If you’re familiar with my earlier columns, you know that I think you are highly likely to be the most important person in the life of your foster, kinship, or adopted child with an early trauma history. As a reminder, I add the word early because when prenatal drug exposure, prolonged extremes of the birthmother’s emotional state, or a lonely stretch in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) constitute deeply significant traumas for tiny ones. These little brains are profoundly changed by these experiences. Some children skate through these early months only to land in a ridiculously abusive, sometimes exploitive, situation that quickly reroutes any of the good stuff that may have happened earlier, though. It falls to caregivers to systematically and sensitively offer restorative experiences over an extended period of time to mitigate the neurological wiring that once supported survival but no longer works in day-to-day life with you, the child care provider, the school system, or the neighbors. It is often a one step forward, two steps back, experience. It is also exhausting.
That exhaustion is the focus of this month’s reflection. I’ve facilitated a support group for AZAFAP for close to 3 years now. Every week, a rotating group of foster, kinship, and adoptive parents joins me on a Zoom call to talk about anything they want. It is always authentic. It is often darkly humorous. Recently, it has taken a new turn.
The past few months can only be described as tragic and marked by anguish of the most painful kind. Every week for 8 weeks, a different caregiver joined the call describing life with a child with trauma and seeking support. (I’ve worked with these children in one way or another for almost 50 years now so, please, trust me, these trauma histories were among some of the most horrific I’ve ever heard. I also do my best to elicit the details of what the caregiver knows about the trauma history so I can grasp what makes the situation so particularly challenging.)
So, knowing that stable connections to patient and kind people is the path to healing for children from trauma, the idea of placement disruption goes against everything I hold dear. With this huge preface, I will finally get to the point of this column: When is disruption the right thing to do? How can it be done lovingly? I’ll try to summarize what has moved through our support group.
- What if all your energy, day in day out, is consumed by trying to “manage” the behavior of one of many children in your care? The other children simply cannot compete and don’t get the time with you they need for their own healthy development or healing. Is it fair to simply cross your fingers and hope the other children have the strength to withstand the emotional abuse meted out by an older sibling?
- What if your mental health is put at risk by the threats to your safety in the place you most need to feel safe? A foster mother of 2 adolescent girls required psychiatric hospitalization after a few months in their toxic company. She just didn’t have the resources, emotional/physical/social, to sustain herself during their destructive onslaught.
- What if a child poses an actual threat to the younger children in your care? This can look like physical or sexual aggression. Some families resort to locking the other children in their rooms to protect them from the aggressor. Is this a step you are willing to take?
Please understand, the guilt you may feel about even considering out of home placement is not lost on me. The idea that a child will not get the care in another setting you have worked so hard to offer may work against your ability to evaluate the situation authentically. I’m offering these reflections in the hopes that you can shine a light on what may lurk in the shadows of your life.
Many families simply have to be willing to “love at a distance.” Out-of-home placement, whether in an RTC, therapeutic group home, psychiatric hospital, or other family member, doesn’t let you off the hook for love. Love at a distance can look like calls, cards, meeting attendance, and holidays together. I know many foster families who continue to offer respite to a child reunified with a biological family member. Your willingness to continue to stay connected to a child who has yet been unable to accept your love is not meaningless.
With all this said, I’d like to issue a few caveats.
- Your DCS staff are exhausted, too. Their system does not do enough to protect them from vicarious trauma (the trauma of hearing/seeing these tragedies daily, like police and firefighters sometimes experience). The burnout this creates means a rapid turnover in front line staff; further resulting in inadequate training about trauma and the need for uncompromising self-care. These young people may not know how to counsel you when things get unmanageable. One shared with me that 3 children in her caseload had died. Not an easy thing to recover from without sensitive support. Please be gentle with them. There simply are no easy answers for how to navigate the care of children who are being abused in their family of origin.
- Too often, the ever-popular “fost-adopt” status that so many prospective adoptive parents claim ends in reunification. A child’s reunification with a birthparent after 2-3 years with a foster family who loved them deeply and hoped to be their “forever family” is a nightmare for the foster parents. The grief that attends this moment, the anger and powerlessness, puts the next placement at risk. If you are afraid of loving because you don’t want to get hurt again, own it. Don’t take that next placement until you have processed all that and are ready to give again.
- Sometimes, we get focused on behavioral issues that have more to do with our own upbringing than on what the child needs from us. A 16-year-old content with Ds in school is too close to adulthood to waste your time lobbying for better grades. It’s time to focus on what the world will expect of them when they want to live independently of you. Bs in history is not work readiness. My oft-repeated story is, “Mrs. Tompkins, your child is the only kindergartner who doesn’t know how to peel a banana” is a perfect example of this kind of misguided good intention. Similarly, just because you missed your prom while you were in care, doesn’t mean you should rush out to buy an elaborate dress for the 17 year old placed with you last month. You risk feeling disrespected or even rejected if your gestures aren’t attuned to the needs of the child rather than manifesting your idealized parenting role. That disrespect or rejection is a hard hill to climb back from in your relationship. The responsibility to rethink strategy is yours, not the child’s.
- These children can be cruel. If you find yourself “getting even” with the child in your care, either get help to work through this stuff or let someone else try to live with this person. You are doing them no favors by letting them live with you when you sink to this level. Those thoughts show up in our support group. This is the dark humor referred to above. Not the same as actually doing it, though. If you are doing it, it’s time to rethink the relationship.
- I’m going to go out on a limb here: It is beyond unkind to demand removal on a child’s birthday, placement anniversary, cultural holiday, or, in some less than urgent cases, in the middle of the school year. You made it this far; you can make it another week.
I’ll close on this: the time to recognize your capacity is BEFORE you take placement. How savvy are you about the needs of children coming into care? Be prepared for anything. DCS may not know or may even withhold information about what the child has been through. How are your spiritual, health, work, finances, self-care practices, and support system? And, btw, a support system is one that provides reliable respite (part of your self-care/personal maintenance), can deliver to therapy appointments in a pinch, listens and understands when you need to vent, and respects your decision to bring a child from trauma into your life. It is unlikely that a single other person can provide all this support.
Even with the best of support systems, out-of-home placement or disruption may still be the loving thing to do.
NEWS
- Check out the AZAFAP Event Calendar at https://azafap.gnosishosting.net/Events/Calendar.
- Our Friday night Happy Hour and Tuesday afternoon Coffee Chat continue. Some find Nancy or me and a single other participant; others find a conversation among 4 to 6 people. The topics range from the silly to what hobbies have us in their grip to what life has thrown in our path. If you ever find yourself wanting a bit of grown-up conversation, consider joining us (check your email for the unchanging link).
- Parent Mentor Partners: AZAFAP has trained volunteer parents as mentors who are ready to help support foster, kinship, and adoptive parents through one-to-one conversations. Interested? Fill out the form at https://www.azafap.org/family-support-services/
- I encourage you to check out what Dr. Bruce Perry has to offer. Find his thoughts at https://youtu.be/uOsgDkeH52o?t=3 and at https://www.neurosequential.com.
Thanks for listening. Maintain yourself so you can be there reliably for others.
Cathy (cathyt@azafap.org)
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