Poker face...

For our “lesson” today I decided to teach my kiddos poker! They are 9,6,and 5 and all have varying issues that make comprehension and retaining information more difficult. However it was fun and my little one got a little ruthless! Poker was always very important in my family. My grandpa was truly the center of our family and he LOVED poker. All nine of his grandkids learned at a young age and it was a major part of all family get-togethers and it was serious, real money was involved! My grandpa died sadly and too soon shortly after I started my fostering journey. He was crotchety and old school. He would make brash statements that would sometimes embarrass me and came from an old school way of thinking when it came to mixed race relationships. He lived long enough to meet my youngest adopted son (who was the first of my three placed with me) He made some smart alec comment about my baby’s beautiful bushy afro but then later when it was just me and him he told me how proud he was of me and how cute my kid was. Today when I was teaching them to play poker I thought my grandpa’s biggest complaint wouldn’t be about their race, or their special needs, it would be that I waited this long to teach them! Love you grandpa.

5 years....

5 years. In 5 years one would assume that a person would be accustomed to the world around them. In five years a person should know the expectations and routines. In five years a person should be comfortable. 5 years is nothing! Nothing when your first five years were traumatic, unpredictable, and horrifying. My two older adopted children have been with me for five years and still my daughter, who is now nine, fears there won’t be food, fears that there won’t be shelter, fears bad men, and worst of all fears that she will not be allowed to stay with me, that she will be alone. She has not been able to be fully comfortable. As much as she wants to be here in the present but her past rules her. Don’t get me wrong, she has healed some, but five years of being safe is no competition to the five years of hell she has been through! I made a comment when looking in the fridge that we had no food (meaning that I wanted to make for dinner.) When it came time for dinner, her thanks was: “I am thankful that my mommy found us food and has her grocery list to remember to get more.” She loves looking at the grocery list, if there is nothing on it she writes stuff just so we don’t forget to go to the store. She enjoys knowing that I have money in the bank even though her FASD makes her understanding of the value of money hard. She is always afraid when I leave even though I have countlessly shown her I come back. She becomes aggressive and animalistic when she feels threatened. She desperately wants to be so close to me, but reacts when she feels herself being vulnerable. She lives in a perceived reality that is frustrating for those around her but not near as frustrating as it is for her that we don’t understand her. She challenges my life and parenting daily. I have realized that she may never change to who the world expects her to be but that my job is instead to give her a world that works best for her.

quick catch up...

I enjoy writing on here, even if no one ever reads it. I like to read others blog and feel the similarities and challenge myself when I feel that others have a better way than I do. I also, being a single mom, enjoy sharing my childrens life. It has been so long since I blogged last or even connected to my fostercare/adoption people. We have had many short term placements come and go, we have had upheavels in our support system, and we have had many many ups and downs. Most importantly we also had our adoption! My dear children had to wait four and a half years for permancy, four and a half years! They are MINE now, all mine! I love every ounce of them no matter how much they push me away. The adoption did cause some regression, but that was expected. We also had a med change that led to an extreme psychotic reaction, which sadly led to a hospitilization. If you have never had to do that be thankful, if you have you know it is increadibly hard. I would never have done it if my child wasn't an danger to herself and others. When my eight year old gave me a detailed plan of how she planed on ending our entire family's lives, I had no other choice. Then to try to parent your child when they are away from home is amazingly hard. The staff felt they knew my child more than I do. my daughter gets aggressive, super aggressive when she feels unsafe. So obviously when she is away from home in a new environment she felt very unsafe and became aggressive. I told them this would happen. I only wanted her there long enough to detox from the med that gave her the reaction, the aggression I can handle. They told me that they couldn't release her until she was safe for 72 hours in a row! HA! Then they told me that the female staff couldn't handle her so the placed her with a male one on one aid. Really!? Um... could someone look back into her files... um PTSD- triggers 1. men (specifically black men)!!!! The CEO of that place knows my name now and I had my baby back on Monday morning. She has had no more suicidal/homicidal ideations since the med change. My point is I advocate for these children in my sleep, seriously! Somedays when I am up against a RAD/FASD wall advocating for the world to change is all I can do.

Happy birthday D!

Today was my nephew's fifth birthday party. I love him so much, he is such a little stinker. He is my sister's bio child and her one with "special" needs. He is a genius, truly. She began wondering if he was autistic, and had him go through several screenings and it turns out his IQ is just extremely high. He just turned five and can read and write anything and can figure out complex math problems. He is behind socially and has a lot of quirks that can make other kids and parents uncomfortable. I hate to say it, but it is nice that she has him, because it can give me someone to talk to. THe issues are so different, but to have a special needs child puts you in a different place as a parent.

On a negative note, my mom was there and decided to criticize my parenting in front of my 8yo daughter who was having an "evil" moment! She is having a hard time understanding that getting mad at somebody doesn't mean that you hate them. She also needs to learn to stop blaming me for everything and feeling so bad for herself, but she'll get there. She did end up turning herself around though and had a good time though she tried to milk my mom to get out of the situation.

It can be hard to love her...

My oldest child is eight. She came to me at four after living through hell. She had been neglected and abused most of her small life her mom had many men in and out of her life some of whom she let do whatever they wanted to her kids as long as they still supported her. Then my daughters older sibling decided to go to the police because she couldn't stand being raped one more time.
When bio mom found out, she uprooted her four children and drug them all the way here to my town 3 hours away and moved in with her brother and his paramour. Her brother abused her, when she was a child, he was also into heavier drugs than she was. She is a drinker, she drinks her way out of any stressful situation. Well down here my child felt a new kind of life, one of constant beating and starvation.
The Uncle and his girlfriend were out of their minds. They beat my daughter and my son (the least favored two) with a vengeance. When she came to me she had over 27 cigaret burns on her body and too many to count belt marks on her legs, she also had rope marks around her wrists and ankles. (Her brother was worse.) She came into care the day after a severe beating. Her brother was left for dead, and would have died if not for the ten year old sister. (Mom was passed out.)

The mom only brought her son into the hospital because she was mad that the girlfriend stole a pack of her cigarettes and wanted to get her into trouble.

My daughter looked like a child on one of the "feed the children" ads. She was skin and bones with a bloated belly caused by starvation. She had a vocabulary of a one year old, but knew how to tie her shoes, because her uncle beat her if they weren't tied. SHe didn't know how to eat with silverware or understand why she had her own bed. Se didn't want to change her clothes because it was the only outfit she had. She had two emotions, absent and rage. There was no child there.

I am writing this now because I need to remember this. I need to think about this every day. Especially now. She was doing great. so you forget about this sometimes and begin to expect her to meet up to your expectations. Then last fall we had an awful scare and the state almost removed her from me, all because of a misunderstanding. Her workers were all fighting for us. Then my daughter began a steady spiral down and I forgot about her past, I just remembered about how good she had been doing. I fought for her to be back, without realizing how far she still was from where she came. We also have all of this paperwork issues that have postponed the adoption for over a year now, trying to get it all settled. She needs that adoption.

Today she acted like a selfish little stubborn eight year old. Nothing extreme, or "bad" even, just pushing my buttons. I over reacted. I want my daughter from last summer back, and the last few weeks she had been doing so good again that her attitude today made me lose some needed hope. I asked her "Don't you care about me?" and she didn't respond. It wasn't a fair question especially when emotions were charged, but I took it hard that she couldn't just say yes. WHy doesn't she say she loves me when emotions are hard? I know why and I just wrote why, but sometimes in the moment it is hard for me too. I will need to do some damage control after today, but this felt good finally putting her suffering into words, it will help imprint them into my brain so when I start feeling disappointed I can remember where she came from.

When it starts to feel hard to love her, I can remember why she needs it more.

All the story...

My youngest, my butter bean has been so off this last week, I know that him trying to make some sense out of this crazy world is whats getting to him. How is he to understand that he has siblings and that they are his baby brothers and sisters, yet he will never know them like that and they will be raised by someone else. This stuff is confusing to me as an adult, it makes my brain and my heart hurt. How else would a four year old react except to be a stinkpot and a clingy little man who decides that sleep is unnecessary. I hope that he starts healing this week.

It does bring up the point that some people have told me; to wait and tell him when he gets older. No matter how hard it is for him right know, I believe this is the best thing I can do. I do not believe in lying to my kids when it comes to their personal stories. I think that they have every right to know who they are. This might mean some hard truths now, but this way they will just be facts to him not some bomb drop at a more appropriate age. My family is a big family of secret holders. Since I was close to my mom and grandma I was privy to most of these secrets. I know things about my family, who I am really close to that I wish I didn't know. I hate the burden of that. The most shocking secret came to me the year before I started fostering. I found that I wasn't wrong in my suspicions that my mom was keeping something from me, that their was something weird about the fact that my mom never knew dates to things. I just didn't know that it wasn't going to be about me but a sibling. I now know this secret and my sibling doesn't. How can that be fair??? My sibling would be destroyed by this information and it isn't my place to say. I just know that the holding of secrets like this, that are internal parts to a persons life, is burning; I refused to have this barrier between me and my children. So yes this will not be the last time, and there will be very hard questions to come in the future, especially when they start asking about fathers, but I will be a age appropriately (meaning a 5 yo doesn't understand what drug abuse is) honest, while remaining supportive and positive that they are not defined only by where they came from.

Learning to Juggle

I always wanted to learn how to juggle.

Seriously as a kid they did a weekend juggling lesson at the YWCA and I begged my mom to let me go. We were broke, something I didn't understand then, but instead of being honest with me and telling me that we couldn't afford it my mom was prideful so she told me that I would never learn how to juggle, that I wasn't coordinated enough. This was my moms way of deflecting the real reasons to keep her pride in check, but she was such a loving mom in everything else why shouldn't I believe her?
I wanted to join Girl Scouts, she told me that she asked around and none of the groups wanted me. I wanted to play an instrument in band, she told me I couldn't find a beat and I would give up after a day any way and it wasn't worth the investment. I stopped asking for things. I realized that I couldn't see the board in fifth grade, I didn't get glasses until I was a junior in high school because I refused to ask for them, but I failed my eye screen in drivers ed. My Senior year in HS I got nominated for a leadership award, part of this award was a weekend trip to meet the other winners and go to leadership seminars. My mom told me not to go, that she loved me but that if I were to go the other kids wouldn't like me and they would make fun of me because I was fat. When it was time to go to college, I applied to a college four hours away. My mom made me fear it and almost made me quit with all of her negative speech. My moms hold on me led to a lot of my decisions. I was convinced she was right, I must not be worth much, I cannot accomplish much, I am really nowhere as good as my sister.

When I knew I wanted to be a foster parent, I did it all with out letting my mom know, she didn't find out until the weekend before I was licensed. I couldn't bear her negative look on it and have her be able to talk me down before starting. She was negative, told me she thought I made a stupid decision, and probably ruined the rest of my life. She came around to the kids. In the time I was fostering my sister had a son. I love my nephew so much, he is fantastic. My AS was born in the same year and came to me 9months after my nephew was born. My mom said its not the same and one day I would understand. Two years later I found out that I was going to adopt my baby and she told me to really think about it. A month before his adoption, I told my mom that I could no longer bear her negativity, my self worth could not be based on all of her fears and insecurities. I told her I was capable, and I told her that if she couldn't muster up enough love for me and my son to respect what this meant then she could leave. She slapped me in my face. However, she did come to my sons adoption and loves him in her way. My mom will always look at everything I do through a negative scope and try to get me to a dark place, but now I am strong enough to know when to hang up the phone.

This whole thought came to me because while I might parent differently and understand my children's strengths and weaknesses, I will never define them for them. I will never tell them they cannot do things. I do not hold the answer to that. Instead I will give them baby steps and directions to succeed. I will always believe with them even if it is hard to.

In other words, I finally learned how to juggle!