Posts from — January 2009

Per Merriam Webster, courage is defined as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty”.

Our kids’ school gives out what they call “Character Counts” awards.  I used to think of these things as a public school’s attempt to teach morality by rewarding kids who supposedly exemplify certain character traits, such as honesty, acceptance, etc.

Yesterday, L received an award for demonstrating the trait of Courage.  And suddenly, all my cynicism regarding these awards melted away.

Remember, this is the kid who last year at this time was getting called into the Vice-Principal’s office on a near-weekly basis.  Yesterday, he was being feted for being courageous.

I’m not sure what criteria the school used to recognize L for his courage – but here’s how I see it:

• Every day he returns to the school where he was originally labelled as weird by his peers – he is courageous.
• Every time he attempts his homework when he think he can’t do it – he is courageous.
• Every time he goes to therapy and makes eye contact with the therapist – he is courageous.
• Every time he says he’s sorry – he is courageous.
• But mostly, every time he shows his tender heart, instead of hiding it away to protect it – he is courageous.

I wish you could have seen the look on his face – first, as he saw that both daddy and I were at the awards presentation, and second, when he went up to receive his award.  “Beaming” isn’t strong enough a word.  You earned it buddy, enjoy it!

I just found out that a friend of ours moved about 7 hours away.  Their mom is dealing with a health issue, and the wife had been doing a great deal of travel between home and mom to care for her.  And as she explained to me, she could “feel her daughter’s attachment slipping away” (they adopted at about the same time we adopted M and L).  So they picked up and move.

Not really a logical decision, considering that the lousy housing market (they’ve had to put their house here up for sale).  But for this family, their daughter’s attachment is far more important than the sale of their house.  Makes perfect sense to me, and probably to any other adoptive parent.

Consider our situation with L.  He needs therapy.  And we found a therapist who specializes in trauma and adoption issues, right here in our home town.  Do you have any idea how rare that is?  Problem was, the only appointment this therapist has was during school hours.  So we’re pulling L out of school every week for his therapy.

Not very logical, seeing as how L is behind academically, and we live in an area that values education highly.  But for our family, L’s healing is far more important than his education.

If you’re considering adoption, you may be surprised at how quickly your priorities change.  You may find yourself making decisions you would never have considered before, and using criteria to make those decision that you never knew existed.  Its just another part of the adoption process.

It may not be logical, but it will be right.

L’s behavior has been spiraling downward pretty dramatically in the last few weeks.  In addition to the running around we’ve had to do to get a therapist, get hold of the psych, talk to the school, etc… its taken a toll on my husband and I emotionally.  The kind of toll where no matter how much you sleep, you still feel tired.

I’m fortunate to have several friends who I can count on for support in these times.  Folks I can say anything to, and who will respond with sympathy and prayers, not judgement. I just got back from lunch with one of those friends, and I’ll tell you, its made a world of difference in my attitude.  I’m still worried and such, but we had a lot of laughs, and now I can focus on those laughs, not the drama.

If you are planning on adopting older children via fost-adopt, take a look at your support system first.  You NEED friends who can make you laugh, pray for you, bring you a meal, or just let you rant.  Don’t tell me your family is enough – you need people who are a little more removed and objective, who can understand your situation while still not being a direct part of it.

I suppose there are folks who do this without a strong network of friends – but I cannot imagine how they do it.  I find my friends essential not only to MY mental health, but to the success of my kids as well.

When you adopt via the foster care system, your child comes with Medicare coverage, such as it is.  But as you can imagine – trying to find a pediatrician or dentist who will accept Medicare patients can be between difficult and impossible.  Here are some tips for managing this.

1) Employer Funding Insurance

If your employer provides health/dental insurance, see if you can get your child covered under your plan.  The trick here is that until your adoption is finalized, you are legally “only” the foster parent – and many plans do NOT consider a foster child to be a dependent.

When I approached my HR department, that was their first response.  But never accept the first answer as the right answer!  I went online, got our HR policies, read the section on dependents, and found this text: that a dependent was “a foster child placed with the intent of adoption.”  I immediately called our HR department, pointed that out, they agreed that I should be able to get coverage for M and L, and took it up with the insurance provider.

Of course, the insurance provider did not initally agree – but thanks to a very supportive and agressive HR team, they finally agreed to cover my children.

2) Check with your current providers to see if they’ll accept your child’s Medicare

As the HR vs. Insurance Carrier issue was playing out, I needed to come up with alternate plans, because I was obligated to get my kids’ physicals within 30 days of placement.  Fortunately, our son N has a wonderful pediatrician, who agreed to see M and L under their Medicare coverage until they could get on my employer’s coverage.  Unfortunately, our dentist couldn’t do the same.

3) Get personal recommendations of Medicare providers

If you must use a Medicare provider, seek out recommendations.  That’s all I’ll say on that one

4) Pay out of pocket

As I was looking for personal recommendations, I could not find a decent recommendation of a single medicare accepting dentist.  And all the dentists were at least 30 minutes away from us anyway.

We decided to pay out of pocket for M & L’s cleanings – which amounted to about $60 each.  Not chump change, but worth it for the peace of mind.  Fortunately, the employer insurance issue was resolved by the time they needed to get fillings, and the money REALLY started adding up!

Any other suggestions?

M and L are Hispanic.  I’m about as white as they come, as his my stepson.  My husband’s your average white guy as well.

Yesterday, I found myself trying to explain why the inauguration was so important – what I said was “no one with Obama’s skin color has ever been president before.”  L thought about that for a minute and said “oh yea, brown, right”?

I almost said, “no, black, YOU’RE brown”, but then quickly realized that I wasn’t sure I wanted to perpetuate the idea of those skin colors.

And honestly, I’m not sure my kids know that they have a different skin color than I do. To make matters worse, all I know is that they are Hispanic.  I don’t know if they are Central or South American, Mexican, Spanish, or some other category I’m missing.  So now I can’t even manage it from a cultural background by introducing traditions – because I don’t know which set of traditions to introduce!

So here’s the question – how much do I pursue the issue of my kids skin color?  I’ve checked with friends who are hispanic, they’ve said don’t make an issue of it.  But my kids are living in a ridiculously white community – don’t I have to address it sometime?  Do I wait till they bring it up?

I want to talk about this subject in more generic terms than I did in the previous post.  I think one of the things that’s not thoroughly discussed when it comes to fost-adopt, particularly older-child adoption, is that you are potentially entering into a relationship with a whole lot more people than the kids you’re adopting.

In our case, we have big sister E.  E, M, and L all have the same bio-mom and dad, and lived with the same foster parents – they’ve spent more of their lives together than apart.  But because E was managed by a different county than M & L, their placements were handled separately.  And we ended up with M & L, while their prior foster parents adopted E.  There’s a much longer story there than I’m getting into, but this is all we need for now.

So, when we adopted M & L, we took on the responsibility of helping them maintain a relationship with E.  And therefore, we have an ongoing relationship with E and their former foster parents.  We live 45 minutes to an hour away, so its inconvenient to arrange visits, but not impossible.  And my husband and I are continually trying to figure out how often to arrange for meetings; how much of the transportation burden we’re willing to take on; etc.

There’s also the temptation to justify cutting off contact.  Its too confusing; it just reopens old wounds; its better if M&L just forget.  But as an adult adoptee, I cannot justify cutting off contact with the little bio-family they have.

So while nothing about this is fun (for my husband and I, anyway), its one of those things you just do.  For the kids.  For their hearts.

This Christmas break, I tried desperately to arrange for M and L’s sister (E) to come up for a visit.  I did insist on her coming to our place (about a 45 minute drive), as we’ve done the driving for the last two visits.  But we never heard back from E’s mom regarding a visit, once again breaking M’s heart.

At long last, today, we heard from E’s mom – turned out she had the flu, and had lots of family in town – that’s why we didn’t hear from her.  But she is wanting to bring E for a visit this weekend. The timing is perfect – just last night, M came into our bedroom needing lots of hugs – I’m thinking it was just generalized sadness, but it could also have been due to missing E.

I’m excited for E to finally see where her brother and sister are living.  But I won’t be telling M and L about this until the day before it happens a) because I don’t want hearts broken again if it does NOT happen, and b) they will be BESIDE themselves with excitement (and not healthy excitement – more like crazed excitement).

I really hope this visit happens!

The last two days have been a whirlwind for us.  We suddenly realized that L was not as far along as we expected, and we had to deal with both our grief around this realization, and identify ways/resources to help him in his recovery.

And that’s all I can really say about this issue.  Which leads me to question the very name of this blog.  If that’s all I can say, then how “real” are we?

The reason I can’t go into details is that while I work to protect anonymity, the reality is that some folks can figure out who we are.  Especially since we have a bunch of friends and family who read this blog.

But while I feel its important for us to share the journey we’re on, if I share details regarding any of my kids issues, it puts them at risk.  At risk of being judged unfairly; at risk of having their “secrets” shared with strangers, or even friends they aren’t ready to share them with; at risk of violating their dignity.

Truth is, the details just aren’t necessary.  All anyone needs to know is that they’ve been hurt, long before they came to us, long before there were even eligible for fost-adopt.  This blog attempts to show the realities of life as a family that’s been thrown together via adoption, with special-needs kids recovering from trauma.

Even without the details, this is all very real.

For the last six months, L has been DYING to play football.  Seems reasonable enough.  So we signed him up for Flag Football, which starts in about a month.

Thing is, I’m getting nervous.  If the practices and games are during times when he’s on his ADHD meds, then I’m confident he’ll behave well, try hard, etc – but he may not be as fast as we know he can be.  If they’re in the evenings, then there’s a good chance that L will be uncontrolled, intimidate the other kids, and be overwhelmed by everything that’s going on.

So why enroll him?  Why not wait till next year?  Because I think this is going to be worth trying.  I’d rather try and fail, then never try.  So long as its not a completely horrible experience, that is.

So what can I do to help L succeed?

we all know how this saying ends.

L has been doing so well over the past month.  Certainly not perfect, but really well.  The all of a sudden, this weekend, he started stealing again.  Money from dad’s wallet, item’s from N’s bedroom, being a bad playmate to a little boy who came over, etc.

The old me would have spent hours analyzing this sudden change in behavior, trying to figure out the reasons behind it, so we could come up with a solution.

The new me has come to accept these steps backwards as a temporary thing – we’ve seen in the past that he can move forward, and we know he will again this time.  If anything, we’ll just be a little more observant, stopping him before he can act on his negative impulsis.  But thats all.

This is part of the process of older child adoption – learning to accept what looks like a major step backward as just a temporary blip, and learning to love your child not just in spite of the blips, but because of them.