt at the end of the school year.
I'm told no one thinks BioMom is ready to handle parenting 3 children on her own. I'm told that's not a good enough reason to keep the kids in care because there aren't any "safety concern" reasons. (Her drug tests are clean, she's maintained employment, taken all her required classes, obtained housing....) I guess having a single parent that no one thinks is ready for it isn't a "safety concern." I suppose we have to hold our breath and wait to either be proven wrong or watch her fail. (BioDad is out of state and has been denied as a placement. He's still showing up to court every time it happens, but he is not a serious contender for custody and the relationship between him and BioMom is not one of mutual support for the good of the children.)
I'm told--by several different people involved in the case--that they won't be surprised if the kids end up back in care again in a few weeks or months. But that's not a "safety concern"?? That's "permanency"?
I don't know what to expect from this hearing. I don't know what to hope for. Some days I think BioMom has worked so hard and so clearly loves her kids that it's time to get them back to her. Other days I think they deserve permanency that will last and wonder if Paternal Aunt would be better at that. On really bad days, I wish they could have a clean slate and an entirely new family to get them out of the drama circus that appears to touch every single extended family member we've every heard of.
Mostly, I'm trying not to hope for anything specific and just wait and see.
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