So many things have been happening, but most of them involve our teenager Miss Kicks, and I want to protect her privacy so I can’t really write about any incidents in particular.
Suffice it to say, being a foster parent to a 16-year-old who has experienced a tremendous amount of trauma in her life is hard. Gut wrenchingly hard. Time for prayers and hopes and lots of tears along the way kind of hard.
It’s also insanely rewarding. I love this kid like I birthed her, so all of the things that trouble her make my stomach hurt and make me wish I had a magic wand to make things better for her. I also occasionally want to wring her neck, but I think that goes with teen parenting territory in general.
I will say that I have noticed that kids in foster care tend to blame themselves for practically everything. I think this is a trend with kids in general in that the kid whose parents are getting divorced often thinks that it’s because of them, and if they were just better, their parents would get along still. But I think the phenomenon is magnified with foster kids. The more trauma they’ve experienced, the more they blame themselves.
Foster kids tend to blame themselves for the really big stuff: “I was so hard to deal with that my mom became an alcoholic.” “I was so badly behaved that my dad abandoned us.” “I’m the reason my mother committed suicide.” “It was my fault that CPS took us.” It’s never ever the kids’ fault, but most seem to feel like it is.
How does a child who blames him or herself for something so huge ever gain any self esteem? With the underlying gnawing belief that they’re responsible for something terrible that happened to their families, foster kids have a hard time feeling like they have any self worth.
Teaching a child to believe in him or herself is… almost impossible when they’re carrying that kind of weight deep inside. I look at Miss Kicks, for example, and see a bright, funny, bouncy, energetic, loving, sweet, beautiful young woman who can do whatever she wants with her future. I can tell you for sure that’s not what she sees in the mirror.
I think time in a loving family will help, but it’s no magic pill because learning how to belong to a loving family is HARD when you’ve never had that before. The very idea of having responsibilities to each other is an alien concept. The idea of commitment? Totally foreign because no one has ever committed to her before. She’s been treated like she’s disposable, and learning she’s not can only come with time and testing – a lot of testing.
The wounds foster kids carry run deep and heavy. And my home, loving and patient and kind and fun as it is, can only do so much so fast. It’s going to take years. And therapy. And a person has to commit to therapy to make it work and that’s hard because it requires vulnerability. And vulnerability is terrifying when you’ve teetered on the brink for so long.
All in all, we’re doing ok. We’re loving on each other the best we all can. We’re testing our bonds and finding them firm. We’re taking care of each other and learning from each other. The trials and tribulations and minor heart attacks along the way? Par for the course I’m afraid. And worth it for this awesome kid of ours.
At the last visit, Miss Kicks’s case worker handed me a piece of paper that said “intent to adopt” across the top. It’s a form that says that since Miss Kicks is legally freed for adoption, Seth and I intend to adopt her. She said she needed it for our next court appearance later this month, and asked if we were willing to sign it. I eagerly said yes, and Seth agreed with equal enthusiasm.
A few days later Seth explained the form to Miss Kicks saying it means that we want to adopt her, but that it is entirely up to her whether she wants to be adopted. She’s 16, and it’s her choice. Before he had even finished his sentence she had shouted “YES!”
Woo hoo!
I am so freaking happy that she wants to be adopted by us. Adoption is such a tricky thing when it involves young kids who don’t have a choice, but when it involves older kids who are able to decide for themselves whether they want to be adopted, it strikes me as something beautiful. She’s chosen us as her forever family, just as we have chosen her for our forever kid.
It still means a tremendous amount of loss for Miss Kicks – she still has a living biological father, grandmother, two sisters, and a bunch of half siblings. We support and encourage her having contact with her grandmother and her siblings, and will support her if she chooses to have contact with her father when she’s 18. We are an extra family for her, one who is able to provide daily stability, guidance, and love. A chosen family. Her soft place to land no matter what happens.
Kiddo is struggling with it a little bit, and I understand. Miss Kicks will be more officially part of our family than Kiddo is. Kiddo is a forever part of our family too, but we don’t have any legal rights to her because she has a mom who is doing an amazing job raising her. We are Kiddo’s bonus family. Seth had a long talk with her last night about the fact that we will always love her and she will always be part of our family. After all, she was basically our first born since she was our first foster kid. Kiddo now spends every weekend with us, and that’s just how it is. I think of myself as having three kids. Kiddo seemed to feel a little bit better after being reassured by Seth that we don’t love her any less than Miss Kicks and adoption won’t change that. But I’m sure it’s a conversation we will have to repeat a few times.
As I mentioned above, we have court again later this month for Miss Kicks, and hopefully that will be the final step in freeing her legally for adoption. I called an adoption attorney on Friday. I told her caseworker and her adoption worker the good news. The process is marching forward.
And every time I think about the fact that Miss Kicks is choosing us with enthusiasm, I get a warm fuzzy glowing feeling. ❤️
I decided to follow the lead of my dear friend Emily whose awesome blog involves interviewing people. I’ll never get my husband to do his own guest post, so I decided to interview him.
Here he is in all his glory, the man, the myth, the legend: Seth.
H: I think I know the answer to this already, but are you glad we became foster parents 5 1/2 years ago?
S: That’s a yes.
H: Can you elaborate on that?
S: I have to elaborate?
H: Yes. You do.
S: Damnit.
Well, if it wasn’t for foster care I wouldn’t have gone to nursing school. So there’s that.
Boom.
Mic drop.
H: Pick that mic back up. I’m not done with you yet.
S: *groan*
H: What comment do you get most often from people when you tell them you’re a foster parent?
S: Usually I get “That must be really hard I don’t think I could do that.” I think that’s the most common one. I usually respond with “Well, my wife and I joke about it sometimes but we’re really serious about it: there’s a reason we both have therapists, because in order to be a foster parent you have to deal with your grief when kids go home, and you have to deal with your Stuff.”
H: I love my therapist more than I can express. And you are so right that she’s crucial to my being able to be a good foster parent.
Along that line, what makes a good foster parent?
S: You’ve gotta have somebody who is compassionate and loving but can fight for the children and separate their own wants and needs from what is actually best for the kids. I think that what happens so often is that people end up becoming foster parents to “save” kids but they don’t think through what is actually best for the kid versus what they themselves want. You have to step back and think about whether your bias is affecting your decisions and also if what you want is in the best interest of the kid or is just that you can’t let go.
H: A savior complex is so problematic in so many ways. I think people get in trouble when they assume that all people who get their kids taken away “don’t deserve their kids.” Life is complex, and trauma shapes the lives of the vast majority of people who have their kids enter the system. I’ve mentioned before that more than one of our kids’ parents grew up in foster care themselves. Compassion for the parents is required as much as is compassion for the kids. And sometimes that’s hard.
What advice do you have for people who are considering becoming foster parents?
S: We already mentioned get a therapist. That’s my advice to most people actually. But anyway.
It’s a trial by fire system. It’s a messed up system and it’s hard to understand until you’re IN IT. There’s no golden nugget of advice anyone could have given us that would have prevented us from going down some of the bad roads we went down. I think the only advice I have is something our homefinder gave us when we became foster parents: “Be clear about your boundaries with the system.” The system is like a machine, or more accurately like a power tool, (H: seriously? Power tool? S: this is an interview with Seth, after all…) you have to be careful with it. The tool will take off your finger if you aren’t careful. The system is like that in that it will push you right past your breaking point if you don’t know how to shut off the switch and say “I’ve had enough.”
Seth gets up from the table and walks away
H: Hey! I’m not done with you yet!
S: I’m getting ice cream. I need my strength. In ice cream I trust.
H: zomg.
Seth’s fortification
Ok. You’re fortified. Now. What’s your favorite thing about being a foster parent?
S: The amazing beauty and joy that these kids bring into our lives.
H: Amen.
S: I said in my graduation speech: you can learn things from kids, especially kids who have gone through hard times.
H: Like what have you learned from the kids?
S: One thing foster kids will teach you is that you can make it through really hard things and you can still carry on and have moments of happiness.
In my particular case they taught me what I want to be when I grew up, too.
They also teach us how to be more present and live in the moment because most of them do. They find joy in little things. Like ice cream, for example. And chocolate sauce.
Tiny didn’t want to wait for the chocolate to hit the ice cream
I feel like our time with Kiddo really honed my observation skills – we got good at trying to understand what was going on with her because she was nonverbal when she was upset and we had no idea what was going to set her off so we were always watching to see what was causing problems for her.
The other piece of that was when she was upset it really taught me to be THERE and present for her. And nothing necessarily needed to be said but you just needed to be there. And that’s a skill that we as humans forget about. Silent support. It’s something they talk about in nursing school. It’s something I’m now good at and comfortable with: sitting with someone who is hurting in silence and holding their hand. People want to fix problems but you can’t. We’re led to believe we need to fix everything but we can’t. And that’s ok.
H: Well said. I spend a lot of time just holding Tiny while she hurts. It hurts my heart but what she needs then is just me. As I am. I can’t fix her longing for her Mama, but I can hold her while she cries. And that’s huge. It’s a painful skill to learn but it’s monumental.
I want to end on a happier note. What’s a funny foster parenting moment you want to share?
S: Good lord. I don’t know. The funny moment that comes to mind is not blog appropriate.
H: Heh, dare I ask?
S: The conversation we had with Miss Kicks and Kiddo on the way to church one day recently, where Kiddo loudly said out of nowhere that girls have vaginas and boys have penises and then elaborated on the subject, and Miss Kicks was mortified, and Kiddo thought it was hilarious that Miss Kicks was so bothered by it. So then boobs came into the conversation too.
H: I remember laughing so hard I was having trouble seeing through my tears and I was trying so hard to respond to Kiddo nonchalantly but I just couldn’t. Kiddo was so proud of all her Big Kid knowledge! And Miss Kicks wanted the earth to swallow her rather than having to discuss private parts with her brand new Old As Hell foster parents. Ha! That was a beaut! Thank god we were in the car and not in public because it would be just like Kiddo to have that convo in public at full volume…
Personally I’m a fan of Kiddo asking me “where babies come from” while I was driving her home through the worst blizzard I’ve ever driven in. The kid has impeccable timing!
I love all those embarrassing parenting moments. Love them. They’re hilarious. Like recently when Tiny announced at top volume in Five Below “Mommy, I poop in my pants.” I got a sympathetic look from a fellow Mom, and a giggle from a teenage employee. Ha!
And on THAT note, thanks for reading folks! Keep on keeping on.
My house is ludicrously chaotic. In fact, when we are trying to get all the troops out the door, Seth always irritably shouts “Come on, Team Chaos! Let’s go!” And when we arrive somewhere he says “Team Chaos is here!”
Kiddo and Miss Kicks have no volume control. Both are often at Max Volume at the same time. And their Max Volume makes my ears ring – no exaggeration. They both get in loud disagreements and loud laughing fits that make the figurative chandeliers tinkle.
Someone’s always hungry and rummaging in the pantry or fridge.
Someone is often on a hoverboard. In the house.
Tiny usually is strewing toys behind her with abandoned glee, and often leaving shoes behind in the middle of the floor as trip hazards. The person on the hoverboard is often scolding Tiny for the trip hazards.
Often either the TV is on or music is playing.
At least one dog is underfoot perpetually, sometimes the neighbor’s dog joins the fray, and there are five cats milling about, twining between ankles and asking to go in and out and in and out. They got so sick of waiting for someone to let them in and out that one of them (affectionately nicknamed Le Shittén) ripped her own cat door through the screen door that they all happily now use.
Le Shittén and her cat door
There are piles of paper on the desk and counter. Someone has usually left a dish or a toy on the dining room table. Someone (eh hem) has usually left her acrylic nail supplies on the unused end of the dining room table. There are construction materials strewn about the place for the upstairs bathroom project.
And there’s usually a dog squeaky toy or two on the floor.
Plus fur. Always fur.
I have been diagnosed with ADHD. I strongly suspect Kiddo has it too, and Seth as well. And kids who have experienced a lot of trauma typically have behaviors that look a lot like ADHD even if they don’t actually have it. Plus, kids (and adults) who have lived through a lot of chaos often recreate a chaotic environment around themselves because it’s what’s familiar and comfortable for them. So Kiddo and Miss Kicks both tend to wallow in chaos like pigs in mud – it’s homey to them. Miss Kicks and Kiddo both leave clothing behind them on their bedroom floors to the point where they have to wade through it all. We make Kiddo pick up her clothing since she shares her room with Tiny but Miss Kicks is free to have her room however she likes it so long as it’s not attracting ants or rodents. I’m just as bad – half my closet is piled on top of my dresser or in front of the closet doors.
In short, poor Seth is fighting a chronic battle against the mess the rest of us leave behind, and we’re all loud as hell and moving in 15 directions at once. Always.
Last night my sister and 16 year old niece came over to babysit the little two so Seth and I could go out for a (*gasp*) date. We had a lovely delicious dinner filled with adult conversation and no interruptions from anyone needing anything. It was bliss!
Meanwhile, my sister – who has one exceptionally well behaved child and one well groomed purebred cardigan corgi and an always perfectly neat home – got to swim in my sea of chaos for a few hours. Each of my kids gave her a run for her money, requesting different variations of the meal she made (🙄) and generally being loud and everywhere at once like usual. She managed to get everyone fed and keep them all alive, but says she only managed to do so because she had the help of my niece.
My sister’s eyes were bugging out of her head by the time Seth and I got home. I find it utterly hilarious that my beautiful Team Chaos unnerved her so much. Perfect meals with matching china and organized neatness everywhere? Not in my house! Ha!
The funny thing is, I love all of it. I joke that I kind of have a thing for chaos, and it’s true. Seth and I were just saying yesterday that if it weren’t for the fact that we have no more bedrooms and I have health issues that limit the amount of energy I have available, we’d go for one more. Alas, not right now. But maybe some day!
I’ve been talking solely about the kids in this blog, but one of the things that affects them is me, and my health. So I’m going to talk about that today. I don’t think my story is unique. In fact I know it’s not. For a lot of women in particular, we struggle with chronic illness and lack of answers because the medical community doesn’t take us all that seriously.
My health has been a bit of a mystery for a lot of years now. Approximately 10 years ago, I started developing some pretty significant symptoms. I started reacting strongly to certain foods, which would clear out my digestive system in a heartbeat. I also developed pretty extreme fatigue and weakness.
I went to my GP. Many times. She referred me to a respected gastroenterologist who did some testing, found nothing, and told me – I kid you not – to find a psychiatrist because there was nothing wrong with me physically.
That charming man was the start of a decade long wrestle with doctors who casually decided that I was crazy rather than doing any further digging into what could possibly be wrong. I went outside of my hometown to two different doctors in Boston. One truly very helpfully ruled out celiac disease by doing a genetic test on me. The other – a cocky Resident in a respected practice there – not helpfully scoped me fully, told me that there was mild inflammation throughout my entire digestive tract and blood in my stool, but that the inflammation didn’t look like known inflammatory bowel diseases under the microscope, and therefore there was nothing really wrong with me.
I learned to manage my symptoms by rigidly controlling my diet. I cut out gluten, dairy, soy, corn, rice, apples, pears, grapes. Anything that triggered my symptoms I eliminated from my diet even in trace amounts. My list of foods that caused symptoms kept growing, and I lived in perpetual terror that I would run out of foods to eat. I stopped eating out entirely because no restaurants could accommodate my dietary needs. Our food budget was ridiculous because I still desperately craved things like bread, and the only bread-like food I could find was very expensive and required me to make it myself. But I just gritted my teeth and endured. What else could I do?
Then I had an appointment one day with a GP about something totally unrelated, and I couldn’t get into my regular GP so saw one of her partners. The new GP walked into the exam room, waved my thick file at me, and asked “what is all this?” We talked for a few minutes, she referred me to another gastroenterologist (who was equally unhelpful), and suggested that we potentially should try a medication that is known to help with intestinal inflammation: sulfasalazine. She said that even if we couldn’t determine exact cause of my issues, it seemed like something was definitely going on, and she had other patients like me who responded to this medication but who didn’t have a particular inflammatory bowel disease that had been diagnosed.
I went out to my car, sat in it, and cried. This GP? She believed me. She didn’t treat me like I was crazy. Incidentally, I changed my designated GP to her that very day.
Sulfasalazine turned out to be a miracle drug for me. Within about 10 days of starting the drug, I came down in the morning and stood in the kitchen for a minute pondering the effort required to make coffee. I thought to myself “I feel kind of weird. What is different?” It finally dawned on me that I was standing up straight. I hadn’t stood up straight in years because of chronic abdominal discomfort. It was just… gone.
I took sulfasalazine for years. Over time, my intestines seemed to heal. I got back the foods that I had lost, and lived happily able to stand up straight. Chronic fatigue didn’t go away, but it got much better. I was placed on gabapentin for my anxiety (an off label use of it) and it miraculously took away all of the joint and muscle aches that perpetually plague me. I love gabapentin. It’s my favorite of my current drugs.
I had other setbacks along the way. When I did get sick, I got very sick, and wound up with pneumonia on the regular. I got mononucleosis one year, and it took me, well, I’ve never really recovered fully from that. The fatigue has lingered for years afterward. But when I first came down with that I was really very sick, and discovered that mono is not just about fatigue, but can cause spleen and liver problems too.
On the whole though, I hummed along through life needing lots of sleep but generally being functional. My health issues had a decided impact on my work and on my parenting, but they were manageable-ish. I got used to them anyway. I gave up on seeking any kind of answers and just adjusted to a life that required lots of sleep.
And then Covid hit. And all the manufacturers of sulfasalazine stopped manufacturing it. I don’t know the exact reason, but my sister who is a VP at a big pharmaceutical company and who understands things about Pharma manufacturing suspects that the raw ingredients needed to manufacture sulfasalazine are needed to manufacture drugs that are used to fight Covid. Whatever the reason, sulfasalazine stopped being available.
And my guts hate me for it. In fact, my whole system does. When I stopped taking sulfasalazine because I could no longer get it, my intestinal symptoms returned, and worse, my fatigue went off the charts. Like, needing a minimum of 14 hours of sleep a day every day is my jam now. My kids have been known to literally beg me not to take a nap because they miss me because I spend so much time sleeping. That absolutely kills me.
Over time, the GP who prescribed sulfasalazine for me has become less fabulous. I don’t know if she’s become jaded as she works in the field, or if it’s solely because I’ve gained a lot of weight (once upon a time I was a svelte size 2 in part because no food would stay in my digestive system for more than 20 minutes), but she does not treat me with respect anymore like she used to. All of my complaints about my fatigue have fallen on deaf ears.
And then my husband found a new GP within the practice, and recommended that I try him. Desperate, I agreed to try yet another new doctor. Lo and behold, this one is a true gem! He believes me. He’s taking it seriously. He’s noticing some weird things in my blood work that have been overlooked for years. He’s done enough blood tests on me to suck me drier than the mosquitoes in an arctic summer. He’s taking into account my reaction to going off of sulfasalazine, which is an immunosuppressant, and believes that I need an immunosuppressant. He is sending me to a rheumatologist because he believes that I have an autoimmune disease that is underlying all of my symptoms, he just doesn’t know which one. (My husband and I have believed for YEARS that I have an autoimmune disease but no one would take the idea seriously until now). He’s also sending me to another gastroenterologist – sigh – but it is time for another scoping. Yay.
I’m feeling hopeful again for the first time in many years. He just put me on a tapering dose of steroids to knock down the current state of inflammation in my system, and after just a couple of days of steroids I feel like a million bucks. Once again the intestinal pain has gone away, and I can stand up straight, and bend over, and generally just function without hurting. The fatigue is a little bit better too. I love steroids.
What does all of this mean for me as a foster parent? It means that I can never quite keep up. We have two kids during the week and three every weekend, and they’re all whirlwinds of mess makers. They are all high needs kids. They need a lot of attention, they need a lot of assistance, they need a lot of me. They come with service providers and case workers who need to come to the house regularly.
And I cannot keep up. The house is always a mess. It doesn’t help that I have ADHD and I’ve never been a good cleaner to begin with, but my medical issues and all my fatigue have a major impact on how much I can pour into keeping my house clean. When it comes right down to it, I would far rather play a game with the nine-year-old and sit and chat with the 16-year-old and let the three-year-old dress me up than clean. From where I am sitting, I am looking at squeaky dog snake on the floor, a diaper bag overflowing with random clothes, a pile of construction materials for our bathroom, a zillion bottles of the teenager’s Pepsi that don’t fit in the pantry, stacks of papers on the desk, and a whole hell of a lot of fur because it’s shedding season and we have a zoo.
Messy house places a strain on my husband to. During his super intense nursing school semesters, I have been on solo kid duty a lot during the day, meaning I’m responsible for all of the transportation and medical appointments and appointments with service providers and keeping up with the house and making dinner. Then he comes home at the end of an exhausting 12 hour shift at the hospital, and is faced with a mess and kids who need him immediately because they’re needy, and it’s an all out assault on the senses.
Thank God I am no longer working at the law firm. Now that sulfasalazine is not available and I am sleeping so many hours each day, it’s crucial that I have a flexible schedule and the ability to work from home. If I didn’t? I think I would need to be on disability. And I don’t have a diagnosis to make that possible yet. So far I am managing to juggle court appearances – most of which are virtual still – and meetings with kids who are my clients, and still managing to get enough sleep because I can nap with the toddler a lot of days, and can go to bed when my husband gets home in the evening.
Is it sustainable long-term? I don’t honestly know. I do hope that we can get to the bottom of some of my issues and that some other pharmaceutical that I have yet to meet will be able to make a difference for me like the sulfasalazine and steroids do.
My husband is about to start as a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital towards the end of June, and we will again have a two income household. I’ve been working for many months without getting paid because that’s the way the system works for attorneys for children, and the relief of having a steady paycheck coming in the door will be immense. (I will get paid eventually when cases get resolved). I have ultimate control over how much work I get just by telling the judges how much they can assign to me so I can keep my workload somewhat below full-time as needed. My kids are more important to me than anything, and I would far rather prioritize my precious awake time with them than work.
I’ve learned how to parent while horizontal on the couch. The toddler can still dress me up when I’m lying down, and appreciates the easy access to my face. The teenager stands and talks to me while I lie there. And the nine-year-old tends to snuggle up with me when she gets the chance. They’re resilient kids in so many ways, including accommodating my medical issues. Somehow? It all works. I wish I could run around with the kids the way I used to, and sincerely hope that a new drug will allow me to do so again.
But until then we will make do with a tired but very loving Mom.
I haven’t written a whole lot about visits and what happens during them or after them and it’s an important part of being a foster parent.
Kids in foster care still have visits with their families. Those visits can look a lot of different ways.
For some families they’re supervised at the Department of Children and Family Services. Most parents start out with visits there right after the kids are removed. A lot of families then move on to have visits at a facility run by an organization like Salvation Army, which here runs a facility called The Family Place. Visits at both DCFS and the Family Place are supervised visits, with a trained facilitator who monitors what is happening. At the Family Place they also assess how the parent is doing with the child or children, and then they can make a recommendation for what type ongoing assistance the parent(s) might need to get their kids back.
So for example, with Kiddo, visits started at DCFS, moved to the Family Place for four visits with each parent, a report was written about what skills the parents needed to work on in handling their child, and then the parents were referred to another facility where they could work with a supervisor who was trained to assist them in building any skills they needed to work on.
Ultimately, if things go well and parents are working their plans and kids are looking like they will go home, visits can move on to unsupervised. In theory, visit time with parents will increase at that point. Sometimes a service provider is added to help work on the bond between the parent and the child if it needs extra help.
But.
Things get tricky with visits in so many different ways. The above outline works great for kids who really are headed home. We’ve seen it work more than once, and it’s a beautiful process. But things in foster care are seldom neat and clean and scripted.
In our county, the stated “goal” is always “return to parent.” It stays that way until a termination of parental rights proceeding is actually filed. What that means is, you run into situations where everyone knows the child is not actually going home. The parent is not working their plan, or is not capable of achieving their goals because of mental limitations, or the parent is not getting off of drugs or alcohol, so the case worker, the foster parents, the judge all know that the child is very unlikely to ever return to the parent. But the stated goal remains the same until that termination proceeding is actually started. And visits continue until the termination proceeding is completed.
As an aside, not all counties work this way. I work in two counties as an attorney for the child, and one of the counties – the one we foster in – works this way. The other county is much more inclined to change the stated goal to match the actual progress of the case. It seems to be a cultural thing and is very frustrating to me in the county we foster in. But that’s neither here nor there.
What really matters is what happens to the kids around visits.
And visits are horrifically messy for kids.
All foster parents know and experience the Post Visit Fallout. After a visit with parents, kids can come home angry, fussy, irritable, hysterical, off their oats, destroying things, laughing hysterically, and crying a whole heck of a lot. We’ve experienced all those things with different kids. This post-visit state of affairs lasts for anywhere from a few hours, to almost a week.
For Tiny, visits with her family have been very sporadic during her time in foster care. A lot of that has to do with Covid, because the visit centers shut down. When she first came into foster care she went nearly 7 months without a visit. Then one of her therapists arranged a couple of visits at a park because she was frustrated that no visits had happened. After that, finally things opened back up at DCFS, so visits were happening every other Friday for an hour with just her Mama. Tiny returned from those visits positively chipper, and remarkably unfazed.
So two court dates ago, the caseworker recommended a change in the visit schedule, and requested unsupervised visits be allowed at Mama’s apartment so that Tiny could see all of her siblings, because the siblings could not be accommodated at DCFS because of Covid still. There was a little bit of back-and-forth in court about whether the visits were a good idea, but ultimately they were agreed to. I supported them. I knew Tiny missed her siblings. She’d carry around a photo of them that I laminated for her and point out each one, and talk about them.
So, we started with visits at Mama’s apartment with all of the siblings. And the wheels came off.
Something about the change in the visits really rocked Tiny’s world. She went from returning from visits all chipper and happy, to coming back crying hysterically for days on end about how much she missed her Mama and her siblings. She would be extremely clingy, needing to be held 24 hours a day for two full days after she returned from the visit. Then she would move on to just being weepy periodically. She’d be moving along through her day just fine and then suddenly stop, remember her family, and basically be brought to her knees by the recollection and weight of missing them.
This whole process would take about five days. On the sixth day, she’d be herself again. Then on the seventh day, there would be another visit.
We wound up having to go back to the court to request that visits be moved to every other week so that Tiny could have some recovery time between visits. If Tiny had been actually looking like she could be going home I wouldn’t have requested the change because the bonding time with her family was so important.
But right now, her Mama is not managing to do all of the things she needs to do to get Tiny back. Honestly, it doesn’t look like she’s capable of doing all of the things she needs to. It’s horrifically sad in so many ways. Tiny is a very, very, very well loved child. Her Mama loves her, her siblings absolutely adore and dote on her. But the home environment just isn’t what it needs to be for this medically fragile kid to go home. Anything can happen in foster care, and there’s still time for things to change, but that’s the way things look right now. And it’s hard to imagine how enough change could happen at this point.
If Tiny truly doesn’t go home, it means that Tiny is going to grow up missing her family and they are going to grow up missing her. It means Tiny isn’t going to grow up in her culture and is going to be stuck growing up with a white family who is trying hard but never quite able to achieve truly teaching her her culture. It means a tremendous amount of tragedy and heartbreak all around. It’s some thing I am wrestling with daily.
For now, we swing in foster care limbo. We suspect which way this case is going, but there’s still time and anything can happen in foster care, and I mean anything. For now the visits will go on every other week, with it taking a week for Tiny to recover after each one. Even though she just turned three yesterday, we are restarting her play therapy to see if there’s anything a therapist can do to help her process after visits. And we will of course keep loving on her and doting on her and wishing with all our hearts that visits weren’t so damn hard on this poor tiny little human.
It’s not really a day for me. I’m a foster mom, but am I really a “Mom”? I care for children who aren’t my own 365 days a year. I wipe butts and take care of them when they’re sick. I bathe them and buy them clothes and toys, I take them places, and honestly spoil them. I get sad when they’re sad and sing songs with them and march them to bed when it’s time each night.
But I didn’t birth them. I don’t have any legal rights to make decisions for them. I can’t even travel with them without getting permission. If motherhood is a bundle of rights and privileges, I’m clearly missing some of the sticks.
Mother’s Day is a hard day for my kids who are old enough to understand what it is. They miss their first moms. They wish they were with them even if they love me. It’s normal and natural and heartbreaking.
Mother’s Day is hard for people who had sucky Moms. Whether they’re in touch with them and feel obligated to come up with a gift, or whether they’re estranged and feel bad about what they missed out on as kids, it’s a hard day. Some people have traumatic memories of Mother’s Days from their pasts.
Mother’s Day is hard for Moms who have sucky relationships with their kids. Moms of drug addicts, and those who can’t be there because they’re incarcerated, and kids who are MIA, or inconsiderate, or just uncaring – it’s a hard day for those Moms. And it’s a horribly hard day for the Moms whose kids are in foster care. Or whose kids were adopted by someone else.
It’s a hard day for Moms who have lost their children any time from in utero to when they were adults. No parent should ever outlive their kids.
Mother’s Day is a hard day for women who want desperately to be mothers but are infertile.
It’s a hard day for women who have spent a lifetime nurturing other people’s kids as aunties and godparents and teachers and mentors but chose not to have children, or couldn’t have children of their own. Those women deserve credit too.
Mother’s Day is centered around this myth that somehow reproducing makes one superior to other women. It puts women who breed on a pedestal… regardless of whether they deserve to be there. And it excludes a lot of women who should be on pedestals for all their nurturance and mentoring.
Mother’s Day sometimes sucks for two-Mom households. Which Mom gets pampered? Neither in reality, if the kids are young.
Mother’s Day sucks for the trans women who get overlooked and not told “happy Mother’s Day,” especially if they know some clueless human is bound to wish them happy Father’s Day the following month. And the non-binary parents? They don’t get a day at all.
I know it’s a day of joy and fun for some women and to those women I wish a wholehearted Happy Mother’s Day! Enjoy your children and may it be a sunny day!
For the rest of the women? I see you. I’m so sorry it’s a hard day. You’re entitled to your feelings, whatever they may be. Be gentle with yourself. And know Monday will be here soon.
Look at this gorgeous creation by my friend Brooke at PippiLu Designs! Sweet with cupcake fabric just because of my blog.
Cupcake sweetness. Ignore the furry well loved bench it’s on. Bonus foot for fun.Drink in that rich blue accent fabricCupcakes with a handy back zip pocket
It’s a “busy bag,” in which we will keep a coloring book and markers and a book or two and a toy or two. We can grab it any time we are headed to a restaurant or church or anyplace where we need to keep Tiny entertained for a little while. It’ll always be stocked and ready to be grabbed for any outing. Every parent of little kids needs one of these!
Brooke is a fabric GENIUS. Seriously. Look at this gusseted pocket.
Gusset perfection
Dude. I’ve been sewing since I was a little kid. I have made fancy gowns, and costumes for musical theater in college, quilts, bags, you name it. But this is a thing of beauty. A work of art. And it would elude me entirely.
Terrrrrrible quality photo but I made this Victorian “lady of the night” gown on…
this 1950s Singer bent needle sewing machine. It was a labor of love and an exercise in frustration.
I also got my face masks from PippiLu, and some fantastic toddler t-shirts back when she was making them. One of which was a magnificently beautiful portrait of Kiddo on a swing.
Framable art. I love the wild abandon she captured.
I daily use a PippiLu Ruth Bader Ginsburg “twinkle” wallet that is also amazingly perfect.
I also have one of her cat butt bags, which are freaking hilarious.
Anywho, if you need a busy bag for your toddler, or a cat butt bag of your very own, or a facemark that is designed so you won’t inhale fabric when you breathe or speak, or a whole host of other magnificent fabric creations, I shamelessly plug PippiLu Designs!
It’s such an amazing honor to be called “Mom” or any variation thereof. I get a little frisson of joy every time the big kids say it in particular. Even when it’s uttered in a tone of exasperation. Ha!
I feel like Miss Kicks has always been a part of our family. Like she was meant to be here. Like she belongs. She’s a joy to parent and spend time with. Yesterday she had a doctors appointment that lasted 2 1/2 hours (there’s nothing wrong, they’re just Very Thorough and Slow) and then we had to fly home to get Tiny from daycare and drive all the way back to the city to drop Tiny off for a visit with her family. By then Miss Kicks and I were self digesting, so we found fast food on our way home. All told, we spent about 2 1/2 hours in the car together in addition to the time at the Doctor’s. Miss Kicks remained great company the whole time, cheerfully enduring all the driving, being a great DJ. We chatted and laughed and sang along to songs and just enjoyed each other’s company. Somehow I feel like not many 16 year olds would have taken that day in stride and remained cheerful the whole time!
Then Kiddo joined us in the evening and Miss Kicks took that in stride too, being an endlessly patient big sister to our whirlwind-of-chaos middle kid.
She’s amazing. Seriously.
One day last week I received the following texts from Miss Kicks, just after her sociology class:
Apparently they showed a film in her sociology class about meat processing and it didn’t sit too well with our Miss Kicks.
I laughed a long time, looked wistfully at the chicken in my fridge, and drew up a new meal plan and grocery list. My husband has been wanting to go vegetarian for a long time, and I’ve been resisting. But with the two of them as a united force, I’ve got to cave. It’s way better for us to eat lots of vegetables and less meat anyway, soooo, it’s happening. Miss Kicks, who was previously a super picky eater, has been great about trying new vegetables (just not Brussels sprouts) and has been finding she likes most of them. I’ve joined a recipe site called Delish.com and am finding some excellent recipes there. I ordered a vegetarian cookbook too but it’s… well… stereotypical vegetarian dishes, and they’re a bit out there. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. But delish.com has saved the day and given me two of the best recipes I’ve ever made so far.
Here’s one of them. Not good for one’s heart or waistline but good golly miss molly, it’s to die for cheesy goodness with veggies hidden inside that even the pickiest kid will eat.
This is the other amazing recipe: veggie enchiladas. We splurged on really good enchilada sauce which helped I’m sure, but these are packed with veggies if you serve them with the extra veggie toppings. I added sour cream as a side too just to make it more decadent. And they’re fantastic. Restaurant quality good.
So there you have it. What we have on our hands is a cheerful, good natured, funny, smart, vegetarian 16 year old. ❤️
Our teen (who I’ve dubbed “Miss Kicks” because she has a pretty epic sneaker collection) still hasn’t started school but she’s registered and ready to go. She’s excited to start! When the guidance counselor called to tell me they were ready for her to start on Wednesday, she noted she was “excited about her good grades” in a shocked tone. I internally thought that I wanted the guidance counselor to keep her stereotypes about foster kids off my sweet smart teenager, but verbally said “Yes, she’s a good student, isn’t she?” I’m glad Miss Kicks is challenging the stereotypes. And truly the guidance counselor sounds quite nice and like she’s got a good plan for Miss Kicks’s introduction to the new school, so I’m giving her a pass.
Miss Kicks and I have spent several days doing girly things like getting her hair professionally braided, manicures and pedicures, and shopping. She’s got some magnificent long box braids, new clothes for school, and killer pink butterfly claws. We’ve driven around listening to her music at high volume (I now know most of the lyrics to WAP 😂) and drinking Starbucks, and I’ve had the chance to notice a few things. Like how Miss Kicks saw someone at the mall drop some change, picked it up, and returned it to her. And when she found clothes falling off hangers at Marshall’s she neatly straightened them so the sales people didn’t have to.
At home, Miss Kicks is endlessly patient with Kiddo and Tiny, and she refers to them as “my sisters,” and it makes my heart feel all melty. Kiddo refers to Miss Kicks as her sister too. Miss Kicks is silly and goofy and so much fun with the littler girls. When Kiddo and Miss Kicks get together the volume is set to As Loud As Human Girls Can Get, with lots of shrieking and laughter.
This isn’t a Kiddo weekend, but Kiddo was having a rough time with some family stuff so we picked her up today for a little lunch and overnight getaway. As we all sat around the table at Coppertop, with Kiddo and Miss Kicks chatting and giggling, and Kiddo getting some much needed hugs from Seth, and Tiny chatting to me about her French fries, I looked around and thought, “I’m having lunch with my four favorite humans in the world. It feels like a little bitty noisy miracle.”
Life is good. And god damn I love my foster and former foster kids. For all the stress and heartache it sometimes causes, becoming foster parents is the best decision Seth and I have ever made.
sprinklesonachaoscupcake.com 