Upside-Down Adoption

Short addition

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 21:56:00 +0000

I just caught up with what's going on with Tudu over here. I'm feeling heartbroken. Please, anyone who's familiar with the case, let me know if there's anything I can do, or any letter I can write. I'm checking my atlasien email address in the profile.

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 20:12:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I'm sorry I never followed through on my last post many months ago. I'm going to try again next year to get back into the swing of blogging and catch up on how everyone else is doing.

Here's a little bit of what happened in 2010.

- BB came to us. I flew to the city and waited at the airport curbside. His foster father drove up and handed him over. I turned around and flew back to Atlanta carrying him. BB was already very familiar with me due to our visits, but it just felt... strange, as you can probably imagine.

- I took a two-month maternity leave. I also became very depressed during this time. I was functional, and dealt with it in several different ways. Guy also had some problems with depression, and Sunny did not handle the addition well. He loves his brother, absolutely loves him, and I'm convinced we have done the best thing for both of them. Nevertheless, in the short term it was very difficult for him to come to grips with the fact that he was suddenly receiving a lot less attention.

- BB is a highly active, dynamic, joyful and sensitive child, much like his brother. He smiles and laughs and dances all the time. He also cries and screams often. He needs a lot of attention. He was behind in several developmental areas such as fine motor skills and behind in speech development: at 20 months, he still hadn't spoken any words at all. But during his eight months with us, he's caught up a lot. At almost 2.5 years, he's now opening doorknobs, eating with a spoon, climbing everything in sight, saying "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "I want my booties" and "please" and "thank you", answering the telephone, and a bunch of other things I'm very proud of.

- Sunny's behavior at home is more or less the same as it was in the beginning of the year, but his behavior at school took a nosedive. He was kicked out of his summer day camp for defiant behavior. After one month in third grade at the same charter school he's been going to for two years, he started getting in a lot of trouble. Things like throwing pencils, disobeying the teacher, even telling the principal to f*** off. We're working with them to do an IEP. Guy has been going to the school almost daily to do things like have lunch with Sunny to make him feel better and more regulated.

- I don't think the Abilify is really working anymore. We're looking at switching to another medication; I'm going to ask the psychiatrist about Depakote. We're up against the wall when it comes to his schooling. He's already had one "disciplinary hearing." The school is not our enemy in any sense, I really feel like we're all working together, but they don't have the resources right now to do the only thing that works when he gets deep into one of his fits: restraint. All they can do right now is call one of us to come get him so that he doesn't hurt someone else or himself during one of them.

- Sunny's behavior is also isolating him socially at school. The other students in third grade are starting to avoid him because of his outbursts. He still has great relationships with his friends in the neighborhood, but I'm really worried that he's on the path to hating every part of the school that he was so happy with in first and second grade.

- Our new Georgia governor (makes gagging noise). I don't even want to think about him.

I've been dealing with depression from a lot of stress that comes partly from parenting, partly from finances. I'd really like to make a change in my job, but helping Sunny might cost a lot of money, so now is not the best time to make such a change. I feel isolated, but not energized enough to take the steps that I know I should take to un-isolate myself.

But overall, I and my family are still holding together well. I'm on Lexapro now, and although the side effects when I started were really, really rough, I think it's having some positive effect. My mother has been helping me out a lot, too.

Oh, and for those who remember all the stuff I've written about my dad? The last time he was over here, Guy was talking with him about something parenting related, and asked him what he would do in his shoes... and my dad said "I have no advice for you. I was a terrible father." Sigh. As usual, he's being hyperbolic. He messed up a lot of things, but he wasn't that bad, really. But it goes to show that a lot of the challenges we're facing are unprecedented in the history of our families.

I hate to be gloomy at this time of the year, but I want to paint an accurate picture of what's been going on. And like I said, it's really not all that bad, and I'm confident 2011 is going to be better. I'm going to try and make a happy 2011 post by the end of the weekend.

I'm looking forward to our official adoption of BB, which should happen very soon. Everything is filed; we're waiting on a court date.

If you'd like to update me on your milestones for 2010, please comment and link! I'm going to try and catch up, but it'll be an uphill struggle. I've read so many blogs that cover the bad as well as the good, and they've been so useful to me, but it's been unexpectedly hard to keep up communication during my own most difficult times. I'm just going to keep on doing my best.

Love and Peace in the New Year,
- Atlasien

I'm OK, and I apologize for the long absence!

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:37:00 +0000

I sincerely apologize to those who've been worried and left nice comments. Actually, to anyone who's been worried. I really should have put up a post saying I wouldn't blog for a while.

I've been gone from this blog, from Racialicious commenting and from Twitter for more than a month now. I did a volunteer trip to DC, spent a weekend in New York City, and visited BB and Sunny's home state several times. This weekend, I picked up BB at the airport curbside and flew him back to what should now be his permanent home.

I've been under a lot of stress, and I had a very, very strong attack of the typical internet paranoia that strikes a lot of foster care bloggers. There was some drama we almost got sucked into. I had dipped my toes in Facebook, but now I think Facebook is a bad fit for me and I won't be updating or adding any more friends or relatives to the list.

I just started a two-month maternity leave. I appreciate the fact that I get leave when so many other mothers don't, but I think this is also going to be a difficult time. Although I'm happy to finally have BB with us -- and Sunny and BB are fantastic together -- it's very intensive to care for BB. Luckily his foster mom has been giving me great advice, including tips on how to get him to eat his veggies. He's taking a nap in the other room right now.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to get started blogging again by answering them! I'm going to make it my goal to update at least once a week from now on, and slowly get caught up on the blogs in my Reader as well.

Rough Weekend - Short Update

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:53:00 +0000

Sunny broke a long streak of great behavior by sort of falling apart this weekend. Guy was out of town on a trip, and Sunny didn't handle it as well as he did on the last trip.

He had a fit on Saturday, and then a huge one on Sunday, where he pushed me in the supermarket because I wouldn't buy him the snack bar he wanted. We went out to the car, and it took almost 15 minutes in the back seat before he calmed down.

It was quite depressing and tiring for me... but I'm looking on the bright side, as well. Two steps forward, one step back.

Torchwood Season One Ratings Guide!

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:58:00 +0000

Here's a fun post I've been working on here and there, over the past week.

I finished all of Torchwood, plus Captain Jack Harkness appearances in Doctor Who Seasons One, Three and Four. I'm now going back and watching Torchwood Season One over again. So here are my ratings for the various episodes of Season One. They have been rated according to the following categories:

Sexual Tension		This category is self-explanatory.
Action		Explosions, Chases, Fights, Stabbings, Chompings, Shootings, Decapitations, etc.
Drama		Character development and effective emotional-type stuff.
WTFery		Anything off the wall in an especially good or bad way. Includes plot holes and strange hommages/rip-offs.

Image-heavy, so click here for the full post if you're not already on the post page...

Episode 1: Everything Changes
We're introduced to Torchwood through Gwen Cooper, a policewoman in Cardiff, Wales, leading an ordinary Welsh policewoman life until she spies on the Torchwood team. She ends up joining when another team member dies.

	Sexual innuendo, sex-drug-induced bisexual triangle kissing, Captain Jack Harkness standing on the top of a building in a highly suggestive way.
	Post-death stabbing, alien throat-chomping, shooting.
	Effective introduction of characters and great performance by Indira Varma with a rather unexpected and shocking ending.
	It's obvious to any viewer that this is a unique show and quite difficult to categorize. But why would you tell someone all about your secret organization before giving them an amnesia pill? And why do the Torchwood computers have swirling animated desktops? Animated desktops are very distracting! They give me a headache just thinking about them. How are you supposed to get any sort of serious work done on a computer if you have an animated desktop?

Episode 2: Day One
An incorporeal alien lands in Cardiff, invades the body of a young woman and starts having sex with people in order to kill them and steal their orgasmic energy. Commonly referred to as the "sex gas" episode.

	Lesbian kissing, explicit hetero sex, lots of implied sex, although it isn't actually very sexy in context. Owen getting naked and handcuffed.
	A little bit of fighting and a lot of chasing.
	This episode established the Gwen Cooper is very empathetic, and a good policewoman, but otherwise falls flat.
	This is basically Welsh Species. Or if you're feeling extraordinarily generous, Welsh Liquid Sky. This episode takes a ridiculous, derivative premise and runs it into the ground and over the top. It's fun, though.

Episode 3: Ghost Machine
Torchwood discovers a piece of alien technology that calls up glimpses of the past and future.

	Not much sexual tension other than the suggestive shooting range scene, but that's enough for two peppers!
	Chasing, lots of stabbing
	Great minor characters and a "slice of life"feel. One of the characters is first introduced as a sadistic young murderer/rapist, and we meet them again many years later as a pathetic, old, dying, mentally ill man. A complicated portrayal. The first instance of a major Torchwood theme: being haunted by the past.
	Rather understated except for the shooting range scene. Apparently, teaching superb marksmanship to someone who's never held a gun is easy and takes only a single session; all you have to do is stand up tightly against them, gently stroke their arm and whisper in their ear. Yes, it's just that easy, if you're Captain Jack.

Episode 4: Cyberwoman
Ianto has been hiding his Cybergirlfriend in the basement, wearing Cyberfetishwear, strapped to a Cybertable. He tries to fix her up, but it doesn't work and she starts trying to kill everyone.

	Kissing under dangerous circumstances, sexually suggestive aggressiveness, Cyberfetishwear
	Chasing, electrocution, bashing, vivisection, shooting, chomping, debrainification.
	Ianto suddenly becomes an interesting character. Poor Ianto! He really loves his hot deadly Cybergirlfriend. There's a lot of intensity under that carefully controlled exterior. We also learn that Ianto is very loyal.
	This episode is Cyberbananas. I loved it.

Episode 5: Small World
Torchwood investigates killer fairies. That's not innuendo; this is probably the most heterosexual episode of Season One.

	Topless Captain Jack (brief)! Otherwise pretty tame.
	Chasing, multiple magical asphyxiations.
	We learn a lot about Jack in this episode. We learn he's capable of taking his relationships very seriously, despite previous indications of ruthless and callous behavior. He has a very caring, romantic, nostalgic streak. We also learn more about his willingness to make split-second moral trade-offs, a scary trait which becomes important much later on. I thought this episode was quite moving.
	Fairies? Science fiction? I guess so...

Episode 6: Countrycide
Torchwood goes camping.

	A snatch of innuendo, plus some Owen and Gwen action. Otherwise tame.
	Chasing, dismemberment, shooting, bashing, shooting, chasing, bashing, dismemberment, chasing, field surgery, chomping.
	Some good insight into Gwen's motivations, her passion for what she does and the way her job is affecting her life and her relationship with Rhys. Otherwise, not much development.
	This episode is basically Welsh Chainsaw Massacre. If you like horror movies (and I do) you'll love it, otherwise you'll hate it. And I know this has to happen in every horror plot... but they shouldn't have split up the team! Bad things always happen when you split up the team. I know this from my own combat experience (I, umm, used to play D&D when I was a teenager, so I'll go ahead and call that "combat experience" for the sake of this review).

Episode 7: Greeks Bearing Gifts
Toshiko has a lesbian affair with a dangerous alien.

	Kissing, non-explicit sex, suggestive displaying of teeth.
	Shooting, bashing, organ removal
	Great development for Toshiko's character. We learn about her unrequited love and her frustration at being taken for granted. I also liked the part at the very end with her and Jack. It was subtle and well-done.
	Toshiko seems uncharacteristically naive and the character of the alien doesn't seem fully-fleshed. There's really nothing to the character beyond the broadest of outlines: Dangerous Sexy Alien!

Episode 8: They Keep Killing Suzie
Suzie returns from the dead.

	Nothing until the end, when there's brief blazing innuendo bombshell.
	Stabbing, stabbing, cheeky tasering, post-mortem stabbing, chasing, shooting, shooting.
	Suzie does a great job playing a complicated, mysterious mixture of victim and villain. Loved the dark humor in this episode. We see that there's always going to be a cloud of doom over the Torchwood team. The theme of facing/fleeing death is also developed.
	The plot is built on a complicated causal chain involving amnesia, drug-induced brainwashing, strategic suicide, Emily Dickinson poems and secret computer codes. If you think about it for more than half a second it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

Episode 9: Random Shoes
A lonely, sensitive young man tries to solve the mystery of his death.

	No pepper! Just romantic yearning, which goes under the drama category.
	Traffic accident, half-hearted nerd-wrestling, light chasing.
	This episode is told from the point of view of an outsider obsessed with Torchwood. Like "Ghost Machine", it's more about the normal than the supernatural. Gwen Cooper shines in this episode. Funny, sad, moving.
	A very understated episode. The mechanics of the plot are left a mystery, but in a self-referential way.

Episode 10: Out of Time
Three people from 1953 fall out of a rift in time and find they can't go back. Torchwood tries to get them acclimated to the present. One adjusts, two don't.

	Owen has sex (in a classy way).
	No action.
	A beautiful story about how humans define themselves as a product of their time. Each of the travelers has a totally distinct, compelling and unique personality and you can understand why they make the choices they do. The end of Jack's new friendship was extraordinarily sad.
	No batboy. This episode is so tasteful it might as well have been introduced by Alistair Cooke.

Episode 11: Combat
Owen goes undercover to try and infiltrate an alien fight club.

	Considerable tension between Owen and the fight club dude, but it never goes anywhere.
	Chomping, barfighting, pitfighting, chomping.
	Owen is depressed. I get it. Did we need this episode to know that?
	This is Welsh Fight Club. I know that, even though I've never seen Fight Club. I have no desire to ever see Fight Club. Wait, I did accidentally see five minutes of Fight Club at one point, and the dialogue irritated me so much it made me want to punch the television set. So why is Torchwood making me watch Fight Club? Argh!

Episode 12: Captain Jack Harkness
Jack and Toshiko fall through a rift in time back to 1941, in the middle of a ballroom party for the troops about to head off to fight the Germans. Jack meets his namesake, the "real" Captain Jack Harkness.


	Light fighting, shooting, off-screen bombing.

	All the steps involved in passing the message forward to the present were totally unbelievable, but I was too busy crying to care.

Episode 13: End of Days

	Just kissing and hugging, but it hits the spot.
	Bubonic plague, shooting, stabbing, Welsh kaiju
	Every character gets a large roomful of furniture to chew.
	This is as over the top as it gets.

Other Torchwood Season One reviews:

A more detached approach and rating system: Planetzogblog
Like A Whisper: "Feminism, Critical Race Consciousness, Queer Politics, & Dr. Who Too?!?" A bit of season one critical analysis here.
Hilarious Torchwood fake Facebook pages (Captain Jack and Season 1&2 recaps)

More on Anger, and why Catharsis Doesn't Work

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:20:00 +0000

I've been thinking about this topic on and off all week, and how to respond to this argument of support for the hydraulic theory of anger (though the comment supports the theory as description, not prescription, and that's an important difference)

Ultimately, there can be many different reasons to explain the mechanism of the same pattern - in this case, the anger-release-calm, anger-release-calm pattern.

The cycle starts off when something in the world doesn't go our way. The world intrudes into the boundary of the self. Maybe we feel physically threatened. Or we feel a loss of control. Or we just feel really small all of a sudden. We then respond to the world by attempting to shore up and strengthen the boundaries of the self. These responses can have positive, neutral or negative outcomes for ourselves and for other people.

Driving in Atlanta traffic presents numerous opportunities to understand anger. Let's say I'm on my way to work, and I've managed to achieve an emotional equilibrium within my immediate environment. I'm listening to some rocking music. I haven't hit too many red lights. I'm on time. I'm in a rhythm. Things are going right with the world. Then someone cuts me off and comes dangerously close to hitting my car.

My first, split-second reaction is visceral. I doubt a cat or a dog or a monkey would react differently. There must be a short release of adrenaline, my heart rate goes up, my brain goes into overdrive, and the fight-or-flight response kicks in.

However, since I've been socialized extensively on how to react in these situations, as are most drivers, this reaction doesn't last long. I don't drive off the road or try to kill the person who cut me off. I assess the situation realistically. My heart rate goes back to normal only a couple seconds later. I realize my muscles are tense, so I relax them; I'm holding my breath, so I let it out, perhaps saying a few four-letter words at the same time.

Within a few seconds, I start having a second reaction. This is a much more emotional reaction than visceral. My boundaries of self come into play. I'm not just a bundle of nerves anymore, I'm a human being, and I've been insulted by whatever other human being was driving that other car. They've invaded my space. The world is suddenly out of equilibrium. I imagine their thoughtlessness, their lack of care; I imagine them imagining me, or not imagining me. I imagine that the world has a sense of justice, and now I've experienced the world's injustice. They don't care about me, and I care about the fact that they don't care about me. It's not right for a person to act that way. I wish I could reach out and make them know that. Make them. My control was taken away. I want to reassert control. At this stage, a whole chain of thoughts and imaginings are running around in my head. I'm angry.

Then a few more seconds and I'm over the second stage. I'm on my way to recovering equilibrium. That chain of thoughts runs out, it's not attached to anything... it slips out of my head. I'm not angry anymore.

I don't have a road rage problem, so if you were driving with me in the passenger side, you wouldn't know any of this was going on. The only outward signs would be a short cursing spell and a slight tightening of hands on the wheel. At absolute worst, I'd bang my fist lightly on the steering wheel. I don't know exactly why I curse and steering-wheel bang, but if I had to guess, it's because I've been socialized into that reaction by hearing and seeing so many other people do the same thing.

I called visceral reactions the first stage, and emotional reactions the second stage, but in most other situations, it's not that clear-cut. The second can come first. Or they can feed into each other and go back and forth. That's how we start to see these anger cycles.

Here's an example of the second stage going first. The next morning after the 2004 election was a rough one for me. I'd worked on the Kerry campaign. I was terrified of what George W. Bush would do to this country. The morning we lost, I definitely felt like the world was not only invading my boundaries of self, but burning them down with a blowtorch and then laughing at them. I was powerless, pathetic, depressed, fearful and hopeless. I went out for a smoke break (I quit that year, actually). Another coworker on his smoke break said "Looks like Bush won. I didn't even like him that much, so I'm not happy about it. But I've always voted Republican and I always will, that's just what we do in my family."

I was suddenly very angry. My sense of being under attack by the world was based on social, political and emotional factors, but all those complicated factors had just crystallized into the presence of a human being standing next to me. I had a friendly relationship with this guy, I already knew his stupid political views, and we always had nice conversations, because we never discussed politics. But all this social context was unimaginable in that split second. I was having a visceral reaction: ENEMY ATTACK FIGHT HURT.

My reaction was to turn my face, grit my teeth, walk a few steps away and sigh. The feeling passed. My heart rate returned to normal. I got over it.

I don't want to get pinned down to any one psychological or philosophical theory about the boundaries of self. They're very flexible. You often feel like your self is interwoven with your family and loved ones, your community, even the world itself. In general, I find that it's a useful way to think about issues involving control and anger.

As a teenager I engaged in several violent situations -- basically, short fistfights -- where I became trapped in one of the stages, and it turned into aggression. It's easier to talk about the two extremely mild examples above, because to dissect my emotions at their most violent would be too depressing and embarrassing. I will say that I can look back to those teenage years and pinpoint an interesting variety of reasons why I released that aggression.

1) I had no choice. It was a true fight-or-flight situation, and I couldn't run. Oddly enough, I didn't feel particularly angry when I hit.
2) I had an opportunity to run, or to turn away, but a combination of external factors made me feel so powerless that hitting back was the only way I could regain any sort of emotional control. I felt like I would die if I didn't.
3) I was drunk and it felt good.

With all that in mind I want to touch on the situation that marythemom raised in her comment: the cycle of domestic violence. It's extremely disturbing to try and put myself in the mind of an abuser but I'm going to give it a try. Looking at my own reactions, I can get halfway there, and then I have to squeamishly imagine the rest of it.

Abusers beat their victims (usually a man beating a woman or children, but I'll use the word generically) for two reasons: to gain a sense of control (emotional), and because it feels good (visceral). It must be a complicated mixture, and some tend more to one extreme than another. I can imagine that some abusers are totally conscienceless and do it out of sheer enjoyment. For them, it's like having a really fun boxing match, except that they're not in danger of getting hit back. They get that rush of adrenaline, the raised heartrate, the heightened sensitivity, and they don't think beyond that.

However, I think it's more common that abusers don't get that much physical enjoyment out of the abuse. It's more of an emotional issue. They feel like they're out of control. Their job is getting to them. They're not achieving all the goals that their society tells them they should have achieved. Something is holding them back.

It's accepted in our society, and shown in every type of media, that men can express their anger physically. These expressions of anger don't make you any less of a man. In fact, they make you more of a man. The abuser already has a link between control and aggression nested in their mind. One day, the abuser experiments by hitting someone close. The world becomes crystallized into that person next to them, and a visceral reaction sets in... if they hit that person, they'll reinforce their boundaries of self. They assert themselves as someone with power, someone in control. They hit. It feels good. Then, when the adrenaline fades away, it feels really, really bad.

They apologize and make desperate promises. But the problem is that they've already established a pattern. Feel bad > hit > feel good > feel bad > apologize/justify > feel good > feel bad > hit. Instead of breaking the pattern, they refine it in order to reduce cognitive dissonance. In other words, they don't want to think of themselves as bad people, so they build up elaborate justifications. She was asking for it. He didn't want to do this, but he had to do it. He had no choice. He didn't like it, but it had to be done. She drove him to it. The abuser has built up a fantasy world that justifies their abuse. They don't want to move outside that world, because then they'd have to face the moral consequences of their actions.

It's a pattern, but it's not a pattern where a unitary force (anger) builds up and then has to be released. It's a complicated interplay between control, the boundaries of the self, imagination and pleasure. There have been studies done that prove the catharsis/hydraulic theory does not work to reduce anger. A lot of modern approaches I've seen explicitly reject the hydraulic buildup-release model as being too convenient... especially convenient when it comes to the rationalization stage. Instead, to simplify the process, they use other models, such as addiction.

I've found that reading about Buddhism is also a great way to approach anger - anger as craving. Many Buddhists work to move beyond this craving. In Buddhism, you can't just say "I am going to control my anger!" You have to ask, who is this "I" in the first place? And why does this "I" feel the need to control, much less the need to control anger?

I'm certainly not cut out to be a nun, and my particular branch of Buddhism doesn't focus so much on perfecting the emotions. But it's definitely helped me get a greater sense of awareness. Those are the two key terms for me: awareness, and letting-go. I'm not in control all the time, and I'm aware of that. I'm going to feel things that I don't like to feel, and feel things I don't want to feel, but these feelings will pass. I don't need to hold on to them. I don't need to police the boundaries of my self in order to feel whole.

Finally, getting to anger in children: children feel intensely, and lack the adult capacity for self-awareness. Their boundary between the self and the world is constantly shifting. The world constantly intrudes on them. They have their control granted and then taken away for seemingly mysterious reasons. They imitate adult patterns of aggression without understanding the roots of the pattern. They want to explain all these powerful things they feel and imagine but can't find the right words. Habit reassures them and anchors them, even when the habit brings emotional pain.

You could actually say all of these things about some adults, now that I think of it! Anyway, anger issues in children are just ridiculously complicated, and listing it out like this is so frustrating, it almost makes me want to start banging my head against the keyboard... RRRARRR!!

Sigh... it'll pass...

A couple responses to the TDD post

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:21:00 +0000

I started replying to comments but decided to post the replies here to the main page, since it's such an interesting and new subject. Several people have left comments on the TDD post; here are my responses to the last two.

@Essie:
I wonder what the social attitude/stigma towards "Temper Dysregulation Disorder" is going to be in five years time. I do hope it doesn't become the "spoiled brat" diagnosis. Then again, it would probably have to compete with ADHD for that label.

I was recently discussing with my friend and neighbor how according to the DSM-V, her son doesn't have Asperger's anymore. He now has plain "autism spectrum disorder". She said she was actually relieved, because Asperger's has been getting a reputation as "not a real problem". Her son does so well academically that he's in a gifted program, but he's also got some major special needs and just can't function in regular junior high school without extra supports in place. They've had to struggle hugely, even to the point of getting a lawyer, over the services he needs to stay in school. They've noticed that over the last decade as the awareness of Asperger's has grown, and the negative stigma has decreased, there's a sort of reverse positive stigma -- "it's just that they're extra quirky" -- that isn't helpful at all in terms of getting him supports.

It's such a fine line. Labels can help us get help for our kids, but they come with such huge baggage... social stigma, inaccuracies, false predictions.

@marythemom:
I've watched some documentaries on childhood bipolar and read some articles, and from what I can tell, true, unmistakeable mania is way beyond what I've seen from my son. There was a little girl talking -- very calmly and with a smile on her face -- about how she wanted to cut off her mom's head with a knife. Children who thought they were invulnerable and could jump off roofs or out of moving cars. Children who kept seeing weird sexual hallucinations during the daytime. These weren't children who had attachment issues; I think all of them were bio kids from regular families.

I have a feeling that future studies are going to show that some anti-psychotics are going to work equally well on TDD and childhood bipolar. I really hope someone will do some therapy studies as well. When we started out, we had so many ideas for how to manage fits, but I've had to disregard most of them as worthless. They may work for regular, developmentally appropriate temper tantrums, but they don't work for my son.

And as a side note, I realize a lot of them are based on "the hydraulic theory of anger", a disparaging term I've heard a few times. It's the idea that anger builds up inside you like steam, and to get rid of the anger you have to express it somehow in order to release it. That makes intuitive sense -- we want to believe it's true -- but nobody has really been able to back that up. Extend it to other emotions and it doesn't make sense. If you're happy, and you express your happiness by jumping into the air while pumping your fists and shouting "I FEEL GOOD" does that release your happiness like steam so that you suddenly stop being happy?

I do think anger/rage/temper causes extreme physical and mental tension, and part of defusing it is releasing that tension, but we have to figure out how to release the tension in ways that don't involve expressing the anger, even against inanimate objects. That just creates a habit of expressing anger.

Toddlers and Torchwood

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:04:00 +0000

I had a fairly productive weekend. Right now, I'm a bit stressed because I'm neck-deep in a semi-crisis at my agency. It's a combination of typically high turnover and terrible communication practices by social workers. Perhaps they practice keeping secrets so much that they forget how to actually tell important things to large groups of people. I don't talk about my job here, but I will say that I have a bit of experience when it comes to the psychology of communication about change. You really should not have the junior-most person in the organization sending stakeholders a mass email saying "I'm leaving and everything is changing, but I won't say exactly how, I'll just let you the reader fill in the blanks with the worst-case scenario, but don't worry, nothing will really change."

On the bright side, we finally have a subsidy and reimbursement amount for BB, which means a presentation date can be scheduled soon. I'm happy with the amount. I'm going to regard this as a solid enough milestone to go ahead and buy some general parenting books on toddlers. I'm especially worried about attachment issues. I remember reading "Toddler Adoption" a while back, but I need to go dig it up again.

I've also been watching a lot of Torchwood lately. It was added to the Netflix Watch Instantly list, and I thought I'd give it a try. The only thing I knew was that it was a Doctor Who spin-off with more adult subject matter. IT. IS. SO. FREAKING. GOOD. I'm not typically the kind of person who falls in love with TV shows. I mean, I like exciting, character-driven, well-written shows like Buffy and Angel and The Wire and Six Feet Under and Big Love and Battlestar Galactica (yes, I cried at the end even though the end was kind of stupid) and so on. But I can't recall a TV show that hooked me in as quickly as Torchwood! It's like television crack, and I'm totally addicted. Now I'm listening to Torchwood radio plays and buying Torchwood books along with the toddler books.

Here's why. I'll get the bad stuff on the table right away. The series starts off a little unevenly. I thought that some of the first season episodes were too sentimental. And if you're into serious/hard science fiction (and I am) you need to suspend your disbelief. Like Doctor Who, it's really more "science fantasy". Especially factoring in all the time travel, there are often plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. Much of the basic plot structure clearly comes from a kind of Buffy/Angel/X-Files secret team format. Plus, you don't really get the full picture unless you're watching Doctor Who, and I was never a huge fan and have only sporadically watched the new Doctor Who series.

The good stuff: the acting is fantastic. The show takes a lot more risks than any American equivalent I can think of. The subject matter is dark and the body count is high, so even the plots may start off as derivative, they soon get complicated. You know where the shows start but not necessarily where they're going to end. The characters are actually changed by what they go through and events are taken very seriously... but there's still plenty of cheeky humor. And then there's the fact that the team is led by a heroic bisexual cosmic space slut. Captain Jack Harkness is an absolutely fantastic character. To really get the full story on Captain Jack, you have to jump back and forth a bit between Torchwood and Doctor Who, and luckily Netflix Watch Instantly has them all available. If you want to start from the very beginning, watch Doctor Who Series One Episodes 9-12 then start on Torchwood Series One.

I only have one episode left to watch: Children of Earth Day Five. Day Four was grueling... and heartbreaking. I knew what was going to happen, but I still cried just a little bit.

At least I know there's going to be a Season Four. There's also a development to Americanize the show to some degree and put a version on FOX. I'm rather leery about that. It's not Torchwood without awesomely gratuitous gay sex, and I don't see that happening on FOX!

Right now I'm trying to get my mother to watch Torchwood too. She's not really a sci-fi head like me, but she's much more of an Anglophile, so it shouldn't be too hard. She thinks anything from the BBC is brilliant. I've argued with her before that there are just as many crappy shows in the UK, it's just that they only export the best of them. And even those are frequently fishy. For every "Father Ted" there's an "Are You Being Served". I think my husband is probably a lost cause, though. His favorite BBC show is "Lovejoy".

Snowed In! And other stuff.

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:43:00 +0000

We got several inches of snow yesterday, which for Atlanta is quite extreme. My father flew in from Hawaii just in time, or else his flight probably would have been cancelled.

We're planning on spending a quiet weekend at home. I don't want to drive anywhere until this nasty snow melts.

I've been following the New Life missionary scandal mostly via Bastardette. It's getting more and more tangled. They're turning against each other. Their lawyer, Jorge Puello, isn't a real lawyer, and he's suspected of trafficking kids from El Salvador for prostitution. There's this matter of a supposed $60,000 bribe. The ringleader, Laura Silsby, was probably motivated by greed. I do feel sorry for the two teenagers in the group; their parents were criminally irresponsible to have involved them in this mess.

I'm sure there'll be more twists and turns, plus a few tell-all exclusives and books. Sadly, at least some of the New Lifers will make on the profit on this story when they're released from prison.

I'm waiting for the inevitable movie, which will probably be some kind of made-for-TV crap. I'd see it, if was of real cinematic quality. Perhaps the Coen brothers? Or González Iñárritu. Trailer voice: "A nation in peril. Fear of God. Love of money. Desire for children. Combined in one woman. Snaring others into her web and dragging them into the moral abyss." Laura Silsby played by Meryl Streep. Judge Bernard Saint-Vil played by Jimmy Jean-Louis. Jorge Puello played by Benicio del Toro.

On another topic, I remembered recently that I wanted to link to this post from last month at Restructure: "White people’s family roots are deeper than those of ethnic minorities."

I love this post. It absolutely eviscerates a common and irritating stereotype: that minorities have "deeper roots". I run into this all the time. Often, it's very well-meaning and put across in a self-deprecatory fashion. "Oh, I'm not very interesting, I'm just a plain vanilla kind of family, I'm a mutt, I don't have any special ties to another culture..." Even though it's often intended in a positive way, it has the potential to be really insulting and damaging.

I'm certainly insulted by it. I mean, I can trace my white ancestors back 500 years, to York and Hanover, with a few mouse clicks. I'm very connected to American culture, and I feel a strong connection to England as well. The fact that I'm not white shouldn't mean I'm an automatic foreigner to Anglo-American culture. On the other hand, I can't even read or write my father's name in Japanese, much less my Japanese grandparents' names. I don't speak Japanese. And this lack of knowledge isn't wholly by choice, it's because I grew up partly in a racist environment where being marked as non-white meant you were supposed to conform culturally or else face verbal and physical attacks.

Like Restructure says, the stereotype of "deeper roots" masks the responsibility for cutting off those very same roots.

I can think of another, more subtle effect. White people often talk about being cut off from their roots in the context of feeling a kind of existential angst that propels them into a desperate search for meaning. That's quite understandable. Modern American life increasingly isolates people. Extended families are scattered all over. Family and community ties break apart. The problem is that people often don't realize that these isolating social forces affect minorities just as much and even more. I think in a lot of movies and books and art, the angst of middle- and upper-class white people is cast in a really portentous, heroic, important light. Take that George Clooney movie Up in the Air, which I didn't see, but I heard it was about an angsty white business traveler. Nobody makes big budget movies about angsty Mexican landscapers or angsty black postal workers or angsty Korean convenience store owners. When you get into more independent movies, you finally start to see portrayals of people of color addressing complicated psychological pain: Michael Kang's "The Motel" is a great example. But usually, any minority in a lower-class job is stereotyped as hard-working but happy, or oppressed and sad and noble. Often, they help the angsty white character discover what's really important in life. Because they are simple people and they have roots. Gah!

Anyway, I love Restructure's take on the topic. I also recommend her post "Libertarianism is rational for rich white people only". It's short, sweet and to the point. My only quibble is that libertarianism is increasingly rational if you're a person of color who is very rich, but the core of the argument is awesome. It's one of my favorite libertarian takedowns, although China Mieville's Floating Utopias article is always going to be #1 for me. I love the fact that a bunch of libertarians swooped in on the comments and dropped a bunch of awful, awful arguments that were easily swatted aside.

Helloooo Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:39:00 +0000

Last night, after hearing and reading this story on NPR, I've been carefully reading through every document concerning TDD at the DSM-V site. Is that enough acronyms for one sentence?

The new rules are eventually going to have huge implications for children in foster care or adopted from foster care. These kids are the always the ones that get the most diagnoses and the most medications. They're really the front line... or more cynically stated, they're the guinea pigs. The NPR article doesn't address the issue of children in foster care, but they do provide a good summary of the importance of the DSM-V.

Doctors faced with kids struggling with explosive moods felt the diagnosis was appropriate and said that the bipolar medications they gave to children worked. Research psychiatrists worried that the children were being given a label that wasn't right for them, and saddled with the sentence of a serious mental illness for the rest of their lives.

In a move that could potentially change mental health practice all over America, the American Psychiatric Association has announced that it intends to include a new diagnosis in its upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — and hopes that new label will be used by clinicians instead of the bipolar label. The condition will be called temper dysregulation disorder, and it will be seen as a brain or biological dysfunction, but not as a necessarily lifelong condition like bipolar.

The DSM is the official dictionary of mental disorders recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. Doctors use the DSM to diagnose patients, and insurance companies use it to decide on reimbursement, so it's incredibly important in the profession of psychiatry.
By adding this new entry, the American Psychiatric Association is trying to use the considerable institutional power of the DSM to curb use of the pediatric bipolar label.

I'm cautiously optimistic about these changes. I realize that the process of making these diagnoses is sort of like asking a blindfolded person to draw a line using fingerpaint to encircle a seemingly random scattered pattern of symptoms... projected onto a moving target. But in this case, that line might be drawn slightly more accurately than the previous one.

Here are the new criteria for TDD - Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria. Sunny, when off medication, fits every single criteria.

Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria

A. The disorder is characterized by severe recurrent temper outbursts in response to common stressors.
1. The temper outbursts are manifest verbally and/or behaviorally, such as in the form of verbal rages, or physical aggression towards people or property.
2. The reaction is grossly out of proportion in intensity or duration to the situation or provocation.
3. The responses are inconsistent with developmental level.
B. Frequency: The temper outbursts occur, on average, three or more times per week.
C. Mood between temper outbursts:
1. Nearly every day, the mood between temper outbursts is persistently negative (irritable, angry, and/or sad).
2. The negative mood is observable by others (e.g., parents, teachers, peers).
D. Duration: Criteria A-C have been present for at least 12 months. Throughout that time, the person has never been without the symptoms of Criteria A-C for more than 3 months at a time.
E. The temper outbursts and/or negative mood are present in at least two settings (at home, at school, or with peers) and must be severe in at least in one setting.
F. Chronological age is at least 6 years (or equivalent developmental level).
G. The onset is before age 10 years.
H. In the past year, there has never been a distinct period lasting more than one day during which abnormally elevated or expansive mood was present most of the day for most days, and the abnormally elevated or expansive mood was accompanied by the onset, or worsening, of three of the “B” criteria of mania (i.e., grandiosity or inflated self esteem, decreased need for sleep, pressured speech, flight of ideas, distractibility, increase in goal directed activity, or excessive involvement in activities with a high potential for painful consequences; see pp. XX). Abnormally elevated mood should be differentiated from developmentally appropriate mood elevation, such as occurs in the context of a highly positive event or its anticipation.
I. The behaviors do not occur exclusively during the course of a Psychotic or Mood Disorder (e.g., Major Depressive Disorder, Dysthymic Disorder, Bipolar Disorder) and are not better accounted for by another mental disorder (e.g., Pervasive Developmental Disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety disorder). (Note: This diagnosis can co-exist with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ADHD, Conduct Disorder, and Substance Use Disorders.) The symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a drug of abuse, or to a general medical or neurological condition.

When he's on his medication, he only has 0-3 violent fits a week. Off medication, he had 1-2 every day. On medication, he's happy most of the time, except for his rarer crabby days when he seems irritable and looking for an excuse to argue, cry, fight or have a fit. Off medication, he's irritable and miserable most of the time. On medication, he's been doing well in school; off medication, we had to temporarily take him out of school so that he wouldn't hit his teacher.

I think he also has anxiety issues and trauma separation issues and ADHD issues, but these don't fit his pattern of behavior nearly as well as the TDD definition.

Now that the TDD definition is in place, some serious studies can be done that show long-term outcomes and medication appropriateness and so on. But reading through the summaries of the existing studies, I'm optimistic that what he has will ameliorate as his brain matures, and that he won't have to be on medication for all the rest of his childhood. Right now, Sunny's atypical antipsychotic medication is working for him, and we're not going to try to take him off it again until next year. We're just going to keep trying every year and hope that the therapy and the work that we've done between those times will eventually allow us to do so.

I like the fact that the discussion documents stress that TDD is not at all less serious than "real" childhood bipolar. Children with TDD end up in RTCs quite frequently. I could imagine that happening with us. Without his medication, Sunny a) would not be able to go a regular classroom b) would need one of us to stay with him constantly and be prepared to restrain him multiple times a day. Very few people could handle that. I don't know if we could handle that. An older couple with less physical strength definitely could not handle that.

The documents also discuss some of the social ramifications of these disorders. Childhood bipolar overdiagnoses started partly as a well-meaning response to stigma around Conduct Disorder. If your child had Conduct Disorder, they were a Bad Kid (and/or you were a Bad Parent) and there wasn't really much anyone could do. If they had childhood bipolar, they had some genetic or chemical bran imbalance and it wasn't their fault and it wasn't your fault either, and it could be fixed with the right pill. Kids won, parents won, drug companies won... but it turned out this wasn't such a happy ending.

I do feel lucky that we've ended up in a situation where Sunny is on a medication that really helps him and doesn't give him any side effects (so far), and that we've finally found a therapist, on our fourth try, who's actually helping him get a grip on his behavior. I know a lot of other parents aren't so lucky.

I'm still frustrated with the fact that I don't really understand why Sunny's med works for him, and why it doesn't work for kids with similar issues. And, of course, I'm terrified that it's going to cause some kind of long-term issue, sort of like that Halloween III: Season of the Witch movie where the demon masks make the kids' heads explode.

Anyway... hello TDD! Nice to meet you. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from you soon.

How are you doing in your life?

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:55:00 +0000

BB's foster mom has been very irritated with the assessment delay. At the end of last week, she called up BB's worker, and told her to "sh*t or get off the pot" (in exactly so many words) then threatened to call her supervisor.

As a result of all this pressure across multiple fronts, we're finally starting to see movement. BB's foster mom confirmed that the assessment agency called her back and said they'd received the referral. On our end, we submitted a subsidy letter so that we can get a presentation date, but we've supposedly reserved the right to change the amount in case the developmental assessment turns up anything particularly shocking.

Today, BB's worker asked us what his adoptive name would be. Like Sunny's name change, it's going to be the same as his old name, but with our last names added at the end.

It's finally starting to seem real.

We shopped a little this weekend. We need to get a play area ready and set up gates and cabinet locks. We also need a bigger bed, and one that's lower to the ground.

Sunny got to talk with FFB this weekend. His first question was "So FFB, how are you doing in your life?" Since FFB is only four years old, he didn't really know how to answer. That question struck my mother as drop-dead hilarious. She's been laughing about it for days. She says she now lives in fear that someone will ask her, "how are you doing in your life?" and she'll have to struggle to come up with her own epitaph. Sunny did eventually rephrase the question as "How are doing this week?", and FFB was able to answer that one.

Sunny's behavior has been pretty decent. He hasn't had a violent fit in more than a week now.

Sunny and I have been watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold together, about an episode every other night. I watched a few of those when I was a little kid, a long time ago, and I always wished I could have seen the whole story. Thanks to Youtube, Amazon and the long tail effect, I recently bought the complete deluxe DVD edition of Mysterious Cities of Gold!

This was such a cool show. It was a combined French and Japanese production; there's a rumor that Miyazaki was involved. I do notice the characters sometimes doing subtle things that are intensely Japanese (cheerful head-bobbing). As far as I can remember, it has a not-necessarily-imperialist perspective in that both the indigenous characters and Spaniards are presented as having complicated motives. The Spaniards are not the automatic good guys... in fact, I think Gonzalo Pizarro is the major villain.

Sunny really loves the story, and it's something that we can both enjoy watching together. The other show he's watching right now is "The Replacements". It's one of those horrible screechy cartoons that doesn't seem to have much of a point.

The music to Mysterious Cities of Gold is especially awesome. I love the theme, and the rest of the music sounds like it was composed by an avant-garde electronic group from 1970s Berlin.

Subsidy Negotiation Desperation

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:38:00 +0000

I'm probably breaking the advice I gave myself on some earlier posts. I'm facing a very tough decision I didn't even know I had to make until just this week, and I'm starting to get really desperate and emotional and angry about it.

I've been informed that the next step on BB is to request a subsidy amount. When we did this for Sunny, it wasn't that hard. The worker told me exactly what to do. I sat down in a meeting with our worker, and she gave me a list of things and amounts to request. I added the amounts together and put that in an email I sent Sunny's ex-worker (who is now BB's worker). They gave us an amount that was somewhat less than the amount requested. The end. That is, except for that weird extortion attempt at the end of last year, which we ignored.

BB has more early documented records: for example, his tox screen after birth. Currently, he's delayed on several indicators. He has a lot of stomach problems, and has been on antibiotics more than half the time he's been alive. He may need physical therapy. But his issues aren't really severe, either. His foster mom has been trying to get him a developmental assessment for almost a year now. Anything she tells me that isn't backed up by a medical evaluation is worthless, apparently, for the purposes of subsidy negotiation.

I thought we were supposed to get the developmental assessment, then we use that to negotiate the subsidy. Then we move on to visitation and a placement date. But BB's worker has been dragging her feet on the assessment. She needs to do some special kind of referral. I think she's been slacking off on that. BB's foster mom said that she said that the assessment people were supposed to call her two weeks ago but they never did, for example.

A whole tangled ticket of she-said-she-said-she-said has been growing around the process and choking forward movement. Instead of a clear 1->2->3 process, now I feel like both workers are trying to dump decisions on my shoulders, but refusing to give me any of the information I need to make these decisions. Today, I've been calling up both workers and getting desperate on the phone with them. Talking with my worker is often frustrating, because when I press her on anything, she starts talking really, really fast, repeating herself and making annoying tautological statements like "Remember, the subsidy is what it is."

At several points I had to stop with "I'm sorry, that's only making me more confused." Also, at several points, I said, in a very frustrated voice, "BUT ALL I CARE ABOUT IS THE MONEY!" That sounds awful, but what I mean is that the assessment has no bearing on whether or not we want to adopt BB. We are committed to adopting him no matter what it brings up. All I'm concerned about is getting the maximum subsidy amount in the shortest amount of time! The subsidy is crucial for anything that Medicaid doesn't cover. We would never have been able to do neurofeedback therapy for Sunny if it wasn't for his subsidy.

However, maybe it's the case that the state is so strapped that they're going to give him the same subsidy even if the assessment turns up a host of ticking time bombs. In that case, the assessment would be pointless, and we might as well skip it.

Calling up both workers and getting desperate seems to have kick-started something. I had the lightbulb idea of suggesting/promising/threatening to pay for my own assessment. I know how expensive these can be, but it's only a one-time expense. What I proposed would be to ask BB's foster mom to take him to some independent private clinic, then pay for it myself or immediately reimburse her, and then she would have the documentation to submit to them. The thought of me doing this seemed to strike the fear of God into both workers. I guess that's because a) it's a departure from the way things are supposed to work, so they might have to file new paperwork or consult superiors or do something else incredibly time-consuming b) it's logical, so they can't dismiss it out of hand, although they both expressed deep reservations.

I'm prepared to request a subsidy amount without an assessment if things are stalled any longer, though.

Hopefully, they will now argue with each other a bit, then iron it out so that we can move forward. Or maybe they'll team up against me. Gah... I don't care as long as we can get this process moving again.

The Benefits of "Open" Adoption

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:02:00 +0000

A few days ago, when Sunny was mad at me for giving him a consequence for backtalking, he said,

"I can't wait to go to [Foster Mom]'s this summer!"

After he'd calmed down and apologized, I asked him,

"You said what you said about going away this summer because you were mad and you wanted to hurt me, right?"
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"I understand that you were mad, but that wasn't a good choice. Anyway, I'm happy you're getting to visit [Foster Mom]. I'm going to miss you when you're gone for the week, but you're not going to hurt me by talking about going to visit [Foster Mom]. Also, does [Foster Mom] tolerate backtalk either?"
"Oh no she doesn't!"
"OK then."

My only concern about sending him off by himself is the short time he'll be alone on the airplane. I've flown unaccompanied myself as a child for very long flights, and I did well. But then, I've seen other children flying unaccompanied who just sob uncontrollably the whole time. And then there's this story and this story. Yikes! I think he'll be OK as long as he has something to keep him occupied. And we've also had some talks with him about what he should do in case of inappropriate touching.

The trip is going to be great from a financial perspective. I looked into short special needs summer camps at one point, and found a few that sounded awesome and therapeutic, but they all cost about a gazillion dollars. Staying with his foster family, he gets experienced special needs care, at absolutely no cost! If I offered, I know she would refuse. I'm going to send some spending money with him anyway, but she'll probably just send it right back.

NN (Sunny's bio maternal grandmother) has become pretty close to Sunny's foster family. She doesn't have a real visitation schedule anymore, she just comes over when she can to see BB, and sometimes helps Sunny's foster mom by babysitting while she takes other kids to therapy or court dates. So it will be a visit with her as well.

I suppose we have an open adoption, in the sense that we have a totally open relationship with Sunny's foster family. It's been easy to navigate. I check out the questions at Open Adoption Support sometimes, but I really have very few questions I need answered myself. Our relationship with NN is a bit more complicated but still very open. That's really been more like a "classic" open adoption scenario. We have no contact with his bio father and likely will not have any contact for many years. The relationship with his mother, on the other hand, is uniquely challenging because of her death. She's present, but present as an absence. In terms of the logistics of contact and the setting of boundaries, things could not be simpler; in terms of emotions, they could not be more complicated. If she were still alive, Sunny might have more issues about divided loyalties between his "three moms", but he also wouldn't be suffering terribly from the knowledge of questions that will never be asked or answered, words that will never be said or heard...

Sunny is especially fond of his former foster brother, who is now 4 years old. I guess I'll call him FFB. FFB came into foster care as a baby, a little after Sunny started living with his foster family, and they were very close to each other. I think he loves BB in an abstract way, but he loves FFB in a much more immediate way. When I was talking to him recently about BB, he asked if FFB could come live with us too! I reminded him that FFB had another family that he stayed with, so absolutely not.

There's some major drama going on there. Basically, FFB was reunited after a few years with Sunny's foster mom. FFB was no longer a foster child. But the two families kept up a connection. FFB's mother or father would drop him off at his ex-foster mom's home for 3-7 days at a time. Sunny's foster mom has complained about the arrangement to me. She especially complains about that fact that FFB's social skills always got better when FFB was with her, and deteriorated again when he stayed with his mother or father. She talked about constantly giving them advice, but none of the advice seemed to sink in. Then FFB's mother had another baby, and then another baby. She continued dropping them off at Sunny's foster mom's house for long, random periods.

I was at first amazed that Sunny's foster mom kept doing this. She's not a doormat by any means! She explained to me, however, that if she reported the parents for doing this, FFB would probably go into foster care again, and might not end up with her, and she didn't want his attachment disrupted. I don't think I've ever met anyone as pragmatically compassionate as her.

I think a lot of people would want to "teach FFB's mom a lesson" by not giving free babysitting. But Sunny's foster mom doesn't fit that paradigm. She doesn't trust the parents; she doesn't bother trying to control them either, and she doesn't get too emotionally invested in how they live their lives. Que será, será. She's focused more on FFB and what he needs.

Unfortunately, at this point, FFB's mom has too many kids for them all to go to Sunny's foster mom if their case gets opened again. And it looks like the case is about get opened again, from what she tells me. FFB's parents have had years to get their lives back together... years in which they've had a totally reliable source of on-demand, high-quality, free childcare. But it's not happening. It's a depressing situation.

As a result of FFB staying at Sunny's old house so much, Sunny has been able to keep up a relationship with him. He saw him on our last visit, and he talks to him on the phone sometimes. One of his first questions when he calls up his foster mom is always, "Is [FFB] there?"

I think this goes to illustrate that once someone has been her child for a while, in her mind, they're always going to be her child, whether they live with her or not, or whether they also have other parents.

Talking About Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:23:00 +0000

Last week's therapy was the first time Sunny had a meltdown with the therapist.

They were playing his new SMath game that he'd brought to therapy. I'd warned the therapist in advance that Sunny tends to get a little obsessed and overemotional when it comes to new games. Sure enough, he had an argument with her about the right way to play the game. She said that she wasn't able to play the game with him until he calmed down. He yelled and argued and cried and blamed her. On the positive side, he was able to pull himself out of the state, apologize, and finish up the session well.

He's on a trend recently where he reacts by instantly blaming others. We've been hearing a lot of things like "you just want me to starve to death", "you just want to ruin my life" and our favorite, "you just want me to be bored." Because it's just so much fun for us when Sunny is bored! Ha ha ha.

He had another meltdown before we even got to the parking lot of the therapist's office. She thought that might happen, and came outside for a little bit. We had a good talk about how Sunny needs to label his feelings more, because he's afraid of his feelings and defaults every negative feeling to anger, which then turns into "I'm angry because YOU made me angry."

After Sunny calmed down again -- and he stayed OK for the rest of the night -- we talked about how he was feeling embarrassed. He didn't want his therapist to see him lose control, and when she did, that made him very sad, and embarrassed, and then angry. I reminded him that maybe if he talked about being embarrassed, he could keep from moving into anger.

This morning we had another episode that could have turned into a hitting fit, but didn't. I asked him not to touch a sausage. He touched it. That's how it started. I just kept a calm tone and told him I was waiting for a real apology. There was a lot of yelling and accusations: I wanted him to be late for school. I wanted him to starve to death because I said he couldn't finish his cereal until he apologized. I wanted to ruin his day. I was a liar.

I stuck to my points:

- He needs to do what I ask him the first time I ask. I didn't want him to get hot sausage grease all over his hands. Contrary to his argument, I don't need to fully explain my reason before I ask him to do something.
- When he apologizes, it's not a real apology if he yells "Sorry" in a nasty tone while not looking me in the eyes.
- It's also not a real apology unless, at the very least, he takes responsibility.

He came close to really losing it at a few moments, but he finally pulled himself out of it. We were able to talk about the fact that we knew he was embarrassed. He knew he was wrong, but he kept inventing excuses, and that caused him to feel embarrassed and hang his head and hide his eyes and refuse to look at us. He agreed that he'd been feeling embarrassed.

I also asked him Sunny if he wanted to push me in the kitchen when he was angry. He paused a little bit before he said "yes, I did." I congratulated him for not pushing me. Instead, he'd come to me for a hug when he was ready to calm down.

It's so hard to know when an issue like this is a pointless power struggle, and when it's important to hold the line to establish consistency. One thing I've decided to give up on is making him wear sweaters or roll up his pant cuffs. It's not worth it. But I still think we have to come down like a brick wall when he starts with the blame routine. I believe Sunny's number one challenge in life is going to be anger management. We can't just let it slide. We have to do everything we can right now to keep it from being a bigger problem later.

Exploring "embarrassment" and maybe talking about shame and guilt as well is a path that seems very promising. It's not hard to tell when he's feeling that way, because he doesn't have any problems making eye contact under normal circumstances.

The "starve to death" accusations are irritating consider the vast amounts of food he consumes! But I think it's much more about keeping his brain temporarily occupied than about the food itself. He often wants to eat small things, just because eating is something to do. For example, he thinks of his tiny multivitamins as a dessert, and sometimes he says he's hungry so that he can eat his vitamins early, and after that he's satisfied.

We're pretty strict when it comes to snacks. He can eat everything he wants at breakfast and dinner; we encourage him to eat second helpings until he says he's full. But he doesn't get any more than one snack between mealtimes. I'm kind of a hardass on this issue because I think that nonstop snacking on candy and chips throughout the day establishes bad eating habits: that is, if you feel bored, you eat something, instead of doing something. It's hard to know when to draw the line, though, because I don't want food to turn into too much of a control issue.

Getting back to labeling feelings, I've watched this video podcast from Welcome to My Brain a few times. It applies so much to Sunny! Our therapist is obviously on the exact same page. The game sounds like a great idea.

Sunny went to a birthday party this weekend for his little neighborhood friend who just turned three. All the other kids were around 3-4 years old, and Sunny played with them wonderfully. His friend's grandparents kept telling me how much they love having Sunny come over to play. I just wanted to mention that, so I'm able to end this post on a positive note!

Haiti News Over the Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:14:00 +0000

I said I wouldn't follow up, but I somehow feel obligated.

Medical evacuations resumed late yesterday, thank goodness. There's no telling how many people died because airlifts were suspended for five days.

Then there was the child trafficking arrest story: the ten Americans who were arrested trying to sneak a bunch of Haitian kids across the Dominican border. I read about that here and followed up here at the Baltimore Sun, where there's also video.

Among the many disturbing aspects to the story is the fact that one of the Americans is an 18-year-old girl. Her father back in the States has been talking to the press, but as far as I can tell, he hasn't taken any responsibility for encouraging her to do something so ridiculously outrageous and dangerous. The pastor, also, hasn't taken responsibility as the leader of this effort. All they say is "but we meant well!" repeated ad nauseam.

I'm a little sore about this subject because we just had a long talk with Sunny this morning about the importance of taking responsibility and not blaming other people. He's not that good at it yet, but at least he has an excuse: he's only seven years old.

Charlie Crist's Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:06:00 +0000

This is heartbreaking.

U.S. Suspends Haitian Airlift in Cost Dispute
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: January 29, 2010
MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.

The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.

[...]

The suspension could be catastrophic for patients, said Dr. Barth A. Green, the co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine that had been evacuating about two dozen patients a day.

“People are dying in Haiti because they can’t get out,” Dr. Green said.

[...]

Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole — in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency — by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Only 34 people have been given humanitarian parole for medical reasons, said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. The National Disaster Medical System, if activated, would cover the costs of caring for patients regardless of their legal status.

Crist later defended himself.

Miami Herald: But Crist too has denied he's responsible.

In a statement Saturday, he noted that ``between 60 and 80 Haitian orphans arrived at Miami International Airport'' Friday night, and that ``at no time has Florida closed our doors to those impacted by the earthquake in Haiti.

``To the contrary, Florida has been at the forefront of the crisis in Haiti -- caring for the injured, reuniting families, comforting those who have been devastated by loss.''

What a scumbag. Of course Florida is at the forefront, because it's right next door to Haiti. (Just a note... I used to live there, and I even used to have a job in the Little Haiti neighborhood).

From what I can gather, Crist is arguing that as long as they accept airlifts of "orphans", it's OK for them to stop every other medical evacuation. So let's say a Haitian family has one child they were living with, and that child was severely injured in the quake. Their other child was in an orphanage when the quake happened, and is healthy. Guess which child gets a flight to Miami?

The Superbowl is apparently a part of this disgusting mess, as well. Officials need to save hospital beds for Superbowl visitors.

I don't know what to do about this... maybe I'll send an email to the Secretary of State or my representative. I'll try typing something up later.

Foster Care Adoptions: How Not to Give Up (Part II)

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:19:00 +0000

Thanks for all the comments on the last post! It's time for some corrections and additions before I move on.

When it comes to religion, at least one parent and one social worker have left informative comments and mentioned that in their experience, they don't see being a non-Christian as a major handicap in their area. That's great. I don't think I need to take back or delete anything I said earlier, but I do need to add quite a bit more qualification.

I live in Georgia, which is one of the Bibliest parts of the Bible Belt. I also live in Atlanta, which is fairly diverse and open-minded, though the city is so informally segregated that it's hard to see that. We elected the first Buddhist representative to Congress, after all. Much of the rest of Georgia complains about Atlanta being full of "gays, blacks, and liberals". So this is an environment where non-Christians are not exactly ostracized, and Christianity is incredibly diverse, but it's still intensely Christian. On Sunday morning, you'll often find the gay black liberals dressed up and on their way to the gay black liberal church.

If you're a non-Christian prospective parent who lives in, say, San Francisco or Manhattan, and you're signed with a county agency and are not doing any interstate, then you should probably just ignore all my dire warnings in that section. But if you are doing interstate, you might want to plan for the worst-case scenario... a child's social worker in rural Oklahoma might have a totally different perspective on what makes the right kind of family than your local worker does.

SocialWrkr24/7 also left some great information on family ranking. Ranking is definitely subjective and will vary enormously according to your region and the kind of child you are submitting your homestudy for. Single dads and single moms may be preferred for children with specific kinds of histories and issues.

Matching

Once you're licensed and homestudied, the agonizing wait begins. More than anything else, you'll want to know, HOW LONG? But no one can tell you. According to Page 32 of the Adoptuskids.org report, this is the stage at which the majority of families who drop out will drop out.

Each agency does things different ways. When you're working with state and national photolistings, you'll follow this general procedure:

1) register (usually a quick process)
2) search the photolistings
3) submit inquiries on children. You might do this through the site, or perhaps the site will give the child's worker's phone number and.or email address.
4) submit your homestudy. Usually, you cannot do this yourself. Your worker needs to do it for you.

This is an emotionally draining process. It can start to feel like bargaining at a swap meet. You quickly realize that the younger, healthier children will have had a ton of studies submitted on them, and you have a minuscule chance of being accepted. Then you feel guilty not submitting it for an older child with more special needs who might not have any inquiries at all. You begin to feel an uncommon mixture of emotion: humiliation mixed with guilt and inadequacy.

The process isn't helped by the fact that many of the photolistings are poorly run. At one point, it took me about three months of calling before I got in touch with someone about a particular listing. Then they told me the boy had been adopted six months ago. Apparently, this is very common.

At this point, your time networking and being in touch with other adoptive parents is hopefully starting to pay off. You'll probably need to just give up searching on certain states and certain locations. You'll begin to realize that some of the photolistings are really phantoms and no one will ever actually adopt interstate out of that location, anyway.

If you're working with a county agency, your search will most likely concentrate on local placements. Many children won't be photolisted at all. You're relying predominantly on your worker to network for you.

Another path is meeting children at adoption events. We never went to any of these. However, if you're looking at older children (roughly 10-18) you need to think really long and hard about going to them, even though nobody ever wants to go to these events. Social workers hate them, I'm sure the children hate them, parents hate them. You'll imagine your nightmare scenario... a child walks up to you and asks "will you be my mommy?" Then you break down and start sobbing uncontrollably.

There is only one ethical, positive thing about these events: these older children deserve some say when it comes to their future family. This is a chance for them to gather information for themselves, to choose, and to have some small degree of control over the future of their childhood. You can't expect a 13-year-old to pick their own family based only on a pile of homestudies, so meeting their potential future family at some point in the process, in some way, before final decision... this is absolutely crucial.

I also think that many of these events are highly structured, in recognition of the chaotic emotions involved, so it's not like the workers just throw the two groups into the same room and yell "PICK ONE".

How long is too long?

The only way to answer that question is to ask other people who've gone through the same agency. Is your wait time still in the average, or starting to stretch to the extremes?

It took us eight months to get full homestudy approval. Then it took another eight months to go to committee, and we were matched the first time we went to committee. Towards the end I was seriously considering starting over again somewhere else.

A very rough guide might be that if you never even get to committee in a year, you should re-evaluate. Once you get to committee, at least you know that people are considering you seriously and the process is working somehow. Going to committee doesn't mean you have to accept the placement. It does mean you will have the opportunity to get a lot more information on the child(ren), so you can make a truly informed decision as to whether you should withdraw your application, or stay.

Here are some reasons you might not be getting to committee:

1) Your worker is doing a bad job because they are a bad worker. They are not submitting your homestudy or not getting in touch with any other workers. The solutions are to switch workers at the same place, or leave. You might also try to do much of the worker's job for them in terms of contact, but this is an exhausting and dangerous project.
2) Your worker is doing a bad job because they think your family isn't that suitable. Maybe you have alienated them for some reason. This could be your fault, or their fault. Ideally, social workers would tell you to give up and go away outright, but sometimes they might not want to deal with the confrontation. If you can't repair your relationship with the worker, you'll have to switch or leave.
3) Your expectations are not realistic. You are not applying for a wide enough population of children. This could be out of entitlement, or simply out of naiveté. For example, if I'd restricted my applications to Asian children only, I doubt I'd be matched today.
4) Your homestudy is bad.

If you think it's because your homestudy is bad, and your agency can't or won't fix it, you have some hard choices. If you think it's their fault, you should go start the process again with another agency. If you switch, do it politely and without burning bridges. Social workers from your old agency might be friends with social workers at your new agency.

Also, try to be as objective as possible, without beating yourself up, and consider the possibility that maybe your family is just not suitable. If you make that determination, I still don't think you need to give up. If your passion for the goal is still burning, then take a break for a year. Work on yourself, work on your family. Then start fresh. I know that sounds really insulting. But not everyone is suited for this. You can't be perfect, but you have to be strong.

Facing Change

You may realize that you're changing many of your attitudes and parameters. All kinds of things can change. Some people even start the process married, and then end up reapplying as single parents.

One common thing that happens is that you radically reevaluate your attitude towards contact with birth/first parents. According to the report I've been using, it seems the majority of foster care adoptive parents (about 2/3 of them) do have post-adoption contact. You might not understand why at the beginning. Aren't these the people that have abused and neglected their children? By the end, you will probably have changed your mind and realized that the issue is a lot more complicated. Most trainings have a strong focus on the importance of some kind of contact for the wellbeing of your child. Sometimes, of course, contact is absolutely out of the question, but there's usually at least one or two extended relatives who represent a safe connection.

It's hard to know how much you can and should change when it comes to special needs and number of children. Sometimes, you need to trust your instincts and hold to your original parameters. You are the person who knows yourself best.

What to do during the wait

- Don't put your life on hold
- Join internet support groups and keep doing research
- Go to extra trainings. Sometimes you can satisfy hour requirements by online study and book reports, but it's so much more useful to go physical events and meet other people
- Keep the healthy relationships with your partner, friends and family; don't shrink into yourself and become isolated. It might feel like you've walked through a door into a totally different world, and everyone else has stayed behind on the other side of the door.
- Be aggressive about contact with your worker. Follow up and stay in touch. Don't let them forget you. Ask for rough timelines on anything they promise. If they get irritated with you, try to manage this irritation. You can remind them that you just want to be "proactive" and you will be equally proactive on behalf of your child(ren) when they are placed with you.
- Don't be too aggressive! And don't contact them just because you happen to be feeling especially pissed-off and depressed. Put down the phone, take a deep breath, and ask yourself if you really need to contact them at that very moment. You might mention in general ways that you're feeling a bit stressed, but keep your inner turmoil to yourself. They are very busy and it's not their job to be your therapist. They also need to know that you can manage difficult, stressful situations. If you think the wait is too stressful, then how are you going to handle placement, which might be 10x as stressful?

To be continued

I was reminded that two things I should have brought up in Part I are a) partner issues and b) a history of abuse or trauma. I'll try and get back to them in Part III. Any other topics I should cover? I think I'm going to stop the series pretty soon after the matching process. Post-adoption support is just such a massive topic...

(link to Part I)

Foster Care Adoptions: How Not to Give Up (Part One First Draft)

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:15:00 +0000

I've seen a lot of comments in various debates recounting how some parents were forced to adopt internationally because they were not allowed to adopt from foster care.

I'm skeptical of most of these claims. Not all. Just most. You can see a comment I left here for more details. I've also addressed it several times in older blog posts here. I won't recap those arguments. Instead, I'm going to try and do something constructive: giving a guide to overcoming barriers to adopting from foster care.

I'm really not the best person to do this. I'm sure I'm going to get some things wrong. If anyone wants to comment or email correcting me on details, please go ahead, and I'll update this blog post later and credit you.

This guide is mainly for people who feel overwhelmed by the process, who don't understand it and are terrified of it, and who are worried they'll be discriminated against. You might be even more scared after you finish reading, but you also might feel better about being forewarned. If you've already adopted from foster care, or have a lot of experience, it won't apply as much. It also applies much more to adoption than to fostering.

Get educated

Read this report: Barriers & Success Factors in Adoption From Foster Care: Perspectives of Families & Staff. Concentrate very hard on the staff section. Also read this report: "Listening to Parents: Overcoming the Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care". These two reports will go a long way in giving you a realistic perspective on the process.

Look for Yahoo! Groups and forums and communities for foster care parents, foster care adoptive parents and older child adoptive parents. Get involved and ask questions. Try hard to get as much specific information as possible about your geographical area. Foster care adoption is incredibly local. You might be in a good location, or a hopeless one. Read lots of blogs. Accounts by adults with experiences of being in foster care are especially important to find and read.

Homestudy Yourself

Read this page about homestudies from childwelfare.gov and try to do the process to yourself, in a general way. Are there any general weaknesses or general strengths? Now is the time to address those weaknesses.

If you don't have much documented experience with children, volunteer as a mentor or tutor. Do this with two different age groups, if possible, and also try to find some volunteer work with special needs children. This will help your homestudy and it will help you immeasurably in order to determine what your specific weaknesses and strengths are. You might find that you loathe carrying babies and changing diapers, and adopting an older kid would be just great. You might find that you have a tendency to get overly irritated with certain behaviors or certain needs. Can you change your own mentality? Are you sure this is right for you? Your motivation is important, but it's less important than your strengths and weaknesses.

You really need to think long term here. In fact, a year of preparation before you walk through the agency doors might not be out of order for some families. If you have children, you need to have talks with them about it. This is a very complicated subject and I don't have any experience with it. While I don't think it's necessary to have your other children's full permission when starting, you'll need to realize this is going to be a huge event for them as well as you. This is a good link specifically for fostering.

If you're living somewhere with no room for another child, you're going to need to move. Finances are also an issue. You're going to need to have documented stable income. You don't need to have a lot of money, and you don't need to be debt-free, you just need to be able to show reasonable stability of income and housing. Don't start the process if you're in the middle of a foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Start going to church. I'll go into this later, but you should develop some kind of involvement with some kind of at least vaguely Christian church. If you're an atheist, pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, etc., this is going to be especially crucial, and especially complicated. An interfaith volunteer organization might be the best compromise so that you don't have to lie or compromise your beliefs in any way.

Start Going to Orientations & Meetings

Private and public (county) agencies have regular orientation meetings. Start going to them. This is the point at which you need to start creating a positive impression. Don't dress up or dress down too much, pay attention, and be respectful to the presenter, even if they're terrible. Ask a couple good questions. Otherwise don't talk too much.

If there are support groups and foster care parent meetings in your area that also include prospective adoptive parents, start showing up. Stay in the background and ask questions.

The reason I'm saying not to talk too much is that at this point, I've seen that parents start to become very emotional. This is a wrenching process. You're going to start hearing things that touch you in deep ways. A natural response from many people, if they're particularly extroverted, is to open up and share deeply emotional things from their own lives, or show disagreement by getting into arguments that are much louder and passionate than they would otherwise be...

To put it into a nutshell, the process is going to drive you a little crazy. You'll get over it (probably), but you need to keep a hold on your expression, and prevent others from seeing you out of control, because these others may have some input on the adoption process. If you need to talk it out, go get a therapist and talk it out with them. Or do it in an anonymous internet support group.

Networking with other parents is also very important. You want to start doing respite work for other parents as soon as possible. Other parents will be happy to share lots of stories and advice and tips with you.

Start Making Basic Decisions

By now, you should know yourself better. You're ready to start making decisions. Don't decide on your agency yet, but think about age range, number of children, special needs and fostering versus straight/general adoption. Go back and read those reports again in the first section.

- if you're set on adopting a baby, you'll need to foster. Adopting a baby from general adoption is basically impossible, unless they're extremely medically fragile with severe special needs.

- if you foster, you have to be prepared to work primarily for family reunification. If you think this is impossible, if you think it would hurt you too much, and/or hurt your other children too much, you obviously can't foster. But try revisiting the idea from time to time. At a certain point in the process, a mental switch might flick and you will realize that you can still love while letting go. Children are also very resilient in that they're able to comprehend other models of "family" than the norm. By fostering, you aren't necessarily teaching them that children are mobile and replaceable. You might be teaching them that you can love someone who stays with you, and you can love someone who doesn't stay with you.

- one of the most important decisions you can make is how many children. There's a really, really urgent need to keep sibling groups together. But at the same time, parenting more than one child can be incredibly difficult, especially if you don't have a lot of experience or a support network. This is a decision I suggest you spend a lot of time on.

- if you stick with straight/general adoption (adoption without fostering) keep in mind you need to establish a realistic age range. If you tell the workers you are only willing to adopt 1-2 reasonably healthy children from ages 1-4, they might either tell you outright to give up and go away, or else sigh behind their backs at you, and give you passive signals to give up and go away. You'll waste a lot of time.

- knowledge of special needs is crucial. Research them exhaustively. Keep in mind (I'll return to this later) that special needs are both under-reported and over-reported. No matter what the paperwork says, you cannot rely on your child not having substance/alcohol exposure or attachment disorder or mental illness. Also, some foster parents overreport special needs in order to get a higher subsidy level, and some parents overreport special needs out of sheer inexperience. The paperwork gives you clues. It doesn't give you answers. Also, keep in mind the difference between "sexual acting out" and "sexual perpetration"... don't automatically flip at the sight of the word "sexual".

- gender is a tricky one. The trend is that more parents prefer to adopt girls; there are also fewer girls in the system. If you say that you will adopt girls only, the social workers will not be very happy with you. Consider this point very carefully and re-examine your preferences.

Some Categories of Parents

I don't see anything about this in the reports, here are some rough groups of families in the process, and the dangers they face. Think about if you fit in any of these categories, and realize social workers might be slotting you into them.

1) Desperates. They go into fostering with a primary goal of adopting a baby. They frequently burn out when they have to give babies back. Social workers love them when it's emergency baby placement time, but otherwise don't respect them or treat them very well. I think there's a large turnover.
2) Empty-nesters. They're older and they've already raised a batch of grown or nearly-grown children. They're often very relaxed about placements because they don't feel the same urgency to parent, having already done it before. Their main danger is that they might think they know it all based on raising their biological children, and they fall apart when they realize this new kind of parenting is quite different. Social workers will be looking closely at their potential flexibility. However, they generally like this type of family, especially because they're frequently looking to adopt sibling groups.
3) Saints. These are often evangelicals, but they can also be secular ultraliberals. They have no age or special need requirements. They tell the workers they want to be placed with any number of children that have the greatest need. They often have very unrealistic ideas about these needs, and are unprepared. The social workers will be deeply suspicious of these people. They burn out frequently.
4) Targeted. These parents have often done a lot of research, and want to adopt a specific targeted population. For example, the parents who say, "we want to adopt a child with cerebral palsy because we have another child with cerebral palsy." Or "we are deaf and would like to adopt a deaf child." Social workers love these parents because they can be relied on to adopt frequently hard-to-place kids. However, if the parents end up at the wrong agency, they can be exploited... the social workers will keep them around, and string them along, even though another agency might have plenty of the kind of children they want to adopt.
5) Aggressive. These are people that have a fairly specific idea of what they want, often in a high-demand population, and are insistent that the social workers can get them that placement. The social workers will sometimes give these parents quicker placements simply because they're "in their face" and don't get forgotten. Alternately, they develop a dislike for these parents and move them to the bottom of the priority list. Being aggressive can be positive, in a way, because if you advocate this strongly for yourself, you will probably advocate strongly for your child, as well. And you will need to argue and fight with a lot of teachers, doctors and bureaucrats when you adopt a special needs child. But there's a fine line between being aggressive and being a jerk, and if you cross it, it may reflect very badly on your future parenting skills.
6) Photostruck. These are parents who have seen a particular child in the photolistings and are starting the process for the purpose of adopting them. The workers know that there is almost zero chance they'll be matched with that particular child. Their goal is to gently let down the parents and focus them on adopting other children too. The parents are probably frantic to get their process as down as quickly as possible so they can adopt that particular child, and the workers may become irritated with their urgency and give up on treating them gently.

Some Categories of Parents with Specific Problems

Criminal Records

You're going to get fingerprinted and have a background check. How clean do you need to be? What we were told at our agency is that everything was examined on a case by case basis. Anything very violent or anything directed at children is going to disqualify you, of course.

I don't know what to tell people with serious convictions. But I do have some advice for the large population of Americans who've had light brushes with the law. First, the criminal justice system disproportionately targets minorities and poorer people. Second, drug offenses are incredibly common, even for richer white people. Strictly enforcing a no-criminal-convictions-whatsoever rule would be racist and classist, and most social workers recognize this.

My husband had a drug conviction from when he was 18. He fessed up, and our agency asked him to write an addendum explaining what he learned from the experience. He included the sentence "I learned I wouldn't make a good criminal" at the end, but I edited that out because it sounded way too flippant.

I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 15. I did my community service and my record was sealed when I was 18. I don't think this has any bearing whatsoever on my fitness as a parent, so I didn't include it. I would also recommend not sharing any similar juvenile misdemeanors. If the records are sealed, there's no legal requirement to do so.

Having a checkered juvenile history might even help you if you're adopting an older child with a similar history. Hopefully, you also have a documented record, since then, of helping young people avoid similar mistakes. If not, start creating one. Otherwise, having any kind of record is going to be neutral at best, and be another reason to disqualify you for a particular child, or move your homestudy further down the pile.

LGBT

The scale of family desirability for social workers goes something like this: hetero couple > single woman > lesbian couple > gay couple > single dad.

If you're a gay single man or woman, I guess an important question is how much of your sexuality to disclose. But I have a feeling that most social workers assume single dads are gay, anyway, unless proven otherwise.

If you're a couple, you have to work very closely with the agency on how to manage this. Your agency choice is going to be especially important. In some states, gay people cannot adopt at all. Florida's ban may be changing soon, hopefully. This link contains some helpful resources to determine laws in your area. If you live in an especially regressive state, maybe you should consider moving. I know that's a hurtful thing to say, and might involve separation from your roots and other family, but in practical terms, it might be the most reliable way to start your own family.

I really wish I could provide a link to specifically transgender resources. I looked, but haven't been able to find anything.

If you sign with a decent agency, they'll support you and try to work around any homophobic social workers. They'll also be honest with you about your chances and avoid creating false hopes. Your status may help you in terms of adopting older LGBT children, but only if conditions are right. Otherwise, any random homophobic worker you submit your homestudy to will sabotage it.

On the bright side, many gay and lesbian couples successfully adopt from foster care. If you read the first report I linked to, you'll see that less same-sex couples drop out before placement! Some of this must be because LGBT parents know they have fewer options, so they work harder and don't give up as easily.

Non-Christian

The vast majority of children are going to be from a Christian background. Not being Christian is a major, major handicap. The foster care system pretends to be secular, but in most areas, it's really not.

This wasn't a serious problem for me to deal with. Neither of us are Christian, but we joined a liberal congregation that doesn't require any particular belief system. I realize that for other non-Christians, this can be a really agonizing issue. The advice I'm giving is hurtful and humiliating, but necessary.

Regular church attendance establishes a support network. You have to think about the social function of churches more than the spiritual function. It provides a sense of stability to the family to do at least one thing the same every week. Social workers want to see as many support networks as possible. Most don't really care what you believe. They just want proof that you're connected to some greater community. The majority of Americans do this through churches.

Find a church that allows you to believe what you believe, even if you have to drive an hour to get there. If you don't like services, find some other way to be associated... maybe do volunteer work for them. Or find an interfaith organization and get involved with them in some regular way.

Beyond and beneath the support network aspect, which I actually agree with, many Christian social workers are prejudiced against non-Christians. I'm not talking about fire-and-brimstone condemnations... it's more subtle than that. Many will doubt your ability to parent a Christian child. I think it's important to prove in some documented way that you don't hate Christians, you like Christians and you're comfortable around Christians.

When your worker brings up these questions for the homestudy, and in your autobiographical statement, don't talk about what you believe, just talk about what you do and what your level of involvement is. That way, you're not lying about anything. And don't overshare.

Maybe in some very liberal places or places with a lot of non-Christians, all this doesn't apply. But if you're submitting your homestudy in any wider area, they will apply.

Race/Ethnicity

I'm not going to give a lot of advice to white people adopting transracially. There are a gazillion other resources for that. My only advice is: do your research, and don't act like a martyr. White couples are at the top of the pile when it comes to family rankings. You're number one for white children, and you're a very close number two for everyone else. Do not complain about how being white hurts your chances, especially in front of black social workers. Yes, I've seen that happen, and it's really pathetic.

If you're black, you have higher chances of being matched to black children, and almost zero chances of being matched to any other race. The big exception is going to be sibling groups. There are a lot of multiracial sibling groups out there. If you're considering that seriously, you should try and have something in your homestudy about your connections to other ethnicities and races.

If you're Latino, and you don't live in a very Latino area, it's hard to give advice. If you're a black Latino, white and black social workers will probably just slot you into the "black" category. Latinos will be sort of preferred for Latino children, but if there aren't many Latino social workers in the area, this preference won't be very strong.

If you're Asian, like me, you've got especially big problems. Outside of Hawaii, there aren't many Asian kids who end up in the photolistings. White (foster or otherwise) parents who say they aren't comfortable adopting black children are frequently just fine with adopting Asian children, so many of them don't get to the photolistings. Nobody really cares about recruiting Asian foster parents or adoptive parents. Any adoption you do is going to be transracial. Black and white social workers don't really know what to do with you. You might exist in a strange Twilight Zone, beating your head against a wall.

If you're Native American, you may have difficult issues in the regular system, depending on your geographical location. But you probably have the additional choice of working with a tribal agency to get placements. Networking with other parents is going to be key.

Interracial couples will experience some combination of these issues. In opposite-sex couples, the mother's race is always going to be more important. Adoption is an intensely female sphere, and adoption social workers are overwhelmingly female. That's true for any of these categories, by the way... the woman's attributes are going to be scrutinized most intensely, and she'll have to do most of the work. I think for same-sex couples, a parallel dynamic applies. One partner will get pegged as more "feminine", therefore more maternal, and given greater scrutiny and responsibility.

Like any other of these barriers, the older the child and the more severe the special need, the less they apply. Social workers for hard-to-place children will often set aside many superficial prejudices because they're desperate to get a match.

Physical and Mental Disability

These can both hurt and help, though mostly it hurts. Having a physical disability means you are very unlikely to get placed with a young child. There will be a questions asked about capable you are of carrying children, bathing them, restraining them in a rage. You can anticipate some of these yourself. What would you do if your child is about to run out into the middle of a busy street? If they start attacking another, smaller child? On the other hand, it may help you in getting placed with another child with a physical disability. For example, having a wheelchair-accessible house.

Mental disability can be neutral, but only if you manage it carefully. Many, many children in the system have mental illness. If you have a history of successfully "dealing" with the illness, and "dealing" is defined in such a way that the social workers accepts it, that shows that you won't be afraid with some of the more common issues that children often present.

In short, these are very serious barriers to adopting younger children, but can be neutral or even positive when adopting older children. Again, don't overshare. What you talk about with your therapist should stay with your therapist. Don't volunteer anything that won't come out on the physical anyway. Many social workers have prejudices against specific kinds of disabilities.

Choose Your Agency

Once you choose your agency, you'll go through licensing, training, approval and homestudy. This could take a few months, or maybe even a year. It represents a huge investment of time, energy and emotion.

Even if you do tons of research and networking and make a really informed decision, your agency might still be wrong for you. You have to know when to cut your losses and move to another path. Otherwise, the disappointment will crush you.

The agency choice is going to vary enormously according to region. Some basic divisions:

1) Nationwide. I can only think of two: Adopt America Network and WACAP. I personally did not consider WACAP because they don't focus solely on foster care, and also because they charge some amount of money for the homestudy.
2) County. The quality of your county agency is going to vary. They will have a lot of children to place. Many county agencies pressure parents to switch form adoption to fostering, since they usually have greater need for fostering. County workers are also frequently overworked and have little time for hand-holding or supportive advice. Since county agencies are nominally secular, if you're LGBT or non-Christian, they might be your best bet.
3) Private religious agencies. Again, variable. Some of these have restrictions and practices that horrify me. Otherwise are really about as secular in practice as the county agencies, with slightly better resources.
4) Private secular agencies. These are frequently specialized. There are ones for medically fragile children, for sibling groups, for African-American children, for older children and so on.

A smaller agency might give the matching process more care and attention. On the other hand, if you get stuck with a bad social worker, that makes it harder to switch later on.

Don't be a Jerk in Training

No snorting, eyerolling or loudly arguing with the presenter! Yes, I've seen this. Especially when the topic of spanking comes up. I'm not going to elaborate on this too much, but I feel it deserves an entry.

You need to build up as much goodwill as possible in this stage. Later, when you get aggressive and starting calling your social worker every day to bug them about your homestudy, you will need this store of goodwill. Bring food to the trainings, volunteer to help with training-time childcare, do anything you can to make their difficult job a little bit easier.

Write your Autobiographical Statement Carefully and Stay on Top of Your Homestudy

Our first worker was terrible. The homestudy consisted of large chunks of my own autobiographical statement, woven together with sentences full of misspellings, grammar errors and more serious content errors. I gave it back with edits marked in yellow highlighter and red pen and asked her to fix it. She said she did. I believed her. She didn't, and we only found out about six months later.

The most serious problem is that it said we could parent children with "mild" special needs. It should have said "moderate". If I had to write it over again, I would have written "severe", because I realize that quantified need levels are a bunch of garbage due to massive underreporting and overreporting.

When a child's social worker received our homestudy and saw the word "mild", they would throw it in the trash, because all the children we were submitting for were marked as "moderate".

We only started to see movement once our worker left and another, much better one, took over our case and fixed our homestudy. This time I demanded to read it in order to confirm.

Homestudies are not set in stone, even though your worker will probably act like it. You should demand to read yours and look for serious errors. Social workers are very resistent to changing homestudies, but they will do it if you make a strong enough case. Ideally, if you have a friend or relative who is a social worker and knows a lot about the process, see if you can show them your homestudy.

If your homestudy is bad, and doesn't reflect your family strengths, you should leave and start again somewhere else.

Be Realistic and Be Humble

I'm assuming a somewhat combative relationship with social workers. At the beginning of the process, I believed everything they ever said, and looked up to them greatly. I was disappointed. Ultimately, they're just human beings doing a job. Many of them are very young and inexperienced women who entered the field with idealistic goals that have since started to seem rather far away and futile. The system chews them up and spits them up. They stop caring as much. Some of the ones that stay are amazing, some are terrible, most of them mess up a lot but try to do their best.

I don't think you should trust social workers, but until they prove otherwise, respect them. They know more about the process. If a social worker tells you that have a problem -- attitudinal or otherwise -- listen to them with an open mind.

And realize that although the process is humiliating and difficult, it's nothing compared to what your future child may be going through. This is a chance to experience a tiny portion of what they experience: the fear, shame, guilt and uncertainty. You can back out at any time. They can't.

Matching

Well, I ran out of juice, and time. I'll have to continue this later...

ETA: Here's the link to Part II. I also corrected the comment link in the beginning.

This is Reassuring, and Interesting

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:45:00 +0000

Many children 'hear voices'; most aren't bothered

By Anne Harding Anne Harding – Tue Jan 26, 5:22 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Nearly 1 in 10 seven- to eight-year-olds hears voices that aren't really there, according to a new study. But most children who hear voices don't find them troubling or disruptive to their thinking, the study team found. "These voices in general have a limited impact in daily life," Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis of University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands wrote in an email to Reuters Health. And parents whose children hear voices should not be overly concerned, she added. "In most cases the voices will just disappear. I would advise them to reassure their child and to watch him or her closely." Up to 16 percent of mentally healthy children and teens may hear voices, the researchers note in the British Journal of Psychiatry. While hearing voices can signal a heightened risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in later life, they add, the "great majority" of young people who have these experiences never become mentally ill.

[...]

Children's brains are amazing places.

Follow-Up

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:38:00 +0000

I really appreciate all the comments in the last post. 27 now. I think it's my record here! This post went up on Racialicious today as well, and it's reaching a wide audience, which is what I'd hoped for.

I also want to let any new readers know that if you're frustrated by the comment registration policy, I'm sorry. If you really need to get in touch with me, try email. But I like having the registration policy in place because it means I never have to deal with comment spam or drive-by flaming, and I have limited time to manage my blog. Google registration also keeps comments centered on a regular group of people -- other adoption bloggers -- that have been reading me for years, as I've been reading them for years.

As for a comment policy, I don't have one. If you take the time to type up a negative comment, I'll probably leave it. I will note that I don't hate transracial adoption. I'm a transracial adoptive parent; I have a hopefully-healthy-rather-than-narcissistic love for myself. Also, I reserve the right to judge pretty much everything and everyone. I usually define the word "judge" to mean "think critically". I'm aware that many other people have different definitions of the word "judging", such as "saying anything I don't like" or "being a jerk".

I'm probably not going to revisit the topic for a bit, unless I become aware of an important immigration action item (I'm hoping that a proposal will come up soon to at the very least double the number of Haitian visas).

Again, I really appreciate the comments. And if you want to stick around, great! Just warning you that most of what I post about regularly is more day-to-day mommyblogging type of stuff.

The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Babies

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:46:00 +0000

I'm a foster care adoptive parent. I can't speak for all of us, since we're a diverse bunch. Some of us have also adopted internationally and support international adoption strongly. Others despise the institution, and are angry about what the perceived hypocrisy of parents who walk past the foster kids in their own cities and states so that they can adopt from a far-away country. I'm somewhere in the middle, but definitely leaning more towards the anti side, especially after this week.

This week, I've been deeply disturbed at the swelling public desire to adopt Haitians. Haitian orphan babies. The very name is problematic. In our imagination, an orphan has no family, but the vast majority of "orphans" all over the world have living parents, and almost every single one has living extended relatives. And the children that need family care are, overwhelmingly, older children.

Quite a few other parents I know are really pissed off about it. If you want to adopt, why not consider adopting from foster care? Why Haitian babies? I can guess at some of the answers. Most of them will not be very flattering.

There's a certain group of white adoptive international parents that dominate much of the discourse around adoption in this country. The most organized of these are evangelical Christians, but many of them are secular in their beliefs on adoption. They're across the political spectrum, ultraconservative to ultraliberal, though if I had to hazard a guess, most of them are center-right in politics. I believe these people are, basically, a force for evil. If I put it in any nicer words, that would be a lie. Examining their belief system, and their potential political influence on the recovery efforts in Haiti, is a pretty terrifying process.

I was first made aware of the Rumor Queen website several years ago. I was doing some research on Chinese adoption for a blog post. They're a large community of parents adopting from China, and the site is known for posting a lot of useful data about wait times. A few years ago controversy happened in the forum when some Chinese-American parents were accused by white parents of "jumping the line". There is, in fact, an expedited program for some Chinese-Americans; it's quite restrictive and any Chinese-American greater than second-generation does not qualify. The fact that some of these Chinese-Americans were possibly be more worthy of Chinese babies because of factors like "language" and "culture" and "race" apparently enraged some of the white parents. I read about it second hand from a couple of really angry, hurt Chinese-American families. This episode should give you a taste of the quality of discourse at this and similar websites. There are dissident voices, but the environments are most often dominated by white parents who refuse to consider any of the complex ethical issues surrounding transracial, transcultural, international adoption. They're saving children. How can you argue with that, right?

These online communities are often very hostile places for adoptive parents of color. They're even more hostile, of course, to adoptees and birth/first parents who want to discuss more complicated perspectives of adoption.

I stumbled on Rumor Queen again recently and was shocked to see what was going on. The whole site has gone gaga over adopting Haitian babies. It began with concerns about Haitian children, and is evolving into a coordinated plan of action to put pressure on political representatives for a Haitian babylift.

Also, I’m hearing about plans to bring more children (as in, thousands) into the U.S. all at once on airplanes. There are some precedents for this, there was Operation Peter Pan / Pedro Pan in Cuba in the 60’s, and then there was Operation Babylift in Vietnam in the 70’s. IIRC they did something similar in Korea in the 50’s, but I’m not sure it was given a name. At any rate, there is precedent for allowing a whole bunch of orphans into the U.S. who do not already have parents waiting for them. The U.S. government has not yet given the green light on this, and I’m unclear at this point who exactly gets the final word on it. If anyone out there has more information about it, please share. If it can be done in a way that ensures they are only bringing true orphans over then I’m all for it and would get behind it in a letter writing campaign. However, I would want someone overseeing the effort who can make sure things are done ethically. Someone with the ability and the clout to insist upon it.

The concern that "things are done ethically"... that's a nice thought. The comments dispense with that window dressing. They're full of demands that we have to get the kids out now, now, now, before they die, die, die. The practical reality is that after a horrific disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti quake, it's completely impossible to determine whether any abandoned child is a "true orphan". It's a process that is going to take months and even years.

This post from a more informed international adoptive parent blogger is a more reality-based examination of the issue. Adoptee bloggers who also study adoption academically -- among them Harlow's Monkey and A Birth Project -- are deeply concerned about the parallels to massive child extraction events like Operation Babylift. These were not shining humanitarian moments. Many of the adopted children found out later that they had parents and siblings left behind who wanted them, or even relatives in the United States who were searching for them.

In countries like Haiti that suffer so severely from poverty, citizens have to take the risks of globalization, but reap few of the rewards. Families are split apart as young people go to the cities to work, or to other countries, leaving their children in the care of relatives. Family ties are weakened by poverty, by the constant presence of disease, death and loss, but also paradoxically strengthened as families come up with new ways to endure hardship and stay together. A white middle-class Midwestern mother doesn't understand why a Haitian mother would leave her children at an orphanage, hoping to take them back later. The white mother could understand if she really thought about it on a rational basis. But the lure of the white savior narrative is powerful, and sweeps her up in a rush of emotion: fear, longing, desire. It's because the Haitian mother is a bad mother who doesn't deserve her kids anymore. The innocent baby is not yet contaminated by this evil culture. They deserve something better, cleaner, richer, more tender, whiter.

Here's another comment from that thread.

RumorQueen Says:
January 21st, 2010 at 2:07 pm
And how many children will die while they are building a new infrastructure?

Sometimes you do what you can, not what the ideal would seem to be.

It’s like the guy rescuing starfish on the beach, there are a hundred thousand starfish and a guy is throwing some of them back in the water. Someone tells him there are too many, he can’t possibly make a difference all by himself. And he says, as he throws one in the water “I made a difference to that one”.

There are going to be all kinds of issues these kids will deal with. I’ve gone out of my way so my kids know I did not “rescue” them... but that isn’t going to be able to be said for these kids. Sure, it’s not an ideal situation. But would it be better to let them die?

Analogies simplify complex issues, sometimes in an accurate way, but this analogy is just smoke and mirrors. International adoptive parents are really fond of this starfish metaphor and this is not the first time I've seen it in play. It always boggles my mind. Why is adopting a third-world "orphan" like throwing a starfish back in the ocean? Maybe the poor starfishes needed to be on the beach as part of their mating cycle and the guy is messing with them because he's sadistic. Maybe he has a weird sexual fetish about echinoderm-hurling. Or maybe he's just a dumb-ass. The analogy effectively obscures the issue of motivation, as well as the implication of "saving".

Let me try another analogy. Let's say you live with your child in a house that burns down. You're dazed, confused, and burned. Your neighbor says, "I think I should take care of your child". You say, "Thanks for your offer. But my child really needs me now, and I think they wouldn't sleep well in a strange house. If you could just give us a tent and some food and some bandages so we can camp out while I get better and look into rebuilding, we'll be OK." Your neighbor says, "that's too logistically complicated and I'm concerned about the security situation. I just want your child." You say, "Thanks again for your concern and I'm grateful for any help you can give me. If you're so worried about my child, maybe you could let both of us stay in your guestroom for a while? That way my child could be safe and would sleep well too." Your neighbor says, "No, we have an interdiction-at-sea policy and visa restrictions will not be relaxed. Just give me your child. Actually, nevermind. I don't even need your permission anymore. I'll just take them."

Here's the worst comment on the thread. It was let through without a rejoinder. Mine was blocked.

49. Proud2Adopt Says:
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:03 am EthioChinaadopt – the issue is that if someone is paying $30,000 to adopt a child, they want a baby! Its as simple as that! I’m really tired of hearing about how so many of these kids are just split from their parents. Lets get the 380,000 kids that were ALREADY orphans OUT of the country & into waiting homes, that way the focus of orphanages can be on those children who are NEW orphans or split from parents & families. The reality to me is, I would LOVE to adopt one of these children. No, this isn’t a NEW passion spurred from seeing photos on TV. But hopefully with the dire situation they will waive much of the 25K+ fees for families like mine to adopt one of these children here! Amen!

I admit I wasn't nearly as diplomatic as I could have been. But that's not my strong point. I was way too irritated with these people. In case you're wondering why the maniac above me was referring to $30,000 for a fresh baby, I really don't know. I'm not up-to-date on the latest prices in the international baby market.

The next babylift thread was racist beyond belief. Rumor Queen ran footage of a riot at a food distribution point.

Desperate target Haiti’s orphanages

In a country where it is survival of the fittest, what chance do babies and children in an orphanage have?

The Vietnamese Operation Babylift was driven both by racism and fear of communism. But this framing, on the other hand, is pure 100% unadulterated racism, invoking the most damaging stereotype of black people invented by white imperialists. "Survival of the fittest" implies that Haitians are nothing more than animals. Their children need to be removed immediately or they won't even grow up to be human beings.

I haven't watched a lot of news in the past week -- probably less than 10 minutes of footage a day from sources like CNN -- but in those brief times, I've seen plenty of examples of orderly food distribution. I've seen Haitians rescuing each other. I've read accounts by independent media, small media and even the mainstream media -- "Despite isolated incidents of looting, violence and other criminal activity, the overall security situation remains calm" -- that security fears have been massively overblown.

Rumor Queen attacked me for my blocked comment later on in that thread. I then left a harsher comment (I refrained from profanity but did use the word "strip-mining") and my comment was, of course, also blocked.

Luckily, policy makers aren't listening to these people with full attention anymore. There are competing voices. UNICEF, Save the Children, SOS Children's Villages, pretty much every single large secular children's aid organization, plus some of the religious ones, are advocating a total stop to new international adoptions until quake recovery gets underway and far-flung families begin to come together again. Adoption should be the last resort. I agree with that. I'm somewhat moderate in that I don't see a huge problem with removing children who have already been through most of the process and have already met their adoptive parents. If a bond is already there, there's no point adding another loss. And a lot of the adoption process is true red tape that doesn't serve anyone's interests. But airlifting children who just "appear to be orphans" (as several Catholic leaders in Miami have been demanding) and almost certainly cutting them off from their roots... this is wrong. It's wrong for the children, it's wrong for their relatives, and it's wrong for the country of Haiti.

There was an adoption story I heard on NPR yesterday that really touched me. It's not the typical adoption narrative we've been hearing:

Margalita Belhumer, a Haitian-American who lives in New York City, was visiting Haiti when the quake struck nine days ago. She shaded her eyes from the tropical sun as her 8-year-old daughter, Melissa, squatted at her feet.

"I'm seeking to leave with my daughter. People are dead, place crumbled. She has nowhere to live, so I can't leave without her," Belhumer said.

She said she raised Melissa since the girl was a newborn infant, wrapped in a sheet and left on the sidewalk in front of St. Joseph's Catholic Church. Child abandonment by destitute mothers is not uncommon in Haiti. While Belhumer worked at her job as a security guard in New York, she paid a family to take care of Melissa. Belhumer said she had begun the adoption paperwork before the quake struck.

"I started the adoption process, but I started last month. But I've had her since the first day she was born," she said.

If any adoption is expedited, it should be these ones. But these are also the people who are least likely to have the ears of politicians. Everyone wants Haitian babies. Haitian adults, and Haitian families, are another matter. There has been no announcement that more visas will be granted to reunite Haitian-American families.

This report by a US adoptee-rights blogger, based on notes from a USCIS teleconference, has a chilling quote.

Hundreds of adoptive parents, paps, orphanage directors with dozens of children, and even, apparently, loose children gather outside the US Embassy. Many come unannounced demanding entry. Officials have set up and are refining procedures for entry into the compound, interviews, and decision making. (Procedures were discussed in detail, but I"ll hold that for another entry.) They emphasize that the Embassy needs advance notice of petitioners so someone can go outside, locate them, and escort them through the gates. Only adoption cases are being handled. (Haitians with other Embassy business, including those with pending pre-quake visa and immigration applications are being turned away for now.)

Talk of adopting orphaned Haitian babies seems to be swirling all over. And though I'm concentrating my ire on a certain class of white adoptive parents, I'll have to note, not everyone full of this dangerous desire is white.

"I wanna just go down there and get some of those babies," Latifah said on the Today Show Thursday. "If you got a hook up, please get me a couple of Haitian kids. It's time. I'm ready."

As someone who has adopted before, here's some questions I'd ask of anybody in the U.S., of any race, who is really serious about this.

- Do you know what a homestudy is? Are you ready to pass one?
- Do you realize it will be almost impossible to adopt a baby, hard to adopt a toddler, and that the vast majority of children who really need to be adopted are older children?
- Do you know what attachment disorder is? Children with inconsistent caregiving in early years often develop this to some degree. They may experience the expression of love as a terrifying loss of self. They may do anything in their power to make you stop loving them, including physically attacking you, your pets or your other children. There is no known 100% effective therapy for this.
- Do you understand the effects of various prenatal exposures? Do you understand and accept that your child may grow up with irreparable brain damage?
- Are you ready to establish routine visits to one, two, three, all of these and more: therapist, psychiatrist, physical therapist, neurologist?
- Are you prepared that your child may resent you or hate you for taking them away from everything and everyone they've known and loved? And that even if you've explained to them that they're never going back, they may still try to push you away, because in the back of their minds, if they're bad enough, you'll send them away, and they'll go back to everything and everyone they've known and loved?
- Are you prepared to have a child so terrified from trauma that they act as if they were half their developmental age? That they wake you up screaming every night at 3 in the morning? That they rage uncontrollably if you don't stay by their side every waking minute?
- Are you prepared for your friends and family to perhaps shrink away from you because they don't understand why your child acts the way they act -- maybe it's because you don't love them enough, or you don't spank them enough -- you're doing it all wrong and it's all your fault.

If you can answer "yes" to all of these, congratulations. You might be ready to adopt from foster care. To adopt from Haiti, answer all the above questions, add the effects of malnutrition, add a language barrier, and multiply the child's trauma by a factor of ten. And subtract a lot of money. Unlike foster care adoptions, which are basically free, you're going to have to pay legal fees. Maybe even $30,000. And children from foster care will have permanent Medicaid, no matter your income level, but if you adopt internationally, it's up to you to find a way to pay for all those psychiatrist visits you'll almost certainly be needing later on.

Here are some additional questions:

- Are you aware of transracial adoption issues? If you're a black American, are you aware that transcultural issues can be just as intense as transracial ones?
- Do you have a connection to a Haitian-American community? Do you speak Kreyol or French?
- Your child will likely be Catholic and think of themselves as Catholic. Are you? If not, how will you handle the difference?
- The ethical thing to do is to try to establish contact with your child's relatives in Haiti. Are you prepared for the fact that you, as a rich American (no matter what your income level) will then be regarded as a financial benefactor/patron? If you've grown up in the US and absorbed our surface-egalitarian values, you will be unaccustomed to this kind of role, and extremely bad at it. If you refuse to make contact because of this issue, or because of fear that your child will love you better if you cut them off from their roots, then... well... you suck. I'll leave it at that.

You'd better be sure you can handle it. If you can't, your child will pay the highest cost. If the adoption falls through, your child may end up in foster care, possibly so scarred that they'll never get another chance at a family.

I've said a lot of harsh things in this post. But I also want to note that this desire can also be understood in a positive way. Children inspire love. I believe in certain universal values, and across every culture and all of history, people love children and want to take care of them. An equally universal trait, unfortunately, is the desire to exploit children. Children don't speak fully for themselves, so we speak for them. It's necessary, but it's also dangerous. Exploiting a child can be as blatant as child sexual abuse, or sweatshop labor... and it can be as subtle as wanting our children to validate us as parents. Wanting them to love us, and being angry when they don't show us love.

We're getting into grounds of philosophy and religion here, but I don't think a completely pure love is truly possible on this earth, because love needs knowledge, and pure knowledge is impossible. We try, but we don't know fully what's best for the other person, so we make guesses, and our guesses are based on imperfect knowledge. And so exploitation creeps in.

My religion talks a lot about the impossibility of individual purity and makes the acknowledgment of imperfection absolutely necessary. I think many other belief systems address the same issue in different ways. For example, in Christianity, Jesus Christ represents a pure kind of love, and other kinds of love exist in relation to that standard. The answer is not to stop loving, or to stop trying to understand, but to realize that our love is always endangered by selfishness. If we ever think our love is pure, we need to stop thinking along that track, take a step back and think again. Don't stop loving, just stop thinking that your love is infallible and all-knowing.

I'll close with a few reality-based ways to help Haitian children in Haitian families:

- Donate to SOS Children's Villages, Save the Children or UNICEF.
- Sign this AIUSA petition to request an end to interdiction-at-sea policy
- Contact your representative. Ask them to support an increase in refugee visas for Haitians and expedited family reunification visas for Haitian-Americans. Ask them to support the airlift of Haitian children unaccompanied by family ONLY for the purposes of temporary medical hosting and NOT for the purposes of adoption.
- If you live close to a Haitian-American community, contact their organizations and ask if there is anything you can do to support community efforts.

I may add more later as I become aware.

Follow-Up and Miscellaneous

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0000

From the therapist (I love quoting emails, it's so easy).

Thanks again for the update. I wanted to address the issue with visiting your cousin in greater detail than I was able to last night. First of all, I think it was extremely savvy of you to figure out the emotional connection for [Sunny] between visits with your cousin and his biological mother. It sounds like you hit the nail on the head and were able to deescalate the situation quickly as a result. As I mentioned, [Sunny] and I discussed grief and bereavement and read a story about losing a loved one through death. He seemed interested in the story as he sat quietly throughout, which is unusual for him. He struggled to talk about the story afterward, likely due to the discomfort he experiences in facing his emotions head on. We have been and will continue to work on this as I think it is the heart of the issue for him. To answer your question regarding whether or not he should be allowed to continue with visitation, my answer is most certainly. It is important to show him he can visit your cousin and say goodbye to her and that the goodbye will not be forever. I would also encourage you to verbalize this to him (i.e., let him know when you will be coming back) and acknowledge and label his feelings for him (i.e., sad, scared, etc.). This last part will be extremely important in whatever you are doing as it seems [Sunny] may not always know what he is feeling so the more help he can get with the identification of feelings the better. Please let me know if you have questions.

I've tried reading books about loss with him before, but it's very difficult. When we read Everett Anderson's Goodbye, he was crying bitterly by the end of it, and told me he never wanted to read it again because it was too sad. It's nice to finally have some professional backup and guidance.

However, it's not entirely true I was able to "deescalate the situation quickly". It took about 30 grinding minutes and felt like an eternity.

To a commenter who asked what medication Sunny is taking: it's a popular atypical antipsychotic that also begins with the letter A. If you look up any reference on that drug class it'll be right there. That's the only med he's on. I don't have him on any of the strictly ADHD drugs. His foster mother tried Adderall at one point, but said it made him "act mean", even though it did improve his ability to concentrate. Given his generally good academics, and the fact that I don't think he has standard ADHD, I don't want to give him any med that will change his personality, as long as he can get along OK in school with the support of his 504 plan.

Thanks to everyone else who's commented!

Later today, I'm going to start working on a blog post on the media around Haitian "orphan" adoption. I need to get back to some controversial posts after a long string of just-about-family ones.

A Lightbulb Moment

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 02:42:00 +0000

We visited my cousin a week and a half ago at her psychiatric clinic. I think I did mention the visit in a previous blog post. I never had any qualms about the clinic environment, because it's a pretty nice, high-end type of place. It's bright, airy, the staff are casual and friendly, and I've never heard anyone screaming. When we go over there Sunny usually plays games with my cousin and anyone else who happens to be hanging out in the lounge area.

Last time, Sunny had some very bad behavior after we left. We had to spend about ten minutes in the parking lot and back porch. I always refuse to get into the car with Sunny once he passes a certain point of emotional turmoil. It's because I don't want him throwing stuff at me while I'm driving (if he gets worked up while I'm driving, I immediately pull over).

Tonight, when we went to visit, I prepped him extensively. I reminded him that my cousin might not feel well. "If she has a headache, we have to turn around and go home." I reminded him that the clinic might have an outing, and we might have to leave early. I told him to try and keep calm when it was time for us to leave. I gave him all sorts of reminders covering various contingencies. I was a little nervous of taking him anyway, given the rough week we just had, but he seemed to have recovered, and he'd been begging all weekend to visit my cousin.

So we showed up at 5pm, in the middle of visiting hours. Luckily, my cousin was feeling well enough for a visit. She always lights up when she sees Sunny. He really is a little ray of sunshine (except when he's a thunderclap of doom, of course, but mostly, he's a little ray of sunshine).

We had dinner together, although she didn't feel quite well enough to eat. She's on a lot of medications that do unpredictable things to her appetite. He was so happy to see her. He even repeated, unprompted, what I'd told him earlier: "if we come visit and you have a headache, it's OK. We'll just come back when you feel better."

Sunny had a fantastic time playing Pictionary with my cousin and three other patients. I told him we were going to leave at 6:30 and gave him plenty of reminders. The game wrapped up naturally around 6:30, then we said our goodbyes, signed out, and walked out the back. Again, out in the parking lot, Sunny started breaking down and picked an excuse to fight with me. He wouldn't do his deep breathing exercise when I asked him to calm down. He just got more and more worked up.

"All you ever do is mean things to me."
"I say I'm sorry a million times, but you don't listen to me."
"You just want me to freeze to death" (but this time I had moved back into the heated back porch and I was preparing myself for the breakdown)
"You never listen to me."
"You don't care about me."
"You're mean."
"You're a total idiot."
"You don't listen to me, you don't care about me, I hate you, you hurt me and you never say I'm sorry, you don't listen to me when I say I'm sorry, you're never nice to me, you're mean to me..."

At one point one of the staff came to the back porch and asked if we were having trouble with the door. I just gave her a forced smile and told her we were going to be on the porch for a little bit because my son was having a tantrum, but he'd get over it. I'm past the point of being embarrassed when things like this happen. The only thing I ever worry about is people calling the police or child protective services. I wasn't too worried about that here. It's a psychiatric clinic, after all.

He screamed and cried and accused me for a while. He started pushing and grabbing at me. Finally, I had to put him in a light basket hold. His fit wasn't as bad as it could have been. He wasn't screaming curse words or trying to hit me in the face. In his worst fits, I can't use a basket hold at all, since I have to restrain him so that he's incapable of head-butting.

Finally, he moved to the inevitable stage: from blaming others to blaming himself. This is the only point where I talk. I can't argue with him when he's blaming me. He just doesn't listen. But I can argue when he's blaming himself.

"I hate myself for doing stupid things all the time."
- "You shouldn't hate yourself and you don't make bad choices all the time, just some of the time. You should say 'I'm nice'. You should say 'I love myself'."
"I'm nice I'm nice I'm nice I'm nice. IT DOESN'T HELP."

At this point a lightbulb went off in my head.

-"Does saying goodbye to [my cousin] remind you of having to say goodbye to anyone else?"
"Yes! It reminds me of the time I said goodbye to Mommy ___ and it was my last visit ever and I never saw her again and then she died and I'll never see her again ever. It makes me feel JUST THE SAME."

Oh... my... God...

Sunny loves her deeply. She suffers from a mysterious disease that adults can never really explain to him well. Communication and access to her is completely out of his control. Visitation takes place at a supervised institutional setting. Of course it's exactly like saying goodbye to his biological mother.

One day, his worker and his foster mom told Sunny that there wouldn't be any more visits with Mommy __. Termination of parental rights had been completed. But there would be one last visit. So they took him to the official visitation room and let him play together with Mommy __ for a few hours, and then he had to say goodbye, a goodbye on the last visit ever. It brings tears to my eyes thinking about what he must have felt.

Sunny's rage towards me, and towards himself, completely vanished at that point. He just cried and cried. We talked a bit more about missing Mommy ___. I told him that whenever you feel sad, it makes you feel better to tell another person why you feel sad. And even if there's no one else around, you can tell yourself why you feel sad, and that will make you feel a little better. Not all the way better, but a little better. And of course he misses Mommy ___ and it was a terribly sad thing to have to say goodbye to her like that.

It was 7:00. We starting driving home. I reminded him that he could talk about missing Mommy ___ anytime, and he could also call Nana N and talk to her about it, because Nana N missed her just the same as he did. We did call his Nana N when we got back home, but he didn't feel like talking about it by then, even though I gave him a little reminder.

He was his normal happy self for the rest of the night and went to sleep right at his bedtime.

The difficult part for me is that I can't talk to my cousin about all this. Her mental state is too fragile. I'm going to take Sunny to visit her again next week but this time I'll bring someone else as well (Guy or Nana) and make sure we're totally prepared. I think visiting and then breaking down afterwards is going to suck, but ultimately it's good for him to see that he can say goodbye, but my cousin is still going to be there next week. I think it would be worse if I didn't take him on visits at all.

If she ever kills herself, I'm going to kill her!

Sunny is dangerously full of need and full of love.

No Hell Week Part II Post! Purgatory, at the Most.

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:19:00 +0000

We made it. Whew.

Tuesday was the worst. I outlined the basics in the email to the therapist that I posted on Wednesday. Sunny was in a terrible state. He seemed full of hate. It was like the hate came from outside and took him over. He took the hate out on us, but I could tell, more than anything else, he hated himself for being that way. When he told me in the car about the voices in his head that said "I hate you", it made me feel so sad for him.

We started him back on his old med that night. Wednesday was a little better, but he still got called him from school for acting out. We had a school meeting about him on Thursday -- we kept him out of school that day -- then let him go back for a half day on Friday. He made it.

Thank goodness I can trust the people at his school. They're treating this like a "lost week". They're full of sympathy for him. There won't be any lasting consequences. At another kind of school, they might have been talking expulsion or a move to a special education classroom.

By Friday, he was begging to go back to school! He was missing his "Math Message". I don't know exactly what that is, but he sure does love it.

He had a sleepover with Nana on Saturday night. Guy and I took a much-needed date night and saw The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, then went to Loca Luna for tapas. We didn't go to bed until midnight and slept in until 10AM. Then we met Sunny and Nana and another friend of ours for dim sum. Overall, this has been a pretty good weekend. The smile is back on Sunny's face.

The situation in Haiti, of course, has been weighing on my mind. I emailed a Haitian friend I met through the Obama campaign and asked him how his relatives were doing and if we could do anything else besides donating (which we've already done).

This man worked harder than anyone else on the campaign, and he couldn't even vote. He must have registered hundreds of new voters. When our small group went on a weekend vanpool together, he drove the whole time. And he knocked on twice as many doors as any of us, with a bigger smile on his face, in the blazing summer heat... all while wearing a three-piece suit. I really admire him and I feel terrible for what he and his family (a wife and six very sweet kids) must be going through now.

Sunny's therapist talked to him a little bit about the voices. She told him that when he heard voices inside his head saying mean things about him, like "I hate you", he could tell himself positive things, like "I'm nice".

So we're back to square one with his medication. I guess we'll try taking him off again next year. I don't want him to go through the rest of his childhood on meds, but I can't risk 1) his school and 2) our sanity. Thinking about my younger cousin and his life, the thing he really regrets most bitterly is how he was warehoused in special ed because of his behavior, and never even learned to write until middle school. He made me promise that I would never do that to Sunny.

Quick Links to Help Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (atlasien) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0000

These are some of the organizations that can move the quickest.

Red Cross: American Red Cross Pledges Initial $1 Million to Haiti Relief - Send a $10 Donation by Texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999
MADRE: Emergency in Haiti! Please send humanitarian aid
CARE: CARE Deploys Additional Emergency Team Members to Haiti
MSF/Doctors without Borders: Haiti: MSF Teams Set up Clinics to Treat Injured After Facilities Are Damaged