Happy Birthday Roland

Actually, today isn't his birthday, but all the kids were available. Well, not Carl, but I guess I can't have everything. I made us an appointment at a department store protrait studio. I've got a pretty good one of the five boys and another of all of us -- including Andrew's girlfriend and David's boyfriend. Evan didn't bring his boyfriend, though he might have if he realized I was including everyone in the photos who wanted to be there. Brian and Gary's girlfriends were not invited.

We debated about the romantic partners but decided that exactly who are members of our family at any given time is a bit flexible. This is a picture of who we are this years.

I do wish that Carl could have been there though. David says he got photo shop for Christmas and if I give him a photo of Carl he will stick him in the one with the boys. I would like a photo of all six of them.

I'm still having that "six is a complete set" feeling, while at the same time not liking the idea of being done in just a couple of year. Fortunately I don't have to make a decision for a while.

They are really good boys.

Emancipation

Gary just got a call from CASA. Roland spoke to them briefly. I was in the bath.

I spoke to Gary and he said that they were going to be supporting emancipation as his goal. Since he lived in a juvenile justice facility and some of the residents did emancipate at 17, he was a little confused about what that meant. While some of the kids at the facility were able to get job and become emancipated minors (on probation), they were not already foster kids.

So I explained that for foster kids having emancipation as a goal meant that the plan was to keep him in foster care until he was 18. The only ways for him to stop being a ward of the state was by guardianship or adoption. So he started talking again about taking extra classes and graduating at the end of his junior year. That is fine with me, but more difficult than he thinks it will be.

At least now he doesn't want to do anything that would entail notifying his father, and that is okay with me.

His permanency hearing is next week. I have learned that his judge has a reputation for incredibly short permanency hearings. What we experienced last time was typical. If everyone shows up agreeing to a plan, the judge won't do more than ask Gary if he needs anything and we will be out of there.

Why renters are happier than home owners

The large black cat who lives in the basement whom I never see, got an injury on his foreleg which turned into an absess. Gary showed it to me when he first got it and I remarked that it wasn't infected. However, it got pretty bad. So he went to the vet on Friday, had icky things done, and now has a bandage which he is not supposed to get wet. Um...yeah. It's winter. This cat has a cat door and hasn't used a litterbox for years. Roland blocked the litter box with his toolbox, but our very large cat (16 pounds of bone and muscle) pushed that thing out of the way. So now there is a board nailed over the window. (The cat door replaced one pane of glass in an old basement window in the laundry room.)

This also means the dog door is shut. Fortunately it came with a cover. Anyway, we now have to remember to let the dogs out regularly. We have had fewer accidents than I would have predicted, given that the Shih Tzu was never trained to ask to go out.

Our washing machine died. We bought it and the accompanying dryer when I was expecting Andrew, so almost 20 years ago. We bought a new one which will be delivered on Friday. It was a Consumer Reports Best Buy. Roland is the laundry guy and says that he can manage with the old dryer even though its capacity is much less than the new washer.

AND we are having eletricity problems. Joy. Two ceiling lights now blow out blubs as soon as you put new ones in and we are getting more sparking at plugs than we once did. We called Roland's dad who is a retired electrical engineer. We asked him if he thought it would be a good idea to have our 80 year-old electrical wiring inspected. He agreed. The thing is, this is an old house -- 80 years to be approximate. The basement has been renovated in a way that cut off access to the crawl space. Totally not code, but there it is. When the bathroom and kitchen were renovated by the previous owner they re-wired those rooms, which involved removing the internal plaster walls to get to the wiring and putting up sheet rock. I'm not prepared financially to have all my walls dismantled and replaced, so that probably means having wiring molding all over the house. We already have it in much of the basement, but it is more appropriate to a basement than a late-1920's living room.

Anyway, I seem to have to choose between dying in an electrical fire, going deeply in debt to rennovate my house, or live with wire molding running around.

We are supposed to be getting an estimate today. I am hoping that the ceiling lamps can be re-wired from the attic crawl space. If they can't then I might just have the charming ceiling fixture in the living room disconnected and light the room with lamps. In the dining room though I think we will have to do it one way or another. We really can't light it with lamps.

Anyway, I'm sighing here.

I keep thinking how pretty my ceiling light and wall sconces are -- and reminding myself that they are not worth dying for.

The electrician is supposed to be calling to make an appointment to give us an estimate.

On the fourth day of Christmas

I had a conversation with Gary that had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.

I asked him why he was dating Trouble again.

He asked me how I knew. I told him that I was psychic. The real answer is that I am minimally observant and not stupid, but psychic sounded better.

Anyway, I said that I understood why he would be friendly with her, but why was he romantically involved with her?

Really it was like reading dialogue from a TV movie on domestic abuse.

She is really making a change, and he feels obligated to support her in it. He knows that she might not really change, that she probably won't change, but he won't feel good about himself if he leaves. She knows that if she does anything really terrible he will leave, and he thinks that will work.

That was the point where I broke in. I told him that I wanted to explain about how boundaries "work." If they are working, they are keeping chaos out of your life, but they don't make people stop producing chaos. He can't fix her.

He said he knew, although his face indicated that he wasn't happy about it. He still wants to be with her, support her, because she wants to change. He says that if she does something really bad, he will leave, but he thinks he can help her change.

So we talked about the frog in the pot, which is not true in the sense that frogs won't in fact stay in a slowly heating pot because as the frog slowly gets warmer it slowly becomes more active, but which is a good story for talking about how abuse victims can find it hard to leave. I suggested that what he wanted to happen was for her to either become the wonderful person he knew she could be, or else do something so bad that he could walk away without guilt. He agreed.
I warned him that there was a good chance that wasn't going to happen. He could very well have to make a decision to leave and that he would have to deal with the feelings that came with that.

He didn't disagree, though he was sad.

I said that I understood because I had my co-dependency side too. I also wanted to fix people's lives for them. I tended to think that I can make them make better decisions by just explaining things to them.

Then I got the irony and shut up.

Well, sort of, I did make him promise to think about what I had said.

No Calls

Gary's father did not call Gary, has not called since Gary's birthday.

The agency social worker seems to think the permanency hearing is the most important indication of his father's commitment to his life. Whether he show for that, which she expects he won't, is symbolically important to her. For me the symbolic importance was calling at Christmas. I thought there was only a 50/50 chance, but I did hope. It will still "count" for me if he calls in the next day or so.

I'm not holding my breath.

It was fun for a while

I have reached a new level of peace with the world. I can say things like, "Don't worry about. We will go ahead and open our presents now and when you get here you can open yours" and not be the least bit sarcastic about it.

I was much more go-with-the-flow, release all expectations, and that was a good thing.

We had a pretty good day. Roland gave me key finder that beeps loudly when someone whistles, or the dog barks, or someone laughs just so, or if the TV hits a certain note. Everyone had fun with that. Evan and David seemed to really like their robes. Actually I think everyone was pretty content.

Evan got here late because he works nights and so 9:00am is as unreasonable an hour for him as 3:00am is to me. He brought his boyfriend who looks fourteen, but thanks to heaven isn't. David got here around 11:30 and also brought a boyfriend. His boyfriend is older, but not too much older. They brought along David's tiny Yorkie. The Shih Tzu spent most of the day hiding. When Brian carried him out to sit in his lap the poor dog shivered in terror. After about four hours he calmed down and decided that the Yorkie was probably not going to kill him.

The food was good, although not everything came out as expected. Roland shook his head over the roast because I cooked it too rare. He just cut pieces off the end and a couple in the middle. I had to go back into the kitchen and slice up the middle so that those of us who know how meat should be prepared could enjoy ours. We ate lamb, which Evan's boyfriend had never eaten before and also found vaguely sacreligious -- eating lamb on the birthday of the lamb of G-d. Not that he is religious, but it just seemed wrong to him, like eating rabbit on Easter.

My mother sent Roland, Andrew, Brian and Gary all pj pants, as is her custom. She labeled Gary's "To Gary or foster son." She wasn't sure she had the name right, which is partly my fault. I don't call her often enough. Of course she could have called me before she mailed it, or just left it blank.

Roland's parents gave all three boys gift cards to iTunes. Gary's was for half as much as Andrew's or Brian's. I am going to have to figure out a way to let them know that that is just not cool. I understand and accept that they stop giving gifts to boys after they move out of the house. If they give gifts to the boys here though they can't be of obvious different value.

Gary was appreciative of what he got though, and did not seem to expect more.

I don't think his father called him, although I did not ask.

Late in the evening Carl called. He had a tale of woe, much of which is probably true, but I am never sure. His life is currently at a cross-roads or in the toilet -- sort of glass have full/empty situation. He asked for money to help him through the next couple of weeks. We debated for a while but when it was finally clear that he wanted about as much as we spent on the older boys for Christmas presents we agreed. I hadn't sent him anything because I wasn't sure where he was, and I did sort of think of the bus ticket as a combo birthday-Christmas ticket.

Brian and Gary got into a tussle at the end of the day. It was pretty minor. Brian has a tendency to over play his injuries, especially if he thinks people are not believing him when he says it hurts. Gary on the other hand doesn't like to admit to pain and even when he does it is in a matter of fact way that leaves you wondering if he is seriously injured or just letting you know that his last workout left him a little sore. Anyway, Gary used a martial arts move, pulling Brian's arm into a decidedly uncomfortable position after Brian, wanting Gary to look at something, wouldn't let go of Gary's shirt. There was crying from one boy and eye rolling from the other. We are establishing two rules: 1) nobody attempts to physically restrain others from leaving and 2) nobody may use any martial arts move or other physical force on anyone outside the gym.

So it was an okay day. Gary spent a good deal of time in his bedroom, which is cool. If that is what he needs to do to cope, it is okay with me.

And now I am tired.

Foster Teens and Sex

I have said in various contexts that it is important to remember when you do foster care for teenagers that you are parenting someone who is somehow "finished."

I can't find the words to say what I want to say without saying something that is obviously false.

Let's see ... the younger a child is when he or she comes to you, the more influence you are able to have over the development of their character and values.

That's better.

Sixteen is an age when young people are supposed to be separating themselves emotionally from their parents. They are often beginning the process of reflecting upon the values they have been taught and deciding for themselves what they believe. Gaining their trust and respect to the point where they will include you in this process is a wonderful thing. Still that is not the same thing as teaching my values.

I can have rules, of course. I do have rules. The agency imposes some rules upon me, things like "people can go into other people's bedroom by invitation only and then the door must stay open" and "no one has sex in this house except mom and dad and then always with the door closed."

But having and enforcing rules is not the same thing as teaching values.

What is lately becoming clear to me is that parenting a teen who has been sexual active from before they met you, is a very different thing from parenting a teen who is very much in the process of deciding for himself when he will become sexually active.

I'm just sayin'.

Ettiquette Advice

Let's say your college-aged son is home for the holidays and has been spending every third night or so playing on-line games at one of his friends' houses. Though the young men could play in their separate bedrooms, it is apparently more fun to bring their laptops to one house and play together.

Having been to all the other houses you say that yes, they can come to yours.

When you get up on Christmas Eve and find your living room furniture completely covered by sleeping young men, at what time is it social acceptable to wake them up and kick them out?

Perhaps it would be best to wake them up with pancakes...

Which one are you dating now?

So...remember about the girl friends?

Since June there really have only been two girls that he has dated for any length of time. One is a girl who went from mother to foster care to father. She ... well she has stuff she has to work out, and she is not my responsibility, and I don't like it when she pulls Gary into the drama. Sitting with an anxious and depressed Gary explaining that a particular action, though stupid, would not induce an abortion and the girl was either mistaken about being pregnant or had a miscarriage is not my idea of a good time. All this while I am thinking, "She probably made the whole thing up to suck you back into her drama after you broke up with her. Remember when you said she wasn't good for you?" I would like to come up with a nice blog name for her. I shall call her "Trouble" as it is the nicest thing I can think of at the moment.

The other girl was the first girl's very best friend, so how about we just call her "Trouble's Friend"?

So I think the last time I told you about them he had broken up with Trouble's Friend because she and Trouble were fighting and drawing him into it. He thought he could be friends with both of them. Even though Trouble's Friend was angry at Trouble for speading unspeakable lies about Gary to everyone at their little school (the Charter school Gary had wanted to go to), lies which Trouble's Friend initially believed.

Shortly after I wrote that post, Gary was dating Trouble's Friend again. They were united against Trouble and her dramatic, manipulative, deceptive ways. Gary was often sympathetic with how hard it was for Trouble's Friend to go to the small charter school where everyone was hearing terrible lies about Gary and now her.

Last night Gary asked if Trouble could come over for a while today. I looked at him in disbelief. Did he say who I thought he said? "Yeah, we worked things out. I mean, we worked some things out and I just thought it would be good to spend some time with her." What would Trouble's Friend think, I wondered. "Oh she won't care."

So he is off to ride the bus to her house and ride back with her so that the she won't have to ride alone.

Just before he left he said, "Oh, I put my iP*d through the wash. It doesn't work. Good thing Trouble's Friend broke up with me! I get to keep the [refurbished] S*nsa I bought for her."

"Wait! You and Trouble's Friend broke up?"

"Yeah."

"And now Trouble is coming over here for the day."

"Yeah."

"Are you two dating again?"

"No. Well, not yet. I mean I don't know if we will again, but maybe. Don't look at me like that!"

And now he is off to catch the bus.

MMA and Braces and More MMA

Because a couple of you have expressed concern, we will certainly not make Gary give up MMA for braces. I'm hearing different things about whether he can be safe with braces and a special mouth guard. I am thinking about telling him that if he wants to find out if that would work for him we could make an appointment with the orthodontist and ask. I don't think it came up when they were there before. I don't know for sure because Roland was the one who took him.

Right now MMA is the most important thing in the world to him.

I did tell you that he is incredibly fantastic right? And that I know this because he tells me so? He goes to the gym (I am told that it no one there calls it a "dojo") four times a week. He earns his lessons by cleaning the gym after. He is very proud of the fact that he is paying for his own lessons.

If I was good at remembering these sorts of things I am sure I could tell you in exactly what way he is fantastic and which ways the other people are able to beat him. I can tell you though that these other guys beat hime only because there is this one particular move (different ones for different guys) that he hasn't learned to defend against, or have longer legs, or are stronger and have studied longer than he has. This does not, however, make them better. Gary is the most talented young player anyone has ever seen and in a month or two he will be able to bring down all those guys. Well, maybe not ALL of them, but most of them.

'Cause he's the best.

Honestly, I prefer to have a teenager who unrealistic picture of himself in a positive direction. I wish he had some of the same confidence with things like writing.

He is complete focused on the competition this summer. The gym will have some fund raising and the agency will help him, but even so that leaves an estimated $900. Now we are good for part of that, but he still needs to get a job or figure out another way to raise money. He is looking for a job, but those are not easy to come by at the moment. Yesterday he learned that there are such things as grants, so he spent quite a bit of time on the Internet trying to find one that would help a sixteen-year-old go to a tournament.

He also has been trying to find cheaper housing. The tournament is at a convention center and of course everyone is staying there. He has found some cheaper housing, but it only works if everyone is willing to do it. He was very excited when he told me about it, and I just nodded. I didn't tell him that they probably wouldn't want to go. I remember when I went to a professional convention very close to my brother and sister in law's. SIL was very confused and sad that I let the college pay my expensive hotel bill instead of staying with her, but staying with them and taking a taxi to the convention would not be the same. I wanted to go to evening sessions, be able to take a nap in the afternoon, and eat dinner with people I had not seen for a year. This tournament is not a youth event. It is an adult event with some youth competitions. I think the adults who are going are going to want to be there, where everything is happening.

But I digress. The point is that he is putting lots of creative energy into figuring out how to pay for this, and/or reduce the costs of it. A lot of what he comes up with is unrealistic, but Faber and Mazlish (authors of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk) convinced me long ago that it is best to let kids pursue these plans. They tend to learn stuff along the way.

I didn't do such a good job of keeping my mouth shut when he was talking about getting a sponsor. I finally asked who he thought might sponsor him. I was kind, really I was, but I was also confused. It didn't seem to me that a local business would give him a lot of money in return for putting their name on his back because the competition was so far away that it wasn't going to help them. "That's why I need to get a national sponsor."

"Okay, but why would they sponsor a sixteen-year-old who for all they know could get eliminate in pre-competition trials?"

"I won't get eliminated!" (Insert here explanation about good he is).

"Sure, but a national sponsor won't know that. If they are going to sponsor a youth at all, they will probably sponsor one who has already competed."

He acknowledged that was probably true.

Still he hasn't given up. He will find a way.

Although when I suggested taking the snow shovel around door to door he said that would be his "plan b." I did point out that the snow was not going to be here in June.

Sometimes all this gets to Roland. Of course, he is the one who drives him home from the gym and so has a full 20 minutes four days a week of this. I probably hear as much or more than he does, but in smaller spurts and usually while I am able to do something else like cooking dinner. Besides, I find it just a little bit cute. Roland is more ... flabbergasted.

The guy who got Gary set up with this work-for-lessons thing is the job-services guy. He used to be heavily into martial arts, and has the damaged knees to prove it. He wants for Gary to be able to do this, and I suspect he will work hard to help him find a way to raise the money, hopefully by helping him and the other kids in the program actually find jobs.

It is possible that after the competition this summer he may decide that he can back off serious competition for a couple of years and get the braces. Or he might not ever get the braces and then need dentures when he is sixty. As I told the social worker, I'm not going to worry too much about that. When he is sixty I will be dead. Cause Gary says I'm already old.

Seriously, the little twerp yesterday informed me that based upon his mother's age when he was born and my age when his mother was born I could be his grandmother!

"If I had given birth to her when I was like, what, thirteen or fourteen?"

"I know girls who had babies at fourteen."

Like he cares about when he is 60

Months ago we took Gary to a dentist who refered him to an orthodontist who couldn't see him for weeks because there are only so many spots open for medicaid patients. The orthodontist said that he really should have braces, which medicaid wouldn't pay for because his teeth weren't really bad enough, but still needed. This orthodontist of course knows that the private agency will pay for them.

Gary however really, really doesn't want braces. If he has braces he won't be able to do martial arts for two years, and his life would not be worth living if he had to quit martial arts. Of course, he wasn't allowed to do martial arts when he lived in the group home, but that is not relevant. He is doing it now, and he loves it, and he is going to be professional fighter for a long time, maybe even until he is 30. (Yesterday he saw a photo of Obama on the beach shirtless. Gary was very impressed -- he looks good for an old guy. I protested that Obama is only two years older than I am. Gary looked at me with sincere confusion...exactly what was my point?)

So we got a consult with my dentist whom I trust.

My dentist said that Gary really should have the braces and that if he doesn't his teeth will suffer more wear and tear causing him problems later on. Then the dentist said in ominous tones, "You might even have to get dentures when you are 60."

Oh the horror! Dentures at 60!

Gary is sixteen. The 60-year-old man who will remember being him means nothing to Gary. That is an old man. Don't old men wear dentures anyway? As far as Gary is concerned the dentist said something like, "If you don't have braces, when you turn 60 you will be 60 years old."

If he has the braces he will not be able to participate in martial arts for the two years it would take. That is NOW. That is his life, his passion, his future. It is everything to him.

Why would he even consider giving that up so some old man won't have to have dentures?

Please.

Advice for a newbie

Jenniebee, who has been commenting here recently, is on her way to becoming a foster parent. She has started a new blog, which you should check out, of course. She's written two posts!

At the moment she is looking for advice about private agencies in Virginia. If you know anything, you can leave a comment here...or go over to her blog.

On Rick Warren

via Andrew Sullivan, this post by Mellissa Ethridge's wife.

So you should read it. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, so I don't have any reason to doubt what she says, but this leaves me wanting to say a few things to Rick.

The comparison of marriage to a religious thing that other people shouldn't claim would be a whole lot more convincing if the religious people weren't saying, "All the people who are similar to us in a way that makes us comfortable, get to participate in our religious insitution, even if they totally reject everyone of our religious values and beliefs, but people who make us uncomfortable because they are different, even the ones who hold our religious values and beliefs, can't participate."

Once you have opened your religious institution to everyone, you cannot with any consistency deny it to one group because they violate one of your religious principles.

Consider for a moment those religious groups that have a form of marriage restricted to their own: Mormons and Catholics for instance. If I were to convert to either of these groups, they might very well ask me and Roland to get re-married. My marriage doesn't meet their standards. However they have never tried to pass a law, much less a constitutional amendment, saying that I can't use the word "marriage" to describe my relationships. They have never said that all those laws the government has passed don't apply to me because in their eyes "marriage" only refers to their relationships, the ones blessed (as they see it) by G-d.

They couldn't get away with saying that because in this country we believe in religious freedom. The government does not represent one religious view.

So maybe the post above is right about Rick Warren. Maybe that makes him more educable or less offensive on gay rights. Maybe. It makes him more disturbing on other levels though. He doesn't hate gays, he just thinks that the government should reflect his religious views.

Oh, I feel MUCH better now.

First Christmas in years

I always ask the kids if there is any particular treat they want for Christmas. Gary wants to make white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. I think David is the one who wanted fudge.

Gary mentioned that he hadn't had Christmas outside a group home in years. I asked about the year he was with his aunt. He said no, that she used to have him taken back into detention for something or other when she didn't want him around, so he was in juvie for that Christmas too. He's sixteen. He hasn't had a Christmas outside a group facility of one sort or another since he was eleven. No presents to speak of because even the most recent group home was a juvenile justice facility and those projects where people give presents to kids in group homes don't go to the detention facilities.

There is part of me that would like to try to make it up to him with a big Christmas, but I think it is better to keep it calm and quiet.

I'm going to make ginger bread people today. In past years I have decorated them with mini M&M's, but I can't find them this year. [Update: Brian walked to the drug store and got some for me.] Tomorrow Brian says he will bake golden bars (little more than brown sugar and butter). Andrew and his girlfriend are going to bake more cookies on Monday. That along with the cookies Gary wants to make should be good.

And now for a pet peeve

Today, December 18 2008 is 7 days before Christmas. It is NOT the 5th or any other day of Christmas.

Christmas is the first day of Christmas. That's right folks. The FIRST day.

Christmas does last for 12 days, as you know from the song. The twelfth day comes early in January. They used to celebrate it. There is even a play named after it... you may have heard of it:

Twelfth Night

Currently, we are in the liturgical season of Advent.

I have nothing against the pagan/secular Christmas. In fact I have been known to remind Christians that the secular world did not "take over" the religious holiday. They took it back. All this mid-winter stuff with trees and lights and revelery -- that was never Christian. Christians can do it too, but if it is "taking over" your religious celebration it is only because a bunch of Christians decided to try to take over another people's holiday. So deal with it.

It's just this "days of Christmas" thing bugs me.

Christmas day is the first day, got it? THE FIRST DAY.

Okay, I feel better now. Also the nice people working at the store who don't decide what sort of stuff to put on their advertisments are less likely to have to listen to that.

Probably.

Lying about School

I'm very clear about the food thing. One on hand, I would not quarrel with someone for whom family meals were important. There are some real down-sides to my relaxed attitude about food. One of them is that my kitchen is almost always a mess. It isn't just that Gary eats off-schedule, everyone here grazes at will. If I had more kids, younger kids, or kids with some other kinds of food issues I might make a different choice.

I just don't want anyone here to think that when I write about a problem and a solution that has worked for me that I am explaining the "right way" to handle it. The right way to handle a problem always depends upon the particular people involved.

I work with teenage boys, which complicates things too. I suppose I should just say "teenagers." They come to me pretty complete. Their developmental stage is, and should be, one of establishing independence. They should be wanting to solve their own problems, and not wanting their parents in their stuff. Add to that the fact that they don't really see me as their parent, well, I have only so much capital, so to speak. Things work out better if I think of myself more as a mentor, ready to help, than as a parent responsible for making them do everything they should. I don't mean that we don't have house rules that they have to follow, but today I want to talk about school.

How Gary does in school is clearly something that doesn't affect me. It isn't like asking him to do a reasonable number of chores around here, and it certainly isn't in the category of speaking to us respectfully and not using my stuff without asking. He knows that, so it is an area in which it is much more difficult for him to accept me butting in. From his perspective it has nothing to do with me.

So he is lying to us about it.

The charter school has a system where you can log in and see exactly what your kids' grades are. I can see that Brian still hasn't made up the quiz in Spanish they had the day that he went to the doctor, and that both boys have not turned in all their journals in Drama. Actually, I can see that Gary hasn't turned in ANY journals for Drama. He also hasn't turned done the second paper for English. Most of his grades are actually pretty good, but some are in the basement. Brian's problem is that he does really well on things that happen in class but forgets to turn in all the small stuff. Gary on the other hand has trouble making himself write papers and can get his back up about things that he doesn't want to do.

So recently we have been pulling up the boys' records and talking to them about it. The conversations are different with each boy. With Brian we are sometimes firm, sometimes angry, sometimes gentle. Always though we are insistent. He MUST stay after school and see if he can take that quiz. He needs to get his back pack RIGHT NOW and see if he has these missing math assignments or he can sit down at the table and do them. Like I said, sometimes we are gentle when we say this, but we say it.

I certainly don't want Gary to feel like we care less, so we talk to him too. With him though we am always more gentle. "Gary, there is still no grade for this paper. What's going on?"

"I turned it in on Monday. I guess he hasn't graded it."

"Well, maybe you should talk to him about it?"

"I turned it in."

"Okay."

"What's going on with all these Drama journals that are missing?"

"I did those! I don't know what is wrong with her. She is really getting on my nerves. You know we are supposed to do these presentations tomorrow and she hasn't given us any time to practice at all! She just sits there and lectures us telling us that we should be practicing but she doesn't give us any time to do it. I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to deal with her."

Uhuh. This by the way is a real problem since at the Charter school you need to have a 'focus' in high school. Since he has no particular artistic talent or experience, he picked drama where he can do things like set and light design. (I know, it takes a talent to do these, but it is at least something that the other kids haven't been practicing for 10 years). He needs to take a class with the drama teacher every semester. He will need to work closely with her when he does his senior project.

Roland talked with him gently about how he was going to need, all his life, to work with people he didn't like. He would have jobs with supervisors that got on his nerves. He was going to need to deal with this. Gary sat silently waiting for Roland to finish talking so he could leave. This is a little better than having kids talk about, but it is fairly clear they are not paying attention. Well, they are not going to let you think they are paying attention.

But Roland has been doing this for a while too, and he didn't let Gary push his buttons. He said his piece and Gary left.

We went to the bedroom. I said, "You know I don't like being lied to."

"Me either. What do you think is happening in drama?"

"I think the kids are wasting most of the class time and the teacher spent the last few minutes reprimanding them. Gary left thinking that she had used up all the time they had left so it wasn't his fault."

"That makes sense. He never did turn in the English paper or write those journals. Do you think we should do anything about it?"

"Remind ourselves that we are not the ones who will have to go to summer school."

****

I really think this is the right thing to do, but I have less certainty about it. I made different choices with Carl and David and that didn't work out so well. They made pretty much the same choices at school they would have made anyway. It just brought another level of conflict into the relationship. I also think our interfering got in the way of them bringing their problems to us. In the end we might have been able to help them more. Or not.

I think that letting school be Evan's business worked out better.

I think it is right with Gary because he has career goals that matter to him. He envisions becoming an assistant for a physical therapist and eventually getting all the schooling he needs to be a PT. He brings it up with me, asking me questions. He has asked me what it takes to get in and how it is different from high school. He wants to know if he gets an associates degree will those credits count towards a bachelors.

In other words he has his own reasons for succeeding, our reprimanding him would not give him more motivation. It would bring a new source of conflict into our relationship though. I think it is better to keep going as we are, letting him know that we know he is struggling and that we are ready to help if he will let us.

Although I'm still debating about whether and how to call him out on the lying, because I really don't like being lied to.

Not being a burden -- food

Is there anything in your life that it is difficult for you to do, even though you know that you don't have any rational for avoiding it? Maybe you can even explain why you hate it so much, but that doesn't make all the resistance go away?

Well, Gary has some complex stuff that all centers around not wanting to be burden to us. Some of it is conscious, but that doesn't make it go away. Some of it is less than conscious.

The less-than stuff includes food. He doesn't seem to be able to be hungry in front of us. I don't think he is feeling hungry and denying it, I think he stops feeling hungry. Now part of this is the result of institutional living when he had to eat on a schedule. Dinner was a six and if you didn't eat then you went hungry until breakfast. He hated that. I think he hears, "It's time for dinner" and he has some level of anxiety and just doesn't feel hungry.

If I tell him that I really want him to sit with us at dinner he will and he will be nice about it. He won't put much on his plate though, because he isn't really hungry and he doesn't really know why. Half an hour after dinner he will be loading up a plate in the kitchen. If I announce that dinner is cooked and available and people should just serve themselves and yes, you can eat wherever you want, then he is hungry, although he generally won't come into the kitchen until I am gone.

Now part of this may be the "being a burden" thing and part of it may be that he is embarrassed about the amount of food he puts away. He's a teenage boy and he works out hard at least four evenings a week. He needs food and lots of it. He doesn't really want people commenting on the piles of food he eats. It isn't just that though. I really believe that he is just not hungry when he has to eat in front of us.

If I am not feeling like cooking and we decide to go out for fast food (something we do less and less) then he really isn't hungry. Sometimes he insists that he would rather stay home.

When he does eat out with us, he orders the least expensive options and claims that is what he really wants. I still remember one of the first times he ate with us. We had Evan along. We went to a bagel shop, got sandwiches and Gary was turning down all the extras, things like chips or cookies. Evan said, "Come on dude! It's FREE FOOD. Eat!" Gary said, "Free? Oh!" and he grabbed as much as Evan did. Gary of course didn't realize that Evan meant that it was free because I was paying.

Anyway, this is on the list of things that I just accept. I've moved to serving buffet style, eat-where-you-want more often than not, and when we do eat as a family I don't comment on Gary's lack of appetite. I also leave the food out for a while so he can come back later for seconds. I think it is getting a little better since I have learned not to say anything about how much he is eating. If I don't seem to notice one way or the other, his appetite slowly returns.

It occurs to me that all this could have been a real problem for me in the past. I like family meals and I like to see people eating and appreciating what I cook. Having someone refuse to eat what I cooked and then sneaking off and eat it behind my back might have felt like a personal insult. Clearly it wasn't the food he disliked, so it must be me, right? I would have felt hurt that Gary couldn't allow me to feed him. I might have experienced his behavior as rejections of my attempts to love him. Just think of all the posts I would have written. "Would it be so hard for him so hard to just eat with the family?"

If I had decided to make a big deal of it, to tell him that in this family we eat together and I expected him to sit with us and eat what we ate, the whole thing could have escalated. Gary has trouble with authority, with being told to do something. So that would have been ugly.

I probably would have decided that this wasn't a battle I should fight. I would have eventually decided that I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, but I still would have struggled with it, felt bad about it. It would have been hard.

Now though, it isn't hard at all. It is a little sad, but that is just the way he is.

I don't experience it as having anything to do with me at all. I'll just make sure the food is there when I am not. He will eat. Slowly I hope he will feel safer and when he actually starts feeling hungry when dinner is served, I will be happy.

But I won't comment on it.

How I am feeling

Feeling a bit drained...no emotion very strong but still lots of them...

1. Relieved. So relieved that apparently pushing for TPR is nobody's priority. I wasn't there for the discussion but I don't have any anxiety about that. Also relieved (especially after turning on the news this morning) that even though both agencies are facing budget cuts neither of them let that figure into the guardianship issue. If they had pushed for it I would not have known if they were considering budgets, but gently pushing us towards the most expensive (for them) option pretty clearly indicates that they were NOT worried about saving money.

2. Let down, slightly annoyed. This is minor, but it is there. When I first brought it up with the social worker I wasn't committed to doing anything, just wondering if it was a good idea. She seemed excited too, and now after talking to people she is shifting sides. Rationally, I don't blame her at all. I know she was always cautious and that I am very much responsible for my own emotions. It would have been easier though if she had somehow known the answers to the questions when I first asked them. If she had said in the beginning, "I know you've been hearing that the agency wants to move in that direction, but we really are not there now. If it is really important to you we can try to figure it out, but I'm not sure it is in Gary's best interests." Of course she didn't have that answer for lots of reasons...

3. Feeling peaceful with it, at least for myself. I like working with the agency. I certainly like the degree to which they support the kids and I like that they are there if I need them.

4. Disappointed, cause yeah, it would be exciting.

5. Worried about how to strike the right note with Gary. We can still do this if it is something that he wants. The social workers are striking cautionary notes, but they are not saying no. If it is important to us, we can do it. The thing is it is not so much important to me, and it is difficult for me to get a good read on how important it is to Gary. I think he wants it, but I know he recognizes down-sides. I think for him the biggest worry is that his father would have to be notified and would make trouble, which his father is capable of doing. Right now his dad is the proverbial sleeping dog. I mean no insult by the 'dog' language - I just mean that there are risks to stirring him up and making trouble, specifically making unsubstantiated allegations about us. Of course I think part of Gary is also worried that his dad would NOT get worked up and make trouble. What if he just said, "Yeah sure, take him, I don't care."

Gary also really does want not to be burden to us. I've been meaning to write a post just on this. It comes out in all sorts of little ways, but like I said, another post.

Anyway, we will just let that particular conversation go for a while.

I went into the kitchen last night and made him face me. I told him that he was NOT a burden to us. He said he knew. I hugged him and he hugged back hard.

And the answer is...

...unclear.

The social workers just left. They were here for two hours. We talked about ordinary things for a while: school; his trip to the dentist; martial arts. Then they finally got around to asking Gary what he thought about the various permancy options. The current plan is long term foster care with the possibility of reunification (or something like that). What did Gary think?

Well Gary took some time sort of mumbling around and finally said something to the effect that he would LIKE it if he could live with his dad, but he didn't think it was realistic. The conversation sort of dead-ended. I announced that I didn't want Gary to say or not say something because he thought it might hurt my feelings and so I was going to leave for a while. Roland followed me out and they talked for 45 minutes without us.

I explained to Roland that I was only partly worried about the "hurting my feelings bit." I was mostly concerned that Gary would just not talk if I was there, perhaps hoping that I would talk for him. Anyway it seemed to work. We could hear his voice (though not his words) as soon as we were walking down the hall.

We came back when we heard the state worker leaving.

The sum-up seems to be this:
1. Gary qualifies for all the agency's education benefits after being in the program for 12 months, which will be in June so they are not making any changes to the plan for now.
2. Though the agency at the level of vision wants to support kids exiting from foster care by reunification, adoption, or guardianship, at the level of practice they really do foster care. They haven't really thought about what the other options should look like. In the few cases where they have done it was more clear what the family wanted or needed.
3. Gary had stated that what he likes about being in the agency is that he doesn't feel like he is a burden to us. He doesn't like asking us for things. On the other hand he doesn't like the stigma of being in foster care.
4. The state worker has almost never seen foster parents take guardianship and though he is not opposed to it, he doesn't see how it would be better for Gary. He understands what Gary means about not liking the stigma.
5. Gary was reassured that his social worker would give him permission to compete in martial arts competitions, which was one of the reasons he thought guardianship might be better.
6. If we went into guardianship, the agency would probably only offer limited support for one year. Waiting until he is about 17 (next fall) would mean that we would receive some level of support until he was 18.
7. He would definitely qualify for the state supports available for youth who emancipate from foster care no matter what happens.
8. Gary asked the state worker to find out whether one or both of his parents had to be notified if we petitioned for guardianship. (My understanding is that notification is not necessary if it is not possible, but that you can't just skip it when it is possible.) Gary is clearly concerned that his father would object and possibly make life difficult.

Anyway, the bottom line is that they really don't think we should do anything until at least June, and they seem to be recommending against pursuing guardianship altogether, although if it is something that is really important to us they will support it.

And the social worker acknowledged without my asking that we were getting contradictory messages.

Now, I know some of you are thinking about the TPR issue. That sort of almost came up. Just about everything I typed above I got from the social worker in summary, after getting Gary's permission of course. She started out saying that they reviewed all the permanency options. She mentioned all of them including, "[state worker] told Gary that sometimes teenagers are made available for adoption, but that does require terminating the mom and dad's parental rights. Then we talked about guardianship and staying in foster care..."

I'm thinking that Gary wasn't thrilled about the TPR either. It may be that he doesn't want the TPR itself or that he doesn't want to deal with the likely consequences -- or both.

Anyway, I like working with my agency and I have only wanted guardianship if it was best for Gary. I think the social workers are asking him to think seriously about whether it is. There is a lot that they can offer him if he stays in the system.

The agency social worker even told him that she could back off so that we only saw her when we needed to -- except that she still would have to drop by once a month.

Things about me

So this is inspired by Dawn's meme. I don't normally do meme's, but I thought I would just this once. I'm supposed to come up with sixteen things.

1. When I buy consider buying new furniture I look at it and think, "This will have so much more character after the kids scratch it up." If I can't make myself believe that I don't buy it.

2. My best friend from high school reports that I told her when we were in high school that I wanted to be a professor and I wanted to raise kids from foster care, but that I didn't think I would be able to do both. I do not remember this conversation. (Wait I think I metioned that on this blog once. Oh well.)

3. Roland asked me out because all his friend would tell him about me was that I once asked him if he masturbated. I remember that conversation. The question was rhetorical and followed my exposition on my recently acquired knowledge about the percentage of men and women who claim not to masturbate. I was insisting that that was actually the percentage of people who lie about their sex lives.

4. I went out with Roland because when I went to the library there was someone at every table. I had briefly met him, so I sat there. He asked me what I was reading and I told it was an article arguing that golden mountains had to exist in some sense because we had to refer to them in order to sensibly say sentences like, "golden mountains don't exist." He seemed really interested and we actually talked about it.

5. I did not know that the reason he was interested was that he was curious about the girl who had asked his friend if he masturbated.

6. I took Greek in college because we had to take a foreign language and if you took Spanish, French, or German you had to go to drill in the afternoon and a foreign language major would snap her fingers in your face if you didn't answer quickly enough. Oh, and the only other choice was to take Latin with the football team.

7. I went to my college sight unseen because it had one of the best programs in education for the deaf.

8. I knew I wasn't going to major in any sort of education after two weeks at that college.

9. My first job after college was waitressing at Mr. Omelet. We had to call in orders.

10. I got the best tips because I was mean to people who were mean to me (mean people never leave good tips, but sometimes they will leave apologies) and treated teenagers like royalty (they have no idea how much to tip).

11. I once kept a penny a regular left (an insult to let you know that he didn't forget to tip) and gave it back to him when he came back. I refused to serve him and he sat with nothing at my station until the other waitress asked if I minded if she did.

12. After that he was always nice to me and I brought him his coffee the way he liked it without him needing to order it.

13. My sister has a small scar over her eyebrow that she got because I threw her into her room and she hit a plastic crate. She had to have stitches. Neither of us remembers why I got so angry, but she does remember that I gave her the new giant Barbie head I got for Christmas as an apology. She enjoyed it more than I would have.

14. My vision is so bad that I can't read the big E at the top of the chart without my glasses. (I'm running out of ideas here.)

15. I went to a Unitarian church once and realized that if I wasn't a college professor I would have enjoyed it, but it sort of felt like being at work.

16. When I was in labor with Brian I had considered having him at home (one of my friends was a midwife) but went to the hospital because I wanted to have an epidural. I had done this already, remember. I asked for one but they said that all the anesthesiologists were busy. I kept saying, "Busy? What do you mean they are busy?" At the worst point in labor I made Roland promise to kill all the anesthesiologists. I meant it. He said, "I promise." Then I panicked and said, "But not now! Don't go now!" He was very calm and soothing and kept saying, "I won't go. I'll wait. I will kill all the anesthesiologists after the baby is born ." I think I may have made him promise to murder the child birth instructor since she had said there would be anesthesiologists.