Out of Sync

What is normal behavior?  What makes most of the people that we interact with everyday behave "appropriately"?  How does one gauge appropriate behavior anyway?  By what means are we to measure how a child should interact with the world around them.

I am one that believes that we way over diagnose these days.  Every behavior has a "disorder" assigned to it.  There is ADD, ADHD, RAD, ODD, DBD and a plethora of other acronyms for behavior issues in children.  It's as if there is a specific name assigned to the behavior, it can be fixed. Although I do believe that some children are extreme exceptions and do need medications and therapy to help them balance their emotions, not nearly as many as are treated every year in America.

Some children don't fit into a specific acronym and so they are assigned several even though they don't really meet all of  the criteria for any of them.  We treat a little here and a little there and hope that the outcome will be a calm, happy child that will sit still for hours in a desk at school and behave according to the TEA guidelines for school age children.  That these children will be medicated enough to forget what has happened to them and with a simple pill will know how to automatically respond appropriately to the world around them.

What about those children that have experienced extreme trauma in their lives and  I think  there are many, many more than we know.  How are they to deal with "normal" life when "normal" to them is violence, anger, drugs, abuse, yelling, screaming, profanity and neglect.  Why wouldn't they act like animals when all of their lives the adults acted like animals?  No pill can fix this.

I have learned so much in the past year about what is normal.  My sheltered life of comfort, love and blessings is NOT normal.  I am so guarded and protected from the lives that millions of children have been born into and think is the only life available to them.

Foster children are thrust out of a life that they have become accustomed to and into a life of chaos.  It's seems so odd to me that MY home would seem chaotic to a foster child but it truly does.  Our newest foster son came in to my home and has been frantic ever since.  A stay at home mom, that made him meals, helped him dress, wanted to read stories and tuck him in at night actually scared him a bit.  He asked me repeatedly what I was doing.  Why I was helping him.  Why did I want to read him a story.  Why did I sit on the couch by him and watch a movie.  Why I wanted to help him get dressed.  This little boy actually experienced pain when I rubbed his back or arms.  He had never been stimulated like this and so he thought I was hurting him.  It's so sad to me.  

My expectations were of a child that would welcome the love and support that my family gave him.  That he would see how we were there for him.  That we were patient,caring and loving and that he would look at us and say "Thank you for all of this.  I have been missing this all of my life."  But in reality he is skeptical of us.  He is disconnected and confused.  He is defiant and angry at us.  WE ARE NOT NORMAL TO HIM.  

One night, for example, I was helping him out of the tub.  He slipped a little and it scared him.  I picked him up and wrapped him in a towel.  I held him like a baby until he stopped crying.  Trying to make him smile I said " You are like my baby".  He immediately sat up and glared a very angry look at me and said, " I am NOT your baby!!  I am my mommy's baby!"  He jumped out of my lap and began putting his own clothes on.  At first I was hurt but as I watched this little 3 year old struggle to put his own jammies on I realized that he was "Out of Sync".  He desperately needed his "normal" button reset.  I was not his mommy.  His mommy would never do what I just did for him.  I was not loving him, I was a threat.   He loves his mom although she has horribly mistreated and neglected him, he desperately  loves her. I can not comprehend this.  He does not have a desire for me to replace her. All of my efforts to be a loving mother figure for him mean nothing to him right now.  He wants HIS mother.   Not that I want to replace her at all but I desperately want him to see how a mother is supposed to love her children.  He doesn't know what that even looks like.  So his response is anger and defiance.

We are working hard to reassure him that we are not trying to replace the life he has known.  We are trying to show him how to respond differently to the world around him.  Life does not have to be full of anger, rage and violence.  We are trying to show him that they way to respond to others is out of kindness and patience but this will be a very slow process for him.  He is trying so hard though.  He always asks if he is doing the right thing and saying the right thing.  He really just doesn't know.

The way he reacts to a hug is to scratch.  The way he responds to sitting close to someone is to bite.  He  grabs things he wants out of your hand and screams at you until you get what he wants.  He thinks that aggression is the only way to get what you want.  There is no please or thank you in his world.  It's just give it to me now or you will get hurt.   Such a sad outlook to life but we are working hard to reset his normal.  

It has been suggested to me by a therapist to start doing exercises with him from the book "The Out of Sync" child.  These exercises are to help with sensory issues due to lack of stimulation.  They seem so silly while doing them but they are supposed to help him react appropriately to stimuli.  From birth, most babies are held and rubbed and rocked.  We as moms think we are doing this for us because it makes us feel good but in reality it is essential to a child's development.  God gave us a "mothering" instinct in order for our children to bond to people, learn empathy and gentleness.  It's so amazing how intricately God has formed our need for relationship and touch.  And in turn so tragic how we as humans destroy that.

I am not sure how long it will take for Little "L" to respond to the world around him "appropriately".  Maybe never.... All we can do is love him as long as he is with us and hope that his life is touched in a positive way.

God has a plan for him, that is the only thing I know for sure....

Heart Broken....

Adoption is such a beautiful thing.  When I see families that are so obviously pieced together through the adoption process, it brings tears to my eyes.  We just recently had an all day training with Buckner foster/adopt families.  To see all of the families pour into one room with children of all ages, races, disabilities, tragedies, it is awe inspiring.   Black families with white foster and/ or adopted children, white families with black foster and or adopted children is such a exhilarating sight.  It gets under skin and you realize what life is really about.

Fostering/Adopting has really changed our lives for sure and we want more.  Last year I thought I was so overwhelmed homeschooling 2 boys.  HA!  What a joke :)

My heart right now is so overwhelmed with emotion though.  Steve and I have been praying about a little boy that crossed our path a few months ago.  We saw his picture on a waiting child website and were instantly smitten.  He is adorable.  We were totally hooked when we saw the video of this child.  The description they give you on these websites are limited and vague.  All we could gather is that he was 8 years old and had some "mild" learning disabilities.   We contacted his caseworker through our caseworker.  We told them that we were interested in getting some more information about him.  Some time passed and we still hadn't heard about him.  I contacted my caseworker at Buckner and she called his caseworker back.   That afternoon we got the news.  He was autistic.   My heart sunk a bit but understanding that the spectrum for autism is so broad, I didn't deter us really at all.  Since he was classified as mild, I assumed that it was more in the Asperbergers spectrum.  We are fine with adopting a disabled child.  Right after we were told about his disability, we were placed with our newest foster son.  Life is always nuts right after that so we put this little boy on hold and decided to pray about him.

I thought about him everyday.  I couldn't figure out why with all the craziness in my life why this little boy was  constantly on my mind.  I told Steve this and being the awesome man he ism he said "Let's find out more".  So I called his caseworker.  We talked at length about him.  His tragic story of being taken away from bio mom for abuse and drug use.  Being adopted by his foster family only to have them 2 years later relinquish their rights and drop him off a state institution. How he was never nurtured until his latest foster family and how with their love has exhibited great progress.  That he is a sweet, affectionate boy that is doing well in school, loves animals and with proper care will grow up to be a fantastic man.

I got off the phone with her after 2 hours excited about him.  We  could do this.  It won't be without it's hardships or stresses but he deserves a home that loves and supports him.  I even went as far as to condemn his adoptive parents for giving him up so easily.  How dare they throw away this child bc he is not "perfect".

So the next step was to get all of his paperwork.  This would include all exams, medical and psychological, foster mother notes, background of bio family, etc.

Well, I got that yesterday.  I poured over all of the papers.  Read every line.  Even had my MIL here on a visit and bc she is highly specialized in Special Ed, had her go over all of the testing data.  I came away exhausted mentally and with a very heavy heart.   This little boy had been grossly misrepresented to me.  My heart strings were plucked for a child that I was told was desperate for a family to love him.  What I read was exactly the opposite.  This was an incredibly violent and profoundly mentally handicapped little boy.  He could barely function on a coherent level most of the time.  I read the detailed report as to why his adoptive family relinquished their rights and felt even more sadness.  At six years old this little boy had severely beaten and threaten to kill the families other son that was younger.  After being instituionalized for a while, they learned that he had schizophrenia, ODD and borderline personality.  In other words, no empathy for anyone.  He was anti-social on top of autistic.   And there was so much more than just this too.....

Why would they misrepresent things like that?  The Department knew all of these facts when I called.  They knew these things when they made a video, that know when I go back and look at is obviously doctored to paint this little boy in the best light.  They knew these things when we talked at length on the phone and I specifically asked if he would be okay with younger children in the home.  Not a word was spoken of this.

I am so overwhelmed  and burdened with emotion now.  I am desperately praying for this child.  He does deserve a forever family that can love him and care for his specific needs.  I just don't think it can be our family.

I am so sad now.....  I am trying to understand why I can' get this little boy off my heart....

The Boy Crisis

I have joked many times that I am "Never going to get a little girl" in my life.  Either biologically or through fostering/adopting.  When we were blessed over 12 years ago with our first bio boy we were thrilled.  Two years later, bio boy #2 came and we were twice blessed.  Having boys was so exciting and new to me.  I had one sister growing up and very little exposure to true "boyhood".

Over the past year of being licensed in foster care, we have probably been called for 12 different children; only about 4 of them have been girls.  Obviously we have never been placed with a girl, so I have resigned my post to boys... four of them now ;)

But boy oh boy how I love them.   I will tell you, that over the last year I have made several observations.  Every where you look in the foster or adoption arena there is an over abundance of boys.  Boys needing foster homes and boys that are past the foster home stage and needing adoption. I first noticed this when I was browsing the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange website looking at ready to adopt children.  The overwhelming majority of them were boys.  Now there are way too many girls too but most of them are 13 years and older.  Which is not atypical for waiting children because teenagers are harder to find forever families for.  But what I noticed was that boys of ALL ages were waiting; as young as 5 years old and up.  None of the girls were that young unless that had profound mental and physical handicaps.  This really got my mind whirring.  So I moved on over to the Texas Heart Gallery another waiting children website and confirmed my suspicion.  More boys....

Why? Why are boys so much harder to want and love?  One website I read said that statistically 56% of all children adopted out of the foster care system in Texas are girls while only 44% are boys.  While I realize that statistic is not staggering, when you are talking about 1 million children nationally are currently in the foster care system in some capacity, that's a huge number that are being overlooked simply because they are boys.

Just in my short year of being immersed in foster care, I have heard some pretty negative comments concerning boys in the system.    Just a couple have been:

       - I would foster a boy only if they are under one year.  I would never take one older because of all     of the behavior issues.  Girls are much easier .  

Really?  Girls that have been neglected, abused and abandoned are easier?  They have less issues?  Are less likely to be hyper active?  Are they less likely to be aggressive?  Are they more likely to be able to deal with the sexual abuse and violence they have experienced in a healthy way?  Hmmmmm......

Another comment I have heard was actually from another foster mother.  She was describing a difficult 3 year old boy she was fostering.  He had experienced extreme violence in his little life.  Everything from physical  and sexual abuse to witnessing someone put a gun to his mother's head and threaten to kill her in front of him.  He was, to say the least, traumatized.  She was describing an incident that was extremely  "disturbing" to her.  She said:

"He lives in a fantasy world.  All he wants to do is pretend he is an alligator  or super hero.  He always says he is going to turn into Spiderman and spin a web to save his mother.  There is something seriously wrong with him.  We are a foster to adopt family and would NEVER adopt this one.  He will have issues for the rest of his life."

Okay.... is it just me or is that precious?  Of everything that little boy has been witness to.  Of all of the behaviors that have been modeled for him, he wants to be the "good guy".  He wants to save  his mom.  He didn't say he was going to take a gun and kill anyone.  He didn't say he wanted to beat up the man that hurt his mom.  He wanted to take the chivalrous way out and be courageous.  He wanted to be a HERO!!  It brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. 

When did pretending to be a Super Hero become "disturbing".  When did sword fighting, gun slinging and vanquishing foes go from boys being boys to "issues"?  I am confused!!  Are boys being boys these days or should boys be girls?

My heart is overwhelmed with sadness for these boys waiting for families to love them.  To nurture in them all of the potential that God has put in them to be boys that will one day be warriors for Christ.  

How many scriptures describe warriors?  How many analogies in scripture are about swords, arrows, armor and soldiers?  Our future depends on these "warriors".  Our future depends on boys being raised to be bold, fearless, strong and valiant.   And definitely NOT GIRLS!!

Pray for these boys!  Pray that hearts will be opened to all of the boys needed homes.  Pray that great men will be raised up and fight the fight for the LORD.

My home is full of them and believe me there is never a dull moment.  But I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Great resources for raising boys:

Created for Work by Bob Shultz

Boyhood and Beyond by Bob Shultz

Warrior Prayers by Brooke McGlothlin

Bringing Up Boys by Dr. James Dobson

Psalms 127:3-5

Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Boys....

We finally have our 3rd foster placement.  Yes, its a boy :)   This time we took one who was a little older than we had originally planned.  He is a very precious 3 yr, almost 4 yr, old.  His story, like every other child in our wonderful foster care system, is sad and very complicated.  For the first time we have one that talks, has his own very dynamic personality, and is way too mature for his little age.  I don't think we were truly prepared for this :)

This little boy is through the roof smart and I mean more than just letters, numbers and shapes smart.  This little boy is incredibly street smart too.  He can articulate with his thoughts as well as the "colorful" language his chooses to use :)

He asks so many questions and is very eager to know if what he is doing and saying is "the right" thing to do and say.  He wants so badly to please me but gets very frustrated when he doesn't get his way immediately.  We have had several tantrums but he is easily calmed down.   I don't think he has ever felt like someone loved him completely and bc of that, he obviously suffers from attachment issues.  He immediately called us "Mommy" and "Daddy" and has already said he loves us and wants to stay here forever.  This seems so sweet and believe me, it totally melts my heart, but it is such an huge indication of his lack of connection with people.  He can easily go with strangers and if they show him an ounce of kindness, he will do whatever they ask!!  Scary and makes him incredibly vulnerable to abuse.  We watch him EVERY second when we are out in public.  He would literally go with a cashier if she offered him candy.

We are unclear as to what exactly he has been through.  We know he has seen drug use and domestic violence.  He has already told us some of that!!  We will probably never know even a fraction of his abuse but we will love him forever.  We pray for his future, his attachment issues and his "next" family.  We have been told he won't stay with us long but we can still hold out hope that we may be able to be his "forever" family.

We would gladly be his Mommy and  Daddy forever if we could!  I tell you, we are smitten!!

The Call...

Well we got THE call yesterday.  I have actually been called so many times over the past two weeks that when Buckner comes up on my caller ID I don't jump anymore.  Twelve children have been offered for our consideration and 12 children have either gone to another foster home or we decided that their situation was not a good for our family.

So in this instance THE call would be THE call back.  We were called back to inform us that on next Tuesday we willing be getting a 3 (almost 4 ) yr old little boy.  Yes, another boy.  I think this is what God is screaming at me.  "Laura.... you NEED boys in your home.  So, I have relented and excepted this.  I actually love boys and find them incredibly entertaining.

The fun thing about getting a boy placement is that you are all excited about going shopping for clothes, you are really excited about finding out what activity they like.  Will they like cars, blocks, balls?  It so much fun to see how they explore the world around them.  And now little Evan will have a room mate.  Sure hope this little one sleeps ;)

This little boy, from the little I have been told, has a very similar background as Evan.  Except he has been in it much longer.  Mom is addicted to Meth, Dad in and out of the picture.  No family that is stable enough to take care of him.  He is also coming from another foster home who unexpectedly is having to move due to a job transfer so he has been out of his toxic home for a while but what has this precious little boy seen and experienced in his little life?  More than I have for sure!

We are praying for little "L".  Can't wait to meet him!!

The Wait

"Wait for the Lord, Be Strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes wait for the Lord."

Psalm 27:14

It has been really hard waiting this past this year.  We have waited more in the past  two years than we have ever had to in our lives.  When had to wait 9 months to become licenced to foster.  We had to wait for our first call for a placement.  We had to wait for our actual first placement.  We had to wait to hear about how our foster sons case was going to play out.  Wait for his mom and dad to go in and out of jail before the court and the system moved toward termination.  Wait to hear if dad's appeal is going to be denied.  Wait for another placement... and on and on and on.

And here we are a year later and guess what?  We are still waiting.  Some of it we are waiting on his still Evan's case to be resolved but some of it's of our own doing :)

We have really thrown Buckner for a loop with our family.  We approached them about 6 months ago because Steve and I really want to foster and try to straight adopt at the same time.  This means we would love to continue to  be called for foster placements but at the same time we  would like to submit our home study for consideration for children that are ready to be adopted now.  Buckner scratched their heads on this one.  They have not , at least at our local agency, had a family that wanted to do this before.  I didn't understand why this was a big deal but apparently it is because the foster side and adoption side are two separate entities.  They were worried about how it would play out if the foster side called us for kids and we were waiting to hear if we were chosen for a straight adopt placement too.

We solved their problem for them.   We just redid our home study so that we are licenced for 5 children now ;)  We knew we would never foster more than 2 at a time and that we would never submit for a sibling group to adopt more than 2 children.  So we are good!!

So, here we sit waiting again.  We have been called about 12 different children in the past 2 weeks.  They have either gone to another family or we have said no because of extenuating circumstances.  So we wait for a call for another foster placement.  We have also submitted for 7 children to straight adopt.  3 of them we have heard that we were not chosen but we are still "waiting" to hear about the others!!!

God is teaching us pure patience for sure!  It's a joy :)

Stirring

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

James 1:27

I can see something amazing happening all around me.  I am not sure if it has always been there or if my eyes are just now being opened to it.

So many families around me are opening their hearts, home and wallets to orphaned children.   I am in awe of the daily phone calls, emails or texts that tell me that someone else is considering fostering or adoption or both.  In a world that seems to only promote self indulgence, this seems like such a huge departure.  To have the stirring to bring an unwanted, abused, neglected, drug addicted orphan in your home is anything other than self serving.  It's hard work like I have never done before. It seems that it has to only be the stirring of the Holy Spirit.  

Maybe I am hyper spiritual about this but I see such a huge chasm between our world and Christianity today.  It's all around us.  Especially when it comes to children and babies.  You see abortion as not a big deal anymore.  Our own government is even debating whether or not late term abortion is ok.  Really?  Late term?  When so many struggle with infertility.  When so many babies are being born premature?  We really get to decide whether a child is a life by our whim?  If we want the child at 32 weeks, its a life.  If we don't, it's not!  Messed up!  When did this even become a debatable issue? 

In our world you can see the total annihilation of the family.  Marriage is at an all time low, fatherless children, even mother's leaving their children for a life of selfishness.  What has happened to our God fearing country and our responsibility to the next generation?  What has happened to pure joy in the faces of our children that fear the Lord?  Where are the Christian men and woman standing up for the families even if it's hard and not really want they want to do?  When did it become a choice for mothers to stay with the father's of their children and give up selfish ambition for them?

Now I am on a soap box but all that to say, that although our world is screaming at us to have smaller families, bigger houses, better cars, more stuff, I see a different world.  Families growing larger, orphans being loved and  sacrifices being made so just one more child knows what it's like to be loved by a family! 

AWE INSPIRING!  

May we be the generation that turns our hearts and minds back to the LORD!!

Baby Boys Abound!!

We just got called for a new foster placement.  This one is a 4 month old baby boy.  I don't think I will ever get girls :)

When you are in the foster care world, things can change in the blink of an eye.  One morning, no baby... that afternoon you have two!!  It's a crazy world we live in!

Again... so worth it though!!!

Why Foster?

Foster care is such unique and crazy journey.  We are still relatively new to the whole process.  We have only had our license for 9 months and a child for all but 2 weeks of those 9 months.  I know my experience is limited  and narrow compared to so many other families that have gone before us.

When we entered in to foster care, like so many others I have talked to, we were incredibly naive and idealistic.  We were going into to "help" a child that needed a loving family to care, nurture and love him like he had never been loved before.  And although I think those ideals are noble on their own and definitely ones you need to keep you going, they are also fleeting if there is not a higher calling behind them.

We would like to have believed that foster care was about "the children" and their needs but what we really have realize is that fostering is about obedience to God first and foremost.  And that without His sustaining love and heart, you will never get through all of the emotion.  The heartbreak over the child's situation, the anger for the parents or family members that have abused or neglected them, the sleepless nights, the medication logs, the endless appointments with ECI, CASA, CPS, Buckner, courts, family visits, the responsibility and the lack of control are all too much too handle on just an idealistic notion.  There has to be a more divine momentum or your resolve will crumble.

This has been one of the hardest things we have ever done.  We have been asked to take in this little boy that for the first 11 months of his life was either abused or neglected and sometimes both at the same time.  We have been asked to nurse him back to health mentally and physcially.  We have been asked to do an unreasonable amount of paperwork everyday or run the risk of having our liscence taken away.  We have been asked to care for him like our own but not "love" him too much in case he goes back to his abusers or some obscure family member.  We have been asked to do this with him and have been called to do it with more kids at the same time too.  Now we have chosen to not take anymore foster children right now because of our current foster sons recurring medical issues but our heart is there for more.

Why?  I can honestly tell you that I DON"T KNOW!!  It's crazy if you think too hard on it for sure.  All I can say is that our journey of fostering so far as been so worth every minute!  To see our little boy come so far physically and mentally is a joy everyday for us.  To know that for the time he is with us , either for a year or a lifetime, that he has changed us forever is amazing.  We would never do it any differently.

A great verse to cling to:

Isaiah 40:28-31

 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.