Affair of the heart

Today we did Valentine’s Day cards for class and the last to send out to friends and family. I bought cute items to send to her two half-sisters and she helped pick out several cards to send to family. I tried to be low key about it all and let her decide who got what.

Of course that didn’t work because she basically put off everything, not wanting to write all the names for the cards for her class. They are having a big party on Valentine’s Day that ties into something they are studying, so I helped out with a bunch of fun stuff for the party. Once she saw that, I got her in the Valentine’s mood.

She has this stack of cards and asks me what to do with them. We go over the usual suspects and I mention her birth grandmother and birth mother. Her birth grandmother has been very supportive so she was all for sending her a card. However, she was very hesitant about sending one to her firstmom who has been pretty absent from her life due to illness and some reasons we don’t know. I could be snotty and say her birthmom has been MIA because she simply wanted to be but I’m trying hard to not be judgemental - even in my own head.

HH cut her eyes at me and says no, she doesn’t want to send a card. She is looking for a reaction from me. I just stay neutral and say ok. I told her we had a card if she wanted to send it but she didn’t have to. When I seemed to give her permission, she immediately wanted to send it.

She asked me what to put on the card, should she put her birthmom’s first name (for background she usually calls her by her first name or ‘momma’ first name)? I shrugged vaguely and said whatever you want. She cut her eyes to me again and said I’m going to write Mom ok? I smiled and said fine fine.

Yes, it was fine really. Inside my heart stung a bit, part of me wants to be the ‘alpha mom’ and wants her to forget her birthmom. It is a mean thought, I know that. I’m not a saint and I’m not going to pretend I don’t get jealous or have really crappy feelings. I’m an only child who sucks are sharing. I don’t act on them and that is the key. Having those feelings are pretty natural, you just have to get past them and do the right thing.

I know if she has her first family in her life, she will grow up healthier. Having them in her life let’s her really believe that she wasn’t dumped and disregarded, she was placed for adoption because they loved her enough to make the decision to let go. I want her to be a whole person, not one with big gaps in her heart.

She can call her firstmom ‘mom’ and that is ok. Her birthmom is her mom - she gave birth to her and I will always be grateful that she made the choice to carry this child.

Mom is really just a word and every day I grow more confident of my role as her mother and need titles less.

House of hard knocks

It has been a tough two weeks in our house. We are trying to teach our daughter how to work more independently as well as be more accountable. Maybe that sounds a bit over zealous for dealing with an almost eight year old but she has never had to deal with either of those issues. The lack of ability or really familiarity with them causes her problems in school and to a lesser extend at home.

When she would have been exposed to that as a younger child, her birth family was chaos. Her foster family did a wonderful job but their work was mostly putting out the fires in her emotional well being. After everything she has been through, people often don’t expect much from her but that does her no good in growing up and being a productive person. She needs expectations to be put on her, she needs to be pushed some.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not out there driving her like a sled dog but we do expect she step up to challenge of conducting herself appropriately. It isn’t just abused kids that can fall into this trap - I’ve seen kids who weren’t abused at all but were spoiled and weren’t expected to manage their behaviors and actions turn out to be self-involved, rude and cold people.

The biggest problem is she doesn’t want to do homework on her own. We believe in making school work fun - you can’t learn when you are arguing, so our efforts have gone towards engaging her in the process. We have stacks of books, games, workbooks, programs and such to entice her to learn. She is allowed to do homework sitting next to us or even in my lap. However, we have found that she will ask for help before she even needs it.

Understand that this is a child with no developmental delay or learning disabilities. She has been tested by experts over two days to determine her IQ and learning potential are just like everyone else. She does have mild ADHD but we work hard to help with that as well. Her deficiencies were more related to simply being behind. She has had a tutor for over a year and made amazing progress. Yesterday in fact she came up another reading level, her fourth this school year, and she is now at the benchmark (minimum) for her class. We don’t want her hovering at the minimum but she was far behind it. In 13 months, she’s gone from a 1-2 reading level to 19-20 - pretty dang great!

When she was younger, we definitely helped more with getting concepts down, especially in math. Now we expect her to give it a try before she cries ‘uncle’ and we are not going to listen to her argue with us when she is wrong. It is sort of funny but mostly completely annoying when a seven year old tries to tell you that you are wrong about basic math concepts.

The second semester of second grade, we’ve decided she needs to work on her homework and bring it to us when she is done for checking. We are no longer going to go problem by problem and bicker. We made it clear that was how things were going to go and just to hammer the message home, we decided to let her screw up royally for a few weeks.

We’ll remind her she has to do homework but we will not have fights to get her to do her homework. That is HER job, she is a part of this family and needs to do her part. So if she ignores us or blows it off, fine - she can suffer the consequences of failing her spelling test and of her teacher being mad she didn’t do homework. She is young enough where people being mad or disappointed in her is still something that upsets her. And of course, if you are failing, you can’t have friends over to play, you aren’t going to the movies, etc. We fully intend to structure her homework time more firmly in the future but for now, we are using this as a teaching tool.

She appears to be slowly getting the message. She did most of her homework on her own and brought it to me to be checked. A lot of it was wrong so I helped her with a few hints and sent her back to work it out. Most of it she worked out on her own, to her great pride. A small victory for both us of - she is learning how smart and capable she really is. Of course on Thursday she pulled some more junk and at bedtime, she realized she was not done and would have to turn it in incomplete. She was very unhappy so we hope she learned something with that one too.

So we’ll start this all over again on Monday and see how it goes.

Things I hope to say

Saturday morning we are speaking to a group of people who are about to finish their MAPP training with Children’s Home Society. The end of this training means once their paperwork is done and approved, they are licensed foster parents and officially in line to adopt from foster care.

This will be our second time speaking to them - I say “our” and “we” but my husband is quiet and my daughter clammed up last time (she’s seven). I’m naturally very talkative so I’ll be doing most of the talking per usual.

The first time we did this it was not good. Everyone involved told us it was just fine but I didn’t get the chance to really say the things I wanted to say because all the kids came down just as I launched into the meat of my talk. I didn’t want to share even sanitized details in front of children.

This time I hope to share with these folks that YES they are on the right path and that great kids are just waiting for families out there. I want to tell them to be patience, listen to their social workers and be realistic about what they can handle. I want to tell them that the best tools they have are love and time. The two of those things can work wonders.

I want to impress on them that these kids can be hard work but oh the rewards can be amazing. I want to tell them to read everything they can get their hands on and go to every workshop they can because you never know what will help.

I want to explain how important counseling is, for their children and for their family. Children’s Home Society has a staff counselor who does one on one and family sessions. She is amazing (big props out to Jody) and unlike any other therapist I’ve ever seen, is available by phone and email whenever you need her. CHS offers this free - I want to tell new parents to grab hold of these services and any others.

I’ll challenge them to be advocates for their child at school, with teachers and administration. To make sure their child is in the best environment they can be and to be as involved as possible.

I plan to open up about how we’ve tried to maintain birth ties. That you have to put this child’s needs first and if contacting their birth family is a positive, keep the communication going. Save everything, even copies of what you and your child send. Don’t condemn but don’t sugar coat the truth. Most of the time, these kids know what happened even if they don’t know all the worlds.

And I’ll ask them not to hide their adoption. Sharing about adoption is healthy, don’t isolate yourself or your child from the adoption issues. Adoption involves loss and foster adoption is never the ideal solution - but it is the best solution in many cases. Honor the good and bad but don’t hide from it. Be proud of how your family was made, in all ways.

Who knows if I’ll get this all out but I’m sure gonna try.

Clothing wars

Iwant my daughter to stay young as long as possible. Her early childhood went by too quickly and she had to deal with things a child shouldn’t. In the past, she was confused - old and young at times. Young because she missed so many things, old because of what she was exposed to. That exposure made her inclined towards some more adult things, especially her taste in clothes.

It is also not uncommon for foster and former foster kids to regress some. They missed big chunks of childhood and if they are going to heal and bond, they need to fill in some of those gaps. Letting my daughter go back and “play” as if she is younger, or even her regressing in small ways in terms of development isn’t a bad thing. I want to slow things down for her, slow down her childhood.

When I go into clothing stores, I’m looking for clothes that reflect where I want her to be now. It is so easy to go into a store these days and see clothes for children that look like they are for a hooker - or at least a much older teenager.

I will NOT by my almost 8 year old shorts with an inseam shorter than her finger length.

I see black leather, bikinis, nightgowns that looks like a teddy. My friend told me Babies R Us has tube/halter tops FOR TODDLERS. They call that stuff “prosti-tot” clothing. When did we decide it was ok to do this to kids?

In this house, children don’t wear heels, we don’t wear super short skirts or shorts. I understand she is a girl who loves to dress up but there is a way to do that without looking inappropriate.

My friend with a nine year old is already hearing those toxic comments when they shop for clothes - like her body looks hot, she doesn’t want to get fat and she needs to work on her thighs. The mom is doing everything right in raising her daughter to be a healthy woman - but the TV/society commentary about what you should look like comes through. At nine, the daughter is already worried about her body and attractiveness.

Another foster mother reminded me of the shoes out now. Platforms for kids? Heels? What happened to mary janes and little flats?? And why are parents letting kids where those horrid shoes - how can little girls play with heels anyway? They’ll fall right now - HH snuck out to play in flip flops for the house only and got hurt b/c she had no foot support.

This is all gone too far. We need as a society to slow things down for girls. For children like my daughter, the speed needs to slow even more but all girls are vulnerable to this society exposure to what your body should look like.

For women - mothers, aunts, sisters whoever reading this, remember young girls listen to you when you talk about your body, shopping for clothes and dressing. When you look in the mirror and highlight your negatives, young girls hear that and try to fit themselves into the situation - how do their legs looks? Are they pretty enough? Next time you are around a mirror and young girl, point out the GOOD things about your bodies for once.

Look at the magazines in your house, the shows you want, the music you listen to - what messages does that give girls about their bodies and themselves? Be careful, more things are negative influences than you think.

Background about our family, part IV

Our first foster care and adoption education class, called MAPP (Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) classes was tonight. I was excited and nervous but I didn’t know what to expect or who to expect.

The classes were being held at Children’s Home Society’s Raleigh Office and being run by two social workers. Both seemed very pleasant and one happened to be the very social worker we met at county DSS foster meeting.

The room had about 10 couples and a single woman. The group had young and old couples, couples of several races and a lesbian couple. We went over about the rules of the sessions, the schedules and what the goals were of the classes. We got big binders with worksheets (egads - homework) and were ready to roll.

One thing we learned more about was the process to get approved for adoption. They license you for foster care as well so you can get the children out of their other foster placement as quickly as possible. Also, there is something…