Saturday, August 26, 2006

Facing another hard decision

If you’ve been a follower of the blog long, you know that we let Mike come home from residential treatment on Christmas Day. And then right after his birthday in March the decision was made that he would not be living with us. If you really want to understand why, go back and read the blog end of February and March. Very stressful time for us.

In the beginning of June, the reports to court indicated that no efforts should be made to reunify our family because Mike “deserves to spend the rest of his childhood in a family that cares.” The social worker explained to us that Mike had indicated that he wanted our parental rights terminated and asked the social worker to refer to us no longer as Mom and Dad but “Bart and Claudia.” From that point on the probation officer and guardian ad litem requested no further contact with us.

I asked the guardian ad litem and social worker if they could give me one good reason why the parental rights of a 17 year old should be terminated if he had parents who were not abusive nor neglectful and who were committed to him for life. She said, “I have had the rights of a child that age terminated before so that his foster parents could adopt him.” I pointed out that at this time he didn’t have anyone wanting to adopt him. (Though I sometimes wonder if she didn’t think that she could find some who would).

Well, it didn’t quite go the way she had planned, if that indeed was her plan. His foster home placement lasted less than 2 weeks. He then went to shelter care where he ran continuously. He wrote on his bed there, so the county encouraged the shelter facility to press charges for vandalism to property. He was arrested and drug tested, where he tested positive for marijuana -- ended up in the detention center, which is why he ended up up north at a wilderness detention camp.

And now, he’s 3 weeks from graduation. And guess what? Everyone thinks he should come home. They want to know what we think.

We’ve talked about it at length. What do you think we should think?

1 comment:

QueenBee said...

Geez! What a roller coaster. I wouldn't dare have an opinion about what you should do. Except to follow your own hearts and your own gut instincts.