Apres le move.

I had no idea how long it'd been since I'd blogged. Wow. Sorry 'bout that, folks. We moved in April, before Pesach (Passover). Lots of endings and new beginnings around here since then. We're hanging in, though. Little Guy and Big Guy are loving having more space in our new home, life is much improved since we are no longer on top of each other.

The biggest news to share is that adoption is looking like it's going to be the plan for Big Guy. Because Big Guy and Little Guy came into care on the same day but Little Guy was sent home not long after and was home for several months, CPS is counting his re-entry to foster care rather than his original entry as his "date of entry into the foster care system" (the date upon which his parents' 12 months of working their case plan will be based). This means the boys are on different timelines in terms of their cases. So Big Guy's permanency hearing was early this month and his case was moved to the adoption unit, meaning that the goal is now adoption (by us) rather than reunification. This doesn't mean parental rights have been terminated yet or that if a family member came out of the woodwork CPS wouldn't have to consider them. But it means that a TPR hearing will be scheduled. It is quite possible we will adopt Big Guy by some time this winter, barring any legal appeals made by Patty.

Little Guy, on the other hand, won't be done with his year in foster care (the year that's required before CPS can file for TPR) until fall. And unlike Big Guy, he has a dad who is fighting for him. Fighting in an ambivalent, flaky way, but still doing some of what CPS has asked him to do for his caseplan. So the possibility of the boys' outcomes being different still hovers above our heads. Unfortunately Big Guy has started picking up on this and it is contributing to the hard time he is having. You have to understand that he is not happy that he is likely going to be adopted. Those stories about kids who are just so happy to finally have a forever family? That is not our story. Our story is one of a little boy who absolutely adores his mom, whose mom is loving to him and never overtly abused him... and who is being told he still cannot go home to her. This is a story of a kid who is told over and over the reasons why he is in care (mom's mental illness, her cognitive limitations, how easily she got overwhelmed parenting them, the normal kid things she wouldn't let them do due to her paranoia, the lack of family support she has, the way she couldn't protect him from getting badly abused by other family members, his behavioral/emotional needs she couldn't meet) and still doesn't really get why he can't go home to her and thinks it's his fault and if his behavior was better he could go home. This is a story of a kid who adores his foster parents but wants to be with his birth mom... but who doesn't get any say in the matter because he's so young and his needs so clearly cannot be met by his birth mom. It's a sad story, to say the least.

So it's probably no surprise when I say that Big Guy, who in many ways has been doing quite well, is lashing out like crazy at us and finding new ways to test us. His goal in his testing/behaviors seems to be to prove that we don't really love him and aren't "real" parents. He will act out intensely so that we are stern with him or ask him to go to his room - And when he refuses to go to his room he will "trip" and "hurt himself" in a very obviously purposeful way, so that when we don't make a huge scene over how he's hurt he can then accuse us of not caring that he's hurt and tell us that proves we're not "real parents." He will tell us he's going to do something dangerous or self-destructive and when we use the appropriate behavioral techniques (since this is truly a behavioral issue, not a psychiatric one) which involves not over-reacting, he will tell us we don't care if he hurts himself and his mom would care and that this proves we don't love him. It is very, very trying. He is trying to push us away. At the same time, he has been telling us more than usual how much he loves us and even told Sarah the other day "you're the best mommy ever!" (Mommy is a term he never uses for us, only for his birth mom). Can you say AMBIVALENCE?!?!

Little Guy is growing like a weed. He has grown almost 4 inches since he's been with us (8 months) and has gone from having not a single recognizable word to being almost on-target in terms of his language. He is 2 and is very bossy and very funny and sweet. This morning he climbed across my lap while I was on my computer and demanded "Snuggles!" He is just a delight. So cute and so loving and happy. Unfortunately he continues to have seizures, which is a challenge. He also is having a lot of sleeping troubles of late, which is not fun for any of us.

As for Sarah and I, we're doing okay. Okay enough to be thinking about Foster Child #3. We got a call last night for an after-hours placement of a teenager and I immediately told Sarah to say no, but afterwards spent an hour trying to fall asleep while I couldn't stop thinking about whether they could find a home for this young lady. I know we made the right choice, however. It's easy to get excited about taking whichever child they call for (especially because we get so few calls) but we need to think of our boys first and foremost and make sure whoever joins our family is a good, safe fit for them.

Antidepressants Are a Beautiful Thing

Our boy has done a complete 180 degree turn during the past week. He has gone an entire week without a single tantrum (by which I mean no hitting, punching, throwing things, threatening to hurt himself). That is probably the longest he's ever gone since being with us. He's been happy, smiling a lot, telling us he loves us a lot (unsolicited statements like "I love you, Ima..." or "I love spending time with you, Mama..."), and totally fun to be around. He's earned new privileges, he's talked about his feelings instead of acting out, and he's been pretty much like a "normal" kid with fairly severe ADHD. He's had no aggression or violence or angry outbursts. It's pretty incredible.

Family life has been a total joy lately, which is such a relief from the constant struggling of the last 4 months. There have been difficult moments, things are far from perfect... but they are so, so much better. I think the Prozac is working, and allowing the therapy to be more effective... which is giving credence to our belief that Big Guy's violent tantrums were not just behavioral but instead were due to a combination of anxiety, depression and PTSD. He's only been on Prozac a few weeks, and just this week we upped the dose, so it's possible things will get even better from here. I can't help feeling like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop - How can this be real? How long can it last? But I'm also starting to let go and just enjoy these times... and giving him loads of positive feedback about how awesome his behavior is and how much fun he is to be around.

Big Guy told us last night that he's being good so the judge will let him go home. It broke my heart to hear him say that, because it means he really still thinks he was removed because he was bad and he can go home when he's good. But it was a good opportunity to let  him know that being happy and being well-behaved will help him in every aspect of life, no matter where he lives. Whether he goes home or is adopted, he will have a better life and more privileges if he can behave respectfully and he feels good inside. We reminded him he isn't in foster care because he is bad, that he's in foster care because mommy has problems parenting (problems she is working on right now), and that we can't promise that good behavior will mean he gets to go home.

At first I was worried that raining on his parade like this might make him start acting out again, but my dad reminded me that there's no way that Big Guy was able to keep up such amazing behavior for an entire week purely out of willpower so he could go home. If that was the case, he'd have been on perfect behavior from the beginning of his time here. I think he just had an easier time behaving the way he'd like to behave because he's less depressed and anxious, plus he's been working in therapy on internalizing that hurting us isn't going to make him be able to go home. When he saw his behavior being so positive, it may have renewed his hope that now he can have enough self-control that he can behave well at home so that mommy will want him back and the judge will send him back. So I don't think he's going to regress simply because we are giving him reality checks about his power to make the judge send him home to mommy. He looked so deflated after I corrected him, I wanted to cry.

We knew from the beginning that "Oppositional-Defiance Disorder" and "ADHD" didn't fully encapsulate what was going on with this child. I'm so glad we finally found professionals who agreed that we needed to dig deeper into the psychiatric issues. Big Guy is happier, calmer and so much more focused. I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. Even if it's temporary, it's a huge gift. Times like this remind me that all this hard work is worth it. And you know what? In the (unlikely) change that he does go back home to mommy, who is so limited in so many ways, I think it would be great to send him back as a happier, less aggressive, more well-adjusted kid who is easier for a cognitively limited mom to parent. I finally understand what foster parents mean when they say that they get satisfaction out of reuniting with their families a healthier kid who's done a lot of healing and learned new coping skills.

What's goin' on.... and a plea for help.

Oh dear, it's been a while since I've updated, huh?

Did you think maybe I stopped posting because we threw in the towel and our boy got placed in a therapeutic foster home? Rest assured, we're still hanging in there with Big Guy and don't have any intent to stop.

It's partly the Jewish holidays - Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah... They have taken up a huge part of my time for the last month. It's also partly that there's so much to say and I know I'll never be able to update you on everything that's going on.

Here is a bullet list of just a few of the many things that have happened since I last posted:

• His team (case workers, etc) decided if this placement fails he will be placed not in a therapeutic foster home but in a Residential Treatment Center. Holy crap, talk about pressure on us! We feel so strongly, as does his therapist, that at this point he does not need an RTC, he needs a family. It's one thing if we adopt him and then he needs RTC, because he'd have a family to visit him all the time and then to eventually come home to. If he went to RTC right now we'd have no rights to even visit him and at most he might get a weekly visit with mom and an occasional visit from a social worker. 

• His therapist asked me "So, how does it feel living in a residential treatment center?" Because he acknowledged what everyone else is coming to realize, which is that we are basically providing a residential treatment center and therapeutic foster home without the training or compensation.

• Big Guy's therapist is excellent and Big Guy is starting to talk about his anger, why he takes it out on us, his sadness, etc.

• Big Guy has been revealing more abuse history. I'm feeling so angry I just want to kill everyone who hurt him. I have to laugh that I told people when he was first placed with us, "He doesn't seem to have any kind of major abuse history, at most maybe a little emotional neglect." Warning to first-time foster parents like us: Never, ever believe that the story you think you know during the first month or when a kid's placed is anything near what the full truth is.

• We found a great psychiatrist who is starting him on an anti-depressant! Hallelujah! She actually gets that it's not just ADHD and Oppositional Defiance Disorder that are happening here, and she diagnosed him with PTSD after we had been increasingly feeling that some of his behaviors are trauma reactions.

• We have been talking to Patty (Big Guy's mom) a lot and learned from her more about her own and her mom's mental health history which has helped us understand the situation better and also helped us inform the psychiatrist. We have an awesome relationship with her...

• ...Which makes it so frustrating that CPS has decided we shouldn't be allowed to supervise visits. Because an outside agency that CPS contracts with is now doing visits at their offices and doesn't allow any contact between birth families and foster families, we cannot see her, and Little Guy (Big Guy's baby brother who we had for the first week that Big Guy was with us), at all. She literally enters through a different door than us, we think, so we can't even "run into her" in the waiting room. It's awful. So much for our dream that we could help mentor and support her. Basically CPS has made it clear they want to build a case to terminate her parental rights, even though she is parenting her baby and her older kid has only been in foster care 3 months with us. They have a foster family who is very competent and has a good relationship with the birth mom, a birth mom who never hurt her child directly, and a foster child who isn't traumatized by contact with his birth mom... The perfect situation to allow a mentoring relationship between foster and birth family or at least to allow more casual visits outside a clinical setting. Yet they don't want to make more work for themselves or risk her actually getting help from us, so they're screwing everyone in the process. Nice.

• School started and life became much more manageable because of everyone having a set schedule, so we no longer feel we're living in constant crisis mode...

• ...However, around the time school started Big Guy stopped sleeping through the night. He woke us up no less than seven times last night. He simply cannot and will not sleep without a grown-up in bed with him (please, spare me the lectures and horror stories about how foster parents should protect themselves from abuse allegations by never ever laying down with a child. It's the only way to keep from multiple violent meltdowns at night right now, and if those meltdowns are hard to deal with during the day they are impossible to deal with when half-asleep). His anxiety is so out of control. Usually I go lay down with him when he wakes us up, but end up falling asleep and waking up hours later in horrible pain because his bed sucks and I have a bad back. If anything is making my life feel unmanageable right now, it's not his tantrums or violence... it's the lack of continuous sleep and how we're held hostage by him at night because he wakes up multiple times and is terrified to go back to sleep without us with him. Have I mentioned I have idiopathic hypersomnolence, and am therefore supposed to get 9 hours of sleep a night in order to safely drive? Haha.

Any suggestions on how to deal with the sleep issue, experienced mamas and papas? He's already on 3mg of Melatonin and is taking his Risperdal at night as well. He has nightmares but frequently he wakes up without having nightmares. I hope the SSRI will help. I feel like the parent of a colicky infant, who feels ready to kill someone due to weeks and weeks of interrupted sleep.

Dear Big Guy

Dear Big Guy,

You are fast asleep after a night of anxiety attacks that woke you out of a sound sleep. You have been asleep for an hour, though I keep expecting you to wake up any minute. I don't know if it was the Chamomile Calm drops I gave you at 5am (I am still amazed at how well they work) or the imaginary circle I drew around you to keep the bad dreams away or the guided meditation I did with you in the middle of the night as a last-ditch attempt to get you to sleep. All I know is your skinny little body is curled up in your massive bed and you look peaceful, finally. You are so handsome, so little, and so angelic when you sleep. You look innocent, not like the wild creature that tears apart the house and tries to punch and kick and bite us. Mama and I know you are a creative and kind little boy, no matter what your behavior might look like someitmes. You deserve to feel good, not to suffer. You deserve to be happy, well-rested, and calm. One day you will know what it is like to not be so fearful or angry, I just know it.

I love you deeply, honeyboy. I wish I could sneak in there and give you a kiss on your silky-smooth cheek (the most kissable cheek I've ever encountered!) but I'm afraid I'd wake you up.

From bad to worse.

I love this kiddo so much. But we are this close to giving up. We feel like we're in way over our heads right now. I feel resentful at The Agency for putting a kid who needed a therapeutic foster home in with non-therapeutic first time foster parents. I am angry at the people who caused this beautiful little boy to have all these problems. I am sad that we have to worry that we can't do this any more. The bottom line is, we cannot keep missing this much work. This child requires two adults to keep him (and the house, and us) safe when he is having a tantrum, and we cannot provide that when we both go back to work. I am so terrified. I love him more than I've ever loved anyone, in a way I've never loved anything. I want the best for him, he deserves only good things in life. But this child's violent rages are so much beyond what we "signed up for" (a joke of a phrase in the foster world) and are putting our jobs, our home, and our bodies in danger. I called The Agency today and said they needed to find a way to provide more supports if they want this placement not to disrupt. I never dreamed I would even be saying the word "disrupt." But if we cannot keep him safe, then we are not the right foster family for him. We are not giving up - We are keeping trying. We are giving all the professionals and opportunity to put a better support system in place for us. I just don't know if they can.

In the past few days:
-I got punched in the eye (thank G-d for glasses, and 70-pound weaklings), on purpose but I don't think he really wanted to hurt me
-I got kicked in the shin, on purpose
-I got hit repeatedly with pieces of plastic, on purpose
-The crib and the changing table have almost been broken, on purpose
-The fan and overhead light have almost been broken, on purpose
-A lightbulb was shattered, on purpose
-The screen in his window was almost pushed out
-Dents were made all over his walls, using the plastic top of a humidifier
-Sarah's been hit hard in the middle of the head with a piece of metal
-Sarah's been cursed at over and over and over
-I've hurt my (already bad) back trying to drag him into his room when he's refusing to stop breaking things
-We've had him threaten to tell The Agency we're abusing him, over and over

And so on, and so forth. This is just a part of the list. The hardest part to wrap my head around is the sweet, angelic, lovely child he is when he's not raging.

I want this to work.

I want this to work.

I want this to work.

But I don't know if this can work.

When foster kids threaten false abuse allegations

This one's to throw out there to the foster-blogosphere: What do you do when your foster kids threaten to make false abuse allegations against you? It seems to come with the territory with older foster kids, from what I hear. I want to hear how you deal with this.

I have to say that it really freaks me out when, during tantrums, Big Guy threatens to tell CPS we're abusing him. This only happens when he gets mad at us and has a massive tantrum (he becomes like a totally different kid during these tantrums). He learned some time before he entered foster care that you could theaten someone by saying you'd report them for abuse. He seems to understand that CPS is who you should tell. He's so naive and immature, and didn't come into care due to an abuse allegation, so it's pretty clear to us that someone must have told him that he could get grownups in trouble this way. Being a foster parent to an older kid is scary. It's scary partly because you hear warning stories about how it's a matter of when you'll get an allegation made against you, not if.

As much as I know that Big Guy's therapist, caseworker, etc. think we're doing a great job and respect us and don't suspect us of abusing him... if he made an allegation they'd be obligated to investigate, and that investigation alone could be very traumatic for all of us. I know people it's happened to, and even when they discover that the allegation was BS, it turns peoples' lives upside down. We had to have a conversation tonight with Big Guy about how lying is not okay, and I finally let him know that if he lied and told someone we were hurting him, he might be removed and never allowed to see us again... and reminded him he wouldn't be sent back to mommy, which when he's mad at us is probably what he'd like. I had tried for so long to not say anything like that, but I think it's time he understand how serious it is for him to lie about something like this. He is not a liar. This kid really can't seem to lie. But you never know what he might say when he gets mad enough at us, and it's just so scary to think that not only we would pay the price... he would pay the price. We reiterated the importance of honesty. We emphasized that we would never hurt him and we don't believe in hitting children (and reminded him of our anger that he was beaten by relatives) and told him if we ever did hit him he should tell somebody, so that he'd understand that we're serious about kids being safe. I hope we dealt with this the right way. I can't ignore it any more. As usual, we are writing e-mails to caseworkers and therapists to let them know what he said - I make sure to constantly have them document his threats.

By the way, when did Big Guy make the most recent and by far the most serious threat of making a false allegation? Mere hours after he told us for the first time, out of the blue, "I want to stay with y'all forever. I don't want to have to leave."

Yup, that just about sums things up

After Big Guy calmed down from a horrific tantrum this evening during which I got kicked in the shin and both Sarah and I had various items thrown at us, he sweetly pointed out "But I didn't break anything during my tantrum. I tried really hard not to break anything." He clearly wanted a pat on the back, which Sarah had to give him because my shin still hurt too much for me to feel charitable. We suggested that maybe now that he's had a tantrum that didn't involve breaking furniture or lamps, we could try stopping hurting people during tantrums.

That basically encapsulates how things are right now. Tantrums are still intense and violent, but progress is being made with the help of a wonderful behavioral therapist. We have adopted a zero tolerance policy towards whining, which is helping us get him to use his words (and a non-whiny tone of voice) to ask for what he wants and teaching him that when he asks nicely, he often gets what he desires. We have been much more "tough love" (not in a mean way, but in a boundary-setting way where we don't give him attention if he's doing undesirable behaviors and we don't try to over-explain why we're saying no when we say no). It seems like a little progress may be happening. Then again maybe I'm being overly optimistic because he's only been home for a few days so I'm not exhausted from his constant tantrums yet.

How we ended up in the psych ER

Yesterday neither Sarah nor I could work because it took two of us to keep Big Guy safe, and even then he was hitting and trying to jump out the 2nd story window, and things like that. This is after a week that included him running into the street and refusing to come back to us (once on a street that had little traffic, once on a street that has a lot of speeding traffic)... Having tantrums every day... and saying things like "Do you hate me? Do you want me to die?" in a sad little voice while in the bathtub. His tantrums just escalated and escalated. He broke a lamp and threw a lot of our (and his) belongings across the house. He cried, he yelled, he threatened. He refused to leave the house every morning. But the worst part was that he is so, so sad. And so, so frustrated with himself.

For a kid with ODD it can take a LOT of sadness for it to come out as child-like (i.e. appropriate) tears and sobs rather than just angry wild-animal tantrums. But we've had a lot of both recently, and we knew something was not right. Obviously we don't know what "right" is with this boy, since he's only been with us 2 months so far. But we knew something was different than usual in the way he was acting. The difference was that he was excessively sad and even his acting out seemed to stem from that instead of just from testing. In addition, he was unable to stop his tantrums, or recover from them. Instead, I think as he'd start to come down from them he'd start to realize what he'd done (in other words he'd perceive that he had physically hurt the people he loves, destroyed his room, made us upset, exhausted himself, etc) and then feel so bad about himself that he thought he deserved to be punished... So he'd act out even more, seemingly trying to get us to punish him. We have gathered that he thinks he deserves to be beaten, kicked out, or have the cops called on him. So "punishment" means one of these extremes, which are the things he is accustomed to. When I have told him during his tantrums, "Baby, you deserve to feel good. You deserve to be happy. Please stop punishing yourself,"... his response is things like "No, I deserve to feel bad. I deserve to lose all my privileges. I deserve bad things."

I called Big Guy's care manager, and said that our rope was really fraying and we needed help, pronto. I explained that being held hostage by this child, and having him continue to try to harm himself or us, was not an option for us... but that we did NOT want to give up on him, and didn't want him to think we were going to abandon him when the going got tough. I said I didn't know what to do. She quickly recommended that we take him to the psych ER for an evaluation. He hasn't had a psychiatric evaluation in quite a while and when we tried to make an appointment, we couldn't get one until the end of September. We have tried to convince his doctors to tweak his meds, but they hemmed and hawed over it. What the care manager explained is that in the psych hospital he can stay for a few days while they change his meds. It's easier and safer than going through med changes while living with us, as they can observe him carefully.

I really didn't want to do this. I was so fearful he would hate us, that it would set him back in terms of his progress emotionally, that it would undermine his trust in us, that things would be worse when he got back to us instead of better. But I called all the people I know who have professional and personal experience with this stuff, and they all reassured me that it was the right thing. As I said to the caseworker "This really isn't about his behaviors. His behaviors are unmanageable right now. But it's really about the fact that he deserves to feel better than this." It is physically painful to see your child hurting and unable to talk about it, and unable to stop themselves from acting in ways that get them further into trouble emotionally and in terms of family consequences.

The horrible part is they don't have visiting hours today, so our boy is going to think even more that we're abandoning him. We're trying to get through to the psychiatrist to fight for an exception to the rules due to his history of abandonment issues and his being in foster care for only 2 months with us, because we think not seeing us every day would be very damaging for him. But they haven't returned our calls.

I wish I could stop feeling like I've failed him somehow by needing to take him to psych hospital. I wish I could stop feeling like a bad mom because I couldn't magically handle his behaviors and help him feel better. I know better than this. But my brain hasn't yet convinced my heart that we did the right thing and that he'll be okay, largely because he has two dedicated foster moms who can't wait for him to get out, who will advocate for him to no end, and who would do almost anything to help him continue to heal and grow.

Feeling like I'm failing

I really feel at this moment in time like I can't do this. I cannot physically wrestle with a defiant, oppositional child all morning who refuses to go to camp which means I am unable to work or go to school. I can't have my partner, "Sarah", missing work so much that she is worried her job is in jeopardy, because our boy refuses to leave in the morning. I cannot have everything in my house broken, though that seems like the least of our problems right now. I cannot allow myself to be bitten, spat upon, hit with a wiffle ball bat, and sweared at. Sarah is being amazing right now and trying to keep him safe while I have a few minutes to lock myself in the bedroom. Bless her. She had to leave work because I called her today, sobbing that I just can't do this anymore.

And yet I am doing it. I have no choice. The only option available right now is respite, which I fear would set Big Guy back a lot because of his abandonment issues (mom kicked him out because she couldn't handle his behavioral issues). I cannot screw this child over. I really don't want to cause more disruption and more issues for him. But how can I keep going? How?

Times like this I really don't know how we do it. And I really laugh at all the people who talk about how much progress Big Guy's made since he's been with us... because at times like this, I think they must be hallucinating.

Where is my sweet, kind, adorable boy? He disappears behind this mask of an angry, self-hating, wild animal child. It is so hard to remember that the sweet boy is still in there. But he is. And that sweet boy deserves to have a chance to learn how to feel more comfortable living without that mask. Which is going to take a LONG time, and a lot of work. I just really really hope we can make it. I prayed so hard last night after I said the bedtime she'ma that G-d will help him love himself and learn that it's okay to feel good. He is so incapable of allowing himself to feel loved or to feel good, and so he sabotages everything. Aggressively. We are so committed to him, but we also have to keep ourselves safe and we have to keep ourselves employed and functional in the world - Those are non-negotiables.

It is so hard loving someone who feels horrible about themselves... They will push you away in any way they can. This is true of adults, too, but with kids it's so much more intense.

Why I've been M.I.A.

It sounds cliche to say "I just haven't had time to post"... but it's really true. Since my last post here's a brief version of what's happened:

1) We got licensed as foster parents

2) I finished up a pretty intense semester of school

3) I continued to struggle with several health issues that give me a lot of pain and fatigue

4) We got a call about an allegedly gorgeous 1 year old girl in perfect health who was a rare "truly fost-adopt placement" (in the words of the caseworker who called us) in that the TPR process had already started and she had been in a kinship care situation that was no longer working out due to nothing related to the baby. My hands shook, I could hardly contain myself. And then 1/2 hour later we got a call back saying "Uh, just kidding. We found another family member." We both felt really sad for a day or two, but praying for the baby and feeling happy for her that she was able to be with a family member got us through that.

5) We got a call about a teenager. Um, what? What part of "0-5" don't you understand, Agency?

6) We got a call about 1 and 9 year old brothers in mid-June. Because we are completely out of our minds insane we said YES! Little Guy, age 1, was a chubby and delicious and unusually adorable bundle of sweetness. An easy baby who slept through the night, was easily comforted, and adored his brother, Big Guy, like nothing else. He followed him around the house like a puppy dog and belly-laughed every time Big Guy yelled or whined or threw a tantrum. Big Guy was handsome fellow, with a sweet neshama (soul). Kind and helpful and funny and affectionate, when doing well... and extremely behaviorally challenged when not doing well. Diagnoses include Oppositional-Defiance Disorder (ODD), ADHD, depression, anxiety, impulse control disorder, so on and so forth.

7) After a week with us, our Agency totally screwed up their court case, which led to the judge requiring that Little Guy being returned home... but not Big Guy. So now the boys became separated, and for the last 6 weeks we've just had Big Guy, whose honeymoon period ended after 2 or 3 weeks with us. Since then we've been spending most of our energy managing his incredible tantrums and outbursts, which include throwing and breaking things, turning over furniture, threatening to run away, and threatening to hurt himself. In between those challenging episodes, he shows how much some of his behaviors have improved, he shows how much he's bonded with us (he's now asking if he can call us both Mom, and even though we told him we thought it was too early and we didn't want his Mommy to get upset, he's started to occasionally call us Mom-type names), he a pleasure to be around, and he amuses us ceaselessly. School says he's doing better since he's been with us. All his social workers are impressed. Yet at home, we are struggling with how much we are in love with this boy yet how totally clueless we are about how to manage some of his behaviors.

8) So, we're foster parents. It feels like it's been a lifetime. This has been the longest 6 weeks of my life. We know rationally that we're doing a great job with him, even if emotionally it doesn't always feel that way. It seems like Hashem (G-d) must have known what He was doing in leading a 9 year old with intense behavioral issues to our family instead of the 0-5 year olds with mild to moderate needs that we had originally signed up for. Except at the very most difficult times (when I am exhausted and hurt and angry and frustrated and sad and burnt out, and feel utterly isolated and unsupported) I feel like this was totally Meant To Be and I am so grateful that we've had the opportunity to learn how fulfilling it can feel to parent an older child. I miss Little Guy so much. We see him at Big Guy's weekly visits, and sometimes get to hold him. I am angry they have been separated - Angrier than words can express. At the same time, it's amazing to me the ways in which parenting an older child can actually be more satisfying than parenting a baby. I never would have dreamed I could handle this. But so far, I can. Just barely.