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glockenbear
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Name: Alice
Gender: Female
Interests: prayer and worship, travelling, eating ethnic foods, harp, piano, & organ, planning parties and events, hanging out
Expertise: forgetting where I last left my keys (drives Wally crazy)
Occupation: Artist
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/19/2004
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| Find updates on facebook (look at Notes). It seems like a museum here! Does anyone still check xanga?
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| Sometimes it's strange to parent a foster child (or adoptive child). It's different than parenting your own biological child.
My baby has gone through so many losses and changes in her life, it's no wonder that it's hard for her to trust. Don't get me wrong. She is a beautiful, sweet girl who smiles a lot and can be quite charming. But she has experienced more loss than my own kids have ever had...she has lost her parents, she has moved 3 times - from her home, to the children's shelter, to a foster home, and finally to my home. She has had 3 different social workers. She has had different doctors. She's been dropped off at different places for visits, respite care, appointments, etc.
When she first came to me, she hardly ever cried. She wouldn't even cry when she was hungry. How did I know that she was hungry? When she actually saw the bottle of milk in front of her, she would actually allow herself to cry a little bit in relief. I had to watch the clock to make sure that I feed her because I didn't get much cues from her.
She has a hard time maintaining eye contact and engaging with someone for very long, especially the primary caregiver. Perhaps it's because there's been so much broken trust, that it's hard for her to allow herself to connect or attach to someone. Even now, after 4 weeks, it's still hard for her to look at someone for an extended period of time. She will invariably look away. Wally reminds me that it takes time, and it's not her fault. She's not purposefully doing this, but it's defense mechanism. It's not something she can change easily.
As a foster parent, I try not to let her cry - because if she has a need, I want to show that her needs can be met. This helps establish trust, which takes time. So, that means I pick her up even when she starts making any sounds. But she hardly ever cries - perhaps because it takes trust to cry - to express a need in hopes that it can be met.
I can tell that she is tense when she goes to a new place. I wonder what she's thinking. Is she wondering if she is getting dropped off and left with someone else again?
Today, when I took her to a new place (my daughter had a writing class), she started crying. I had not heard her cry much (except one other time, but that's another situation too complicated to explain) but in my eyes, it's a good thing. It means that she trusts me enough to express that she has a need. I just held her to let her know that she didn't need to be scared, and that I wasn't going to leave her there.
I don't know what's in store for her future, but I pray that God will be watching over her and that whatever happens will be for her best. | | |
| We are in the midst of packing and moving in preparation for our remodeling project. There were boxes everywhere and half-packed stuff, with one wall of boxes destined for storage and another wall of boxes of stuff that we think we would need in the next 4-6 months. It's amazing that we have so much stuff...and I was hoping by turning over every single item in the house that our lost library book would show up, but it hasn't yet. I don't think it's in our house (my daughter had lent it out, but they don't think they have it). Oh well.
In the midst of it all, we had a social worker visit this morning. It was a gargantuan effort to clean up the house enough so our house doesn't look like big safety hazard, let me tell you. This was to be the first home visit for the baby's social worker, so it was a Big Deal. But as we were talking to her about the case, I asked about the progress of the case plan, and she said that the birth mother was working very hard to bring the baby home.
I think it gave me great pause. Yes, that's what we've been praying for, right? When Wally and I brought our baby home, we committed to praying for her birth parents, that they would be able to be better parents and clean up their lives. Yet, on the other hand, we have fallen in love with this beautiful, sweet baby girl who smiles all the time. We would love to have her as a permanent part of our family. If we have to give her up, I think we would be very sad...for a long time.
Hearing the social worker's update, I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. Of course, anything can change as this is very early in the process. On the one hand, I believe that every child desires to (and should) be with their parent...but here is a child whom I know the daily ins and outs. I can tell when she is happy, or sad, or scared or tired. I play with her, read to her, take her on outings, sing to her, feed her, clean up after she spits up all over the place, play piano for her...it will be hard indeed to give her up as I can see that she's starting to become attached to me. And on the other hand, I can only imagine what the birth mother could be going through. If I were in her shoes, I would be absolutely devastated. It's not easy.
Yet, this is the road that God has taken us to. With the conviction that God has taken us this far, we trust that He knows best, even if it means that we were just to be with her for just a short time. There's too much to think about, so many unknowns and too many if's, that I have to just lay it all down and just trust that He will give us what we need to do what we have to do...it's the only thing that I can do.
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| One of the expected, yet unexpected things that I have discovered about being a foster parent is the sudden change in schedule. I knew there were going to be parental visits, and appointments, and the such. I guess I didn't realize how much it can add to my schedule.
Parental visits can range from none to multiple times per week. Since I have opted to remain anonymous to the parent for safety reasons, it's an interesting system that they have worked out. One scenario that I've done is to drop the baby off with the social worker 10 minutes before the parent arrives, and come back 10 minutes after the parent leaves. They also have a special visitation location where there are separate entrances for the foster parents and birth parents with separate doors, so you can drop the child off without seeing the parent. All of these are supervised with surveillance cameras and security guards. It caught me a bit off guard, but I after thinking about it, it makes sense. Being a little bit on the paranoid side, we were thinking that perhaps we should check and make sure that we aren't being tailed by someone. 
I'm also responsible for the regular doctor visits. It's a good thing I've done this before, so I knew to make the doctor's appointment ahead of time. Unfortunately, her previous doctor is across town. I tried to change her doctor, but the social worker seemed to discourage it. Oh well. 
And then there's monthly appointments with the baby's social worker, with my foster resource team, for special assessments and medical and court-appointed appointments and foster support group focus meetings (and not to mention the other support meetings which I'd like to go to but haven't found time to attend yet)...I suddenly found myself last week getting off the phone just to get back on the phone with 4 different people making appointments or discussing various issues. Thank goodness the kids have been very flexible (for the most part) because *they* also get dragged along as I squeeze appointments in between theirs and my activities.
The good thing is that I just quit my teaching position at the preschool to spend more time with the baby (and evidently to drive around town for her appointments).
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| When we were taking our 10-week PRIDE class (a pre-req class for applying to be a foster or fost-adopt parent), we were given a somewhat depressing picture of foster kids. They all have issues because they have been removed from their family for a reason, whether it's neglect, violence, abuse (in all different forms), and many others. They all seem to experience some level of developmental delay, whether it is physically, academically, emotionally, or socially. There's different challenges including fetal alcohol syndrome or prenatal drug exposure, oppositional defiant disorder, inability to bond or attach, trauma...you name it, we seemed to be inundated with information. It really scared the bejeebers out of Wally and me.
Wally and I discussed why we wanted to adopt. In our eyes, it seemed like there were two different camps of adoptive parents - one that wanted to make a difference in a kid's life, and one that wanted to add to their family. We weren't sure that we were that noble or unselfish that we would be able to do the former. Having a strong-willed child already, I had a small glimpse of what a child with real ODD could be like. Yikes.
Yet, whether it's stupidity, naivete, or blind faith in a God who was leading us along this treacherous path, here we are...with a precious, beautiful baby who depends on us to provide for her needs, physical and emotional. Having attended classes on parenting special needs children and attachment disorders and everything else, it just seems so different when confronted with a real child. These are real children, who are valued by God, and it's not their fault they have issues.
One of things that is different about raising a foster child is that it's important to develop trust and attachment early on. With your own birth child, it tends to happen naturally because attachment begins in the womb. Because foster children have been moved around so much (for my child, it's going from birth parents to children's shelter, to foster home, and our home is the second foster home), it's hard for them to trust. And my child hasn't been moved around that much - there are other foster kids who have been to multiple foster homes. So no wonder, they have a hard time attaching because once they trust someone, that person would disappear from their lives.
From what I have learned, it's important for me as a primary caregiver to respond to the baby's need immediately, so that she will trust that her needs will be taken care of. This means not allowing her to cry for any extended period of time (which is a bit different than how I was with my other two daughters). This means carrying her as much as possible, having a lot of eye-to-eye contact and touch.
With that in mind, there have been a few things that we've been doing. The first 5 nights, I slept in her room just to make sure that I could respond as quickly as possibly until I understood her schedule. The good thing is that she slept through the night from day one (she used to wake up once/night in her former foster home), and woke up around 5-6 am (which is not a problem since I'm a morning person and am up by 4:30 or 5 am naturally anyways - call me strange!).
I've been trying infant massage (trying to remember all the things I learned back when I took a class with Karissa) and singing to her. She seems to enjoy massage, as she would stop wiggling around enough to let me massage her legs and body. I try to maintain eye contact while feeding her bottle. I notice that when she first came to me, she couldn't maintain eye contact while drinking milk. She would be looking all over the place except at me. But now, she can sustain about 10 seconds or so now every so often, which is an improvement.
She is actually a very easy baby (which could be interpreted in different ways - perhaps she was used to not getting her needs met and gave up; or maybe that's just her personality) and doesn't complain much. So when she does cry, I know that there's something that she needs. It's a matter of figuring out what it is.
One thing that is very interesting is that she's potty-trained, sort of. You know how Asians potty train kids early on? Well, her former foster mom figured out her pooping schedule and had her poop on the toilet twice a day at a certain time. That's pretty amazing for 5 months since my kids were potty trained after 2 years old! Well, that's one habit I wanted to keep up! Except that it's not that simple. Since she's been starting solids, she's pooping at different times. However, I have successfully gotten her to poop in the toilet a couple times. The day before, I was feeding her milk and she stopped to cry. Since she doesn't cry very often, I was trying to figure out what was wrong. It seemed like she was trying to tell me something. I had a sense that she needed to go, and so I took her to the toilet, and go she did! Success! I'm still trying to understand her language...and for those who think there's too much poop in this story, I'm sorry. The great upside is that I save a diaper! (Clean up is actually significantly easier too.)
Other things that we are choosing to do is to not leave her in the nursery...at least not yet. We want her to bond to us as parents, especially me as her mother.
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