Foster Further

 I spoke with a therapist today about everything that happened over the last two days. Her responses were deeply insightful.  Some key take-aways.  In an open adoption with healthy adults involved we can expect the child to display some signs of grief after a family visit. They may be whiny or tired or irritable. This is to be expected and can be supported and the child can work through their grief over time.  The physical disassociation from her body that Jane experienced after the call with birth grandma goes beyond grief. She had a trauma response. It would not be healthy to repeatedly re-traumatize her with more visits.  Grandma is not a positive person, nor is she trust-worthy. The therapist was extremely disturbed the breaches of trust in the past (trying to sneak the grandkids into contact with her son, against court orders; sharing private pictures I was only sending to her with people not allowed to see them). Every time Grandma expressed fears that I'd...

 When I'm deeply frustrated with our daughters' birth family I go in search of blogs about adoption. I'm looking for that perfect blog that tells me the whole story over years and years. The blog that reveals how it all turned out in the end. That honest blog that is honest about how difficult and frustrating these relationships are and then reveals how every decision the adoptive family made turned out in the end.  It makes me feel panicky to be in the middle of this story. I want to know the end. I desperately want to flip to the last page and skim it to find out--everyone still okay? alive? whole? healthy?  But, since it isn't an option to flip to the end of my life story, I keep browsing adoption blogs hoping someone else out there has told their story. I haven't found what I'm looking for, yet. Either adoption blogs are written from the adopter's perspective and they start out hyper idyllic and then quickly fade away, or, the blog is from the perspectiv...

Jane and I talked during her bath and just had a first-ever conversation. It was more insightful and mature and real and transparent and genuine than any conversation I think we've ever had. I am truly bowled over. Because what she told me was absolutely not what I expected her to say. Background 1: Jane is 4 and hyper-vigilant and eager-to-please. She watches me closely and will say absolutely anything if she believes it's what I want to hear. It makes it really hard for me to have genuine conversations with her. I've worked hard to train myself to keep a neutral tone and use open-ended questions and speak slowly with no hint at what I want to find out. Background 2: Jane has no concept of time. She uses terms like day, week, month, year, tomorrow, yesterday all interchangeably with little concept of their meanings. For example, she'll say, "I missed that tomorrow but now I'll get to do it yesterday." Or, "a few weeks ago when I was a baby..." N...

We saw Grandma J, the girls' paternal grandmother, today for the first time in 4-5 months. We met at a park we've met at before. The weather was first muggy and then it rained so, thankfully, the park was nearly empty. I had masks on the kids when we got out of the car and told them we'd wear masks while saying hello and hugging but then they could take them off to play. Of course within a few minutes of taking masks off they were still right next to her as she pushed them on the swings, etc. So, really, the masks were useless. My three are very obedient and used to mask wearing but I'd challenge anyone to keep face masks on three little kids on a playground (which makes me wonder about next school year...but that's another topic altogether.) I didn't tell the kids they were going to see her until we were in the car. I've decided I'll always give the girls some prep but less than 24 hours so they don't obsess over a visit beforehand but also so they ...

Jane was super cuddly today. The weather turned hot and we don't yet have the window AC units in so bedrooms were too warm last night and nobody slept well. Today was a lethargic day. I was quite busy with work and dr appts so didn't really have time for Jane till evening. At bedtime we had fans set up in windows and she and I were sprawled on her bed talking and enjoying the breeze, when Jane began to talk about Leah, her first mother, as we call her. Her speech is all over the place. Sometimes she uses pronouns "we" and "you" to differentiate between Leah's house and our house. For example, she said, "we have only two cartoons: Robot GoBot and Paw Patrol but you have lots and lots of cartoons." That present tense 'we have' cut me to the quick. But then in her next sentence she says she loves me most and Leah "only a little" because Leah was "mean" and "didn't feed us a lot, she fed us sometimes but n...

It's been months since I looked at the FB profiles of the girls' birth family members. It just isn't a good thing for me to do. Takes me to a sad, dark place full of loathing and fear because these people all live in this area. They all get new FB profiles constantly, there are 3 or 4 per person. Which, if I can find them that easily, what is the point of starting a new one? If you friend all the same people and make that public then it's pretty darn easy for anyone you're hiding from to still find you. And no, spelling your name a new way isn't actually a cover. Anyway, I found a profile for their birth mother that I hadn't seen previously. Looks like she just created it recently. In it was a cute picture of baby Kate at about 3 months old. I wanted the picture so I copied the image and then saved it in a file. I'm sure that when the girls are grown they're going to wonder what they looked like as infants. This seemed like an innocuous and nice ...

Today I was snuggling Kate at a random moment during the day. She asks me to hold her at least 5-10 times per day. It's usually for just a few minutes. Sometimes I feel like a human heater--that she just needs a moment to warm up before dashing off pell mell. Or maybe a human charger--she needs to re-energize? So, this morning I was holding her and something she said led me to, out of the blue, ask her if she wanted to see Grandma. She said no. We talked a bit more and she was sad but clear in her thoughts. When I asked her why she didn't want to see Grandma anymore she said, "Because I want to always stay here with you." Which, from a 3 yr old, is about the clearest definition of bonding I can think of. Now, of course I take all this with a grain of salt. She's only 3 and has a personality that's prone to please. She can be easily swayed to say absolutely anything. And, she could change her mind tomorrow. If Grandma pulled up in her car and said, "wa...

For the very first time I lied to a birth family member. I've been brutally honest even when it caused an uproar. I've been honest because I was personally committed to always telling the truth. Until now. Because this lie may actually be the best way to preserve Jane's relationship with her birth family. At our last video call with Grandma Jane seemed uninterested, unengaged, not showing any real emotion. I struggled to find things to prompt her to talk about. Over the next two weeks I waited and she never asked for another call. In the third week I casually brought up the topic and she did not really respond, certainly didn't ask for another call. Finally, yesterday I point blank asked if she wanted to do a video call and she said the word yes but her whole body language said no. It was clear that she was saying yes because she thought she was supposed to, not because she wanted to. So, I took her body language rather than her words and made the decision that we...

Strange how isolating ourselves from all social contact has somehow filled our days. Maybe it's spring coming and lots to do outside; maybe it's Theo's scheduled 4-week break from work and the big list of household projects he's working on. Maybe it's both the effort and importance of maintaining social contact now--even a ten minute chat across the fence with a neighbor feels important now, like it's the highlight of the whole day so it fills the day more than it once would have. For whatever reason, I feel busier now than I did last January when I had nothing to do but stew about how incompetent our social workers were. The only part of the foster/adoption issue that is coming to mind these days is how desperately grateful I am that my girls are not in their birth mother's home during a pandemic. I think there's every chance she would've killed them. I'm not kidding. She was already falling apart, neglect to the point of losing custody is no ...

In the week after the adoption was finalized I first called Aunt (Grandma's sister, though much younger so closer to my age) and told her about it. She had some tears and big emotions and it was a long, draining phone call but one of those good-draining experiences where you hang up knowing you've shared something important and are closer to that person for it. That same week I scheduled a visit with Grandma and gave her a letter Theo and I had written about a month before and honed over time to be as kind but clear as possible about our boundaries and plans now that the girls were officially our daughters. I chose a letter for Grandma because she is scatter-brained in conversation and avoids any difficult topic like the plague. I knew she wouldn't really "hear" me if I tried to talk to her initially (it's also a pattern for her to "not hear" any information she doesn't want to have to follow later). But, I both began and ended the letter wit...

During our visit with Grandma today Jane was really pissy. Flat out angry. If Grandma asked her a question she would stare right at her but not answer until I prompted her to. But even as she was pissy she was also whiny and clingy--insisting on holding Grandma's hand in a babyish voice and then yanking incessantly on Grandma while we walked. It's a regression to behavior she only ever displays when with Grandma. I've learned to pretty much ignore it because we only see Grandma for a few hours per month now. It ceases as soon as we leave the visit. After we got home I decided to try to talk to Jane about it since she's been interested in talking through her feelings with me lately. I opened the topic in an as-neutral-as-possible way and just invited her to talk. After chatting a bit I asked her how she felt. She did the super fake smile and said she felt happy. I just flat out countered her by saying, "Really? Your face didn't look happy to me." That...

The day after the adoption was finalized I call Aunt and told her the news. It was never going to be an easy phone call and I didn't want to see underhanded in any way by delaying. I mean, it's not like this was a surprise; they knew the adoption was imminent. Aunt was very nice. Saying all kinds of nice things about our family and how happy the girls are now. I'm grateful for her continued support. She's a great liaison between me and grandma on difficult topics. After calling Aunt I contacted Grandma and set up our next monthly visit for today. We met at the mall after church. There's an indoor kiddie playground that my three love to romp around in while we adults chat. The minute Grandma walked in I knew that she already knew about the adoption. Her sister probably called the second we hung up. Grandma was extremely subdued and weird--she tried to sneak in without Jane seeing her in order to generate a big response by surprising Jane. The girls always act v...

Tomorrow we tell Grandma that the adoption was finalized. I've been preparing a letter we will give her that a) thanks her for continuing to be a part of their lives, b) assures her we want that to continue, and c) outlines our boundaries going forward. I'll talk this through in person but I also wanted to give her a letter so she'd have something concrete to read if she became too emotional while we were talking and also so she could show it to others in her life who could help her understand. I've already called the Aunt and told her about the adoption finalization and she agrees this is a good plan. One thing I waffled with is trying to manage her social media posts. On one hand it's ridiculous to even try. She can open up new accounts I don't know about--she can show people pictures she takes on her phone when she's with them in person. If she's going to have access to the girls then I cannot control what she does with that access. On the other...

Quick Update: a few days ago Grandma's sister, Aunt H, called me to warn me that Grandma had snuck her son into a family event so he could see two of his children (he has five kids by three women; our girls are his youngest two). She'd begged us to allow her to take the girls, by herself, to this same event. So, she'd been actively trying to give her child-molesting son contact with our two young daughters. I need to remember this fact every time she asks for any contact with the girls. I was remembering this at the Christmas Eve service at the church last night. The girls were performers in the pageant (a sheep and a dog) and after I'd been given a program I realized that their names were probably in it. Grandma didn't have a program. I felt this cold chill and realized that if she took a program with her then she'd probably give it to her son, who lives with her, and then he'd see our last names in print. So, I hid my program and we went through the serv...

After putting Jane to bed and writing most of the previous post, I got a call from the girl's aunt who has moved out of state. We'll be visiting her family on our way to FL. We're chatting when she suddenly changes the topic (I later realized someone walked out of the room so she could speak freely) and she tells me point blank to never, ever allow Grandma to take the girls out on her own. That Grandma absolutely will put them in contact with their father who is a convicted sexual predator of young children. That Grandma did that with his other kids by another mother over Thanksgiving. There are pictures on FB to prove it. And the girl was instructed, by Grandma, to lie to her parents about who had been at the Thanksgiving party. This is the same family party that Grandma BEGGED us to allow her to take the girls to. She tried every which way to get them there. And I felt super bad about denying her at the time but on an instinctual level it felt wrong for us to let them...

I took Kate to the doctor's office today for our fake, made-up, bureaucracy-sucks appt (see previous post). She adores outings 1:1 with me, even to the dr office. We walk in and she's chatty and smiley with the receptionist. In the waiting room a cute little A-A boy sat beside her and she joyfully crowed to me, "Mama, look, it's my friend!" (she'd never met him before). We get called back and she's so friendly and expressive to the nurse that the nurse keeps cracking up and at one point whispered to me, "She's adorable!" So Kate is having a good old time until a student doctor walks in. She FROZE. Like a baby bunny before the jaws of the fox. Absolutely could not move a muscle, eyes wide and locked on him, totally unresponsive. I think she almost stopped breathing. I looked at him and saw what she saw--he looked a lot like her biological father. Same hair; same long face; maybe even a similar voice though I'd only heard him speak once...

Jane is struggling since we were at Ken's house for a pre-Thanksgiving meal a few days ago. She is clearly distracted and sad. She says to me that she wants to be alone, doesn't want Kate or James to bother her, that she just wants me to hold her all day and read books to her. During one of our holding sessions today she cried about a whole range of things. It started with Ken and the toys at his house and went to her cousin, Gabby. Then on to missing her birth mother and all the stuffed animals and her Minnie Mouse bed. Objects figure hugely into Jane's world. She is very much like her grandmother, who absolutely must bring gifts to every visit. No matter how raggedy or cheap it is she has a deep compulsion to give gifts to show her love (she once brought me an entire grocery bag of worn out teen-sized shoes reeking of smoke that she said her friend had 'pulled out of the back of the closet'. They went straight to the trash). And Jane is thrilled every time. Th...

I've been using FB to find out more about family relationships and about the people who say they want to be a part of the girls' lives. I feel like an anthropologist delving into another world. I'm also weirdly obsessed with knowing if any of these people post pictures of the girls that I shared. It makes me strangely angry to see them reposting a picture that I took, at our house, of a special moment that I wanted to capture. And to see who shares pictures with whom (or perhaps, who steals pictures from whom). Here are my main discoveries: a) I discovered that Ken (a fictive relative, is the official term in social work lingo--a person who doesn't have a biological or legal relationship but still considers themselves to be a member of the family, usually a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend of a relative) has a pattern when posting. He posts one Scripture verse, one pro-gun rant, one hate-Democrats meme, one homo- or trans-phobic meme, and then begins the cycle ag...

We're home from an early Thanksgiving at Papa Ken's house. Safe and sound--except for the girls' emotional rollercoaster that will, I expect, play out over the next day or so. Reading all the scary stuff about the girls' pasts last night, as well as my FB stalking of maternal grandfather, Mike and his guns definitely freaked Theo out, too. This morning he was hunting through our paperwork to take with us legal documents proving we're their foster parents. I took a picture of the girls just before we left in case I needed to give it to the police. This is how we both think now and I am not okay with it. We got there around 11am. Ken's house is a run down 20 year old mobile home. He has never been married or had kids and he's been employed in good jobs his whole life--where does his money go? I was surprised to see how dumpy his property is. Except that maybe an old bachelor with a tendency to hoarding just doesn't care.  There were piles and piles of ...

We are finally reading deeply thru the paperwork we were given when we assigned the adoption papers. At first, skimming through, I thought it was all stuff we already knew. Nope. Theo is finding some real gems buried in there. Like, Grandma who knows our last name and address and has been to our house and driven the girls off in our car has a prior conviction for FELONIOUS ASSAULT. What the hell??!! Nobody thought to inform us of this? Back when I was quizzing every social worker and relative all about grandma?? When I was directly seeking info on whether we should trust her and let her have contact?? That little tidbit didn't come up? In case you're wondering, here's what felonious assault is: " Felonious assault, also called assault with a dangerous weapon, occurs when you assault another person with a gun, knife, brass knuckles, or some other weapon that has the potential of causing serious physical injury or death." And while Theo is doing his deep...