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So we met a little boy this week who will (assuming all goes as planned) be our son in a couple of months. :D
He’ 4yo, and it’s a bit of an unusual situation, he was previously adopted (a little over a year ago) by his foster mother who is now putting him up for adoption because he’s “too much of a handful” with the other kids she has. I won’t go into all the details, but the short of it is that he’s a very smart little boy who has some emotional and behavioral issues from all that he’s been through who will be shortly leaving the person he calls mom and the kids he calls siblings to his new home with us.
Since he’s in no immediate harm we’re working on transitioning him slowly, we have two more day visits coming up where we’ll see how he does and slowly come up with a plan on how to explain to him the situation and start all the legal issues.
With us he was fine, he got fussy, got upset when he had to switch gears, or if he thought me made a mistake in a game, didn’t like being told no, but the outbursts were short lived, and he wasn’t too hard to talk down. We understand this is mostly his norm, though he will have bigger stronger outbursts. The social worker also expects that the change of family for him will probably only make his behavior worse for a while before it gets better (he tends to get upset and start going “nobody likes” and things like that).
We have no other children, which they think will be good for him to get all the attention for a while.
Anyway, we’re very excited, but a little scared and overwhelmed because we want to do right by him, but aren’t sure what to expect never having had kids before and not really having been around too many kids this age either. (Another piece of background, we were my younger brother’s legal guardians right after getting married while my brother was in high school after my mom passed and my dad was too ill to care for him, so teenage years we’ve got covered! Lol little kids…. No clue).
Any advice on how to manage the transition in a situation like this? Any parenting advice for first time parents of a 4yo? Any words of wisdom from those who’ve been in similar situations? How to we approach the whole “mom and dad” thing? He’s had two mom’s so far, don’t want to force him to call us anything he’s not ok with, but we will be his parents. How to introduce him to other people? Slowly one at a time better? Or one big event get it over with? My brother who I’m very close to, but who lives in another country will be up here this summer and will be able to stay with us for a few days around the time that we’re doing the adoption. Do we introduce him as “Uncle xxxx” so early? How do we prepare family for some of the challenges he’ll have to ask for support? His current legal name is different than his birth name. We won’t change his name, but the SW warned us that he did know his birth name and to be prepared in case he gets upset at being called his current name. Not sure how to manage that. We’re going to need after school care for him 2-3 days a week when school starts in September, with his issues is it better to keep him in a class like environment with other kids, or hire someone part time to pick him up and watch him at home so he’s not overwhelmed? He doesn’t seem to really get along well with or particularly like other kids (and honestly, I never got along well with kids and school was a nightmare for me until I was homeschooled much later on. But I know some kids socialization is better. How do we know?)
Seriously – blank slate over here. I’ll take whatever the hive mind can offer.
Thanks!
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A. Have you read anything or done any Education on either Foster Kids or this child's Behaviors??
He will ' read into ' the fact that you are ' clueless . ' He will run with this!!
B. I am not trying to be negative, but the ' Normal ' Advocacy with ' Parent and Child Bonding ' is to have no outside contact with anyone , for at least 3 months!!
Have you talked with anyone Professionally Case Management , Pediatrician, Therapist about this??
C, With regards to ' Extended Care '
Kindergarten is an adjustment and also a already long day!!
With our Kids, I would see how they are in August and how he is specifically with the ' Adoption Adjustment ' . How he does with other Kids and or is he still ' napping ' . Before making a decision of either Hiring a ' Nanny, ' or ' Extended Care . '
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Juli Hawley
A. Have you read anything or done any Education on either Foster Kids or this child's Behaviors??
He will ' read into ' the fact that you are ' clueless . ' He will run with this!!
We had training through the agency before the home study and we've started reading several books on it. (I'm starting on "Adopting The Hurt Child" right now).
B. I am not trying to be negative, but the ' Normal ' Advocacy with ' Parent and Child Bonding ' is to have no outside contact with anyone , for at least 3 months!!
Have you talked with anyone Professionally Case Management , Pediatrician, Therapist about this??
You're not being negative. Three months is not feasible though, but we have been making arrangements with work to get as much time as possible between us to be with him.
Though this is what's starting to piss me off. We've talked with the social worker about getting new evaluation for him. We've been asking questions about how to transition him. What should be know. They keep saying the'll get it, they've said it would be good to get his therapist involved in telling him what's happening and working as a team on what's best for transition. We've been asking for details on his schooling program now, should we continue, can he be moved. if he's moved what do we need to prepare... and there are no answers other than what I've been researching which is all general nothing specific about him. The social workers are all saying that since he's no longer on the system it all falls to his current mom to get that information. She's dead set on termination of her rights, but since we've expressed that we're definitely going forward nothing's been done. No information we ask for, no timeline for her starting the termination process, no answer on if we're paying the termination process. All they say is "working on it". So I don't know if she's being difficult or if they aren't following up with her to sort this out. And we've been explicitly told to not communicate directly with her with the exception of an emergency or something while we're out with him. (which other than her sending texts wanting to know about his behavior while we're out, is pretty easy to avoid since she's stopped being there when we pick him up and bolts dragging him into her car the second we stop ours so she's not late to pick up her bio son.
On trying to limit exposure, we have told family and friends that they just aren't meeting him for a while. We'll introduce him to my in-laws, but on a limited basis and only in our apartment, and if he's placed with us this summer in time, my brother who lived out of the country and is only here from mid June to August and will spend a few days of that with us. Everyone else is being told to wait and see.
But that again puts in the hard spot of even if we manage to be home with him full time until school starts, if the transition keeps dragging out there won't be enough time. And no one is giving me a time line. And I'm feeling like my social worker is now just pissed that I'm bugging her, but I've been very patient in getting answers to some of these questions and nothing's happening.
The thing is... I've maintained patience until the visit with him this week. I was all for the whole taking it nice and slow. But this week's visit it's obvious he knows what's going on (or something's going on) and it was stressing him out. He also said some less than great things about his current adoptive mother than made me and DH rather concerned, but it was hard to tell if this was something serious or him just being upset and saying things.
He did though totally freak out when we were driving him back. Not a tantrum, he did have one of those trying to get him in the car, this was after. he calmed down, we were talking. Then he started asking about if we were going to tell his mom that he was bad. He ran away several times, a couple of them were "fun" two though were when he got upset about something (he dropped something and freaked and ran away crying even though it wasn't a big deal and we weren't upset at all). and also when he didn't want to get in the car the started hitting me fighting. For both those things we walked to him. We explained why he shouldn't run, once we got him calm we talked about not hitting. he apologized, it was fine. Honestly nothing he did with us seemed out of the ordinary for a little 4yo, and 99% of the time he was absolutely perfect. But he got terrified that we'd tell his mom and he would get in trouble. Like crying. not the tantrum "i don't wanna" tears, but like panic.
Again, we're trying to keep it reasonable. no little kid likes getting in trouble, and with his background it's understandable that he has anxieties about adults being upset. Though... he's been with this woman between her fostering him and then adoption like... 2 years I think? Trying not to jump to anything, but I think regardless this back and forth is stressing him out, and no one knows what he's been told by the mom about what's happening, but I think she's started telling him something because he was asking about staying over.
C, With regards to ' Extended Care '
Kindergarten is an adjustment and also a already long day!!
With our Kids, I would see how they are in August and how he is specifically with the ' Adoption Adjustment ' . How he does with other Kids and or is he still ' napping ' . Before making a decision of either Hiring a ' Nanny, ' or ' Extended Care . '
Well again, that's why I'd like to get physical custody soon while the legal stuff is being finalized so there's time before school to adjust. I think what we decided is that we will have to do extended care, but only one day a week. I'll ask to work from home 2 days, DH is home 2 weekdays. He does all day care now.
And again we've no real idea of how he's with other kids. He's totally not napping, he despises nap time from what we have been told. but still no one is giving us anything.
At the playground it's been hard to tell. He seems apprehensive about kids, but he also managed to make two new friends the other day playing like normal. He easily goes up to strangers though (which... with other kids is good to talk to, but when he's just going up to adults that's freaking us out. (He's got disinhibited social engagement disorder so stranger danger and running are big risk factors.
... Sorry, I know this was like 10% answering your questions and 90% venting at not getting information and being made to feel like I'm an annoyance or unreasonable to want to discuss creating a more solid plan than this... still...
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Professionally, and as a Mom what I would do is wait until July 1st, Then demand to meet with ' Case Management's ' Supervisor.
Also, it sounds like your ' to be Son ' has Reactive Attachment Disorder ' . There is no ' cure ' for this except Residential Treatment Facility.
I am ' on the fence ' with, or I need more information to decide if is ' Case Management contemplating this type of Advocacy instead of Adoption??
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Juli Hawley
Professionally, and as a Mom what I would do is wait until July 1st, Then demand to meet with ' Case Management's ' Supervisor.
Also, it sounds like your ' to be Son ' has Reactive Attachment Disorder ' . There is no ' cure ' for this except Residential Treatment Facility.
I am ' on the fence ' with, or I need more information to decide if is ' Case Management contemplating this type of Advocacy instead of Adoption??
No one is contemplating a residential treatment facility, and looking up reactive attachment disorder doesn't really match his evaluation, our interactions with him, or what the social workers involved have reported about his behavior.
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