The Daily-Ness of it All

I was reminded today, after receiving a phone call about Rand, who I thought was doing magnificently, that this journey is such a long daily one. Each child needs years of patient coaching and nurturing and intervention to recover from their past and move into their future.

One of the things that has helped me to see how necessary this is is writing post-placement reports for other families. Each month I sit down the a parent or the parents and hear about the progress of the kids. From month to month it goes up and down. Each child deals with their issues in a different way. Since I placed 15 kids between June 1 and August 23, I have lots of these reports to write. I am able, because I am not their parents, to more rationally watch their progress. I have been struck with how slow the going is and how long it takes to see any progress.

I am not a great parent, but I am much better than I started out to be. When I started I had timetables and expectations and I concluded that if I worked hard enough, the kids would change. If I found the trick, read the book, did my homework, persisted long enough, they would overcome their past quickly.

Now I realize that I have very little control over how quickly they change and grow, and that some of them are going to simply take a long time to make progress. I can guide, I can suggest, I can be here to give feedback when it is requested, I can love them, and I can provide a place that is safe, consistent to the point of boring, and stable. I can protect them from some outside forces. But the bottom line is that I cannot force them to change.

I would much prefer a different approach. I like to MAKE things happen. But a slow, steady, calm presence day after day after day after week after week after week after month after month after month after year after year after year.

My husband knew this from day one, and he is excellent at it. I’m apparently not all that bright, because it has taken me about eight years to figure it out.