Frankie Doesn't Live There Anymore

The woman who had been Frankie's foster mom called me a couple of days ago and said she would like to car pool to a recreation event the agency had for the kids today. (They climbed a big rock.) She picked up the boys, but I didn't see her. Roland went to get them, but none of them was Frankie. One of the boys said that he is in a "transitional home," which could mean just about anything.

The family had been living in a tiny town north of here. He had been doing well at the small high school there. Now they have moved to Our Small Town, and Frankie isn't with them.

I have no idea what happened. Gary's new-to-him social worker is also Frankie's worker. I will have to see what information she can give me when I see her next. It won't be much. She might say that Frankie decided he didn't want to come back to Our Small Town because the schools. Maybe the learned that the high school would insist that he go back into the restrictive program he was in when he was with us. If that happened, she would tell me. Or maybe he disrupted for any number of reasons. If that is the case, then the social worker won't say anything other than the placement didn't work out. She won't give me details.

At least he is with the agency. They will stick with him.

I had really hoped that placement would work out for him. I really had.

It is funny. Just a couple of days ago I started a post about kids moving in foster care, about how we can't have fewer moves by deciding we will have fewer moves. Kids move for reasons. If we are going to ensure fewer moves, we will need to address the reasons.

Frankie and Miss E too!

I wrote back in October that I got to talk to the foster mom who now has Frankie. She actually got licensed with my agency so that she could parent Gary. However, she is the grandmother of the girl that Gary dated at one time and it was decided by the powers that be that that might be awkward. So they sent Gary to me, and quite independently they asked her to take Frankie.

He moved in with her in September. She lives in a very small town that has a moderate size high school. Frankie enrolled there and has been succeeding. I can't tell you what his grades are like, but he is coping there.

She typically does therapeutic level foster care and is a much better fit for Frankie than I was. I have a very laid back sort of parenting style. She has more structure. She also has horses and barn cats. Gary spent the day there and reports that though Frankie still seems really young for his age he was emotionally steady. He seemed happy.

A couple of the kids wanted to wrestle with Gary. He pinned them all very quickly. Even Frankie wanted to and Gary flipped him on his back. Gary said it took it with good humor.

So far it is the longest Frankie has been in a home and I am very happy it worked out.

The family is planning on moving back to Our Small Town, and Frankie will have to go to the local, bigger, scarier high school where he was emotionally overwhelmed back when he lived with me. He may be more successfully this time around. He will have had time in a traditional, if smaller, high school, and had time to bond with a highly skilled family.

I'm happy for him, and I am deeply grateful that there was a family out there that was right for him.

It is hard when a kid's needs are greater than your skills. It is tough when they leave and you don't know anything about where they land and if they are happy. One always fears that they will just bounce. Finding out that Frankie is in a family who is right for him is wonderful.

And today while we were all talking about people we had known, Brian mentioned that he has seen Miss E on the public bus. She was talking (I'm not sure if it was to him, or if Brian was eavesdropping) about the courses she is taking and the community college and her plans to work as a nurse. He reports that she seemed happier than any other time he has seen her.

Of course that is just a snap shot, but it is a good one.

Frankie Update

Last night there was an event at my agency. All the employees were dressed up in Halloween costumes, there was candy everywhere, pizza in the kitchen, and reruns of The Munsters playing in the conference/dining room.

There were also eight stations the kids had to visit. They included a room where they were supposed to do a "self-identity poster," a room for taking a life skills assessment, a hearing screening, a visit with the transition coordinator, someone from job services, and I forget the others. The kids seemed to have a pretty good time, many running into friends they had not seen in a while, being welcomed warmly by staff they had met once in the past. Gary ran into someone he worked with closely at a group home once.

And Frankie was there.

He was there with a woman who has been doing therapeutic foster care for four years and who got a license with my agency in order to give a home to Gary. They went through the whole process and then the state workers said, "Um...he was dating your granddaughter, right? Gee...this might not be a good idea." Then Casey said, "As long as you are licensed with us, we think you might be perfect for this other kid."

So about six months ago he started visiting and early in July he moved in. He has been there full-time just a bit longer than he was with us and he is doing well. His current "main" diagnosis is autism, which is plausible. She lives in a small town with a much smaller high school and he is doing pretty well there. She is also really good at dealing with kids who fall apart, roll on the floor and cry. She says he says nice things about us. I told her how extremely happy I was that he was doing well in a family. She sympathized with the pain of losing a kid, and was very glad to hear from me how Gary was doing.

But Frankie is good. I hope he sticks there. He has a good chance and he is in a great home.

Conversation on Photolistings Continues

Two comments I want to share. One is from Janine in Australia:

As I mentioned in Torina's blog comments, here in Australia there are no photolistings. To 'entice' permanent carers we have occasional media efforts featuring a 'poster child' which is usually followed by a rush of interested callers, who are directed to information sessions, and then onto training (with lots dropping off along the way, of course). Again, I don't know how successful we are at placing older or special needs kids compared to you in the States, so how do we know if these photolistings are really needed?

I have no answer for this. In some, perhaps most, places the photolistings are out of date and incomplete. That would bother me not at all if there were an efficient and more private system for matching potential carers and and adopters with children. If the photolistings are the main way that people who can provide traumatized children with homes get connected to those children, then the fact that they are not current means they fail to meet the only criteria that justifies their existence.

I think it is good for US citizens to become aware of how things are done elsewhere. We tend to think that our way is the best way, or certainly the only feasible way, without even knowing what is done elsewhere. Imagine though a country in which there is no private adoption at all, in which every mother who is considering placing meets with a social worker whose job it is to help her get resources so that she can parent her child. Adoption exists as an option, but promoting it is no body's agenda. [update: See Sassy's comments below for more information on Adoption in Australia.] [Also note: if it didn't make Sassy's comments irrelevant, which is rude, I would probably delet the second part of this paragraph. The issues in infant placement overlap but are not the same as the ones in child protection.]

Of course, as we talk about the lack of resources for private matching, or keeping the photolistings updated, I will want to talk about our unwillingness to provide families, particularly young mothers, with the help they need long before the situation has deteriorated to the place where removal of children is an appropriate response. That though is a conversation far too big for me right now. Feel free to discuss.

Bacchus in his comment provides a challenge:

This was my least favorite part of adopting. Knowing there was a code to listings and trying to decipher it. There were times we were drained from reading these. I hate the fact that kids are reduced to innuendo.
Thanks for posting these. If I can challenge people to truly get these, if you have bio kids.. describe them in terms of an adoption listing. It is amazing how it reads.

The level of anxiety I feel about doing this I think is partly an indicator of the level of why the photolistings bother me so much. Can I bring myself to do it?

Brian

Brian is a fun-loving kid with a wacky sense of humor. He loves animals and recently has started baking for fun. He enjoys cartoons and is a great mimic. He will amuse and confuse you by quoting lines from his favorite shows at unexpected times. Brian loves animals and assists in the care of his current family's dog.

Brian goes to a school that focuses on artistic expression, which has helped him significantly. He enjoys art and recently acted in the school play. Parents who will support this activity, which includes making a commitment to get him to appropriate schooling, transportation to and from rehearsals, and attend performances is very important. Brian tests above grade level in most subjects, however his school performance and grades do not reflect his full potential. A family with patience, who can help guide him to develop better organizational skills and focus would be a great asset to Brian. Brian also needs a family who understands anxiety and can accept how this has been exasperated by multiple losses.

Brian does take medication which helps him control his emotions. It will be important for any family to ensure that he remembers his. Brian sometimes has difficulty expressing himself, but an art-based therapy program has been very helpful. Brian responds best to a firm but gentle parenting style. Brian is very sensitive to the needs of other children, and gets along very well with younger children. His new school has helped him to develop better relationships with his peers.

This gentle young man has amazing potential. Do you have the patience, structure and creativity to help guide him to adulthood?

Yeah. That was fun. (Can you hear the sarcasm?) I think it is accurate, and yet it doesn't seem to capture who he really is, you know? Does it make him sound like a fragile emotional wreck? He can be. He has made amazing progress over the past year, but long-time readers know there were times when I was torn with trying to figure out if I was giving too much attention to his anxiety, thereby rewarding it, or failing to adequately address it. If he needed a family to care for him, they would need to know that, but this description paints a picture of a kid who is and is not Brian. It is a character from some TV movie who does not have the complexity and reality of the kid who is Brian.

I have read photolistings of children whom I already knew a couple of times, most particularly Frankie and Ann. In both cases major issues were stated in ways that sounded like little quirks, or problems that are probably in the past. I still have Ann's six-year-old profile on my refrigerator mostly because I love the photograph. It shows the smile I almost never got to see. When I look at it, I see the young woman she should have been, but wasn't. The profile lists things she likes, including animals. It claims, I believe falsely, that she is ready to form a long-term relationship with an adult and understands that this will take work on her part. There is no mention of dangerous behaviors or problems she may have with siblings. Then it says, "[Ann] sees herself as open-minded and wants to share her sense of humor with a family that eats together and plays together." I don't doubt that she saw herself that way, but I don't think that was accurate.

It goes on, "She may struggle with forming anything deeper than a superficial attachment, so a willingness to focus on [her] needs will be important qualities for her adoptive parents. if you know about insecure attachment and its causes are are willing to wait for [Ann] to return your love, please call..." For a while I was seeing "insecure" or "superficial" attachment for a while, but I think too many people figured out that that was code for reactive attachment disorder.

I would have written:

Ann, having grown up in a foster home with difficult older girls, does not have an understanding of healthy sibling relationships. She has a strong need to dominate people around her, and will bully children her age or younger. She has on occasion escalated to physical violence when arguing with her foster sisters. She would do best in a family no other children or perhaps an older, understanding sibling who can help her learn positive interactions. Ann forms attachments to animals whom she feels she can trust. Though like any child she needs help remembering to care for their needs, it is important there there be a pet as that may be the only relationship she will have that will feel safe to her. Ann is an expert at triangulation. If she is adopted by a two-parent family they will need to be skilled at avoiding this and other manipulations. She can and often is very critical of the behavior of others including her caretaker.

She has a brother who has been adopted by another family. His parents have concluded that Ann is not a safe person for him to be around. She will need parents who can help her deal with this grief and loss.

Ann has reactive attachment disorder and in the past has escalated to behaviors dangerous to herself or others when her foster family tried to adopt her. She will need a parent or parents who understand this dynamic. She has never physically injured a caretaker, but she is capable of spewing verbal venom and using language you would not expect a twelve-year-old to know. She seems to respond best to an approach in which caretakers allow her to wear herself out while refusing to engage in argument.

Ann can also be very affectionate, often seeming like a much younger child. Though this could also be a part of the attachment disorder, those who love her feel they get a glimpse of the girl she should have been and perhaps with time and patience will have a chance to become.

If you have the ability to withstand verbal abuse in private and public places and respond without escalating yourself, you may over the course of several years develop a level of trust with Ann, although you should be prepared to take satisfaction in having provided her with a safe place to grow up, even if she never seems to respond to or even believe in your affection for her.

Should it have said that? Would it have been a violation of her privacy to be that honest? Ann was old enough to read her profile herself. I doubt she would appreciate such truths being shared about her. And I guess I don't think they should be -- at least not in any way that can connect these words to her in real life. She deserves more respect for her privacy than that, but I also think this is what anyone who might consider adopting her really needs to know.

Frankie's on-line posting

Yep...Frankie is now photo-listed.

I am nauseous.

I want to believe he can be adopted. I want to believe that there is the perfect family out there. The description is mostly true -- as far as it goes -- but it is not honest. Of course they never are. No diagnoses are mentioned. It says he has been in residential care since the fall of 2007 when the truth is that he has been in residential care since at least 2005 and spent 2 months in 2007 with a family.

It does not talk about his low threshold for frustration, or his lack of ability to read social cues, his tendency towards self-damage.

I don't see Frankie ever managing outside of a controlled environment.

How can they advertise him for adoption when he can't hold it together in a family for a couple of months?

Of course, maybe it was just that we were the wrong family. Maybe someone else would do better.

I hope so. For his sake.

Frankie Called Again

I haven't written him for a while. The last time I was debating about it I did write. I did not hear back. I hadn't expected to, but it seemed a good way to let go. I would write the last letter.

But he called today. He wants me to look for a book in one of his boxes that is still here. I really don't know if the reason he called was that he wanted the book and all the rest was filler, or if he wanted to talk to us and the book was just an excuse to call. I will be taking all of his boxes back to the agency though. It is long past the time those boxes should have left.

His calls are not like when Ann's. At least not for me. I am always thrilled to hear from her. She knows she can't live here and that I love her. I want to stay in touch. With Frankie I don't feel that way. I don't know what to say to him. He doesn't understand why he can't live here again, and I can't explain it to him.

He just turned 16, did I know that? Some people who help kids get adopted came by to talk to him, but he doesn't remember where they are from. He is studying in the school at the treatment center. He is learning, "slowly but surely." He's decided he wants to be an interpreter. He is going to learn lots of languages and travel all around the world and interpret for people. You know, like a mercenary.

Is Brian still afraid of him? He's really sorry he frightened Brian that time. Did I tell Brian that he wouldn't ever hurt him? And what would I think if he got me on the visitor list? Oh, I'm on speaker phone, can I tell? They always make him have his phone conversations on speaker phone.

I don't know what to do or say. I really don't.

I have competing narratives I tell myself about Frankie's time here. In one we did basically a good thing. Frankie had spent several years living in group homes and treatment centers. He needed to try to live "on the outside" and we were the best place for him to try. While he was with us he came out about wanting to be a girl and learned that it wasn't something to be ashamed of. It turned out that he wasn't ready for ordinary family life, but it was good that we gave him the chance.

In the other narrative I realize that he is the only kid I ever took saying that it might not make it. I never made a commitment to him. We took him on a test drive and then sent him back. We shouldn't have done that. We should not have taken him in the first place. We will not do that again. We will be careful. We won't take a kid unless we can make a commitment. If we make a commitment we will stick to it.

And I suppose both stories are true. Both are stories that Frankie may tell someday. We may be the family where he first came out and felt safe. We may one of the families who made promises and then sent him back like a defective toaster. We may be both.

But he doesn't understand why he can't come back.

I went back and re-read the posts from his last week. (If you want to put yourself through that experience start here.) We can't go back there. I spent days trying to get him into the adolescent psych unit and trying to keep him calm so that we wouldn't have to call the police or take him to the emergency room. Brian packed a suitcase so that he could leave to go to a friend's if Frankie went into a rage. And we lied to him. We lied because we thought he would rage if we told him the truth. We lied because we did not think he would believe the truth.

He thought he was in control. He thought he was leaving because he hated the school he had to attend. He liked us and all, but he would do whatever he had to do to get out of that school, even if it meant moving. And it turned out that it did. He was angry about where he had to go, but he saw it as the result of his own demands.

So what does he think now? He think he left because he wanted to shift schools and he can't come back to visit because he scared Brian.

And I hate this. I don't know how to talk to him. I don't know what to tell him.

I don't have an explanation for him that is true and will make sense to him. He will promise not to scare Brian again, or tell me that he doesn't go into rages anymore. He is better now. I won't have to call the police. He won't make knives and stab his stuffed animals or slash his clothes again. But I don't want him to think that he is such a bad person that he can't live here. He is not a bad person, but he is a very sick boy.

Maybe being nice to him just makes it worse. He stays attached and wants to know what he has to do to come back.

I really don't know what to do. I really don't.

And the irony? He called as I was writing a post about wanting the agency to call about another kid.

Brian and Frankie

I do find myself wondering about Brian and the level of anxiety he has over Frankie.

They got along really well in the beginning.

Things went down hill when Frankie decided to tell Brian all about his past on an evening when Brian had forgot to take his pills two days in a row.

Now long time readers know that Brian has some anxiety issues. (You can click the label "anxiety" at the end of this post if you want to read about it). Medication makes a huge difference in his case. If he forgets to take his meds we notice. Like last week when he just sat in the chair and started crying. He has progressed far enough to be able to recognize that that is what it is. When I saw he was crying I told him that he could cuddle with me. He climbed almost into my lap. I asked him if he had forgot his pills; he nodded. I asked if there was anything else wrong; he shook his head. So I did a visualization exercise to help him relax and he went to bed.

He had only forgot them one day.

But it turns out he had missed his pills two days in a row when Frankie started sharing his history. I only came in part way through. It was a thrilling tale of adventure and survival. I have no doubt that much of it was true, and that much of it was false. I imagine that in the real version Frankie did a little less heroic defending of himself and his father with home-made knives and a little more fantasizing about doing so. I also doubt that being homeless was as exciting (in good and bad ways) as he made it sound.

Anyway, I don't know how much I missed, but by the time I got there and attempted damage control, Brian was fairly convinced that Frankie was capable of murder and was his present engaging self only because Frankie's pills kept his homocidal impulses in check. I did try to convince Brian that it wasn't true, but I just didn't have good answers to the questions.

Brian understands that when he, Brian, does not take his pills he very quickly goes from a cheerful capable guy to an anxiety-ridden, tearful guy. It is very plausible to him that Frankie would go from a child-like kid who never stopped talking and rolled on the floor crying in frustration to someone who might murder us in our sleep.

I think one of Frankie's stories must have included knifing someone in his sleep. It was such a common theme in Brian's anxieties.

Anyway, when Frankie had to go to the hospital because he slashed and stabbed his stuffed animal, with a homemade knife no less, and was afraid of what he would do next ..

OH! Something JUST hit me. It was obvious to me that the thing that Frankie was afraid of was that he might go from slashing his clothes and his toy to cutting HIMself. It was so obvious in fact that I did not ever explain that. I think I just said that Frankie "did not feel safe." I did not intend to be unclear. Given Brian's pre-existing anxieties though, he probably thought that Frankie was on the verge of becoming violent towards others.

Well, maybe I just answered the question I wrote this post to address: why is Brian THIS afraid of Frankie coming back even to visit.

1. Frankie told vivid stories of himself hurting other people and behaving in ways that Brian cannot understand.
2. Brian was in a psychological state that made him uncritical of the stories and highly anxious. He formed the opinion that Frankie was capable of doing physical harm to others without warning or provocation.
3. Frankie then used a home-made knife on a stuffed animal; acting out the sort of story that he told Brian.
4. The Frankie went on a rage in his room, destroying his possessions and slamming his fist into the floor until it was bloody and the police (for the first time ever) were called to the house.

And now Brian gets anxious at the thought that Frankie might come back even for a visit.

And I wonder why.

Sometimes I am a bit slow.

Frankie Called

Diane (agency worker) feels confident that Frankie understands that he cannot live here again an that visiting him will not confuse him.

Brian looked like he was going to have an anxiety attack when I told him that Frankie wanted to visit. When I told him that we are talking about me visiting Frankie he calmed down. He cannot tell me exactly why he finds the idea that Frankie would visit here so anxiety producing, but well, there it is. At this point if we decide to bring Frankie to the house he wants to be forewarned so that he can make plans to be somewhere else.

Frankie called here tonight. He wanted me to get the phone numbers for his aunts out of his cell phone for him. He wanted to know what we were doing, how we were, and what I had had to eat today.

He said he wanted to come visit me and I told him that I would probably go visit him. He spoke to Roland (Hubby) and told him that he wanted to visit us. Roland also told him that I would go to see him. Frankie explained that if he works hard he can earn a 6 hour pass and later he can earn a 12 hour pass.

I think that at least part of the issue is that when he gets the 6 hour pass he wants to use the whole thing. He doesn't want for me to just go up there and take him out to lunch. We really couldn't spend a whole 6 hours up there. I'll have to plan a fun day in The City for us. We can go to his favorite place to eat and to the science museum or something.

After talking to him I don't think he is trying to work his way back into living here, I think he just wants to make sure that he has somewhere to go when he has passes.

I think.

He was quite engaging on the phone.

He told Roland that he was so far behind in school that he was never going to get caught up anyway, so he was going to drop out when he turned 16.

Visits with Frankie

The letter from Frankie obviously raises the question of visits.

What will happen is complicated, or maybe it is very simple. I would like to visit Frankie. The rest of the family does not (yet). It would be wrong to confuse Frankie about the possibility of him coming back here.

Simple, huh?

It is feels very complicated because I don't know what Frankie understands or how he will process any information I give him. Remember, Frankie was saying that he wanted to go. He liked us, would miss us, but he was unsatisfied with his education (and at one point with the fact that he kept losing things) and so he needed to go. During the last few days he was here, Frankie felt like he was in control of the process. He was getting what he wanted because he wanted it.

In those days I was trying to keep him calm and feeling agitated that there wasn't a bed for him at the adolescent psych unit. If Frankie believed that he was in control and that helped him feel calm, I was not going to argue with him. I didn't like deceiving him, or playing into his delusion, but I decided the need to keep him safe trumped everything else.

When he left I made a point of telling him that I had known where he was going, even though I had said that I didn't. I told him that I thought he needed to be at the residential center because I couldn't keep him safe. I wanted him to know that I had been lying to him, not because I wanted to hurt him but because if he was willing to have any sort of relationship with me I wanted him to know who I was.

At the very least I did not want him imagining me as the nice lady who would have kept him if he decided to stay and who had been lied to just like he had. No. I was the woman who agreed that he needed to be somewhere he didn't want to go, lied to him for three days, and then told him at the last minute that she did it because she thought she had to for him to be safe. He had every right to know that, and to be angry at me for lying to him and for patronizing him. I hoped that he would come to forgive me for lying to him and be willing to see me, but I wanted any future contact to be based upon honesty.

And I am not going to lie to him again.

So I am going to call Diane (the agency worker) and have her talk to his state worker and the wonderful counselor he still gets to see. I'm going to ask her to make sure they both know that Frankie cannot come back and then take their advice on what sort and how much contact to have with him.

I will continue to write letters to him indefinitely. I will drive up to the center and take him out to lunch a couple times a month if they think it would be good for him. I will meet him in The City before his appointment with his counselor and take him to the science museum or to the pool. If the workers and counselors are agreed that it would be good for him I will persuade or bully my family into letting him come here for a weekend.

What matters is what is best for him, what helps him to feel cared about and connected without being confused about what is possible. And I don't know right now what that will look like.

Note FROM Frankie

One of the things I gave Guy from the residential center was a self-addressed stamped postcard -- one of the kinds with no picture so one side is just for writing. Today, that card arrived in the mail:

How are you doing? are you fine, I know I am. everything is going fine, I miss all of you. to day my caseworkr talked about maby me visiting you. thanks for the card.
Frankie :)

It is good to hear from him.

News for Frankie

I'm sending Frankie a note and I would like to find an interesting short news article to send along. It really needs to be short -- a couple of paragraphs -- and it would be good if there was a picture. I've found a bunch of magazine/news sites for kids that would be perfect, except the articles are not printer friendly. I'd like something science-y if possible.

I'm also interested in sending him some sort of easy puzzle -- like a decoding puzzle.

Anybody know of a web site where I could print something off?

One More "What If"

I don't know that it would have made a difference for Frankie or not...this what if is so far from what we did experience that I can't project us into it and predict an outcome.

But still...what if Frankie was the only child?

So, so often I think placements end because of conflict between siblings.

Ann left Mandy because she got into a fist fight with another girl. She left me, in large part, because it was too hard on Andrew and Brian to see her scream at us. Well, you know, that and she insisted on being moved and threatened to harm one of us if she didn't -- but the risk assessment there again involved the boys.

David's younger brothers lost their last pre-adoptive placement because of the stress they were putting on the previously adopted son. (There are more details, but they are irrelevant).

This is not an argument for separating siblings (although I do think that sometimes they replicate in their own relationships the abuse they experienced from their parents and must be separated), but it is an argument for more single child adoptive and foster homes.

One child plus one child does not equal two children. One child plus one child equals two children and their relationship.

Before, there were just your needs and the child's needs. If the child needed quiet time, the child got quiet time. If the child's anxiety regarding food meant that you needed to keep plenty of food in plain sight, you did. If they child needed to rage, you coped.

But when you have one child who needs to SEE that there is plenty of food, and another who is a compulsive eater and needs for a good deal of food to be out of sight. Well, then you have a problem.

When one child needs everything to slow down and be quiet for a while, and the other needs to express rage ... you get the idea.

Ann has been moved and moved and moved again. I have said since she left me that she needed to be the only child or a child with much older siblings. I don't know if she would have succeeded in that environment, but it was never tried.

And I wonder if Frankie would have managed better in a family with no other children. I don't know.

But I find myself wanting to beg all of you who are parenting one traumatized child not to take another. I want, without really knowing the details of your home, to say that if things are going well, maybe that is because your child is getting what he or she needs.

I don't know really what is going on in your homes. I don't know what is best for you.

But I wonder how many placements have ended primarily because of concerns for children already in the home.

I'm turning anonymous commenting back on...at least for this post. If you have a disruption experience you are willing to share, please do. And you can leave it anonymously if you like.

Hindsight

Maerlowe asks whether the "911 night" might have been partly Frankie's way of controlling how he left my home. You know, he left us...not the other way around. Maybe...but certainly not at a conscious level.

But since I am inclined to go over everything in my mind, all the things we might have done differently, and whether would have made a difference, and a few of you are wondering the same thing, I think I will go ahead and write that post. This is not, by the way, a self-recriminating post. I am not thinking that if we had just done things differently the outcome would have been different. Still... one wonders what might have been different.

So here are all the things I wonder about...what would have happened if....

1. We took the decision-making process more slowly. What if we had refused to visit with him until after we had read the file? What if we had insisted on at least two visits? What if we had given the boys more information and included them on the decision?
A: I think we would have taken him, but he might have missed the beginning of school. Brian may be have been more prepared and that would have helped him.

2. We had got him a PSR and kept him in regular high school?
A: I think this is the first decision that might have made some sort of difference, or should have. I don't think he would have been able to manage regular high school, even with a PSR. I think now though that it wasn't really fair of us to come to that judgment without him having a chance to try. I want to believe that he would have either succeeded (possible but unlikely) or that he would have understood and accepted that he needed to be at the learning center. Given his disordered thinking though, I doubt he would have learned from those consequences. If he did not succeed in the regular high school, I don't think he would have admitted that it was because he need more help. But he might have. He should have had the chance.

3. What if we had "protected" him from things that frustrated him?
A. Hubby is convinced that keeping him from video games would not have made a difference. I'm not quite so certain. Of course all sorts of things frustrated him. With each passing day his melt-downs happened over less important things, and become more extreme. As Marelowe points out in her comment to the last post, and as AidelMaidel had in a earlier post, there are reasons why what happened on the "911 night" happened that night.

Sometimes I think abut whether he would do better with a foster parent I know who deals with difficult boys. He says the key is physical exertion. He takes the boys to the gym every day after school and works them out. Of course Frankie's motor skills are poor and if he was taken to a gym to play basketball with other boys he would have ended up rolling on the floor crying, but maybe it would have helped if he could have had a more structured day, in which he was kept busy doing things that did not frustrate him.

On the other hand, that is part of what they were trying to do at the learning center, and he was insisting he be moved out of there from the beginning.

So I wonder if there was anyway to direct his time and energy so as to minimize his frustration. Someone else suggested that. Was it Mrs. Butter B? I know that my response was that he might need it, and we were not able to provide that.

Now I think that it is an impossible situation: he needs far more structure than he will admit he needs. So he is either frustrated by the world or by the structure itself. I just can't imagine a balance that would have prevented those increasingly exhauting and frightening melt-downs.

3. It is like the WoW thing. It was bad for him. He knew it wasn't real, but he wanted it to be. Playing WoW was causing problems, and taking it away caused other problems. If we had refused to allow him to play from the beginning he would have been justifiably angry that the other boys got to do something that he wasn't allowed to do.

So much of dealing with Frankie was a fricative dilemma (or trilemma, whatever). Every single option wouldn't work, although for a different reasons.

4. And what about respite?

Lordy... I have never sent a child away on respite like that. I hope I never feel the need to again. Sending all the kids away so Mommy and Daddy can have some grown up time is very different from sending the foster kid away so that everyone can rest. He may have concluded that it was the beginning of the end, and probably sending him off on respite did escalate him.

The other choice though would have been for him to stay, and for me to call the social worker and say that we were too exhausted to continue. Would that have been a better ending for him? I don't know. I know this end, as difficult as it is, is easier for me. That night was bad, but it was also so bad that I felt confident that I was doing the right thing. In some ways he released me from guilt.

I don't know that means. I don't know which path would have been the better one. Prior to him going on respite the only real issue was whether we were going to colapse from exhaustion before or after he errupted in self-destructive violence.

When I start trying to describe what sort of environment he would need for that not to happen, I end up describing the group home he was doing so well in. It is not an environment that I am capable of re-creating for him.

5. What if we hadn't cleaned his room?
I shouldn't have done that. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't. I think that I did had something to do with out exhausted I felt -- how out of control I felt everything was. One of the things he was melting down about was not being able to find his things. I had a fantasy that I could fix things by cleaning the room. I would find the lost things and he would have one less thing to get upset about. Unfortunately I did not find the things that he was most upset about losing. I am sure he felt violated by having all of his objects sorted, pawed over, while he was gone. And it made him have less hope that he would ever find the things that were still lost.

Of course the room had reached a level that was unsafe. I would have had to clean his room or make him clean it with me -- neither of those options are good. No amount of telling him to clean his own room would have worked. I don't think he is capable of it. So I would have had to do it with him. No...that would have been a nightmare.

My standards for cleanliness really are outrageously low. Really.

Oh...I can't think about the room any more.

For me every "what if" ends up like this. I can imagine things happening differently, but I can't imagine the final outcome being different.

I really do believe that he simply needed a level of care that was beyond what I could provide.

Of course that doesn't make any of us feel better about it.

Still Thinking About It

No one answered at Carl's house again last night. Worrisome. He is supposed to be renting a room from someone. Why isn't anyone home? But then again they are young people, so who knows. It could be anything. I refuse to let myself obsess. (Not that I am really succeeding...but you know.)

I spent time last night trying to figure out WHY I was so miserable over Frankie.

Hubby, being the brilliant man that he is, suggested that I feel so bad because I feel like I and he and Brian are too wore out to do this again, and yet I am mourning the thought that I would never do it again.

You know that someone has hit upon part of the truth when it makes you start bawling.

And the dear, sweet man let my cry and patted my hair and said, "We just need a break. You need a break. But you know we will do it again. There will be another kid. It won't be soon, and we know that we can't help every kid who is or might be GLBT, but there will be another kid eventually. Even Brian will be ready to do it again at some point. It isn't over."

I dreamed about Frankie all night long. I kept waking up and trying to shake off the dream. I am not sure what exactly the dream was.

I think I just kept trying to tell people the story. I think I keep trying to go over it and make sense of it.

Well, that and I keep re-living what I have come to think of as the 911-night. I remember him slamming his fist over and over and over into that box of ... I don't remember what was in the box. The things were plastic; the box was plastic; the box was sitting on a cement floor; his fist was bloody and he would not stop pounding. How many times did he do that? I try to count in my memory, and I know that is totally unreliable. Was it five times before I said "You have to stop or I will call 911"? Was it ten times by the time I got to the phone? Was it twice that? How many times did he continue before Hubby walked out of the room to nod at me and tell me he had stopped?

And everything before and after that...everything he said that just didn't make sense. How much of it was because he went on respite and we went through all of his possessions? I think that did cause a great deal of anxiety for him -- but I also think that if we hadn't done that something else would have set him off.

If he were a three year old I would have grabbed him and held him tight and said, "I won't let you hurt yourself." But though he is short for his age (5'3"), he has the body of a fifteen-year-old and there was far too much power there for me to restrain. (That and it is against the rules, although rules alone are not that meaningful when someone is in danger. If I had thought I was strong enough to do it, I would have done it.)

I think in my dreams I kept saying to people, "He isn't a bad kid. I just can't keep him safe. He has to be someplace where he will be safe."

And I know the whole thing triggered another trauma, a time when someone I love was in need of psychiatric treatment and did something self-destructive, something that could have killed him before I got him the treatment he needed.

Only Frankie frightens me SO MUCH because he does not believe he needs help. He does not think that his rages are unreasonable. He thinks that the meds that he takes only cloud his thinking.

I am so afraid of what will happen to him when he is 18.

Will he still be too mentally ill to know that he is mentally ill?

And there is nothing I can do. I know that he is where he needs to be.

I just keep feeling bad.

And I am so tired of feeling bad, you know? I want to say to myself, "Self, it's time to shake and shimmy it off."*

And I always feel a little better after I write these posts, even after the ones I delete, and there are a lot of those. I think, okay, I've talked about it. I had (another) good cry. I've come to terms. Now I will feel better.

And then the next day I still feel crappy.

___
*Same Buffy episode. You may have figured out that I am a Buffy fan, but I always love movies or songs or TV episodes that capture those complex, mixed emotions. And "Something Blue" (Season 4) does such a good job of dealing with that phenomena when you are as much tired of feeling miserable as you are miserable.

Just Today

Brian told me yesterday that though he does think it would be strange to be the only kid in the house for all four years of high school, he is tired of getting attached to people who move out.

He is relieved that Frankie left, but the pain he feels associated with that placement is not all that different than the pain of all the other boys moving away and leaving him.

He knows it is normal for kids to grow up and leave, but he is tired of it.

He is very happy that Carl and David and Evan are part of his life (I asked). He would not for anything go back in time and have us make a different decision. Whatever pain there was in adjusting to them moving in and being sad that they moved out was worth it. He is glad that we took them.

"But, Mom, I think I have enough brothers."

I hear ya, babe. I might have enough sons.

Though as AidelMaidel points on in a comment on the previous post, maintaining our license and doing respite periodically is not difficult, and getting re-licensed should we let it expire is a big deal. I think we probably will maintain the license, if only to do respite care.

And none of us are making any decisions about what me might want to do later. All I know is where we are today.

Today we have enough sons and brothers.

Today Hubby and I are thrilled at the idea that we could go out to dinner and not have to get a sitter.

Today we are still tired.

Will it be different later? Maybe, I don't know.

If it were just me I would be confident it would be. I will feel better and be willing. I know that.

But will they? I don't know.

I can imagine a day when the agency would call and tell me about a kid and I would respond with excitement.

But today, just today, I cannot imagine a future in which I turn to Brian and say, "Hey Kiddo, do you think you can do it again?"

Are We Done?

I don't think so, but we talked about it.

Of course we always talk about it, especially after a difficult ending.

When we had Carl we hadn't really planned on taking any more kids. When he moved out I thought I would like to do respite care, and maybe we would do another, but I wasn't sure. I had known Carl for years before I became him mom. The idea of taking in a kid I didn't know was very anxiety-producing.

Then things were so difficult with Ann. That ending was so hard, so brutal. We both wanted to crawl into a shell and never come back out again.

But we did, and we got David. For the first year and a half it was wonderful, then again, the ending was difficult. My response, though not so much Hubby's, was "I do not want it to end this way. I need to have a placement with a happy ending."

And of course I got that with Evan. Oh, our story with Evan is not over, but the point is that the placement ended well.

And after Evan left I was just wanted a break and then another kid.

As soon as Frankie moved in though I felt like maybe I was over-committed. I don't mean that at that time I thought he was too much -- just that I now had SIX kids. I know, compared to a bunch of people who blog that's nothing, but it seemed like quite a few to me: too many birthdays to remember; too many Christmas presents to buy; too many children who may legitimately need something of me.

In general, I am more enthusiastic about doing care than Hubby is. At one point years ago he said that he viewed this as "my calling" and he felt obligated to support me. I wanted it to be our calling, and with Frankie it was.

Now he is again suggesting that maybe we should be done, maybe Brian needs us to be done, which is an odd thought because prior to Frankie moving in Brian's needs weighed towards having another kid. Not that we had any illusions that we would get a child who would be a companion for Brian (anyone else nauseous at the thought of "getting" one child to meet the needs of another?), but just that Brian had grown up in a crowded house. How strange and lonely would it be not to have anyone to fight with? And maybe this is as many young adults as we are meant to be responsible for.

And for the first time since Ann left, I am wondering if he is correct. Maybe it is better to have a bedroom open for all the boys when they want or need to come home for a visit. Maybe it is time to say, "this is our family."

Maybe.

Hubby said yesterday that maybe they won't need us anymore. They are working harder to train all foster parents to be open and accepting; a home particularly for the GLBT kids might not be necessary -- and Hubby has always been clear that his motivation is his perception that those kids need us in particular.

I can imagine being done. I can imagine Brian being the only child in the home through high school. I can imagine giving him more dedicated attention, or at least being willing to be.

I wonder, what would I do with all that time and energy if I didn't not have a needy kid in the house?

The thought frightens me, and excites me.

But no decisions need to be made until next spring. Right now we are a licensed family and if they come up with a kid they want us to consider we will. The decision will be about that child. Next spring we will have to decide whether to sign the paper requesting that our license be renewed. Right now, I think it would be difficult to turn it in.

I'm glad to know that it will be more than six months before I have to decide. I won't be tired and grieving then. I'll be able to make a clearer decision.

Big night out

Friends of ours invited us over for dinner and out to a play. They have season tickets and all they knew was that this was supposed to be humorous and we could us a break -- you know from all the insanity.

Um yeah.

The play was about two psychologically damaged people snowed in together and each forcing the other to confront the traumas that brought them to where they were.

When the woman was overwhelmed with a decision she had made and felt worthless she fell on the floor crying out "Oh what is wrong with me!" and I swear to the Powers That Be that she behaved and looked exactly like Frankie. It was this powerful moment and many people around us were getting emotional. Hubby and I glanced and each other and started to laugh.

Oh we kept it stifled. Only our friends next to us, and probably the people behind us, could tell we were shaking with laughter.

I laughed silently most of the way through the second half of the play. Not because it was funny (although there were genuine moments of comic relief), but because I kept thinking, "We came here to get away from this" and it was all so absurd I couldn't stop myself.

Ever watch The Producers? Hubby and I were that audience -- stunned and then laughing.

Unfortunately everyone around us was moved by the way the characters slowly dug up and shared their pain, coming together and connecting and maybe beginning to heal. So when the curtain went up we were surrounded by people wiping tears out of their eyes and we just had to make a run for it.

We got outside and our friends turned with apologies on their faces. I said, "Thank you so much"' and suddenly all four of us were laughing.

Highly inappropriate considering other people were talking about how powerful and moving it was.

Still here

I'm here...still feeling sad, still processing, still trying to pull it together.

I go through all the "what ifs." Some of them, I think, would have pushed the stream of our journey in one direction or another, but not much. No matter how we turned the stream it would end up in the same lake.

I wonder about how Frankie is feeling, but there is no comfort there. I think that at some level he knows he is where he needs to be. I think he will continue to feel angry and frustrated. I know he is safe.

I want to write to him, but I am not certain what to say. I am not sure what he will "hear" at all. I know that when I wrote the Evan in rehab he did not even open all the letters, but he kept them. It was the getting of them that mattered. But I still have to write something. "I hope you are doing well" or "I am glad to know you are safe" or "We miss you, but don't let that confuse you because you can't come back." No, definitely not that last one.

Maybe just, "Just wanted you to know that we are thinking about you. I'm sorry I couldn't find your glasses or your ring. I'll let you know if I do. Take care of yourself." (It can't be any longer than that. That is about as much as he can read in one sitting unless he is very, very interested.)

Or is it better not to write at all? I don't think so...

There is just no fast track through the pain, is there?

I can fantasize about it...I could cast a spell that my will be done so that I could heal myself...and then demons would attack my friends, Giles would go blind, and Buffy and Spike would get engaged.

Sounds like a plan....

So tired

Sorry...there isn't much in this post other than a bit of a whine.

Lordy, yesterday was a rollercoaster. Tension in the morning, relief at hearing from him and from Guy, good time with the fam in the evening.

And now...

I miss my cat. I want to find her and hold her. She always let me hold her when I felt sad.

I miss Frankie.

I want Carl to call. I want to know he is okay. I don't know how to find him, and right now I have such a need to know all that all my kids are okay.

I want to fast-track the grieving process.

I want to feel better and get caught up on my work.

I want to believe Frankie is going to be okay, but I really don't know that he ever will. I believe he is where he needs to be, but I have no illusions.

I want to feel better.

No (well not many) regrets

If someone came to me who could send a message back to me when I was deciding whether to take Frankie this is what I would write:

"It isn't going to work out, but take him. You will have him barely more than two months and it will break your heart, but take him.

Frankie is a kid who has problems that stem from his abuse and neglect, but also from something else. It may be fetal alcohol effect, it may be a mental illness that we already know is heavily genetic, but whatever it is, Frankie's way of processing information and of experiencing his world are fundamentally different. That will make him delightful, annoying, endearing and, eventually, unsafe. In just over 10 weeks you are going to realize that he needs something more than you can give, that he isn't safe in your home, and you are going to ask for him to be moved.

But in those 10 weeks you will give him something that is potentially valuable.

He will come out to you. He will tell you that he wants to be a girl and he will learn what "transgendered" means. You will introduce him to Jane and buy him girls' clothes and for the first time in his life he will have brought this desire, this thought, out into the world and been accepted. He will learn that there is no shame in it. When he leaves, you will not be certain that he is "really" trans or if wanting to be a girl was the way his disordered brain came up to deal with severe physical abuse which he suffered and his sisters apparently did not. Whichever it is, when he leaves you, and you are helping him pack his things, Hubby will say, 'What do you want to do with your girls' clothes?' He will laugh and say, 'Put some in everything! I'll tell anyone who helps me unpack that I am transgendered!'

And you will know that you helped that sense of shame go away, at least some, and he will be better able to look at that desire and figure out for himself where it comes from.

And though he won't be able to cope with the stress of living outside a controlled environment, neither he nor the powers that be will believe that until he tries. His thinking is so disordered that he might not come away really understanding that he needs more, but he certainly won't if he doesn't try.

There is just one part that is unacceptable that you need to be prepared for. When you realize he needs help, you will go through three days of not being able to get that help and being anxious about how long it will take. You and Hubby and the kids will feel emotionally wrung out. But it is just three days. You will make it."

And if my time traveling messenger said, "Whoa. Gotta make it short woman!" I would say, "Take him. Time from red flag to adequate response is three days."

I'm not saying that I will ever take a kid like him again. It is pretty clear to me that if I want to keep either my career or my family, I can't. We will never again take a kid who has no experience being successful in a family, but maybe we also needed to learn where our limits are, and maybe we can only do that by trying.

So I couldn't do it twice, but if I could only do it once, I am glad that it was with Frankie.