Why We Don't Leave Danielle Alone

Yesterday afternoon, I caught the scent of bleach.  Danielle had come home earlier, and I expressed my concerns to FosterEema.

"She's probably just cleaning her bathroom," FosterEema replied.

I was working, and I was in the middle of a task and didn't have time to check.  FosterEema was busy, too, and I didn't want to get into a squabble over who should check on what the kid was doing, so I just let it be.

We probably should have checked.

This morning, Danielle showed us a formerly-grey zippered sweatshirt that was now a sickly, mottled pink color.  Apparently, she had wanted to wash it so she could wear it to school this morning.  Instead of tossing a load into the washer, she decided to hand wash it in her sink.

Unfortunately for the sweatshirt, instead of using laundry soap, she grabbed the bottle of bleach.

When we asked her about it, she said she hadn't bothered to read the label.  She "wasn't paying attention," and just dumped the bottle into the sink without bothering to check what she had in her hand.

She was absolutely mystified when the color started coming out of the garment, so she rinsed it out and put it in the dryer, not understanding what had just happened.

This is exactly why I'm afraid to leave Danielle alone for any length of time.  Although this mistake was relatively harmless, in that it was her clothing that she ruined, she operates in a state of oblivion that really concerns me.  In our house, there's no mistaking a bottle of bleach for a bottle of laundry detergent, because the brands we buy are in completely different containers.  I can readily identify the difference between detergent and bleach, just by the shape and heft of the packaging, even if I don't have my glasses on.  Even if I were totally blind, I would still be able tell the difference by the smell, as we use unscented detergent, and regular household bleach.

The only way Danielle could have made this mistake was that she was completely oblivious to what she was doing.

In the past, she's put food in the microwave, mistakenly set it for 20 minutes instead of 2, and then walked away, nearly starting a fire.  When I detected the resulting smoke and yelled at her to open the windows so our pet parrots wouldn't suffocate, she stood there dumbly, trying to argue over the necessity of doing so.

For whatever reason, Danielle can't or won't think things through.  Every day she will say and do little dumb things, and when we point out her error, she'll agree that she was being dumb.  "Oh yeah...duh!" she'll often exclaim.

We try to be as kind and gentle as we can when we point out her mistakes, but they really worry me.  Her lack of attention frequently has her walking into closed doors, bumping into people, or even walking straight into the side of our RV.

She can see.  Her pediatrician and the school have checked her vision.  She just doesn't pay attention.

Perhaps this one little incident will seem "normal" to those of you who have neurotypical kids.  The problem for us is that this is just a tiny sample of a pattern of conduct that doesn't seem to get any better.  Sure, Danielle might say, "I've learned my lesson, I'll never make that mistake again," but the truth is that she will.  She doesn't seem to really learn from her goofs in a lasting way, and we both worry that if we leave her home alone, she'll end up making a mistake that could cause her or our pets permanent injury or worse.

We are afraid she might accidentally set fire to the house, because it seems like she still hasn't developed any common sense.

Late to School

This morning, Danielle was late to school.

It could have been entirely avoided, but for her lack of cooperation.

We had gone camping this weekend (and managed to meet up with an Internet buddy I've been corresponding with for a couple of years) at a campground almost two hours from home.  In order to facilitate meeting with our friends, we opted to stay an extra night and head for home early this morning.

We had an excellent time with our friends, and the day went by far too quickly.  Our friends are also adoptive parents, so it was nice to spend some time with people who really understood what we go through on a daily basis.

Last night, after our friends left, we loaded everything we could into the truck, so that we'd have less to do in the morning.  Danielle knew we'd be getting up early and would need to hurry in order to get her to school on time.

She did everything she could to slow us down.

FosterEema and I both scurried about, but when we asked Danielle to do something, she went out of her way to do it wrong.  I asked her to put some things inside the truck; she put them on the picnic table instead.  Since we were packing up before dawn, we needed a flashlight.  She'd use it for one task, and then "misplace" it so we had to spend time looking for it.

By the time we were hitched up and ready to go, I really wanted to give Danielle a swift kick to the backside.

We ended up leaving 30 minutes later than our planned departure time.

I did my best to make up time on the drive home, but there was only so much I could do.  It was extremely dark and foggy, and the road conditions for a significant portion of our trip demanded safety over speed.  Although I did my best, we ended up rolling up (with the trailer still with us) on Danielle's school just a few moments before the bell rang.

"If you run, you might make it to class on time," I encouraged.

My last sight of Danielle, as I pulled away from the curb, was of her dragging her feet to class, walking as slowly as possible.

The Problem Appears Again

Since we were told Danielle was failing her elective class, and then later discovered she had a passing grade, we've kept a pretty close eye on the school's online attendance and grading system.  After the big hassle, the grading system reported that she was still missing three assignments, despite Danielle's protestations that she'd turned them in,  Her grade at that point was a good, solid C, even without the missing assignments.

Thursday night, we checked the system again, and now she's missing seven assignments.  Her grade has dropped to a C-, and if she loses any more points, she'll fall into the passing, but unsatisfactory, range.

When we informed Danielle of what we had discovered, her response was unacceptable.

"I don't care," she replied.

Since it happened that we had a meeting with her therapist that night, we addressed the issue there.  Danielle just doesn't give a crap about anything right now, and it seemed to worry the therapist.  At one point, Danielle stepped out of our session to use the restroom, and the therapist commented worriedly, "Something has changed."

From my perspective, it seems as if little has changed.  Danielle cycles through her moods, especially whenever a therapist is present.  There have been some days where she's completely disengaged and barely says a word.  There have been others where she won't stop talking.  On this particular day, Danielle seemed tired and sullen.

The therapist was worried, and tried to impress upon us her concerns.

It's hard for me to get overly excited, because this is the kid we see all the time.  From our perspective, there is no dramatic change.  Yes, respite and starting medication gave us a honeymoon period of unusually sunny disposition for a while, but now the honeymoon is wearing off, and Danielle is returning to her more typical self.

The therapist didn't seem to much like it when I said I wasn't going to jump all over the school because of the missing assignments.

My problem is this: Danielle has lied to us so many times in the past that I'm just not going to get fired up over things she says.  We ended up with egg all over our faces once before when we jumped on a lie she told us with regards to things that were going on at school.  We aren't going to go there again.  It's a lousy place to be, but we can't trust much of what she says, so everything she claims must be verified.  The school grading system says she hasn't turned in the assignments; she says she has.  Maybe she has turned the work in, but unless she can give us some proof, we are going to side with the teacher.

It's a pretty crappy place to be when you can't trust what your kid says.

Sleeping the Arguments Away

In response to If Only It Were That Simple, Paula wrote:

Why worry about her sleeping so much? It's time when there is no arguing, no complaining and peace all around. My kids with neurological damage typically need much more sleep than my neurotypical children and even at age 10-12 sleep from 12 up to 14 hours a day, just as a toddler would! Realistically, that's where their brain function is and the sleep probably does them a world of good.

Paula has an extremely valid point, and has given us a new way of looking at things.  She's absolutely right.  If Danielle is asleep, it is absolutely impossible for her to argue, complain or fight with us.

So maybe we shouldn't see this as a problem at all, but as simply a peaceful form of respite.  Maybe it's really not all that bad.

Several people suggested that we might try switching Danielle's medication dosage to the evenings, so that she'll sleep at night, instead of being tired during the day.  We'd actually considered doing that, but it seems that right after she takes her medication, she becomes hyper and energetic, which I think would interfere with her sleep even more.  It seems that she's the most tired in the afternoon, after she comes home from school.

Perhaps we shouldn't see this as a problem, because a sleeping child is one who cannot argue.

Although a lot of comments have been focused on Danielle's sleepiness, what I really wanted to draw attention to was the fact that the pediatrician seems to have pat answers for almost every problem we've encountered with Danielle.  If only we would withhold her allowance, she'd stop hitting.  (We did, and she didn't.)  If only we would play board games as a family, she wouldn't sleep all of the time.

I guess our experience with the pediatrician isn't really unique, as so many of the so-called "helping professionals" have given us simple suggestions that, if only we would follow them, would solve all our child's ills.

It's just not that simple.

I wish it were.  If withholding Danielle's allowance had only worked, we would have saved ourselves the expense of sending her to boot camp, and our relationship would be much better.  We adults wouldn't feel bruised, battered and traumatized.  Perhaps we might have even gotten that happy ending that so many adoption professionals try to sell to prospective parents.

If it were a simple matter of doing x, so that a child would behave, do well in school, and end her violent behavior, I'm sure a lot of parents would willing to whatever x is.  Unfortunately, for many foster and adopted children, there is no magic x, y or z that will cure all that ails them.  Even a combination of approaches rarely solves every problem, and if a child has been damaged by prenatal drug or alcohol exposure, the odds are that they will one day end up in jail no matter what interventions they received.

If Only It Were That Simple

Since Danielle has been with us, we've had to interface with a long list of professionals.  We've met with teachers, therapists, social workers, and each one has been different.  Some have been helpful, some not.  Some have been easy to work with, others frustrating.  A few have been downright destructive.

But the one professional who wins the prize, in terms of our absolute frustration level, is Danielle's pediatrician.

Danielle went in for a check-up yesterday.  The point of the visit was a medication follow-up, since she started an anti-depressant two months ago.  Although we've seen an improvement in her mood and behavior, one of the things we've noticed is that she she sleeps excessively, and she's always tired.  This was a problem before she started medication, but now it's much, much worse.

The doctor's response?

She seemed to think that Danielle was sleeping so much because she was bored.  She told us that we should sit down as a family and play board games one night a week.

This is, by the way, the same professional who suggested we withhold Danielle's allowance as a way to put a stop to her endless temper tantrums and rages.

If only it were that simple.

Generational Problems

In response to The Ball is Being Dropped Somewhere, Cyndi wrote:

I have been reading this blog for a long time and I am pretty sure your daughter will not learn to manage her life, period. I can also guess given her issues and abilities she will become a mom of a kid that she will not be able to parent and then this entire story will play itself out for yet another generation. I am an adoptive mom and have been a foster mom and I see this all to often. It is a really sad state of affairs.

My fear is that Cyndi may very well be right.  What's worse is that there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it.

The problem boils down to the fact that Danielle has problems, but the system doesn't see her problems as being bad enough to see her as being truly disabled.  She has at least two other older biological half-siblings who are classified as developmentally disabled.  One lives in a supervised adult guardianship arrangement, the other receives Social Security Disability Income, lives independently, but has a caseworker who does things like pay bills and help arrange housing.

Danielle isn't impaired enough to qualify for those services.  Worse, she thinks she knows everything she needs to know, and views our opinions and help as nothing but unwanted intrusions.  She doesn't want to follow our rules, she doesn't want to live in our house, but it's becoming increasingly clear that she's probably not going to do so well on her own.

I'd like to think that maybe we'll be surprised.  Sometimes, a few ugly lessons from the school of hard knocks is enough to kick some sense into errant young people.  I'm just not sure if Danielle is truly capable of learning those lessons.

I hope we'll be pleasantly surprised.  I fear we will be disappointed in the way that we expect.

In response to the same post, Batgirl wrote:

I work as a sub teacher, mostly in special ed (a lot of kids like yours). I heard a SPED teacher once refer to this cycle as job security. Sad but true...it's amazing how many IEP's start with "Student was born to a mother who admits drinking and using drugs and having no prenatal care..." It sucks.

The generational aspect of this is not lost on me.  Danielle's maternal grandmother was an illegal immigrant.  She was disabled, uneducated, and never learned to read or write.  Danielle's mother, also illegal, was uneducated, a drug user, and we suspect that she may have worked as a prostitute in front of her children.  We've never met her but, by all accounts from reports and social workers who knew her, she suffers from developmental disabilities as well.  All the reports that mentioned her noted that she seemed, "slow."

Danielle's grandmother was clearly a victim of poverty, poor parenting, and a lack of education.  Those problems have plagued her children and her grandchildren.  There's no doubt that this generational legacy has left its unfortunate mark on Danielle, too.

In the end, I think that sad reality is that as much as foster and adoptive parents want to make a difference and want to break the generational cycles of substance abuse, mental illness, poverty and ignorance, we simply can't do it.  I suspect that the only way to stop the cycle is to prevent children like Danielle from breeding, but that treads dangerously close to the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The idea that only those who are worthy to breed should be allowed to breed has a very chilling effect, doesn't it?

But if we can't stop birth parents from breeding, and we can't stop them from their substance-abusing ways, how do we stop them from inflicting so much damage upon their children?

The truth is, we can't.

All we can do is the best that we can do.  We can love our foster and adopted children.  We can care about them.  We can try to do the right thing for them.  But in the end, we have to let them go, because they all turn 18, and have the legal right to be treated as adults in the free world.  Only the most profoundly disabled and impaired qualify for further supervision and financial support into adulthood.

Batgirl is right, it does suck, but there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.  The damage has already been done.

The Ball is Being Dropped Somewhere

In response to A Failure in Communication, schnitzelbank wrote:

I don't disagree that having family time is important, and a very healing time for this family. But pulling your kid out of school early in the school year for a vacation might not be good timing (thanks for clarifying the school days. You had said in an earlier post, that you were gone for 10).

But obviously this IS important to y'all, as witnessed by all the posts about Danielle's school work.

To be honest, Danielle's schoolwork is only of moderate importance to me at this point. It's clear from her state-mandated testing that she's functioning far below proficiency in mathematics and English.  Until this trip, we've always been very diligent of making sure that Danielle had as close to perfect attendance as possible.  Unless she was really sick, we sent her to school.

At this point, though, it's absolutely clear that she isn't going to college.  I have serious doubt in my mind as to whether or not she would even be able to manage some type of trade school. She has no fire, no ambition, and no interests, so I really have no desire to spend my time fighting over her schoolwork. I hope that she will put out a minimum effort, turn in her assignments, and try, but I can't force her to do those things, and I honestly don't expect her to do really well, even if she puts forth the effort.

It's clear from her test scores that she simply can't.

Another question: what did Danielle do then, during the time you (and the other kids) were working?

Danielle did what she usually does when she doesn't have anything to do. She poked at the birds, sat in a camp chair and stared off into space, and complained (only a little) that she was bored.  At one point she did borrow our friends' battery-powered kiddie car, and she drove around in it.  The car is designed for pre-schoolers, but she's so small, she can actually sit in it and drive around.

Moving forward...

1) I would question the teachers immediately, if they fail to send home a packet for a pre-arranged absence. Clearly, there isn't "nothing" happening during those four days, those should be accounted for somehow.

This is one of the most frustrating aspects to Danielle's program. I often feel like we are dropping our kid into a black hole. Communication goes in (messages from us to the teachers) but nothing comes back out. It's very irritating. Worse, it puts Danielle in a position of being able to triangulate and manipulate the adults, which she has done repeatedly.  We've had several meetings with the school about this, but nothing changes.  Short of hiring a lawyer (which we cannot afford to do) I don't think much will change.

2) Is it possible Danielle completed the work (as witnessed by the aides) and failed to turn it in? I have students do this all the time. It's all part of that self-fulfilled prophecy of failure. Failure is easier than success for kids that seem to thrive on chaos and have not experienced much academic success (for a whole myriad of reasons)

It's certainly possible. At this point, Danielle's grade is still a solid C, and we can see a number of assignments that haven't been turned in that have come due this past week. Danielle claims she's done all the work, but the school's grading system says that the assignments haven't been turned in. I'm not going to harass the teachers or the classroom aides about it. This is Danielle's problem to own. She has to learn to manage her own life.

3) Could you get an extra set of textbooks for home? This would bypass the whole "forgot my book" excuse. Books are here and there. I don't see this strategy as helicopter parenting, rather, putting the scaffolding in place that many teenagers need. Clearly Danielle is not ready to be on her own at 18. Heck, most adolescents aren't ready to be on their own at 18. She needs some extra supports in place.

In the end, I'm sure you want to give her every opportunity to be successful. It sounds like you are so very frustrated. I'm sorry for your troubles.

Students aren't allowed to take textbooks home as a general rule, and we aren't in the position of being able to buy Danielle her own set. This is a problem that she is simply going to have to learn to manage on her own, or she won't get passing marks.

Anyway, it's clear from the fact that Danielle hasn't turned in all her assignments that the ball is being dropped somewhere between her special homeroom class and her elective class. Whether Danielle isn't turning in the assignments, the teacher is "losing" them, or the work simply was never done and we aren't being told the truth, it doesn't matter. Danielle is nearly 16 years old, and she's got to learn to manage this stuff on her own.

I can't help her with it. I'm not going to helicopter my ass down to the school and make sure she takes notes in class, or that she writes down all her assignments. I'm not going to jump up and down on her case and nag her into submission. Either she'll do the work or she won't. If her grade drops below a passing score, we'll start meting out consequences, but beyond that there isn't going to be a lot of discussion.

We just aren't prepared for the level of discord that would have to happen in order for us to nag Danielle into doing everything she is required to do. And, really, there's no guarantee that she'll do everything that is expected of her anyway.

Although it may be clear to everyone that Danielle won't be ready to live on her own when she turns 18, that's probably what is going to happen.  She's made it clear that she will move out when she becomes of age so that she doesn't have to follow what she perceives as our dreadful, stinkin', unreasonable rules.  Frankly, we are okay with that plan, because we are pretty tired of some of the behaviors we see at home.  Although things are much better post-medication, Danielle makes a lot of really poor choices and does a lot of things that we would rather not be in our home.  If she chooses to move out on her 18th birthday, we won't try to stop her.  In fact, we'd likely encourage that move.

I do want my kid to succeed, but there comes a point where she has to start doing the things that will make her successful.  I can show her the school's grading system and the assignments she's missed, but beyond that, I can't force her to complete them.  I can't help her with her schoolwork, because when I do, she expects me to hand her all the answers.  I don't know if it's laziness or just complete lack of ability, but she just has to find a way to muddle through all of this on her own.

This isn't what I had expected, or hoped for, but it is what it is.  Somehow, someday, Danielle's got to learn how to manage on her own.

A Failure in Communication

Earlier this week, I reported that we'd been told that Danielle was failing her elective course.  We were told she was eight assignments behind, that there was no possible way she could catch up at school, and she'd need to bring work home.  Danielle's homeroom teacher asked us if we "could help her get caught up so she can have a passing grade."

All very well and good, but Danielle didn't bring her book home that night.  It's kind of hard to help her get caught up if she doesn't bring the materials home needed to do the work.

The next night, Danielle brought the book home, but reported that all of her assignments were completed.  We sent a note back to the elective teacher asking if this were true, and he replied that she was still missing three assignments, but that the work turned in was enough to give her a passing grade.

Good enough.  I really don't care what kind of grades Danielle brings home, just as long as she passes.  Although I think good grades are hugely important for college-bound kids who are fighting their way into prestigious universities, it matters a lot less for everybody else.  Since Danielle is clearly not college-bound material, as long as she makes an effort, and does her best, that's good enough.

Frankly, I'd rather her come home with lousy grades and see that she really tried, than to see her get excellent grades in programs that aren't challenging her.

As for the crisis in her elective class, the failing grade was a direct result of her lack of motivation, and her refusals to do what was expected of her in a timely basis.

One of my readers, seemed to think that we were responsible for Danielle's failure, but it's obvious from his/her remarks that I haven't communicated everything that has transpired.  This reader had several important points incorrect, so I think I need to clarify a few things.

Schnitzelbank wrote:

So it's one thing to battle over homework, but when you pull your kid out of school for two weeks, that's two weeks worth of instruction she missed. So of course there's going to be some extra catching up to do. This isn't just homework - it's 8 or 10 days (or whatever) worth of seat time, instruction, discussion, focused practice, remediation, assessment AND homework she missed out on. She came back with nothing done, and the class didn't stop, because you were on vacation. If she didn't have step 1, 2, and 3 completed, there was no way she could start rolling with step 4 on her first day back.

First off, I think it's hugely important to point out that Danielle wasn't out of school for two weeks. Although we were gone as a family for ten days, she only missed a total of four school days.  It's probably also worth pointing out that the class in question is one of those nearly impossible-to-fail elective classes.  This is a class, like art or physical education, where you are guaranteed to get a passing grade if you do the work, have a decent attitude, and turn in your assignments.  This isn't a heavy-duty academic class where one has to listen to an important lecture, retain the information, and later recall it for tests or quizzes.

She was completely over her head. And you do bear some responsibility in this, voluntarily pulling her out of school for two weeks to go on vacation, without setting up time and space to do her work, without being informed about what needed to be done, without playing the role of teacher a bit, as the rest of her class is continuing on without her, and she needs to keep up.

While we were on vacation, Danielle did have the time and space to do her work, if she chose to do it.  Although this trip was supposed to be a vacation, it was planned in advance to be a working vacation.  The four days Danielle was absent from school coincided with the days that I had to work.  Since my job requires a certain amount of concentration, I had my laptop and work materials set up in an quiet area so that I could accomplish the tasks that were expected. Danielle had every opportunity to avail herself of that time and space, but she refused to do so. 

Danielle was certainly not the only child present who was expected to spend part of our vacation on academics.  Our friends, who were camping with us, expected their kids to do some schoolwork while we vacationed.  Their preschoolers worked on letter-recognition skills, while their kindergartener worked on a packet sent home by his teachers.

There was plenty of time and opportunity for Danielle to get work done if she'd agreed to sit down and do it.

As much as Danielle's homeroom teacher might like to insist that her absence is what caused the deficiency in the elective class, I'm not convinced that is truly the case.  We'd made sure to give the school plenty of notice, in advance of our departure, so that they could put together a packet of work.  Mr. S., the elective class teacher, sent nothing home, other than a directive asking Danielle to take a few photographs of things related to the class subject.  No assignment sheets or textbooks were sent home.

Although I agree that we are certainly responsible for setting up an environment to succeed, we can't be held accountable if a teacher doesn't send something home when they've been warned in advance that our child will be absent for four days.  We also can't be held responsible for things Danielle "forgot on purpose," such as her reading book.  We even made an attempt to retrieve it while we were gone, but the day we selected turned out to be a minimum day we didn't know about, and the classroom was locked.

At some point in this process, Danielle has to own the responsibility for getting her school work done. 

I feel like if a parent isn't willing to play a supportive role during school-time vacation, then maybe you shouldn't take your kids on vacation during the school year. Or if you're going to pull her out, and refuse to do structured, guided, school-related activities during those missing school days, then you're going to have to accept that she is going to fall behind and fail, and not heap a bunch of consequences on top of it.

This wasn't a case of us refusing to give her the opportunity to do her work, or give her help when she asked for it.  This was a case of Danielle simply not doing the work, even when reminded.  And as I've said before, I'm not going to get into a knock-down, drag-out fight with my kid over schoolwork.  She was told, before we left, what the expectations were, her teachers were given an opportunity to send home assignments, and Danielle had plenty of time to sit down and do her work while the adults and other children were also working.  She opted not to do so.

I understand that your daughter has special needs and is combative with you. I get that. So that's why it's all the more puzzling why you'd pull her out of school in the beginning of the school year, when she needs the consistency of routine, the structure, and the format of the school day.

I have to take some exception to the the idea of "consistency of routine, the structure and the format of the school day."  I take issue with this because Danielle is not enrolled in a regular school program, and other than the fact that she gets on a bus at certain times of the day to travel to and from school, I think her day has very little structure.  At present, she spends the the majority of her day sitting in a classroom working on self-paced, independent study.  In all honesty, there's not a lot of difference between her current school program, and when she was attending the supervised home-school program, other than the location and the faces of the people who are helping her.

Given that Danielle spent nearly four years in a supervised home-study program, we all thought that she could manage to get her work done for a total of four measly days.  Obviously, we were wrong on that score.

As for the timing of our trip, it had everything to do with my work schedule and where the Labor Day holiday fell.  Unfortunately, I work at a very demanding job, and my ability to take time off doesn't always coincide with times that Danielle is not in school.  I've learned from many years of self-employment that if there is an opportunity to take time off, I need to grab it while I can. More often than I'd like, even time off I've scheduled in advance with my clients has been interrupted, and I've been called back to work.  This seems to be especially true during the summer, Thanksgiving weekend, and the December holidays.

Now in this case we knew in advance it was supposed to be a working vacation, though it ended up being more work and less vacation because one of our clients ended up having a crisis.  Unfortunately for us, by the time the problems appeared, we'd already made non-refundable reservations, so we went anyway, figuring that working remotely from a nice place would be better than not going at all.

It sounds like you had a great vacation - you blogged that she had a great time and didn't have any meltdowns. School wasn't mentioned at all in your blog. Did you read through her extended absence packet of work and were you familiar with what needed to be done? Did you set up a consistent time and place for her to do her work? Did you provide some instruction or guided practice for the skills that were being presently taught back at home?

Danielle's homeroom and elective teachers did not send home any sort of packet.  The homeroom teacher told Danielle to continue working through her books as she had been at school, and the elective teacher directed her to take some photographs.  Danielle didn't do much of her core curriculum because she "forgot" her reading book, and she was very unwilling to sit down and to the rest.  The photographs got taken, only because FosterEema practically dragged her outside with the camera.

So did I read through her packet?  No, because none was sent.  Did she have a consistent time and place to work?  Yes, absolutely. Did I provide instruction or guidance for skills that are taught at home?  No, because Danielle's materials are self-paced, and there is no formal instruction.  She is expected to read the material, to do the work, and ask someone if she has questions.

You set her up for failure here. And I do think you have a responsibility here to help her at this point. Especially because she has special needs, she doesn't know where to begin. This isn't the same as a homework battle, she missed two weeks of school. You need to provide the instruction, discussion, guided practice and remediation she missed. Then she'll be able to do her homework on her own, and you can back off to your usual hands-off approach. Then it's her chance to make the right decisions. But you have to start with teaching her what she missed. That's what the teacher meant by "getting her back up to speed."

I absolutely disagree with this assessment.  This is yet another case where we gave Danielle plenty of opportunities to succeed, to do the things she was supposed to do, but she opted not to do them.  Sure, I could have spent a significant portion of our vacation nagging Danielle to do her work, but it would have made the trip much less enjoyable for everyone.  And again, she didn't miss ten days of school; she missed four.  A nasty cold or a bout of the flu could have taken her out longer than that.

As for the eight missing assignments from her elective class, it's not at all clear that they were assigned during the four days Danielle was absent, given that her instructor didn't send any work home.  I am skeptical that an instructor would assign that much work over four days, but even if he did, why would he withhold it when told in advance that she would be gone?

Now it's certainly possible that Danielle lied about her assignments, but her elective teacher didn't give me any indication that he'd sent work home with her.  When we asked her about the missing assignments, she claimed that she "didn't know" the work was supposed to be done and handed in. 

I have no way to know if Danielle is telling the truth or making up a convenient story in the hopes that she'll escape doing work she doesn't want to do, but she is the one who must hold ownership over getting her work done.

What I found so frustrating in all of this is that clearly Danielle was capable of getting the work done.  She did get it done, at school, even though her homeroom teacher sent us a frantic note saying it simply wasn't possible to catch her up to the point of having a passing grade.

Clearly, there's been a huge failure in communication.  We should have been told about the missing assignments long before we were (we didn't hear until weeks later) and clearly there should be better communication between Danielle's special classroom and her elective teacher.  I'm still confused as to why the classroom aides told us work was finished that the elective teacher claimed not to have.

Whether this is a communication problem, or Danielle concealing the truth, I can't be responsible for her school work.  I can't go to school with her every day to find out what assignments her teachers have given, and I can't force her to do the work anyway.  At some point in life, Danielle is going to have to learn to be responsible for things, and it's not my job to helicopter in and make sure she does everything.  She has to own that.

In just a bit more than two years, she will be 18 years old, and she will want to live as an independent adult.  If I keep swooping in, trying to manage her affairs for her, then she's not going to learn how to be responsible for herself.  This time, the problem was of relatively low consequence.  If she had gotten a failing grade on her mid-term report, the earth wouldn't go spinning out of orbit and crashing into the sun.  She would have gotten an F on her report card, she'd have to make up the work later in the term, and that would be the end of it.  If she didn't make it up and was still failing, then she'd receive the logical consequence of not passing the course and losing out on those graduation credits.

In two years, she'll be faced with problems like showing up to work on time, managing her finances, and juggling her own personal schedule.  She is going to have to manage her life, because she's not impaired enough that she needs to be placed under adult guardianship or would qualify for disability.  She's in the unfortunate grey area of being too smart to qualify for any real help, but being challenged enough that her life is guaranteed to be difficult.

And there comes a point where I have to stand back and let her start taking responsibility for her own life.  If we keep helicoptering in, nagging her in a futile attempt to avoid problems, or rescuing her when she fails, we won't be doing her any favors.

What we have here is really two separate problems: 1) Danielle's failure to do her core work while we were on vacation, and 2) her failure to turn in assignments for her elective class after we returned.

At the end of the day, I think we did make the right choice in taking a relatively hands-off approach to this problem.  Danielle did manage to get enough work done so that she has a passing grade, and that's good enough.

What I've learned in life is that nobody really gives a shit about grades much past graduation.  Even the fact that I graduated high school and have a Bachelor of Science degree matters less than what I can do.  When it comes to success in life and the job market, what matters most are the skills, experience and knowledge you bring to the table.  Nobody gives a rip what your grade in your high school biology class was.

What is School Coming to These Days?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. S, Danielle's elective class teacher.  It seems there is a large disconnect between what her homeroom teacher is saying, what Danielle is saying, and the actual facts.

On Tuesday, we got a frantic e-mail from Danielle's homeroom teacher.  She reported that Danielle was failing Mr. S's class. She had been instructed to bring her book home that night (which she didn't do) and that there was no possible way that she could get caught up at school.  We told Danielle that she needed to bring her book home the following night, and she needed to get caught up, or there would be dire consequences.

Wednesday afternoon, she brought her book home and claimed that all her assignments were done.  FosterEema wrote a note to Mr. S, asking him to call and verify that all the missing work had been turned in.

Mr. S. called this morning and reported that Danielle was still missing three assignments, but that her grade had been brought up to a passing mark.  FosterEema called the homeroom class and spoke to an aide who reported that one of the three missing assignments had been turned in and they were working on the remaining two, which should be finished today.

So it seems there's a pretty big communication problem here, and there are several things that I don't understand:

1. Why, given that Danielle is in a special program for mentally and behaviorally challenged kids, did the school wait until she was eight assignments behind before notifying us?
2. Why did the homeroom teacher represent the situation as being impossible to rectify at school, when clearly it is being taken care of at school? 
3. Why are we getting different stories from everybody?  I can understand why Danielle might lie, but why is it that we are hearing different information from the various teachers?

Although I found Mr. S. to be helpful, he did tell me something rather disturbing.   He told me that the school was soliciting voluntary cash donations to support his elective program, and that he had offered students in his class extra credit points for bringing in those donations.

So basically, if parents make a donation of a certain dollar amount, kids get enough extra credit points to bring them up a full grade letter.

I was shocked.  Money for grades?

"I'll take it under advisement, as to whether or not we can afford to make a donation," I told Mr. S., "but if we do make a donation, Danielle should not be given extra credit for it.  I believe that grades should be earned, not bought."

Mr. S. seemed surprised at my reaction.  He tried to explain that he offered students a variety of ways to earn extra credit in his class.

"Extra credit I have no problem with," I replied, "if that extra credit is based on work."

I was shocked.  I am still shocked.

Frankly, I'm surprised that students are allowed to turn work in so late and still get credit for it.  Back in my day, teachers would take a full letter grade off of your assignments for each day something was late, unless you had made prior arrangements, or had a valid medical excuse.  Now, it seems kids can turn things in late, right up to the end of the grading period, and it doesn't matter.

Now kids can buy their grades, if Mommy and Daddy will just write a check.

What is school coming to these days?

---
Administrative Note: This post was edited after its original posting to clarify that Danielle's teacher was soliciting cash donations in exchange for extra credit points.

Sink or Swim

I'm extremely troubled by the knowledge that she's failing one of her elective classes.  I'd be less troubled if this was a case of her simply being unable to do the work or pass the tests.  She's failing because she hasn't turned in her assignments.

As I said earlier, I'm just not going to get into a nasty control battle with my kid over her school work.  Her teacher asked for our involvement, so we told Danielle she needed to get caught up or face consequences, and that's pretty much the extent of what we can do.  I'm not going to force her to sit at the kitchen table and battle for hours (like we used to do when we home schooled) over an assignment.

She's 16 years old, and it's time she learn to solve her own problems.  It's time that she learn she has to sink or swim on her own merits.

This is a sad and scary place to be, because I am not convinced that Danielle will swim.  Yes, she's certainly at a disadvantage in the race called life, but I firmly believe she can swim.  She might not be the fastest, the most graceful, or the most skilled, but I do believe that if she put the effort in it, she would be able to do laps in the pool called life.

My fear is that she simply won't try.  She's learned that if she plays victim long enough, someone will swoop in and rescue her.  If she looks like she's drowning, and cries for help loud enough, it seems there is always someone who will feel sorry for her and try to help.

She's done this to teachers, therapists, friends, and extended family members.  One by one, people have realized what she's up to, and their willingness to help has decreased or disappeared.  Folks have learned that a great deal of what Danielle does is manipulation, and they are tired of it.

So I wonder what is going to happen when she finally has to swim in the pool of life and she learns there isn't a lifeguard.

What makes this all the more difficult is that I feel like we are on a collision course with an unpleasant future.  I can't fix my kid.  I can't force her learn, to grow, or to acquire the skills she will need to have as an independent young adult.  I can't make her stop abusing us.  I can't make her follow the rules, which she so conveniently "forgets on purpose," which makes her living here untenable past her 18th birthday.

I am acutely aware of what this situation means.  Danielle isn't safe to live here, but she won't be ready to live on her own, either.  The idea of casting my kid out on the street sounds like a terrible, uncaring thing to do, but we also recognize that we can't continue to live this way either.  We aren't rich enough to set her up in a subsidized apartment, and she won't have the academic skills or achievement to go away to college.

Danielle's 16th birthday is just a few days away, and she needs to start swimming.

But I am afraid she is going to sink.

F Marks the Spot

Against what we considered our better judgment, Danielle's program for behaviorally-challenged teens decided to mainstream her for an elective class this semester.

Not surprisingly, she is now failing that class.

The reason?

She hasn't turned in eight assignments.  At least some of those assignments were assigned while we were out of town.

Danielle knew, in advance, that we were going out of town.  We informed the school that we were going to be out of town, and asked that her instructors send work home with her.  Danielle "forgot" at least some of those assignments.  We know for a fact that she didn't bring her reading book home, and she denied receiving any assignments from her mainstreamed class, other than being asked to take a few photographs while she was gone.

She barely did any work while we were away.  We reminded her a couple of times, but opted not to get into a control battle over homework.  The consequences of failing to do her homework were going to be on her, and that's where we left it.

Yesterday, we got an e-mail from Danielle's homeroom teacher that said the following:

We've been trying to help her get caught up.  There is not enough time in the day to devote the time she needs to get caught up.  She was directed by our staff to bring her [failing subject] book home and work on assignments there.  She left the book on her desk.  I believe she was also told by Mr. [teacher of failing subject] to take pictures of [failing subject] and label them.  I don't know if she followed that directive.  She also has had notes downloaded on her gig stick, but never seems to bring it to school.  Perhaps you could help her get caught up so she can have a passing grade.

We avoided the temptation to send back a snarky, "we told you so," remark, or to ask the obvious question, "how do you expect us to help her if we don't have the book here?"  We politely replied that we would discuss the situation with Danielle, but that our availability to help her is somewhat limited, because of our work schedules.

The real answer is, I'm not going to get into a huge control battle with my kid over school.

We did tell her we expected to see the book, in her hands, tomorrow afternoon, no excuses.  We also told her that if she brought home a failing grade on her progress report, there would be some unpleasant consequences.

When she tried to argue, we cut her off.  "You know what is expected, you know what the consequences will be if you do not meet our expectations, and that's all we have to say on this subject."

And now we are done discussing the problem.

Of course Danielle tried to argue that she'd already received some consequences at school.

"That may be true," we answered calmly, "but when your teacher says, "perhaps you could help her get caught up so she can have a passing grade," we are going to get involved.

I think a snowflake has a better chance of surviving in hell than Danielle has of passing this class.

Yes, It Does Suck

This morning, Cindy, over at Big Momma Hollers, wrote a post entitled, ODD Sucks.  In her post, she outlined the numerous ways that parenting kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder can be difficult and unpleasant.  In her post, she wrote:

When these ODD combatants grow up and leave, I always find myself stunned and shocked at the peace and calm that immediately descends in their vacancy. Really? I lived like that? I don't miss them for one single second and I find that to be a very sad commentary, but I'd be a masochistic idiot to miss the above behaviors. Any one of them, for example the constant complaining, would be enough to send a relatively sane person over the edge, try any combination of those behavior on for size 24-7, and see how it feels.

Yes, it sucks.

In addition to PTSD, my child's numerous therapists have knocked around diagnoses such as ODD, Conduct Disorder, and Intermittent Explosive Disorder.  Our current therapist has raised a concerning possibility, but changed her mind, because she wanted to give our child the least serious diagnosis so as to avoid causing her trouble later in life.

I'm not sure that a more serious diagnosis will make any difference for Danielle at this point.  The fact that she has a diagnosis of PTSD has already precluded her from joining the military*.

Cindy's list of behaviors certainly does a great job of describing our child:

• yelling
• whining
• chronic complaining
• overt and covert defiance
• screaming
• temper tantrums
• throwing objects
• talking back
• use of profanity
• stealing
• engaging in constantly annoying behavior
• ignoring requests
• physically resisting
• failure to complete routine chores
• destroying property, physical fights with others
• failure to complete school homework
• disrupting other activities
• ignoring self care tasks

Cindy went on to say:

No, it's about me now. I'm attempting to heal from within, to try and recover from the intense emotional abuse. Every bruise I've ever had on me from someone came out of one of two possible sibling groups. 'Nuff said. Is it any wonder that I find myself both grieving and furious?

ODD sucks for everyone. I have to recover, they have to change. Only one of these is possible I'm afraid.

In our case, it doesn't really matter what Danielle's true diagnosis is.  We've realized that her problems aren't fixable, and she's going to carry these behaviors into adulthood.  Even the therapist agrees that there is no way to create a happy, fairy-tale ending for our family.  At this point, all we can do is try to declare a truce, and attempt a reasonably peaceful co-existence for the next couple of years.

Yes, Cindy, this sucks. Worse, there's no way to really communicate just how bad this is to anyone who hasn't already lived it.

---
* Even if she did not have PTSD, her extremely short stature, and lack of academic progress would likely keep her out anyway.

The Therapist Calls a Truce

We had an interesting meeting with the therapist this week.

And when I say "interesting," I think I mostly mean frustrating.

We were talking about how things were going, and the therapist started asking Danielle about her level of compliance with our rules and expectations.  She, quite honestly, admitted that she often didn't follow the rules or do what was expected.

"I forget on purpose," she said.

She tried to deny that forgetting on purpose is the same thing as making a conscious choice to disobey.

Like I said, it was rather frustrating.

At one point, Danielle was excused from the room so we adults could discuss goals.  It's clear, from how all three of us feels, that the possibility of a sail-off-into-the-sunset happy ending isn't going to happen.  We talked about what we each wanted, and how we felt.

Then Danielle was called back into the room.

When she returned, the therapist called a truce.  She basically told Danielle that we don't have to love each other, we don't even have to like each other, but we do have to get along.

The therapist elaborated on what she meant by this.  When she was finished, she asked Danielle, "Is this okay with you?"

Danielle was very non-committal.  "I guess," she shrugged.

A Murder Close to Home

Someone I know stands accused of murdering a parent.

I am shocked.  I am stunned.  I am speechless.  Although I didn't know the alleged perpetrator well, we'd had regular business contact.  The person struck me as nothing but nice, and gave us absolutely excellent customer service.

I am deeply troubled by these events, because it makes me think of my own child.  I think of the child who has hit, bit, kicked, punched and threatened my wife and me.  I think of the teen who has  threatened to kill us and our pets.  My kid is often not nice.

If someone who I thought of as a decent, kind, caring human being could be capable of such a terrible and violent crime, I worry about the implications for my child.  Given that she has repeatedly made threats, and has acted on her violent impulses, am I at risk of dying at her hands?

Although Danielle's behavior is substantially better on medication, it hasn't solved everything.  She is still a deeply troubled and dysfunctional person.  Although the drugs do seem to be helping now, there's no guarantee that the honeymoon won't eventually wear off.

We have been so concerned about her behavior that we put a lock on our bedroom door while she was away at respite.

I am deeply, deeply troubled by this murder.  Although I didn't know the alleged perpetrator very well, and didn't know the victim at all, this case weighs heavily on my mind.  It kept me awake last night, because it hit just a little to close to home.

Better Doesn't Make Everything Okay

About ten days ago, Paula over at NaCl H20 Times wrote about how tired she was of being knocked down, beat up, and judged.

[L]ast night I got blindsided again. Some really hurtful things were said about me and behind my back and I'm ready to runaway and never come back. I know that when you get knocked down, you're supposed to stand up again, but I'm losing the fight in me. I'm sick to death of being judged by people. I am tired of Christians being so dang mean. Those invisible knives that keep getting plunged deep into my soul are starting to bleed me to death.

I have only one thing to say to Paula:

I hear you, loud and clear!

I could say the exactly same thing.

Danielle has been home from respite for  about a month, and on medication for a little over three weeks, and things have been measurably better.  We've gone a month without major tantrums, threats or acts of violence.  Things have been really pretty decent, which is a huge change from the way things were before we sent her off to respite.  The break from each other and the new medication have made huge improvements in our child's attitude.

And that's great.  Things are a lot better.

But that doesn't make everything okay.  I feel this external pressure that I should somehow be automatically ready to "start over" or to "forgive and forget" about all the violence, threats, false allegations, and verbal aggression that has plagued our family for years.  I feel like family members, friends, and the so-called caring professionals think that we should be able to magically start over fresh, as if none of the things that have defined our relationship with our child had ever occurred.

Although I do have the capacity to forgive, I will never be able to forget.  I am too battered, bruised and traumatized to be able to put everything behind us and act as if it nothing has happened. I feel completely used up, and when it comes to my kid, I don't feel like I have very much left to give her.  I'm really very tired.

I shared this with our new therapist this week.  I mentioned during our family session that I felt like the past name-calling, verbal aggression, threats and acts of physical violence had completely damaged my relationship with my child.  I spoke of how when Danielle behaves nicely towards me, it feels insincere, as often she's putting on the sweet charm to convince me to give her something she wants.  I shared how I'm really struggling to have much in the way of tender feelings towards her, because of the horrifying abuse she's heaped upon us over the past few years.

The therapist nodded and claimed to understand.  She turned to Danielle and asked her if she wanted to improve her relationship with us.

Danielle was staring off into space, completely disengaged.  When the therapist called her on her daydreaming, she sat up with a start.

"What?" Danielle asked.  "Oh, umm, I guess so," she finally mumbled.

I found the session rather troubling.  Danielle was evasive and disengaged, and seemed unwilling to commit to the idea that violence and threats in our home are unacceptable.

There's no question that things are substantially better in our home, but that doesn't suddenly make everything okay, especially when it comes to our relationships.  A few days ago, Danielle came home from school, extremely upset.  Apparently one of her straight friends at school had called one of her gay friends a nasty pejorative, and she came home in tears.

I felt more emotion about the gay friend who had been the victim of the verbal bashing than I did about my own child's feelings of upset.  I imagine I should have felt more, but I'm to the point where I I've been kicked so many times that I do not have the strength to stand up again.  I cared that Danielle was upset, but I simply couldn't create much emotional energy to do anything about it.

"I'm sorry this happened," I told her.  I listened to her tearful explanations, but I didn't want to engage them too deeply.  I didn't have the emotional bandwidth available for a multi-hour conversation, as so many of her upsets seem to require.  I was facing a looming deadline, and I really needed to get back to work.

Some of my family members seem to think that I should be viewing Danielle's medication as some sort of magic cure that will solve everything that ails our family.  I don't think that a prescription can be the Holy Grail in that sense.  Yes, it's clear the medication is helping and making things better for us and our child, but it can't undo everything that's transpired.  Although the drug may very well help her mood, it won't suddenly improve her weak problem-solving skills, her lack of good judgment, or guarantee she will pass the state's required academic tests.

So better is really better, but it doesn't solve all our problems or magically make everything okay.

Excuse Number Four

This is my third and final post explaining why I was absent from the blogosphere for so long.  For those who might have missed them, here are links to my first, as well as my second and third excuses.

Today's excuse has a lot to do with the fact that we are somewhat in a holding pattern. Basically, we are doing a lot of waiting to see what happens next.

We've had a couple of pretty significant things happen over the past few of weeks.

Most importantly, Danielle started medication.  Although it's really too early to tell if the drugs will make a lasting change in her mood or behavior, the initial signs are promising.  I haven't wanted to say much about it, one way or the other, because I feel like I'm walking around the house constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We've seen periods of good behavior before, only to have them end in sudden, overwhelming, and violent explosions.  Medication might be a game changer, or it might not.  It's just too darn early to tell.

Danielle's new therapist made a preliminary diagnosis a couple of weeks ago, but has since changed her opinion and given a new one.  Personally, I think her first opinion was more accurate, but I suppose the official diagnosis doesn't really matter.  Whatever label they want to use, as long as it gets the kid some appropriate help, is fine by me.  In this case, the treatment for both diagnoses is similar, so it probably doesn't matter if Danielle really suffers from condition a or condition b.

So I haven't blogged, because I'm not sure how much I want to say about any of this.  In the past, I've been pretty open about what's gone on, and I'm not sure that the resulting headaches (and child abuse referrals) have been worth it. I'm really torn -- I think the world  needs to see just how bad things can be for adoptive families, but I'm not sure that the personal costs (created by trolls, bashers, stalkers and false abuse reports) make it worthwhile.

Someone needs to tell these stories.  I'm just not sure it should be me any longer.

Excuses Number Two and Three

Today's post will be a second installment of excuses explaining why I didn't blog for so long. Yesterday's excuse put the blame on camping.

Today's excuse will be blamed on work and a lack of privacy.

Although I did have a portable Internet connection with me, I ended up spending the bulk of the Labor Day holiday, and all of the following week, working. My original plans were that I was going to take off early Friday, work from the campground that day, and enjoy a nice three-day weekend.  I'd planned to work from the campground Tuesday-Friday, and then  enjoy another weekend, already set-up and ready to go.

But things didn't work out that way.  Something I'd been working on was launched on Thursday against my express advice.  It's always a bad idea to turn anything brand-new out of the barn on a Friday because people want to have their weekends off, and it's even worse if you do it right before a holiday.  I'd suggested we wait until immediately after Labor Day, but my advice was ignored by the powers that be.

Things started to go really wrong when the campaign we launched resulted in more than forty times the number of responses we expected on the first day.  For every customer we expected, we had dozens more who patiently waited, and even more who gave up and walked away in frustration.

Needless to say, my client's customer was not pleased that we were so woefully unprepared.  On the bright side, our lack of preparation wasn't entirely our fault.  The sales results we were given from last year's program didn't reflect the overwhelming response that we received.

I spent the weekend fixing things, re-allocating resources so that we could handle the load, and by Tuesday morning, the mess was considerably better.  The overwhelming initial response had died down a little, and we had been able to allocate more resources to handling the unexpected rush.  I spent the rest of the week sweeping up the remnants of the mess, preparing reports, and performing a postmortem on what went wrong.

By the following Friday, things had calmed down sufficiently, and I got off work about an hour early.  At that point, I needed the weekend.

Needless to say, since my work situation was completely out of control, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about writing blog posts.  When things were a little quieter, I did think about posting, but it seemed that whenever I wasn't working, I had an audience.  Although FosterEema obviously knows about the blog, my kid, my real-life friends and my family don't know about it.  It's my little secret, and I am trying to keep it that way.

Excuse Number One

As I said earlier, I've been carefully considering what I should and shouldn't say about my recent unexplained absence from the blogosphere.

There are a number of reasons, not all of which I am sure I want to explain, but I'll start with the easiest one:

We went camping for ten days.

Even though we were camping, I had to work almost the entire time we were gone.  Although I was supposed to have Labor Day weekend off, things went awry at work, and I ended up working for a good chunk of the weekend.  I'd previously planned to work the Tuesday-Friday after Labor Day, but the problem at work really messed up my plans.  Still, I managed to get all my work done, despite the fact that we were in a remote area, by forwarding all my calls to my cell phone, and using a wireless, cellular modem for my Internet connectivity.

It worked surprisingly well.  I'm glad we had the foresight to purchase the wireless modem last year, as I would have had to cancel my Labor Day plans without it.

Despite the work crisis, we did manage to have quite a bit of fun.  All of our cooked meals were prepared over the campfire, and we ate pretty darn well.  We consumed more than our fair share of dead cows and baked potatoes, and I made several treats in our RV's oven.  I baked muffins, cupcakes and even a birthday cake for a friend who was celebrating.  (A commercial cake mix and homemade butter cream frosting to the rescue!)

This trip I started to realize that cooking over a fire is really more of an art than a science, and that I'm getting pretty decent at it.  I learned a few things about the characteristics of fire, and that it's not absolutely necessary to have the perfect bed of coals to grill a steak.  Potatoes, on the other hand, do require coals to be completely happy.

Cavemen don't got nothin' on me when it comes to cooking over a fire, that's for sure!

Another big plus was that this camping trip was meltdown-free.  The kid managed to make it for ten whole days without name-calling, throwing temper tantrums, making threats or becoming violent.  Even more amazing, she was actually helpful for most of the trip.

We had a lot of fun, but things didn't always go quite as planned.  Our RV's toilet crapped out quit working on day one, so we had to deal with the inconvenience of having to flush by pouring water into the bowl.  Still, the toilet worked well enough to spare us from a long hike to the campground's restrooms, or resorting to bush-wacking as our not-so-nice neighbors did.

The big thing I learned from this trip was that I can work from the road, even under less-than-optimal conditions.  I was happy to see that I was able to fix our work-related disaster without having to drive home.  When I left, I had a substantial backup plan worked out, just in case.  If my portable Internet connection hadn't worked, I had two other potential Internet hotspot locations lined up.  If those hadn't panned out, then I would have had to drive home.

But it all worked out.  I also learned that having to work from the campground is less fun than having time off, but it's still better than having to cancel a planned trip.  Still, I'm going to do everything in my power to try to avoid work/camping collisions from happening, as it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for a campsite just so I can sit in the RV and work all day.

So that's my blogging excuse for today.  I'll probably have more, later.

Is Everything Okay?

I haven't posted since September 1, and a number of nice people left me comments asking why I haven't posted, and if everything is okay here at chez FosterAbba.

Yes, everything is okay.

I haven't written because we've had a lot of things happen over the past week and and a bit that I am still pondering.  The big question is just how much I should say publicly.

Some of it is good, some not-so-good, and some indifferent.  Part of my absence has to do with work, part has to do with Danielle, and part has to do with other stuff that has nothing to do with anything, but manage to quite handily get in the way of blogging anyway.

So I apologize for disappearing for more than a week without any warning.  I hadn't intended to be absent for so long.

My big struggle, which has been evolving for quite some time, is how much I should disclose here in the public blog.  It's clear that a certain subset of my readers are intent in doing me and my family some harm, and they seem to take delight in interpreting everything I say as evidence that my wife and I are abusive parents.  I've had enough people send me private e-mails and comments (which I have not published) saying that if they knew where I lived, they would turn me into the authorities in the hopes that the child welfare authorities would take our kid away, or that we'd be arrested for child abuse.

Of course it's kind of hard to have us arrested for child abuse when we haven't committed any abuse, but I guess that doesn't matter in the minds of certain people.

So that's largely why I haven't written much.

I'm trying to catch up on all my blogs, and while I was doing so, I noticed Kari's post Those Convinced Against Their Will...  Her post made me think of a recent camping trip, where we encountered an unusually obnoxious couple, accompanied by a large crowd in attendance to celebrate their wedding.  The happy couple had been together for quite some time, had several young children together, and spent several days drinking, and partying in a nearby campsite.

The group consumed enormous amounts of alcohol.  The bride-to-be (who appeared to be pregnant, though we were later told she still had her baby-belly from an earlier birth) became incredibly intoxicated.  She drank to the point of falling down, and on the day of her wedding she had a huge black eye and bruises all up and down her legs.  She had fallen several times, colliding with a picnic bench and the ground.  Her male companions took delight in yelling curses, loudly extolling their past sexual behaviors in intimate detail, and urinating all over their campsite.  One gentleman (and I use the term loosely) opted to relieve himself into the fire.  Another, made a habit of using the space behind their trailer as a toilet, and he was observed on a number of occasions to be relieving himself in broad daylight.  He was witnessed by my mother, my kid, my friend, and myself.

Sick.

At one point, after the campground staff had asked them several times to cease using the campsite as a toilet, my mother marched over and angrily gave them a piece of her mind.  They responded by calling her a rash of ugly names and stated that she was some type of sexual deviant for watching.

It was hard not to notice, considering their impromptu outdoor latrine could be easily spotted from our trailer's dinette window.

Later, the now-bride came over to apologize for the conduct of her husband's guests.

There's just something fundamentally wrong with a relationship when a bride has to apologize for the behavior of her new husband.  She claimed that he and his guests had simply not been "properly socialized" when they were children, which was why they behaved this way as adults.

Worse, the couple's two young children were present for the entire shebang.  Granted, they were very young and probably slept through most of the antics, but I can't help but think about these children.  Given how much their mother was drinking, I had to wonder if the children had FASD.

In her post, Kari wrote:

I didn't approach the pregnant woman who was drinking alcohol in a public setting because I have slowly come to understand the wisdom in an old saying. Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Indeed.

Blame the Parents

This is something that has been on my mind for a very long time.  Although Morning Buzz touched upon the topic last month in her post A Bunch of Bunk, and Paula touched on a similar thread in her post Trauma Mama, written a couple of weeks ago, this has been on my mind for much, much longer.

Morning Buzz wrote:

We saw a psychologist today - what a waste of time. We sat there for over an hour and listen to him tell us all the things we were doing wrong as parents to create our child's behaviors. We just need to take control and take back our house. We ask him point blank to give us some ideas/tools to that would help us do this. But we just got the hem and haw act from him. He even watch OLA go into full melt down mode after being told no (and no giving in on our part). We held firm - but obviously we are doing something wrong as parents. It was he who finally said after about thirty minutes of watching us standing firm and OLA in melt down mode that he decided our time slot was done and we should just leave.

I am so tired of being blamed, directly or indirectly, for all that ails my child.  I feel angry when I think of all the time we have wasted in therapy, only to have the therapist imply that Danielle was somehow justified in hitting us. It's been hugely frustrating, because every piece of advice we've received has only been contradicted by someone else.

If only we:

• were more lenient/had stricter boundaries
• expressed more empathy/stop letting her past be an excuse
• understood that she is delayed/force her to act her age
• allowed her to express her anger/insisted that she use her coping skills and control herself

The list goes on and on and on...

Danielle's behavior has been our fault for a number of other reasons as well:

• She really needs to be placed in a "normal" family.  (Read normal in this case to be heterosexual.)
• She needs a family with structure.  (We should shutter our business and get 9 to 5 jobs that never require work evenings, weekends and holidays.)
• She needs the attention of a stay-at-home parent.  (Having two work-from-home parents isn't good enough.  One needs to focus 100% of of her attention on Danielle, while the other leaves the house to go to work.)
• She needs siblings.  (Yes, let's go through several more years of hell, including social worker visits and legal battles to adopt again.)

So it was a big eye-opener for everyone when she went to respite and things didn't work out so well.  Danielle spent a few weeks with what seemed like the perfect family.

They had all the attributes of an ideal family:

• White, heterosexual, and legally married.
• Husband works out of the home in a highly-respected career, while the wife is a stay-at-home mother.
• Upper-middle class lifestyle, including a big, beautiful home, a huge yard, nice cars and even a private swimming pool.
• Several other beautiful children.

They were perfect in every way.  In everyone's estimation, Danielle should have gone to respite and behaved like an angel.  It would have further proven that the problem is us, and our lousy, despicable, terrible parenting.

Only that's not how it worked out.  Danielle was awful while she was away.  She showed most of the ugly behaviors she shows at home, plus she even came up with some new and even more despicable ones.

It was, in short, rather amazing.

As aggravating as Danielle was in our friends' home, her behavior did have the benefit of finally vindicating us.  If Danielle could pull out all the stops and be so terrible for this perfect family, it makes it clear that the problem isn't really us.  The fact that she finally showed her true colors when in the presence of experienced, heterosexual parents gave a lot of credence to what we've been saying all along.

Pity it had to take so darn long.  I wonder what might be different now if social workers, therapists and other helping professionals had taken our concerns seriously, instead of brushing us off, and instructing us to take a few dozen more parenting classes?

Paula said it right when she wrote:

I'm tired of it. Don't tell me to shut-up about my life. Don't tell me that I should do more or put up with violence or that I should try a new medication or that I should read this book or put my child on that diet. I will never be good enough in your mind no matter what I do. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I'm going to continue to be honest. I'm not going to sugarcoat my reality to make adoption look better. Plus, I HAVE experienced trauma from taking in abused and neglected children.

And that's the rub, isn't it?  There are people out there in this world who believe that all children will heal, and if they are still acting one, two, three or five years after their adoptions, it must be the fault of the parents.  If only they would love them more.  If only they would show more empathy or sympathy.  If only they would attend this parenting seminar or seek out this therapy or medication that isn't covered by insurance.  If only...

"If only" is bunk.  We do what we can.  We seek out help and therapies that are within our financial reach and we try to do the best that we can do.  But, at the end of the day, these kids are under our control for only a short while.  All children become adults one day, and at that moment we lose our ability to make decisions and to control their lives.

In just a bit over two years, our time to parent Danielle will be over.  Will we have made a positive difference in her life?  I don't suppose we'll be able to tell, at least not for a long while.

I just know that I've done my best.  Perhaps it hasn't been and won't be good enough, but it's all I have.  I recognize, in just a couple of years, I will be just that much closer to retirement, and that much closer to having aging parents who will need my care and concern.  As much as I want to make a positive difference in my child's life, I recognize the likelihood of  her being here much  past her 18th birthday is small.  I can't count on her assistance in my dotage, so I am faced with the weighty knowledge that I must not bankrupt my future to save my child.

Even if I did, I'm not sure that it is within my power to save her.

It's not that I don't care.  I do care.  It's just that I realize that there aren't many years left before she won't be here, and I'll still be responsible for managing my own life.  The first half of my career has gone by blazingly fast, and I don't have near as much to show for it as I think I should.  I am sure the second half will go by even more quickly.

I am the parent riding a doomed airliner.  The oxygen masks drop down from the ceiling, and I have a choice:  whose mask do I put on first?

I choose mine.