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Here is my family’s story in brief:
We opted for adopting through foster care, we started the process in 2017, got certified and then we’re matched in 2018 with a 16 yo girl. We had visits she moved into our home, and the day she moved in it was like a switch flipped. She stopped interacting with husband and bio daughter (15 at the time) and would ask me to leave them and just be a family with her. We are practicing Catholic, bio daughter goes to parochial school so we enrolled potential adoptive match there as well, she didn’t believe Catholics were Christian, she had been exposed to a big box church prior and get very uncomfortable at our church, but the kicker was she wanted me to stop being Catholic and join her at a Protestant church. She had RAD, reactive attachment disorder. We knew this but during disclosure adoption social worker and CSW said it was superficial and meant she struggled empathizing when something bad happened to another. In conversation with prior foster mom (after move in and after all these behaviors surfaced) foster mom said she treated her husband the same way, adoption social worker eventually acknowledged it was an issue as well and he knew about it. Why we weren’t told is frustrating. We had to disrupt placement because it wasn’t healthy and she only wanted a mom (non-Catholic) and our family is a package deal.
After failed match our agency suggested we try fostering to adopt not straight adoption. Essentially what that means is that you foster a child trending towards adoption, they recommended training courses and we took them and then were offered a match of a girl who had previously been adopted but abandoned by adoptive parents. We were told due to trauma she could not know we were adoptive family. She was 11, she moved in, we enrolled her in parochial school, but she was kicked out after 3 weeks to to extremely terrible behavior. We found out that she was classified as ISFC and we were matched with her because by taking the extra trainings we were now an intensive services foster care home. We were told there was some behavior issues but the example was if she is chewing gum in class and asked to spit it out she will swallow it and lie she he it, behaviors were nothing like this. Once county social worker found out we were adoptive hopeful she said child needs to know, they didn’t know we were an adoptive only family and our agency had told us it might be years and lots of therapy before she is ready to know but in the meantime they didn’t want her to know. CSW calls the shots so she was told after a month she confirmed she didn’t want to be adopted but the agency was hopeful, she was with us for 6 months. Lots of extreme behaviors, chaos, fights, it was draining.
We waiting a bit for 3rd match, last October we attended a virtual matching event and found a sibling set 16 yo girl and 10 yo boy. Our daughter was 16 at this point. Everything went well, a week before move in we had a dinner visit, I was wearing a Catholic’s for trump shirt and a MAGA hat and my husband was wearing a veterans for trump shirt, boy expressed he was disappointed and we shared we understood people have different opinions, we respected them and if they ever wanted to talk about it we could. We are politically conservative and practice the Catholic faith, traditionally. By early December girl asked to leave home because of political and religious differences. I feel it was drug out because she was removed on 1/5/2021. Boy decided to stay as he wanted to be adopted. It has been great, though there have been issues with sister trying to undermine brothers relationship with us, maybe she feels slighted he chose to stay, and we know her dislike for us is huge. We have shared instances that have been a concern with ffa SW, CSW, adoption worker because they were issues, with sister encouraging brother to leave and cause disruption. Out of left field, 2 days ago brother told ffa SW he wanted to leave because he didn’t like our rules, didn’t like parental controls and didn’t want to be religious. He had the choice upon move in: public or private school he chose private.
Ffa SW shared he had a lot of good things to say about us so she thinks there is something more, we said, we are competing with sister.
Boy asked to leave, we are devastated, yesterday he told me he didn’t like us and just stayed to get things. This fees like an extremely slow miscarriage, I know extreme, but it feels like it. Here we thought things were fine but in reality I guess they are not, though we are sure this is coming from influence of sister and not him, we are devastated. Agency is hoping to salvage this but he is reminding his frequently he is leaving.
We feel like failures, like the problem is us, and we are nearing the point that adoption is likely not God’s plan. Have any other families experienced repeated loss through this process? Did you try again or give up, how many times did it take to be successful?