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.

In Tribute to My Friends

My friends rock. Two of them particularly rock.

My Friend #1 is a private investigator who investigates the social history of people on death row. She worked in a foster group home for a couple years right out of college and her parents adopted an older child from foster care.

My Friend #2 is a licensed clinical social worker who supervised a program for homeless teenagers for many years, worked with traumatized kids in Kosovo, and now runs a free medical clinic.

They will both touch many lives in the course of their careers. But this week, I get the benefit of their wisdom. Tim and I are getting four full days off, thanks to them.

This is how it came about: I have a business trip to my hometown this week, and decided to take T with me. I figured I'd put him to work and pay him a bit for his time so I wouldn't have to worry about what he's up to while I'm away (winter school break is interminable this year thanks to LAUSD budget cuts). Of course that also means struggling to keep him occupied while I go about doing my job, being with him 24/7, juggling his needs with those of my coworkers. I booked a hotel suite for us with cable, video games and room service and hoped for the best.

Well, unexpectedly, T. announced that he'd be staying with Friend #1, who lives in the town where we're visiting, instead of with me at the hotel. This news was shocking and delightful, because he does not easily take to strangers nor to spending the night in unfamiliar places. Some months back, we had dinner with Friend #1 and her partner, and I guess he was captivated by her stories about her current case, involving a young man who grew up in a prison camp. I think he was also struck by her low-key compassion and hard-to-impress demeanor. So he decided to make himself her house guest. She loved the suggestion, and immediately got in touch to let him know that he should bring his xbox and come prepared to entertain her new pit bull puppy. His complete confidence and comfort about staying for five nights at her house is really touching to me.

Then my blessed Friend #2, who also lives in the town where we're visiting, offered to have T work at her health clinic for a day or two while he's staying in the vicinity. She knows that he wants to be a nurse, and arranged for him to shadow a male nurse at her clinic as he goes about his day. She isn't bothered at all that just three weeks ago I was ranting and raving to her about my problems keeping him in school, off drugs and out of trouble. Like Friend #1, she's pretty hard to impress and she's seen plenty of complicated teenage boys in her time. She has taken the time to listen to him and recognizes who he is, underneath the misbehavior. Like all kids, he rises to the level of expectation, and he responds to her respect and good humor.

One of the hardest things about becoming T's parent has been the isolation. We moved to Los Angeles just two years before we met him. That's not enough time to form deep friendships in middle age. We do pretty well, and we get home to our friends and families often, but I wish sometimes that we had stronger local bonds. It can be isolating enough raising a traumatized kid, because his intense needs and struggles have a way of drawing all of our time and attention and energy. Living in a town without close friends and family makes things harder and we almost never get even an hour off, much less a day.

So this week, I'm exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to distribute the wonders of T.'s company across the safety net of my two friends. He trusts them and feels he can be close to them because he knows how much they are a part of me, and that makes me feel good. Visiting with them gives him a chance to grow and experiment, and it gives me a chance to relax.

I hope every foster/adoptive parent of a traumatized child out there gets a break like I'm getting this week. Knowing that someone you trust who "gets" your precious, complicated child is going to stand in for you for just a little while is SUCH a huge mental and emotional relief. And for T., finding surrogate parents who are willing to open their homes and lives to him sends a profound message about belonging to a family, growing into an adult, and the value of strong friendships. They are my family, and now they are his as well.

Our Second Christmas Together

Our second Christmas with T went a lot better than the first. We were smarter.

This year, we better understood that a lifetime of disappointment makes surprises very unsettling, and we let T make a wish list of desired gifts to guide our giving.

I didn't get a Christmas tree this year - I've learned that too much festivity just produces anxiety. We just had Christmas lights - like the frosting without the cake.

This year, I was better prepared for his...flawed etiquette around receiving gifts, and I didn't expect any display of happiness or gratitude. I just gave him things I wanted him to have.

And of course, in synch with my reduced expectations, T better managed his complex feelings about receiving gifts and even managed a polite thank you!

This year, I kind of got a present from T. T told Tim to get me something. I bought myself some nail polish. Tim gave it to T and T gave it to me. He took great delight in taking all the credit. Making himself emotionally vulnerable enough to make a passing gesture at giving a gift is a big step for T.

This year we didn't let the chaos of his birth family compete with our time with him. Instead, we gave him his gifts on the morning of the 24th and had a nice breakfast together. This worked well for him and he announced that forevermore, the 24th is "our Christmas".

We arranged the same Christmas Eve visit to the birth relatives we facilitated last year, and stressed less about it. We knew the visit would be chaotic, disappointing and depressing and that we can not control or prevent his feelings. (SocialWrkr24/7 had a great post about the complexity of holiday birth family visits here.) We kept in touch with him by text message, made sure he got fed, but didn't freak ourselves out completely when the adults took off and didn't supervise the kids. Their chaos is familiar to him, and he can manage it for short periods, particularly if he knows we are nearby and available.

I'm particularly pleased that T let us take charge of his visit with his brother this year. He was a "parentified" older sibling for many years and it badly frayed his nerves. This year, we made the plans for him: we bought his brother a gift, drove out to a neighboring county to pick him up, and delivered him to the relatives house on Christmas Day. We decided on the timing and duration of the visit. When T got frustrated with his brother in the car, we soothed them both and got them settled down. I felt really gratified by his concession to let us be the parents - that indicates a great deal of trust on his part.

I didn't feel so badly about missing out on T's company on Christmas as I did last year. Tim and I planned Christmas Eve as a treasured date night and we had a blast.

This year, I had a better understanding that the best gift I can give T as his parent is to reduce the burden of my emotional expectations and normalize and help him balance his scattered loyalties and relationships.

This year, my mom included his photo in her annual Christmas card collage, alongside my nephew. He plucked it from the mail, stared at it for a long time, then set it aside in a prominent location. Thank you, mom.

This year, he hoarded all the Christmas cards that had his name alongside ours on the envelope. "They're addressed to me!" he exclaimed. It is hard to explain the significance of Christmas cards and packages to a neglected kid.

This year, my parents joined us for a short ski vacation the day after Christmas. This year, T. referred to my dad as his "grampz".

This year, my cousin's 4 year-old daughter approached T and asked him sweetly if it would be alright if she called him her cousin from now on, and he smiled and nodded.

In our own way, it was a merry Christmas.

Loss and Learning

My beloved 20 year-old kitty passed away this week. It was heartbreaking for me, and interesting for the three of us as a family. In the midst of my grief, I noted a few things that I thought I'd record here, to do with traumatized kids, grief and loss.

When T. was a young child, he lived in a chaotic home. He and his cousins had a kitten, and the kitten died while they were giving it a bath. The kids were very young at the time - probably ranging from 3 to 7 - and they were left unsupervised and told to bathe the kitten in the sink. He blames himself for what happened.

This is one of the first stories that T. told me about himself when we were getting to know each other. He told me more than once, which is very unusual for him. I understood in a visceral way that one does with a child that this story functions for him as evidence that he is "bad". I have always had the sense that this is his "origins" story, the original fall from grace that, in his mind, brought about his subsequent very bad luck.

Ironically, I met him at an event where we were volunteering to wash shelter dogs. I was struck by his extreme tenderness and careful attention to the animals. I realized only many months later when I heard the kitten story that he must have been terrified and traumatized, reminded of the kitten story and afraid that he'd drown the dogs. I recall that his hands were shaking.

When T move in with us he was, at first, very gentle and attentive to my cat. Over time, as he grew more comfortable, she began to annoy him and he let his annoyance show more freely, but he was still generally tender toward her. As she neared the end of her life, and I became more sensitive about her impending passing, he stopped grumbling about her mess and distraction. In the last days of her life, he build a little fort for her out of couch pillows, and monitored her heating pad to keep her as comfortable as possible. He did all of this quietly, with natural authority, when we were not in the room. His goal was to ease her suffering, not to impress us.

I rarely cry but I sobbed the night before she died. T. told me some time ago that he hates to see people cry and it makes him angry. I said, "Sometimes adults can cry in a way that feels out of control and its scary. And sometimes they can cry in a way that is meant to manipulate you. Maybe that's when you get angry. Otherwise, crying is just crying." He nodded.

It turns out he doesn't really mind when people cry. When he caught me crying he nodded in a forgiving way and gave me some hugs. Then he patted me on the head and said, "It's good to let it all out."

We sent him out of the house for the final hours while kitty passed away, because we felt that the atmosphere was too stressful for him. We talked about what would happen, and gave him permission to spend the day at a friend's house. He blew the cat a kiss, and headed out to do teen things. I think he was a little disoriented and upset when he came home and found her gone, but we didn't talk about it much. Her loss has a big impact on the general spirit of our home and it's a big change to absorb. But we all sat down to dinner.

I like to think that this was an opportunity for him to experience one of life's small catastrophes in the context of family, and gain some knowledge of how we help each other through tough times. I saw him learn another lesson, when he realized this week that I have feelings that are independent of him. We are so closely bonded now that sometimes he thinks he controls my feelings, or that all of my feelings are about him. It's hard to develop compassion until you understand and can respond to someone else's experience as separate from (but related to) your own. He did a good job with compassion this week, in his own child-like way.

I think it was also a healthy opportunity to experience what it's like to be in an "adult-led" household; we made the decision to let the kitty go without involving him, and took care of the arrangements quietly on our own. We told him exactly what was going to happen and when, so that he could be prepared, but we didn't ask him to do or feel anything in particular. We tried to show respect for his teen routine, even in the midst of our upset.

I know his experiences of loss have been devastating, traumatic and chaotic - in his young life, he's lost many close relationships, through circumstances he couldn't control. I like to think that this week, he got to witness grief and loss free of trauma and confusion. I like to think also that this experience is one more memory we share, one more private family matter than we will use as a touchstone and reference point in the story of us.

Awkward

At our office Christmas party, an African American colleague unexpectedly asked me the question I dread: What made you decide to adopt an African American child?

It was uncomfortable in a number of ways, not least of which because she has never met my kid, and I never referenced his ethnicity, so it came out of the blue and it indicated to me that the composition of my family had been the topic of some discussion outside of my earshot. We had been chatting about the high cost of groceries and I had mentioned the vast quantity of juice that T consumes every week when she popped the question.

Of course it also made me blush because there really is no right answer to that question. The short answer is: Because we "clicked" and he felt we were the right parents for him. One could also explain (and I do believe I babbled on about it) that there simply are not enough willing parents to adopt older children who want a permanent family, so successful matches are often a bit idiosyncratic. In fact, T. attended adoption fairs and searched for an adoptive match for two years before we met. But that sounds apologetic - as if he would have been better off with an African American family but we were his only option. I don't think he feels that way and we don't either--like any family, we like to feel we are a match made in heaven, not a compromise wrought by a bureaucracy.

Of course there are complexities we can't begin to address adequately when this topic comes up. There is a painful history in Los Angeles regarding the way the child welfare bureaucracy demonstrated prejudice in removing African American children from families at various times. There are also strong feelings amongst some African American people that white parents may be unable to properly teach African American children about how to navigate racism and prejudice. And there are many people, white, Black and other, who question whether white parents can properly convey the richness of African American history to Black adopted children. All of that is fair.

My awareness of and sensitivity to that history caused me to babble on and on in a most awkward manner. I mentioned how, with a younger child, I would have worried about my ability to help him fully connect to the richness of African American identity, but given his age, what really happened is that he arrived with a very full and multi-dimensional Black identity of his own. He just assumes that we support that identity and even share it. We do talk about race and racism on a regular basis at our house. We are not naive as parents - when he was, for example, assumed entirely without cause to be illiterate by a white teacher this semester, we did not hesitate to call the school and ask them to address the obvious stereotyping going on in that classroom. And of course, we felt confident that, because of our own personal histories and relationships, our parenting would not be compromised by unconscious racism or stereotypes hiding in our own unconscious.

And yet, any attempt to explain that I think we're doing an okay job sounds a little...defensive.

I think next time, when someone asks me "why did you decide to adopt an African American child?" I might just say "because we loved him."

The No Good Awful Very Bad Week

Last week, we had an epic eruption of misbehavior. In fact, we three decided that it goes down in family history as the No Good Awful Very Bad Week.

Truly, we got it all, within the span of a few days: suspension, substance abuse, absent-without-leave, petty theft, personal insults, you name it. It was as if T. gathered every shred of mental health he has so carefully cultivated and ignited it all at once in a bonfire of self-destruction.

It also just happened (coincidence?) to be the one-year anniversary of the date he finally moved in with us (the date T. considers himself to have "left the system" as he puts it); the week prior to our adoption court hearing, and, of course, the midst of holiday season. In other words, a Bermuda Triangle of triggers.

Then, as suddenly as it arrived, it blew over. By Saturday, he was communicative and affectionate. By Sunday he was apologetic, warm, and engaging. We went to the Korean spa together, where T. insisted that he needed a salt scrub, to overcome dry skin. "I think it will help me relax and turn over a new leaf!" he said brightly. On Monday, he willingly and without struggle joined us for a meeting with a new counselor who specializes in substance abuse treatment for adolescents (thank God for community mental health clinic, and they will be receiving all my spare laundry change when I quit this life), and signed up to weekly meetings. On Tuesday, he brought home weeks worth of neglected school assignments and asked for help in getting caught up.

When we were preparing to be parents, I did a lot of reading about attachment disorder. But my experience with T. is that he has something that strikes me as the opposite - call it detachment crises. When we have to separate (because we have to go to work, he has to go to school, for example) things go amok. He is not able to regulate his own behavior, despite his intelligence and gentle nature. And when he gets overwhelmed, he doesn't go mildly amok, in the way that peer-influenced way of most teenagers. He goes dramatically erratically amok, like a toddler in a 6'4" body. As we were reflecting on the Awful No Good Very Bad Week, we all agreed that the worst part (and there were many) was that we came disconnected; once we were able to come back together and be close, even though we didn't have any answers, things started to improve.

He said, "I just want you to know, I wasn't having FUN when I was being so bad." I understood exactly what he meant: he often appears to be having a wild time and even smirks when he is in the midst of a meltdown, but it's not because he's enjoying himself. Early on, we learned that a certain smirk actually means he's in full on panic mode.

I find that being his parent requires constant simplification of priorities. There are really only a couple things we can offer. The first is that we can show him over and over again that no matter how difficult his behavior might be, we will not "give him back." I know this, and yet I constantly underestimate how significant it is to him, and how long it will take to confirm once and for all that this is for good.

Recently he said to me "In the system, I had to be good, or I'd get given away." That is his fundamental reality: show your true colors, and nobody will want you anymore, and you will lose your home, your friends, and everything that is familiar. That causes him tremendous stress (his word) and his inability to manage stress in turn causes him to come unglued and do things that, in the end, cause him (and us!) more stress.

We were taught in our parent training classes how to prepare for the grief kids like T. feel at being separated from their families. But I don't think we were prepared adequately for the elevated expectations he had about being adopted. As we were telling our history to our new counselor, I was struck by how proud he is that he is adopted. When he moved in a little over a year ago, we expected him to be bothered that we are white, grieved that we aren't his relatives, alienated by our unfamiliar habits. What I missed, at least in part, is that he was terrified; terrified that we would uncover the real him, or he wouldn't live up to our expectations, or he wouldn't be able to change to fit in. Perhaps unlike the majority of kids in foster care, T. never lived with a parent. Getting adopted was a very big deal for him, a goal he set for himself late in his childhood. That's great, but it also put tremendous stress on him: to be wanted by someone, to be good enough to be someone's precious child. He doesn't really understand that we fell in love with the real T.; we could see him in there all along. We loved him for his intelligence and his complexity and his delicious smell, not for being "good".

Every time we survive one of these episodes, we experience a great leap forward afterwards. He trusts us more, comes closer, and confides more. Tonight he curled up on the couch and leaned against me while we chatted and his whole face was alight.

And just in case someone who is going through a tough time with a complicated teenager reads this and feels like it all sounds easy: it wasn't, and I was not a very good parent at times last week. I lost my confidence, got angry and sad, and had absolutely no idea what to do. I lost my composure and even avoided him for a couple days. By the end of the week, all I could say was "I love you and I don't know what to do." By Monday, I could say "I love you and I don't know what to do but I found someone that I'd like to ask for help," and he trusted me enough to come along.

T. teaches me all the time how little I control and how flawed I am. I am humbled by my own shortcomings, and daunted by how little I can actually do for him. But I do know that when he sees us falter and get overwhelmed and angry, and then find ways to reconnect with him afterwards, he finally understands how much we love him. He sees that he is not the only one who is overcome sometimes, and that family isn't really so fragile after all.

To Be Real

Before we became parents to T., I didn't know it was possible to wake up fully convinced of one point of view, and go to bed fully convinced of the opposite. But that happens fairly often now. Just when we think T. is doing well, he falters. Just when we feel completely bewildered by his behavior, he gets it together. Just when we think we've grown accustomed to his extraordinary qualities, he blows our minds anew.

I am reminded lately of something we learned in our foster/adoptive parenting classes: "Parent the need, not the behavior."

Somehow I forgot that little bit of insight. The behavior can be dang distracting. Last week, we were dealing with broken curfews, marijuana use on school days, faltering (well, actually, failing) grades, angry teachers, and rude, surly, sneaky behavior at home. ("A lot of that is pretty normal for teens," my mom said, nonchalantly.)

The problem with parenting the need rather than the behavior in such situations is seeing the underlying need in the first place. By midweek I had no idea what was going on, and our family life had become a tangle of broken rules and half-dealt consequences. (It's very hard to follow through on consequences when they keep heaping upon each other! Did I take his phone for cussing at me, or for refusing to come home on time? Did he lose his x-box privileges for cutting class, or for refusing to show us his homework assignments? If I take his phone, how will I track him down when he refuses to come home on time?)

I think T. was more disgusted with his behavior than we were. One night midweek, he came to us to talk. He started with with a rambling, introspective description of his time in foster care. He described how in "the system" as he calls it, he felt he "had to be good" because "if you weren't good, you had to go." "I used to do better in school," he said. "But I think that was because I had to, or something bad would happen." We talked about 7-day notices and foster parents who called the social worker when you misbehaved and how hard it can be to trust adults when that's been your experience.

In our parenting classes, they often talked about how kids would "test" any adult who got close to them - pushing boundaries and buttons, perhaps convinced that nobody could truly love them. In our experience, this "testing" is extremely complex. In some sense, we "passed" the test. And yet, that isn't the end. T. isn't just testing us and our loyalty to him; he's testing himself, and the world. The fact that he can count on us raises a host of other questions he never had the luxury to consider. "What happens if I relax?" he seems to be wondering. "What happens if I'm not the good, responsible older brother anymore?" "What happens if I get angry?" "What happens if I refuse to do things I don't want to do?"

It took a full year of living with us (and that was preceded by six months of steady weekend visits) for him to gain enough trust to act out this much. And while he's indulging in bad behavior, he's simultaneously growing deeply attached. He snuggles and tickles, blows raspberries and naps in our bed. I often see him very much like a toddler with tantrums and faulty self-regulation skills, except that he's a toddler who can drive.

Last week, in the midst of a discussion about schoolwork, he said, "You think you know me?"
"Yes," I said. "I do. Ever since the day I met you, you have felt very familiar to me. You make sense to me." He nodded. "I guess you could say that we're similar," he said peacefully.

And therein lies the need, I think. Everyone needs to be precious and to make sense to someone. The utter loneliness of being "good" because otherwise you won't have a home anymore is subsiding in him. In its place, there's confusion, of course. And anger. But there is also authenticity, and the opportunity to love and accept love in return.