I feel so disobedient when I use those words. My mother would not like it.
HIghlights (or lowlights) from Sucky Thing #1 of the day: Meeting about Mike. We went into it saying our emotions would stay out of it. I tried. Bart tells some of what happens here. It takes a lot to get my husband to that point.
My conclusion was that the whole thing is sad. Very sad. That the system is not designed to work with families like ours and that we suffer so much for trying to do a good thing. I asked the question, “Why would a system want to terminate the rights of a two parent family willing and wanting to be supportive of a child and has made a commitment to him for life?” Why would giving him what he wants (when he really doesn’t know what he wants) by terminating our rights help him in any way? And do we hire an attorney to fight to keep a kid who doesn’t want us to keep him? But if we don’t, what repercussions does this have on our other children? Do we continue to keep our commitment that no matter what he will always be our son even if it costs us thousands of dollars and our sanity?
Most people adopting a cute little 8 year old don’t realize they will be asking themselves these kinds of questions.
OK. Sucky Thing #2: My work situation. And I will be purposefully vague. Have you ever done something where from start to finish you felt like you did your very best? You’re stuck in a corner with little choices and you do the best you can to do the right thing, even if you are fighting an uphill battle? Did you ever stand by someone through the thick and thin of something, doing your very best, to find out that your very best wasn’t good enough? Have you ever had the people you were working and advocating for suddenly believe that you were the problem? Have you ever gone from being a trusted confidant to being the enemy at fault?
If so, you’ll know what it feels like to be me. Maybe.
We have some kids, Mike is one of them, who are addicted to cortisol This means that they like it when they are in stress and chaos (running away, raging, etc) because it is comfortable to them. I have found that I might be allergic to cortisol. The stress of these situations literally makes me feel physically ill. And I think I’ll need more than Calgon to take me away.
3 comments:
How about telling Mike that you will not fight the TPR, as he is almost an adult and has stated that that is what he wants, but that you will continue to consider him to be your son and him to be a part of your family, for him to reclaim whenever he is ready? You will only cease to be his parents in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of others who matter or of god.
Sucky thing #2 is how child welfare workers feel ALL THE TIME, every day, with almost all our clients. It is also how some of our clients feel.
If we tell Mike we will not fight the TPR we are worried that it will send this message to all 7 of the kids younger than he is: We give up on our kids. If you do something wrong we will stop being your parents. And if you get mad and decide you don't want parents, you can just go to court and get our rights terminated.
That's one of the reasons.
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