Finally

We "finalized our adoptive placement" tonight, which means we signed a million pieces of paper, got T's history from the adoptive social worker, and have entered the final legal process, which will be expedited because of his age.

Looking through those files, my heart breaks. It's odd to parent a child for years without anything to go on other than what he's told you (his social worker gave us a one-page summary of his early history when he moved in with us and that was it), and then receive such a thorough history only now. The information contained in these reports would have been extremely helpful at several junctures last year when we were having a tough time. As it is, we figured out what we needed to know. There were few surprises in the papers, but a lot of confirmation of what we found out just by loving T and gaining his trust and listening to him and observing his behavior.

Of course I'm not going to share what we learned. But I will say this. There were an awful lot of people "evaluating" him over the course of his childhood, and not enough people loving him. It makes me very angry to read those reports. They are written in pseudo-medical language, while it's clear that T was howling in pain. Reading them, one wants to reach backwards across time and just make it stop.

It feels to me that there is so much that was missed in all the discussion and diagnoses - so many positive qualities that must have been apparent even then, that are bypassed in favor of shining a spotlight on his imperfections. To diagnose a child going through what he was going through feels to me like approaching a weary soldier in the midst of a losing battle to ask him how he's feeling. How objective a sense of who that person really is can one get at a time like that? What might he be like when he's calm, and safe, and understood? We know the answer to that question now - in fact, we've just come off a month of intense togetherness during which T, because we're now homeschooling him, is mostly calm and connected. The child we know doesn't appear in the reports, because that child was never allowed to emerge.

You can't order someone to love a child and stick with him. But looking back over his turbulent life in foster care, it's plain to see what's missing. On his second weekend visit with us, I recall asking him how he thought adoption might be different than living with a foster parent. "When you get adopted, they love you like their own and work with you on your problems and stick with you no matter what," he said. And he was right. That was exactly what was missing.

The United States foster care system has a higher turnover rate than most fast food industries.

I read an article today that begins with this statement: "The United States foster care system has a higher turnover rate than most fast food industries. Of the estimated 200,000 licensed foster homes, from 30 to 50 percent drop out each year...Why are foster parents leaving? Of all the reasons, the biggest by far is that they are treated poorly."

All I can say to that is, yes, indeed. We might have fostered and/or adopted a few times in our lives, these days we are inclined to think that we'll do it just this once.

Our main reason is that we connected with T so deeply and have had such a profound experience becoming his parents that we fear there will never be another T and we might just hang up our parenting gear when he no longer needs us.

But the other reason we aren't anticipating a repeat performance is that the bureaucracy is too punishing. Unless we managed to meet a child with whom we can establish the kind of connection we have with T, we would surely be adrift without the support required to address the needs of a child with complex needs. We became foster parents after meeting T and only because we found him so compelling and there was such unusual chemistry amongst us. Without T as my motivating factor I just don't think I would be able to tolerate this bureacracy.

It's on my mind this week because we recently attended a court hearing to decide the matter of noticing his biological parents regarding the adoption (a discussion they have waited 18 months to even initiate). At the hearing, the court had to fire his present attorney who hasn't shown up in court on T's behalf for several years. The court appointed a new attorney exactly three minutes prior to the hearing, and the hearing moved forward despite the fact that the attorney knew nothing about the case. When we asked to address the court (about the fact that T's caseworker has asked him to notice his own mother) we were told that we can't speak to the judge. After I got back to my office that day, T's adoption social worker called me to ask what is going on with his case, and ask me to straighten out a huge misunderstanding between herself and his primary caseworker. Then T.'s biological mother called him at home to ask him what is going on with the court case because she doesn't understand the papers she's received from the court and the confusing phone calls she's had from his social worker and they've just managed to get her worked up and anxious, despite the fact that she's been aware of and not expressly opposed to his adoption all along. I wanted to scream.

To be brutally honest, we have mostly been treated like low rent babysitters by the social workers and inspectors and court officials involved in T's case. Often, to this day, have the sense that the myriad caseworkers and inspectors and bureacrats involved expect us to fail in our endeavor to provide him with a permanent home.

In my imaginary better world, becoming a parent should feel sort of like joining the Peace Corps must have in the heydey of the Kennedy Administration. There should be recruiters, and the recruiters should help people find a way to view foster parenting as a noble and unique endeavor, not a poor approximation and substitute for bio parenting. The training courses should be hard, and they should take place somewhere fun. (How about luxury hotels, that donate the rooms and facilities for a long weekend as a tax writeoff, like a gift to charity?) The trainings should include a panel of foster children to speak for themselves and their peers. Perhaps they could rank potential foster and adoptive parents: "This foster parent gets an 8 out of 10 stars in reviews from 32 other foster children..."

When we met T. we received a two page form describing his personality and interests. It was 90% inaccurate, with large portions that were frankly erroneous. It managed to be both clinical and superficial, a disturbing combination. Virtually everything we know about his background, his needs and his medical and educational history we found out from him. He in turn received nothing about us except the packet that we put together for him of our own accord. At some point (when his adoption finalizes? it's never been clear), the social workers tell us that we'll receive a thick packet of papers documenting his history; by then, we will have no use at all for the information it contains.

Thank goodness we fell utterly in love with him, I say, because we have mostly had to parent him from the gut while he has helped us understand over time where he's coming from. Had we needed to be more strategic from the start, and had he been unable to articulate his needs, we would have had a very rough time indeed.

Good at Family

One of the things I admire so much about our foster/adoptive teenage son is what I think of as his skill at family.

It is beyond comprehension where he acquired these skills, unless you either accept that such things are innate, or decide that it's possible to learn positive skills through negative examples. In any case, I believe he is good (and getting better) at key aspects of family life: attunement, organization, reconciliation, and play.

Attunement: To me this means knowing how to get in synch with another person. I am pretty sure he developed this capacity through trauma - I'm sure it's quite useful when you're living with a severely abusive adult to be able to read and respond to their moods. However, he's able to carry this skill forward in more healthy environments. We noticed it early on. If you hum a song, he picks it up three rooms and way and finishes the tune. If the mood tilts too far in one direction, he'll switch it up to establish equilibrium. Sometimes he'll start an argument, just to get us back on the same page - he's like the princess with the proverbial pea under her mattress if there's something that needs to be aired and he won't rest until it is.

Organization: There is seemingly no end to the chaos that a life in foster care can wreak. T. has been in sixteen homes. He's had multiple caseworkers. Some of his case files are in another county, on paper, and thus not accessible to his current caseworkers. His birth family, for various reasons, had severe difficulties such that the whereabouts of his father and his siblings was difficult or impossible to track. He told me recently that he's not sure how he's actually related to the person he calls "grandma"; he's pretty sure she's his second or third cousin. Perhaps in response to all of this upheaval, he's quite orderly. When he first came to us, he was TOO orderly - I believe the clinical term is "overly compliant." After that eased up, he became just garden-variety organized. He keeps his important papers in a neat stack in his desk drawer. He remembers dates and appointments and names. He knows the phone numbers and birthdays of all his nearest and dearest by memory. He's taught me that children need organization, and that lack of organization is a cause of significant anxiety, especially for traumatized kids.

Reconciliation: Living in close quarters with others produces intimacy and some bumps and scratches. I greatly admire his capacity to resolve the inevitable misunderstandings and hurt feelings before they fester. He has bursts of temper like any teenager. But if we sit still on the sofa afterwards, he circles back repeatedly, "pinging" us with little attempts at reconciliation. If we respond with openness, eventually after a few "pings" he settles in for a "big talk." He doesn't get up until everyone has said their piece and we've moved along. Often he stays on to chat a bit, euphoric from the feeling of having been heard. It's a great skill, one that really surprised us the first few times we saw him in action following a conflict.

Play: One day when T. was telling me some anecdote about a previous foster home, I had an epiphany. He was talking about how he'd been disciplined, and what he'd done wrong to deserve it. I knew him when he was in that foster home, and I was familiar with the environment there and what his life was like then. "You know what always bothered me about that house?" I said. "I think parents have to give guidance. It's part of what we do. But we also have to bring the fun. That house didn't seem like there was much fun going on." He looked surprised, and he agreed. We play alot. T. likes to lick us by surprise sometimes - he'll sneak up and lick us on the cheek just to hear us squeal. He hides sometimes when we come home so we have to look for him. He loves to flop on our bed and tickle our feet, and he's very quick to pick up a silliness and turn it into an inside joke. We sass each other and tell each other the things that nobody but your family will ever tell you, like "your feet smell." He's just fun.

In all the writing about foster/adoption of older children, I think the basic skills of family living are often given short shrift. We navigate many complicated issues with him, ranging from substance abuse to grief about the relatives he's lost. His skill at attunement, organization, reconciliation and play are a big part of building the day to day bonds that support doing that work.

Sorry

Oh what a funny duckie is T.

After a rough week and some rather steady decline in behavior since last month he came to family meeting tonight in a gentle mood. We wrote out an agenda. He grabbed the pen and added his two cents but kept his agenda item covered up. When it came his turn, he looked down at his notes and read his agenda item in a bashful voice: "Apology."

Apology is a concept he learned recently. Last week I wasn't being my best parent self and I let an argument with him go unresolved - I cut short a conversation and didn't return to finish it before bedtime as I try to do. I was just too exasperated with his escalating behavior at school and the chaos of it all. So the next day I texted him "I want to apologize. I should have come back and talked out our disagreement. Please forgive me. Let's make up later."

I saw him after school and he looked at me so oddly and said "I don't understand why you are apologizing?" I said, "Because we try to talk things out before bed and I left you hanging. I shouldn't have done that." He gave a surprised laugh.

So tonight he came with his own apology. He's sorry that he has been getting high after school. He wants to do what we ask, but he's having trouble resisting temptation. Consequences aren't really working for us right now - our life was turning into an unholy mess of consequences upon consequences. So I just probed for a little more information.

"Do you know why you smoke marijuana?" (we talk about this all the time, but it never hurts to see what today's answer is going to be.)

Awkward silence.

"Do you enjoy the way weed gives you a chance to hang out with certain friends and be cool and have a certain image?"

"No."

"Is it the effect it has on your thoughts?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me a little bit about why you started smoking more frequently? You were doing really well getting that under control since you moved in with us. It seems like something changed."

Tentative, "I don't know. I guess I just like it."

"Oh really? That's interesting. It seems like something changed around spring break."

Here we got some adorably bad acting - totally fake gesture as if to suggest a new thought had just occurred to him. Then he said in a very soft voice, "Oh, there is this one thing. I think maybe it was when my mom stopped talking to me. She won't call me back anymore."

And there it is. I know kids can be manipulative, but sometimes you just know in your gut that the kid just spit out a kernel of pure truth and things suddenly make more sense. We have been struggling to figure out how to explain his recent spate of unusually angry behavior. Of course!

Mom is mad at him because around spring break (at his request) we took him to see the cousin who raised him for several years, and his mother found out and felt jealous. Complicated. I won't go into the whole backstory. Suffice it to say his mom has five kids who all grew up in foster care and none of them have ever spent a single night with her.

I told him that I respect his mom, because he came from her. And that I know how much it hurts when your mom isn't talking to you. And that I wanted him to know that it isn't his fault that she's angry. He listened. I asked if I could do anything to help. He said no. Then he squealed "This is like therapy! Don't ask me any more questions! Can I go play video games?"

The change was immediate. His eyes are warm. He's more relaxed and playful. He asked to go back to the gym - one of his coping strategies that he's been dodging lately.

We'll go through cycles like this for as long as he's with us, I'm sure, and substance abuse is a bitch. But I sure do appreciate the tiny bit of self awareness he's achieved.

On on unrelated note, here's another funny and some recommended reading.

My dad gave me Nurture Shock for my birthday. A short while later, T. and I were having an argument. I said, "I don't want to argue with you." He freaked and said "I hate it when you say that! I'm not arguing - I'm trying to talk to you!" I said, "You know, you're right. My dad gave me this book for my birthday. There's a chapter in the book about teenagers and it says that teenagers' brains are different. Sometimes what adults think of as an argument is just their way of saying something important. So the book recommends that you hear them out." Moment of stunned silence, then a HUGE grin spread over his face. "YES!" he yelled. "Thank you! And now Tim needs to read that book too!"

It's Mah Birthday

It's my birthday and I'm feeling reflective.

I always wanted to be a foster/adoptive mom to a teenager. Then I turned 35, and right around the time other people's biological clocks start to chime, the impetus acquired a momentum of its own.

I think it's just part of who I have always been. I went to a strict Catholic grammar school and in fourth grade, we had to do a presentation in the parish hall. About 80% of the class went with anti-abortion presentations. My best friend and I went a different route. We had a three-part posterboard with cartoon illustrations that we obtained from a local social worker - the "dos" and "don'ts" of child-rearing. The right panel advertised in large type the various hotline phone numbers for abused kids. My dad still jokes about the sideways looks he got from the other parents, but he proudly saved that posterboard for a long time.

So I guess it's not too surprising that I grew up and wanted to do this kind of parenting. Still, actually becoming T.'s parent has been a long, hard slog. Before him, I loved people and I was loved, but I didn't really believe in profound, life-altering commitment the way I do now. Our connection with him was like a bolt of lightening. Just under a year ago, we were volunteering at some stupid dog rescue event in Torrance, and I looked up and there was this boy, so tall and solemn and utterly withdrawn and the three of us fell into an uncanny synchronicity. It was like he had a beacon inside him sending out an unspoken message: "It's me!" On the basis of nothing other than this irrational hunch, we pursued our foster license, did five months of weekend visits while he bounced through two other foster homes, and finally wrangled DCFS into placing him with us. Keeping up the connection to him while navigating that process was like trying to keep your eye on a feather in the midst of a hurricane. But T. kept transmitting his signal, and we kept believing in him for whatever mysterious reason.

Tomorrow, the children's court hears his six-month placement review. The report going to the court contains one simple statement from an interview DCFS did with T.: "I like it here and I want to stay." The report recommends adoption (which has always been our goal, but you have to do six months of foster care before the court will consider moving forward with adoption in a case like T.'s), and we're likely to get a date now in adoption court a few months from now.

I'm not a perfect parent - in fact I'm very bad at it sometimes. And T. is not an easy kid - he has oddities and challenges that come from having been through 15 different homes before ours. I might fail him. I might be broken-hearted when he leaves home. I might foster/adopt several more kids. Or he might be the only one, and we might be close for the rest of our lives. I don't know. But if I died tomorrow, I'd be satisfied that I did this one small thing, however imperfectly

I really do feel that way.

What does it take?

Recently, I was reading Faith A's blog at Adoption Under One Roof about what it takes to parent a traumatized older child. The comments got me thinking about my own answer to that question.

My list goes something like this (and I certainly don't possess all of these qualities, though I strive for them):

- Honest acceptance of your own personal history and mistakes.

- Gallows humor.

- A strong belief that no life is ever "ruined".

- Street smarts.

- Endurance.

- The ability to parent today for the sake of today - an acceptance that it might not "work out" in the long term and the child may end up in residential treatment, embroiled in legal problems, or otherwise struggling and that your decision to do this work now doesn't depend on any "result".

- A healthy skepticism of the system.

- Scientific curiosity. Why is my kid doing this? What happened right before he did this? What environmental factors can I change and how does he respond when I do?

- Empathy for the depth and range and duration of grief.

- Being cool with being different so you can weather the occasional social isolation of adopting an older child with "issues".

- Chemistry: one person's problem child is another person's "special someone". I can confidently say that, had I known the full facts of his case before I met him on his own terms, I would not have offered to parent T. And yet the three of us "clicked" and that natural chemistry ignited a deep mutual affection that gets us through things none of us would have signed up for on the face of it. We fit like puzzle pieces.

- Understanding that how far someone has come depends on where he started.

What did I miss?

Adoption Isolation

Sometimes I have the sense that adopting a teenager is so unusual, it makes us a social oddity and a subject of speculation. I had a breakfast meeting this morning, and a client asked the inevitable "do you have kids?". I said yes; he said, how old?; I said 16; he said he was suprised; I said, we just adopted him, and then....well, you know how it goes. The conversation kind of dies while the other person tries to figure out how to make sense of what you just said. Awkward.

Life in a fishbowl makes me acutely aware of what I call adoption isolation: the feeling that you're in uncharted territory and while everyone seems to have an opinion, very few actually have any idea what older child foster-adoption is really about.

We're a biracial family now, and the difference in our physical appearance is probably one factor that gives people pause, but the predominant reaction is to T.'s age and, secondarily, to the fact that ours is an open adoption, meaning we know and spend time with his relatives.

People ask us outright all the time why we would ever want to adopt a teenager. I tell them teenagers still need parents. There are 12,000 kids in long-term foster care in Los Angeles, and 7,000 of them are over the age of 12. Of all the kids adopted out of foster care in LA over a ten-year period, only 3% were T.'s age or older. One in three kids in long-term foster care who "age out" end up homeless. One in five end up in prison within two years of leaving foster care. T. knew all that and he spent two years searching for adoptive parents against the odds, going to adoption fairs and trying his painful best to make a good impression on strangers in the hope they'd rescue him from the odds.

Kids in long-term foster care who can't return to their birth families need parents. Is that really so hard to understand? Even though they aren't "little" anymore, they are still children - they can't work, they don't have the full cognitive capability necessary to make adult decisions, they are vulnerable and malleable. They want, need and deserve protection and guidance. They aren't gross; they aren't damaged beyond repair. They have special needs, and satifsying those needs can be really profound and...fun!

Those who don't balk at the idea of adopting a teenager balk at our choice to be in contact with his birth relatives. I believe in the merits of open adoption, particularly for older kids. It's very difficult - there are enormously complex issues of divided loyalty, unresolved trauma and loss, cultural differences and more. T's birth mom probably hates me, but we talk. We do our best, so he can integrate his past and present. I want the stability we provide him to be a home base from which he can explore his feelings about his birth family and understand where he came from and make sense of his history. But the idea of a family that combines blood and adoptive ties confounds people more than I expected.

Here are a few other juicy questions we commonly field:

Why would you want to adopt a teenager?
Read: Teenagers are gross.

What happened to his family?
Read: There must be a sordid story here and I want to hear it.

What do you call yourselves? Foster parents? Adoptive parents? (This from his school counsellor, prompting me to reply "We call ourselves parents" in my best don't-fuck-with-me tone of voice that made T. laugh with delight.)
Read: You're not his real family.

On some level, I probably like to be different, to make unusual life choices - and I know I have to accept that doing so implies some degree of self-isolation. But if I were advising someone else who wanted to foster/adopt an older kid, I'd tell them to get ready for a lot of intrusive questions and grow a thick skin. And I'd tell them to seek out other adoptive parents of older kids, because some days it feels like there are three other people on the planet who understand that this is just another way to be a family, and that parenting is parenting, no matter where the kid comes from.

The Truth About Adopting A Teenager

Is it wrong how much I want T. to go back to school? He was placed with us in a "pre-adoptive" placement just over a month ago, and he's been on Christmas break for the last two-and-a-half weeks. We owe DCFS for the brilliant timing and total lack of support around that set of circumstances, but that's a matter for a future blog post.

Mary the Mom, one of my favorite bloggers and most supportive foster/adopt resources, recently told me I make adopting a teenager look easy. I'm philosophical by nature, and I think that inadvertently inclines me toward a reflective wisened tone. But I just want to be clear that I'm not that way at all in real life. I don't want to mislead. This isn't easy.

Yes, adopting an older kid from foster care is incredibly rewarding. It's the most significant thing we've ever done in our lives. It's incredibly profound to intervene in someone's destiny in that way. And I'm sure I'll feel particularly good about it decades from now when I reflect on the meaning of my life. Meanwhile, there are plenty of times when it seems like a terrible idea.

For example: as a result of a severely disrupted childhood and multiple placements, T.'s social skills...well, frankly, they suck. Half his friends are thugs. He constantly tries to buy friendship, unsure that anyone will like him beyond the perks he can provide. He's clingy. He's annoying. And he has no idea how to make constructive plans with peers. My incredibly patient partner Tim, who models unconditional love nearly all the time, referred to T.'s social life as "disgusting" and "repulsive" the other night. I have to say, that was the source of a good hard laugh. Now when we want to run away to Tahiti, we just ask each other "are you disgusted?" and it cracks us up all over again.

Here's more: T. is also rude. I love him, but let's not lie. Once he relaxes (which in our case didn't happen until after about four months of weekend overnight stays in our house) he's utterly rude. Other parents of teenagers that they've raised since birth assure me that all teenagers are obscenely inconsiderate. But he's the only one I've got and, lemme tell ya, living with him is a pain in the butt some days. He blasts his headphones and shrugs when we talk to him. He interrupts important conversations to send scandalous text messages to girls. He refuses to eat most of what we serve and usually gets up and walks away from the table halfway through dinner. Yesterday he gave all the money we gave him for the bus to a homeless man, then called us to come pick him up.

We aren't letting him get away with all this - we usually respond with a calm correction and sometimes a consequence. We're learning that you have to set up the consequences in advance, or you can really find yourself in a pickle. T. is remarkably self-correcting, and even when we think our explanation of expectations have fallen on i-Pod-deafened ears, he often returns and models exactly the behavior we asked for within a day or two. NEVERTHELESS. Having to explain and deliver appropriate consequences and make sure they are implemented is enough to make you want to take a long, long unannounced vacation some days.

We were more or less prepared. I've known a bunch of foster kids over the course of my life, and I've also had quite a few friends who were raised in chaotic circumstances and acquired feral behaviors similar to T's. But that doesn't mean it isn't majorly irksome - after all, alot of the behaviors are expressly intended to be irksome. Maybe all teenagers tend to provoke, but I'd say emotionally distressed teenagers coming out of long term foster care excel far beyond the cultural norm in their total mastery of provocation. They have way more anger to release. They have a compulsive need to try to destroy connections in order to test their strength before they get hurt again. They are hugely confused about loyalties and boundaries and what love really looks like.

So there, I said it. It's working for us - in part, I think, because all along this is the kind of parenting we wanted to do. We didn't want to have babies, we wanted to adopt older kids. We didn't expect immediate gratification- though when we get those unexpected bursts of pure affection from him, it's totally blissful. We waited until we were older - until years of experience at work and at home and with friends and with each other tempered our personalities and taught us that most conflicts eventually blow over. But it's still hard - hard to be patient enough, to be warm enough, to complement as well as criticize, to choose battles wisely and overlook the things that there isn't time to address. I'll try in the future to write more about those parts, because I think it's important for adoptive parents of older kids to be honest about the difficulties so we can be a resource for each other!

BFD

This week is predictably rough. Christmas is such an emotionally laden season ANYWAY. We figured it would trigger some difficulties. Mmmmmmmmm.

I could pick a number of things to write about today, but I'm gonna go with what another adoptive mom of older kids from foster care calls "birth family drama."

Earlier this week, we met T.'s cousin who cared for him off and on from age 3 through about 9. As I expected, she was very warm and pleasant when we met her. She has several birth kids of her own, and we met up at church where we dropped T off to attend services with them. He was removed from her care by the county, but he loves her very very much and says she was like a mom to him.

In the county records, this cousin abused him. But in his perception of things, she loved him in a way his birth mom never did. And he's right - both things are true. He entered foster care when he was three days old and was passed from foster home to foster home (sometimes staying just a few weeks in any particular home) until his cousin took him in for as long as she could make it last.

He can still recall in great detail the time she took all the kids to TGI Friday's on Christmas Eve, and the taste of her gumbo. He was baptized at her church, with her guidance. She gave him some of the touch points kids need in order to form an identity and a sense of being precious to someone. He also bears scars - physical ones, on various parts of his body - she inflicted in the name of discipline. And deep emotional wounds, not only from the mistreatment, but from the trauma of being removed from her home by the county.

For people who wonder why one would encourage a connection to an abusive parent, I'll just say that it's due to her that he has any ability to form a loving bond at all. He texted me from church: "I missed them so much! Thank you. I luv you guys lots."

This is an aspect of older child foster/adoption that is probably not for the faint of heart. Our county mandated parenting classes actually did a great job of preparing us for this part and explaining why one must never criticize a child's relatives nor prevent them from keeping in touch provided the circumstances are reasonably safe. They encouraged us over and over to provide opportunities for the kids to visit with the family from whom they were removed, in the interest of promoting and supporting loving attachments under safe circumstances - even up to and through an adoption. So I texted him back "She's lovely and warm as you described her. I feel honored that you introduced us."

I mostly get it. Life is complicated. I grew up in a strict Catholic school where extreme punishment was still the norm - we had to sit after school for more than three hours in first grade because one kid had thrown half a hot dog in the trash can. The parish priest once forced a boy who misbehaved to bundle up in wool sweaters, then run the track in the hot sun until he got sick. Child abuse? Yes, certainly. But it was a very unfortunate cultural norm that strict Irish priests brought with them from the homeland. So it's not that hard for me to understand that T. suffered the hand of a parent who believed that whippings were in his own best interest. Adults can get their heads all turned around about what's okay to do to kids. Sometimes it takes a long time for intervention to happen. Meanwhile, the kids have to attach to someone.

To her credit, when the county first interfered, she attended all their parenting classes and jumped through all their hoops to try to keep him. It didn't work - she was poor, she was caring for several small children, she had an abusive boyfriend at the time, and things fell apart. But he saw that she really, really tried. It gave him hope and a sense of dignity in all the filth of his years in foster care.

So back to this Christmas. Inspired by his lovely visit with her at church, T. asked his cousin if we could come over to drop off presents on Christmas Eve. She said she and her kids might be going out to the desert to see some extended family and "invited" him to come along. Though when I made a follow up phone call, her plan was vague, she wasn't sure which day this week is Christmas, and it seemed that T. had more or less invited himself along.

The desire to body block all disappointment in his life is overwhelming and impossible. When he figures out he's not going to have a happy family reunion with his relatives this Christmas, I'll acknowledge and name the disappointment and grief - briefly, because that's how he is. And then I'm working on a salve concocted from distraction (I happen to have this fabulous back up plan!), explanation (it's not personal, she loves you very much and things are just chaotic with all the relatives) and momentum (we'll see them next week at church - let's get on with our holiday).

All humans needs to attach and we may attach to some very flawed fellow humans in the course of it, but without any attachment, we shrivel up and die, at least spiritually. She made him feel that he mattered, and his ability to bond with us and love us has a lot to do with the love he felt from her earlier in his life. I'd like to stuff her stocking right now for not being clear and specific with him when any reasonable person could see how high the emotional stakes are for him, but she has her own problems, her own story, and her own blind spots.

Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for a few things. I don't usually take any note of that at Thanksgiving - frankly, I usually find it kind of boring as holidays go. But after spending months trying to adopt an older kid out of foster care, I'm struck by an unlikely sense of gratitude.

More than anything, I'm thankful that we bonded with T. these past few months. I'm thankful we met him in the nick of time. I'm thankful that we humans are so odd that occasionally we match up with each other like puzzle pieces and form unlikely families.

I'm thankful that T. hasn't been arrested.

I'm thankful that our days of intrusive visits from multiple social workers who scrutinize our parenting skills and browbeat T. about his misbehaviors are about to end. I'm thankful we won't have to drive 100 miles every weekend to pick him up anymore. I'm grateful T. won't have 7 different adults sharing the role of "parent" in his life.

I'm thankful that T. is the neatest, cleanest teenage boy on the planet.

I'm thankful that the relationship between Tim and I survived and grew through this very messy, frustrating, drawn-out process.

I'm thankful for whatever miracle of biology and psychology produced a stubborn habit of gentle, optimistic thinking in T. It is so humbling to behold.

I'm thankful that next Tuesday DCFS is meeting to make the final call on placing T. with us full-time and all signs are go.

I'm thankful for my hot Irish temper because it keeps me going and keeps me from getting depressed.

I'm thankful to anyone who adopts one of the many foster kids waiting for a permanent chosen family in the United States. In way too many cases, we have really failed as a society to provide for them. But T. proves to us every day that kids in foster care, even kids on the cusp of adulthood, are still receptive and responsive to love and logic and commitment and guidance and, most of all, a sense of being precious to someone.

A 180 Turns Into A 360

I've been offline lately and here's why:

- T. got into some serious trouble in his foster placement (he's been living in a foster placement and spending weekends with us while our adoptive placement is pending).

- During that time, T took a ride with another kid in his foster mom's car (he wasn't driving, but I'm pretty sure it was his idea). They crashed, left the scene of the accident in a panic, and eventually got picked up by police. (They are 15 years old and their foster mom left them at home alone that day, forbid them to go out, and left the keys on the kitchen table...as he put it "It was wrong, but it was just so tempting!")

-In response, his foster mom called in a 7-day notice, meaning that DCFS has 7 days to get him out of her house. Of course, he had no idea she's given notice, and continued to go about his life until his social worker showed up and told him to pack his things. She drove him to a town 100 miles away, dropped him at a group home and then left us a phone message telling us how to contact him.

- That made us absolutely furious - nobody called us to ask if we would take him before they moved him. And we've been pursuing an adoptive placement since August and we're licensed foster parents. In another post someday, I'll explain the hideous DCFS politics that have caused this situation to drag on and on.

- This whole experience made T. frantic and re-traumatized him - he has PTSD-type symptoms stemming from early mistreatment and abandonment on a rather grand scale. He immediately started running away from the group home, staying out all night and otherwise demonstrating his suffering.

And here's the good news:

1. We all got through it. This weekend, we were back to "normal" - he spent the weekend with us and we had a lot of fun. As he got in our car, he sighed, slumped back in the seat and said, "This feels like a family reunion." Tomorrow we're picking him up for a five-day Thanksgiving holiday.

2. It showed us the strength of T's bond with us. Finding himself in a group home in a strange city and knowing we didn't know where he was, he took matters into his own 15-year old hands. He went to the park, challenged a group of men to a game of dominoes for dollars, won $20, took the money to WalMart and bought himself a cheap text-only cell phone that he now uses to text message us from morning to night. If you don't think that's funny, you probably wouldn't enjoy parenting an older foster kid, but I think it's hilarious and ingenious. He calls and writes to me in the middle of the day, with questions like "I'm thinking of getting a tattoo. What do you think about that?" and "I met a girl at my new school today. I think I've got game! Can I go hang out with her this afternoon?" As I've said before, open invitation to parent, albeit from afar.

3. We experienced a serious moment of doubt in the midst of all this, which I'm pretty sure is an unavoidable component of older child foster adoption. I fully admit that for a period there, we weren't sure we could continue to pursue this adoption - we felt inadequate in the face of his behaviors and totally unsupported by DCFS. I'm not proud that my commitment to him flagged for a moment. But it's done and it taught us that we need to find support wherever we can so we're prepared for the next crisis. Even as I tried to convince myself that it would be okay to admit defeat, it made me feel utterly sick and heartbroken to think about letting him down. We just couldn't do it. It was interesting to realize that even if we thought this was the worst decision we ever made, we wouldn't give up for anything. My mom tells me that's how ALL parents feel sometimes.

4. Because he got in trouble and got moved without notice, he was separated from some dangerous peer influences in his previous placement. He knew he wanted to leave those friends behind, but had he not been yanked out, it would have been hard for him to separate.

5. Our relationship as a couple stayed intact. We stayed friends through all this drama. We weren't always in the same emotional place at the same time but we did a good job of letting each other be honest. We made decisions together quickly when we needed to, and laughed at the situation whenever we could.

Now we're picking him up tomorrow for a 5 day trip to Northern California. He's never been outside of Los Angeles and he's never spent Thanksgiving anywhere other than in a group home. We're trying to keep things low-key because the holidays can be overwhelming under the best of circumstances. Thankfully, he's met some of my family before, so he won't be entirely among strangers -and everyone has been briefed: don't throw your arms around him, don't say "welcome to the family", don't ask him questions about why he's in foster care, and recognize that this is a stressful situation for him. If all else fails, we'll take him out to practice his driving, which never fails to make him feel good. Fingers crossed.

We're In!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! Had a GREAT conversation in the car with T. Thanks to my boss who raised two boys and said, if you want them to talk to you, go on a long drive. I picked him up this morning and we had a drive of just over an hour. Instead of playing music, I left it quiet and started with a couple questions about school.

Once he got warmed up, he volunteered, "I talked to April this week." April is the social worker who visited to talk to him about how he's feeling about us so far. I played cool for awhile, and said, "April called us too. She likes to check in and make sure we're doing a good job and not freaking you out." I knew he was trying to open up a conversation, so a few minutes later, I said, "April asked us how we feel about adoption, because some of the people in the Kidsave program want to adopt, and others are more into weekend hosting. So I told her we definitely want to adopt. But if you decide you would rather just do weekends with us, that's totally cool too. We're in it to help you, whatever you decide you want to do."

Bingo! "I want to get adopted," he said softly. I asked him how he imagines adoption will be different than foster care. He had a complete analysis ready to go! Foster parents give you back if you get into trouble or do something bad, he explained, but adoptive parents work on it with you and they are there forever. They "treat you like you're their own," and make you part of their family. I said, yeah, I think adoption is an awesome way to make a family. We always wanted to adopt, and I like the idea that when you adopt you become a family because you all really like each other. I got a little smile for that one so I kept going.

"Well, we'd be psyched to adopt you whenever you're ready, and you can come live with us while we do the adoption if you want," I said (the Kidsave program is set up so that a kid can be placed with you as a substitute foster family as you're pursuing adoption). "And we think you're the best kid in the Kidsave program and we liked you right away. We knew we wanted to do the program, but we didn't imagine we'd meet someone we like as much as we like you!" He was beaming. Hooray!

I also said, "But you know, if we adopt you, you're stuck with us. I mean, you'll be, like, 35 and you'll have your own kids and we'll be calling you up all the time, asking if you're coming over for Thanksgiving." He seemed surprised about that and amused. So I said, "I think that's one of the things that's really different about adoption - it isn't just til you're 18. And I know I needed my parents for a long time - to help me with stuff like college and getting a first apartment, and just giving me advice when I needed it." He was quiet about that part - I think it might be a new consideration. I also snuck in a word about how we would help him keep in touch with his brother. And I asked him who his favorite foster moms have been - which included the one he's with now - and said, being adopted doesn't mean you don't see those people anymore. You can totally keep in touch with all the people who are important to you. He was quiet, but I wanted to make sure he didn't feel like he had to give up what he has.

And OH MY GOD I felt relieved to have gotten all that out. I was really having trouble figuring out how to broach this subject - there aren't a lot of precedents for telling a 15 year old that you'd like him to be your first and only child! I realized last week that I was clamming up because I was uncomfortable with the emotional intensity of the conversation - it took me some effort to get down to emotional brass tacks and set aside my own fear of rejection.

We chatted all the way home! T. totally cracks me up. A little while later, he said "What do you think about tattoos?" I said, "Why? Are you thinking of getting one?" He nodded and smiled slyly. I said, well, for our anniversary, Tim got a tattoo of a big anchor with my name on it, so I think tattoos are pretty cool. What will yours say? "On my arm, it will say Live Life to the Fullest," he said. "And on my back, Liberty." I said, "I like tattoos to mark big life transitions, because a tattoo is forever. Wouldn't it be cool to get a tattoo like Liberty on the day you get free of the foster system?" "Yeah!" he sighed.

Then I realized he's only 15! "Hey wait, can you even GET a tattoo?" I asked. He cracked up and said a friend is going to do it. I said, okay, not with a ballpoint pen, and it's really important to make sure to use clean fresh needles. He nodded solemnly.

I also brought up the school issue - I said something like "I wish we lived closer so that if you decide you'd like to live with us, you wouldn't have to move and change schools." As usual, he thought about that for a quiet minute, then said, "I don't mind moving schools. That's how you meet new people!" I said, well that's an awesome attitude to have! He chatted a bit more - about his mom, and how he was going to live with her, but decided he didn't want to, and how he has a sister that he doesn't really know who has autism. He told me his mom is tall - 5'11" - and that she says his dad was tall, too.

When we got home, I called out to Tim "We're home! And we're adopting T.! But he's getting tattoos, so you better talk to him." T. loved that and totally cracked up in his quiet way - I was checking to see how comfortable he felt with the outcome of our conversation, and that was my answer.

So now we're home and T. is in the den playing X-box live, after we all shared sandwiches. He played with the cat, and we quizzed him about what he does and doesn't eat. It turns out he eats pretty much everything except what we served him last weekend. And he loves sushi! He's still beaming, and quite easy going and talkative today. And he went in his room and took off his shoes and left them there! So I think he's claiming it for himself.

I suppose the next hurdle is convincing DCFS that we all three know what we want, and they don't have to keep worrying about whether he's comfortable with us. But first, we have a weekend to enjoy. And we're planning a camping trip for two weeks from now.