Too many thoughts too little time

1. If you have not been reading Lionmom's posts, go now. Her daughter ran away, was found, and is currently in a treatment facility. Reading Lionmom's recent posts makes my mind churn. I have one thought which leads to another and I can't, right now, concentrate on any one of them long enough to write a coherent post.

2. I am remembering that the local hospitals official policy when a foster child is admitted is to warn the nursing and medical staff that though the foster parents may visit, they are not the parents, are not to be given any medical information, and are not to be included in any decision-making processes. The foster parents are reminded that as long as the child is in the hospital, the child is not "placed" with them. They are, for this period of time, not even the child's foster parents.

3. My agency recently put me on a contract to pick up a foster child and take her, along with my son, to zero period at the high school. It requires me to leave the house 10 minutes earlier and drive a couple miles out of the way. Their policy is to pay for a minimum of one hour for each trip. SO, what they are paying me for that 10 minutes is $1.50 more than what they pay me for one day's worth of room and board. I'm not complaining about either sum, but I do think I will remember this for the next time some one suggests that we foster parents "do it for the money."

4. I am of course thinking about attachment disorder again. My mind turns to Ann, and to "Miss E" (that name was cute when it was in the title "Driving Miss E", but is beginning to sound a little negative to me now. I think I need to go back to just using "E.") How do we get through to these kids? Lionmom's description of S's "I love you, don't leave me, I never want to see you again" routine is just becoming to d*mn familiar to me.

Can RAD be cured? Can a child who in infancy learned to equate love with pain ever get over that? Or will the internal panic always resurface? Is the best we can hope for that that the reactive periods become further apart and/or shorter?

5. And I find myself almost chanting a prayer, "Let S go back home. Let S go back home. Let S go back home." Ann and E both lost long-term homes even though the people who had had them fought to keep them. E had been adopted and Ann was officially in permanent placement foster care. I don't want to even see it happen again. I want one of these stories with a RAD kid to have a happy ending.

6. I want to make everyone understand that when placements with RAD kids disrupt it is not always because the parents get wore out. E's adoption was terminated because she was so afraid of being loved that she convinced people that she would kill herself to get away from it. I am not being metaphorical or hyperbolic. I mean that in the end the social workers, the judge, and the adoptive parents agreed that the adoptive parents were good and loving people, and that E could not feel safe with people who loved her. The only place where E has felt safe, where she has not reported that the adults were abusing her, was the teen shelter. She could only relax and be a little bit happy around people who were paid to care for her and with whom no emotional attachment was ever expected.

7. And I know that when S goes home, it will not be because Lionmom and Cebii proved that they love her. I think that S already knows that. It will be because S will get a chance to calm back down, some time for the irrational feelings of panic to settle, so that she can believe what she knows: she is safest with the people who love her.