Living at the Boys Ranch

We have a son who has just completed an awful year of moving around. We asked our county for help as it was too dangerous to have him at home. They gave us help by filing a "Child in Need of Protective Services" petition with the court and gaining temporary custody of him. He has thus been back in foster care and has been in and out of several schools, several placements and has been in the psychiatrict hospital twice this year (note, this is a different child than the one who was in the psych hospital last week).

Anyway, I'm not going to go through that whole story. Maybe it will be in the book, if I ever finish it. By the way, I did write another two chapters, just haven't gotten them typed or blogged.

So, this tender hearted, loving, and very charming young man who is at the same time very angry and sometimes violent, has finally been moved to the facility we had asked the county to place him in last fall. It's a boys ranch where many of the other children do not have families.

Having been shocked as to some of the things that had been conveyed to professionals about our family in the past, I decided to go in and visit with his team leader. She was awesome. I told her the whole story about our son -- from day one until now and she listened.

We have determined, Bart and I, that we are going to have to reclaim him. He has been living out of our home almost consistently (with the exception of three weeks) for almost a year. We fear that he has begun to believe that institutions are better than a family -- that it is easier to manipulate people and get your own way when there are more folks to manipulate -- that it isn't is hard when nobody expects you to love them.

So, I asked our son's primary staff person tons of questions. She was very careful to explain their system and to listen to everything I had to say. I explained how we felt our best strategy at this time was to make sure that everyone around him knows that he has a family who loves him. In the past he has told stories about us to manipulate people.

Fortunately, this facility has a very open visitation policy. We can come as often as we would like and bring as many of our children as we would like. We can eat in their dining room, with our son, free of charge as long as we let them know in advance (although she did admit that if we ALL wanted to come EVERY day that might pose a problem, so there were SOME limits. :-)

And, the icing on the cake is that we will be able to have contact with the other boys at the ranch who don't have families. Many of the guys know that they are going to be there until they turn 18 have no contact with their bio families. They have no visitors, except their social workers, and they receive no letters or treats from home.

Our strategy is this: the more time we can spend with him out at the ranch, the less lies he will be able to make up. The more contact we have with his peers and the staff, the less likely they will be to be judgmental or critical of our family size or our decisions. And the more people there that love us, the harder it will be for our son not to realize that having us as his family is a good deal.

So my goal now is to have as much contact with our son as possible -- to wow him with our commitment to and love for him. We are going to approach this as if we have just been matched with a difficult teenager who we are committed to adopting. We are going to get to know him again and have him get to know us again.

And, in additiion, who knows what might happen with the other boys there? Maybe we'll be able to build relationships that will help others as well. It is our goal to provide support for all the boys in his cottage....

Maybe this whole nightmare will have a redemptive element. Wouldn't that be cool???