One of our big lessons from our experience as foster parents is that reading book after book, using imagination and planning how to handle different circumstances did very little to prepare us for the reality of parenting or foster parenting.  We continued to experience the reality of “the system,” which is not truly set up to work for the children’s best interest, but for crisis and risk management.  Within that system, foster parents do wield a great power in how things unfold for the children, which also means a great burden is placed on them in difficult times.

We had read much about attachment problems and the ideal ways to handle moves for foster children.  The moves should happen slowly, with time for the children to emotionally process it. Current foster parents should be available by phone and for visits to bridge the transition.  There should be friendliness between the parents and the children should feel supported and loved, not abandoned.  As our disruption unfolded, we realized how complicated and difficult our situation was and how we simply could not do these things.  We weren’t sure that it was possible based on the behavioral problems we had experienced or if would make a bit of difference for T-7.

We had handled the girls move in with us really well.  We had visits for a month and went back to say goodbye to their previous caretakers, teachers and classes.  We wanted to handle their move out with us just as well. I made photo albums and we had really made an effort to do our goodbyes well. As far as we can tell, this is more than the girls have had in the past.

I do wonder if our decisions (or, of course the behaviors of T-7 herself) would have been different if the girls own histories had been different.  It was really hard not to consider that we were just one of 10 homes and 14 moves that these girls had gone through.  How much difference would extending ourselves make with such a stacked history?  T-7 was either going to be repeating 1st grade or going into a special school, so what did it matter if she moved into her 4th-1st grade class?

We gave 7 days notice for the girls to move out. This is the minimum amount of notice allowed.  We thought hard about whether to give 30 days or even wait things out until T-7 was done with school or her psych evaluation.  Ultimately, we just couldn’t.   We felt that we were not providing T-7 with a loving home and to prolong her move didn’t make any sense.  We were drained. We aren’t the type of people that can keep doing something once we have given up.  We saw that it had taken the county at least 4 months to find us and based on our experience, the girls placement may be more complicated.  We doubted that a few weeks could make that much of a difference for finding a permanent placement for the girls and they would make a difference to us financially and emotionally.

We also decided to make the end of our relationship with them short and sweet.  We saw the anxiety that the girls experienced when they knew they would move in with us and were still living with their previous caretaker.  We did not want to live with them while they were in limbo and it didn’t make sense to put them into limbo any sooner than we had to.

On a Tuesday in the late afternoon we told the girls they would be leaving our care by Wednesday after lunch we were packed and on the road.  We had spent all day Tuesday packing and removing things that the girls would not take with them so that things would stay simple and argument-free.  I spent Wednesday morning taking T-4 to doctors appointments and visits to say goodbye.  We wanted to do the same with T-7, but were unwilling to go without a social workers presence and simply ran out of time in the end.

As mentioned in a previous post, things were eerily normal during the end of their stay here. T-7 actually seemed relieved and T-4 tended to show her anxiety by being very well behaved.  We wondered if things would be so awful for their next foster parents as they were for us?  Would they regress again?  Would T-7 be just fine since the placement was not supposed to be permanent?

Although we had previously been frustrated by many aspects of our agency, they really did show up to support us logistically and emotionally throughout our disruption process.  We needed two vehicles to pack the girls things and we all agreed it would be best if the social workers transported the girls.

Like nearly all of the drives we had with the girls, the social worker’s drive involved fighting, screaming and wailing.  We found this out when we arrived in S- county to transfer their things to the social worker’s cars. We started to see the regression and anxiety eek out of them, bit by bit. There was some excited play, but there was more fighting and wildness.  Things were more edgy than they had been. The girls wanted to look through their things and were not following directions when they were given.  There was awkward waiting. There were people to meet and information to pass on and until the moment that it was clearly time to say goodbye, no one really knew when goodbye would be.

Finally, that time came. T-7 was starting to talk back, they were fighting each time they were interacting and it was hot.  The cars were packed, the information was shared and it was time for all of us to move on.   We said our final goodbyes. At some point, I figured out that T-4 needed to go to the bathroom.  I can’t even remember how I realized this.  Maybe it was the timing, maybe she made one of her subtle gotta-go jestures, maybe it was pure intuition.  I told a social worker that she had to go and they asked if I wanted to take her. I told her I thought it wasn’t a good idea, that we had just said goodbye.  This is where we saw the first signs of the regression that we experienced were returning. The last I saw of T-4 was her heavily wailing and being carried away from me with her head on the social worker’s shoulder.  T-7 skipped along beside.