On New Year’s Eve, four very different people journey to the top of a famous suicide jumping spot. Each of their lives is overshadowed by lost promise, emotional isolation and few coping skills. None of them have a path ahead that looks any good and they join together, not admitting that they are there to save each other and not fully aware that they are trying to save themselves.
The cover image sums the premise of the book up pefectly. The shoes of a smart-ass teenager (Jess), a washed up young rock musician (JJ), a middle-aged mom (Maureen) that caretakes her vegetable son and a pathetic tabloid-smeared TV star (Martin) squared off with each other, not necessarily for a fight (although they do happen), but because they have too many issues within themselves to make a circle. They don’t really like each other, but they are joined together by the roof and the fact that they have nothing better to do. They spend the evening together, initially as an easy out from jumping, and create a pact to look in on each other, which turns into a gang of lost souls. Jess says,
“And that’s me: I suffer from a failure of imagination. I could do what I wanted, every day of my life, and what I want to do apparently, is to get walloped out of my head and pick fights. Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.” (p209)
Because they have nothing to lose, Jess is able to persuade the group to try just about anything, from reading books by suicidal authors to staging an intervention for themselves. Many times, they get into various situations that are punctuated by humorous conflicts. In one particularly wacky scene, Jess has told the media that they saw an angel on the roof as a way to make some money for the story. JJ reacts,
“We’d grit our teeth, say we’d seen an angel, take the money, and try and forget it ever happened. But then the next day you’re sitting in front of a journalist, and you’re all agreeing with a straight face that this fucking angel looked like Matt Damon, and loyalty seemed like the dumbest of all the virtues. It wasn’t like you could just go through the motions, either, when you’re supposed to have seen an angel. You can’t just say, “Yeah, blah, angel, whatever.” Seeing an angel is clearly a big deal, so you’ve got to act like it’s a big deal, with excitement and openmouthed awe, and it’s hard to do openmouthed awe through gritted teeth.” (p166)
I was frustrated with the distance that I felt from the characters due to the writing style. Although the characters were each wonderfully written (I even liked Maureen and JJ, but Martin and Jess seem to be intentionally unlikable) and their tragic circumstances were clear and sad, I never came close to a tear. The chapters were written from their perspective and I could see what they were going through, but I was kept from really feeling what they were going through. Maybe this is reflective of the numbness that the characters may have had to their own situations. Maybe the book tried to take on too much to carry the emotional stories of each of these characters.
What A Long Way Down is very successful at is being black comedy, which I think by nature is a bit distant. It is quirky, irreverent thoughtful and clever. This book is touching without being moving and funny without being sidesplitting. It maintains a low energy and unresolved quality and this is actually, what makes it masterful. Conflict and disrespect comes and goes with compassion and support, while self-destructive patterns are interwoven with startling and brilliantly written self-reflections.
Each of the characters makes an honest effort to reevaluate their situation, if not evolve. These were the parts that captured something that I had felt, or at least could relate to. After the intervention, JJ is sitting in a bar with his pre-roof friends and realizes that life is worth living, but that it is not easy.
“Once you start pretending that everything’s shitty and you can’t wait to get out of it, which is the story I’d been telling myself for a while, then it gets more painful, not less. Telling yourself life is shit is like an anesthetic, and when you stop taking the Advil, then you really can tell how much it hurts, and where, and it’s not like that kind of pain does anyone a whole lot of good.” (p299)
My friend K- has been doing some intensive Nonviolent Communication (NVC) work and invited me to this workshop. Not knowing anything about NVC, but knowing that I need all the tools that I can get to improve my parenting skills, I decided to go for it. The workshop consisted mostly of introducing participants to the concept of NVC, discussing the benefits of using it for a parent and then applying NVC concepts to parenting situations that we have had.
From the class handout:
Assumptions Underlying th Practice of Nonviolent Communication
1. Human Needs are universal.
2. Feelings point to need being met or unmet.
3. All actions are attempts to meet needs.
4. All human beings have the cpacity for compassion.
5. Giving is joyful when it comes from choice and connection.
6. Connection arises from mutual understanding of the needs behind behavior.
7. There is enough for all to meet our basic needs.
8. Moving away from “right/wrong” judgments supports us in making peace.
So, it seemed that this workshop was as much about looking at yourself and your own motivations as it was communication. Actually, the woman doing the class described NVC as a spiritual practice, since she is constantly revising her sense of self based on what she learns from applying the principals. Don’t get me wrong, unless one lives in a bubble, this has huge ramifications for communication, since this is the way that we usually try to get our needs met.
The teacher used the acronym OFNR to describe the NVC process that determines the appropriate communication: Oberservation, Feelings, Needs and Request.
They emphasized that we often consider something a need that is actually a strategy. For example a strategy is to ask for quiet or to follow directions to get to the car, when the needs may actually be rest or food. Getting in touch with the actual need can help lead to clearer and better communication.
The teacher said a few things about NVC with regards to parenting that really stuck out for me. One was that she sees the modeling of her own communication rubbing off on her 6 and 9 year old boys, who are able to identify and articulate their own needs in their decision making. She mentioned stretching herself sometimes, when she knows that she does not want to offer what her sons are asking for, she tells them, “This is not what I want, but I am going to stretch myself and say yes.” And in return, they sometimes stretch themselves, as well.
Finally, she offered that NVC has taught her compassion for herself. Although it seems that the system might open up a can of worms as far as things to go wrong, she emphasized that it is really hard and a constant process. Our mistakes, and understanding them in more depth is what helps us grow into better people. We want to model for this children and teach them to accept themselves and their own learning process.
I left this class really impressed by these ideas and wondering whether it would have helped in our situation with T-7. I do not think that we know the answer to that question, since it may depend on her diagnosis. But, I do think that it can help with our future lives as parents and our interactions with each other.
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.
Imagine a child, 4 or 7 years old, who has moved over a dozen times in her short life, often without any prior notice or explanation (such as once, after living in a home for 9 months, going on a “respite” visit for two weeks and, a week into the stay, having a social worker bring all your stuff in a car and tell you that you won’t be returning to “Mama’s”). Then imagine, later that same year, moving into a home which from the first is described as a “forever family,” your last stop on the moving house train.
Six months into this, you notice that things are not going so well. Mom & Dad are increasingly disappointed with the older girl, and seem to have relaxed some of the discipline, letting you both watch more and more television. What would you think? Yes, this is how it works. The words “forever family” don’t really change the fundamental association you have with the word “family,” which is equivalent to the phrase “the place that you move from every six or so months.” This is one of the deepest tragedies of the entire fost-adoptive circumstance, and a terrible self-fulfilling prophecy.
D- and I were as scared as we could be on the day that we were to inform the girls of their impending move (it was a Monday, and we would be taking them back to S-County the next day, Tuesday). We arranged to go to visit the therapist (who they had both seen, T-4 for much of the time she was with us), and were also met by our agency social workers who would entertain each while we told them separately. This turned out to be a great idea, as it all went very smoothly – even, too smoothly.
We began with T-4. She sat between D- and me, and we explained that it had turned out that we weren’t the best home for her and her sister, that they would be moving, and (with great repetition) that it wasn’t her fault. We told her how much we loved her and how proud we were of the decisions she has been making. I sobbed for the first time in about twenty years. T-4 repeated back to us what we had told her, so we knew she understood. But she was relatively unfazed. She asked us why we were crying, and pulled tissues from a box to dry our dripping eyes. She also asked where she would be moving to, though we didn’t have a lot of information, only that it was a woman back in S-County. After about fifteen minutes of this, on the prompting of the therapist, we each drew a picture for the other to take. I’m as bad a picture-drawer as I am a cryer, but managed to convey, via stick figures, that there was a place in my heart that would be hers forever.
We then switched, the agency workers bring in T-7. We began the same way, with her seated between D- and me, but of course she couldn’t sit for a moment, beginning to climb on the couch and grab whatever was in reach. We explained the same story. Her first reaction when we began talking was to fall to the floor and writhe for a few moments, saying “I told you so, I told you so.” Obviously, no big surprise for her, either. She then wandered over to the bookshelf and began playing with various objects there, paying little if any attention to the surroundings. She did sit on my lap briefly before getting up again. We did the picture-drawing ritual again, and after about ten minutes the therapist had to prod her a bit to let go of the crayons. Neither D- nor I cried; we told her how much we wanted her to be happy, and very importantly, we explained that “we couldn’t keep her safe,” referencing the running behaviors described in numerous earlier posts.
We were morbidly prepared for a very difficult evening and morning at home. We would be completing the packing (most of which we had completed that morning while the girls were at school, but of course there was still a bit left), and had no idea how they would react to being alone with us again, especially with all of their stuff in boxes and suitcases. D-’s brother came over for dinner to help ease any tensions, and left shortly afterwards. And this was the most eerie part: the evening was entirely unremarkable. The girls asked a few questions about where they would be going, but other than that, we stayed on routine and there was no special reaction from either of them. The same was true the next morning (in the next post “Fateful Day (II),” I’ll explain the emergence of frayed edges on the trip to S-County).
Without a doubt, telling T-4 was one of the hardest, if the the single hardest, things either of us have ever done. And conversely, telling T-7 took almost no emotional effort at all. But every time I think of that day, and the complacency of their reactions, I am horrified by the toll that has been taken on these girls. It turns out that D- and I were really the only people who believed for so long that this was to be a permanent placement. Our first social worker had indeed questioned what she called our “commitment” (since we had asked mid-way through about the possibility of separating the girls), the newer agency worker joined us in what was clearly a period of crisis, and the S-County caseworker and supervisor felt that the placement had been in crisis since the very beginning. But the reality is, we did treat it as if it were a permanent placement, which is why we did everything in our power and some things beyond to “save” it. Yet, for the girls themselves, nothing will ever constitute a “permanent home,” perhaps not even after years of living as adopted children, whether that turns out to be together or (as we tend to think is most likely) apart.
After giving notice, I felt as bad as I can remember.D- and I had talked about the feeling of betrayal we would experience (which had been one of the reasons we had not pursued disruption before, along with the inability to be sure that the girls’ difficulties weren’t temporary).We had never been very comfortable with the immediate “forever family” language that was forced on us, but there it was, and now we were taking it back.
Every night, I would lie in bed thinking of ways to go back on the decision.I could continue to care for and nurture T-7 therapeutically to the best of my ability.We would survive financially even with the additional respite care, as we would want her to stay overnight on weekends at the respite provider.We would take her out of her after-school program, which was not serving her (or our) long-term needs.The attachment therapy combined with meds would help, if we could just hold out…
It was gut-wrenching, heart-tearing.Now that T-4 had her own room, she was going to sleep much better, and there were plenty of nights where D- would read to her for a while, then she would play quietly, then I would come in and sit with her for another ten minutes with the light out, then leave with a kiss and a smile and an “I love you, Daddy.”That I had tried to keep her with us was not enough to stop the betrayal.That I could not imagine life with her sister was not enough.
D- and I spent the nights working on an 8-page, single spaced document describing all of the girls’ preferences and routines, along with lengthy descriptions of their post-placement regression, their rivalries and possessiveness.It also contained careful and detailed summaries of their medical histories for the past six months.D- also put together a version of a “lifebook,” albums with selected photos (some from previous placements, where we had them, which was not very much) including pictures of the hospitals where they were born and their birth certificates.I made sure their “binders” (files with all their official medical and educational documentation) were clear and up to date, putting together an appointment history as well. We began setting aside things we knew they wouldn’t notice to prepare the packing.
After four days of this, we took them on a trip to Fairyland, with clear and well-established guidelines for T-7 that she was able to describe beforehand.Nevertheless, after about an hour she began to wander off, refusing to return if called.I waited for her a few minutes, then we walked over to the play site where D- and T-4 were playing.I explained to her that she needed to sit with me for a minute before returning to her play, as she was not well under control.She stood, sat, stood, walked away, and began to play on her own.I walked over to her, she began to run, I caught her and carried her out of the park as we’d explained beforehand, kicking and hitting.She continued this for twenty or so minutes while we sat in the car, screaming at the top of her lungs, biting and scratching at me.And as always, I get the distinct sense that this is, for her, her idea of fun, regardless of how even-tempered I am through the whole time, and believe me, I am very even-tempered.
It was amazing how this event helped to wash my guilt away. Yes, I would still feel awful about betrayal.Yes, the day on which we tell them would be the worst day of my life (unless the day they leave is the worst, but it didn’t turn out that way at all).But this was the clearest possible confirmation that T-7’s problems, whether they are correctable or not, do not have a place in our life. This is not our “work,” and even if it were, it is not clear that we are well-suited to succeed with T-7.I understand her well enough not to “blame” her for her incapacities, but there is still a sense in which she is “responsible,” in that it is indeed her actions, willful if not considered, that make this placement impossible.Our day at F-town was, in this way, the best thing that could have happened to me, and enabled me to get through the next four awful days.It helped me get from guilt to grief.
In early May, our agency worker and her supervisor arranged a conference call with the S-County caseworker and HER supervisor.This was just a few days after our most recent birth-parent visit.Now, this visit had been preceded by a bit of a “crisis” (that word gets used so often it loses its punch).So before I get to the conference call, here’s a bit of background.
In late March, D- and I had our worst travel home from one of these monthly, mandated, supervised visits.The drive is well over an hour and a half each way.We had often provided a “grounding” after the visits, having dinner with D-‘s mom, which often seemed to temper the impact of so much car time.This month, though, D-‘s mom was sick.On the drive home, T-4 and T-7 (actually, at that time she was still T-6) traded tantrums, screaming at the top of their lungs, fighting over toys, punching and pinching each other, pulling off their car seat straps, kicking the seats, etc.We pulled over four times to allow for sequential calming, and the trip home took nearly four (yes, that’s right – four) hours.Probably, T-7’s behavior was compounded by specific emotional issues: her birthday was coming up, she seemed to think she could invite her birth-mom to the party, she had received a lot of gifts, but mostly unsatisfying or inappropriate ones, etc.
As a result, we told the social workers we would simply NOT do this again.They needed to take responsibility for transportation.A lot of possibilities were raised (well, okay, they were things that only appeared to be possibilities until the social workers said they couldn’t do it), until finally, our agency supervisor agreed to drive along with me in D-‘s place.Because of this, the drive in April went quite a bit better.The S-County caseworker had also indicated that she would be available to talk with us together while the girls were in their visit.
Well, she apparently didn’t mean it, since she did not answer her phone and wasn’t in the office, but chance had it that she strolled through the parking lot while I was leaning against my car.The fakish half-smile she greeted me with disappeared pretty quickly when I told her that at the scheduled conference call the next week, D- and I needed ANSWERS, not just more discussion.Would they consider removing T-7 and placing her in a therapeutic home?This could be temporary (we would consider T-7’s return once she had resolved problems elsewhere) or permanent.Would they adapt our placement along the therapeutic model, that is, paying us for essential services like the private attachment therapist we’d just begun seeing ($125/session), and paying for proper respite care ($150/week).At this point, we were already paying upwards of $600/month of respite or afterschool care, to go along with T-4’s $1400/month pre-school.And really, the intensity of T-7’s behavioral problems was still consuming our lives.
The conference call was actually face-to-face for all but the S-County supervisor.The answers were clear.No, they would not consider splitting the girls.After all, there is such a thing as a “bad match,” and many children who do poorly in one home may, for reasons not well understood, experience less anxiety and disturbance in another.They seemed uninterested in hearing about T-4’s remarkable progress on every level, from the physical, to the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.It was unimaginable to me that they would compromise her well-being in this way due to her sister’s developmental attachment problems (which nevertheless had only been informally diagnosed).Would T-4 ever have such support again?Who in her future life would send her to the very best pre-school available (one in which, let it be said, she responded with dramatic developmental acceleration)?Would they simply drag her from wrecked placement to wrecked placement, until eventually the girls were split anyway?
The answer, of course, was yes, that was exactly what they would do before even considering splitting the girls.There simply was insufficient paper trail to suggest that T-7 wouldn’t adapt better elsewhere.There was no reason to think T-4 would continue to do better in the absence of her sister than she would in her presence.Resources for therapeutic homes were highly restricted, and such homes were only for “unadoptable” children, whereas they still believed that the girls could be successfully placed in a new adoptive home.
They asked us for thirty days to find a new adoptive home.We said:
“No, you may consider this officially a seven-day notice of placement disruption.”
We knew in advance of the meeting – and so did they – that this was how it would resolve.We did not believe they would investigate any additional resources.And we also did not believe that the girls (or us) would be more likely to place into an adoptive home in 30 days than in 7.After all, they were four months in their previous temporary placement, and at the very least, T-7’s paper trail had lengthened, since we had troubling school reports, therapist reports, and had begin medication evaluation.No, they would be going to a temporary placement in any case, better sooner than later.
We had one week.This was a Tuesday.The next Tuesday, we would be accompanying them to S-County with all of their possessions.We wouldn’t actually tell them until Monday.But nevertheless, it was going to be a rough week.
I do not make decisions impulsively. Actually, I think I do the opposite. I look at situations and try to consider all options and almost compulsively research them and play them out. I do like to talk about the things that come up, even if they do seem a little far out. I like to brainstorm and sometimes I get excited about some wild ideas that I come up with. J- and I developed a rule that I had to say it 4 times before he is allowed to start dissecting it. By 4 times, we both knew I was serious.
We had been considering disrupting the adoption practically since the beginning. We were assured that things would get better and the beginnings were always rough. We took this at face value and could see that the girls had regression and an anxiety-induced wildness about them that would get better.
Although I hate to make dog comparisons, we also remembered the few weeks after we got each of our dogs. We actually made phone calls each time telling the shelters that we weren’t sure yet that it would work out. 6 months later, we couldn’t imagine the idea of giving back our dogs. We had a joke that we wouldn’t try to give back our kids like we did our dogs and we have actually wondered if we lasted longer before disruption because of the experience with our dogs.
When considering disrupting our adoption, the first thing that I did was to get on the internet and research it. There were some great sites for putting disruption in perspective, seeing that it is relatively common for older children and seeing the reasons (that really resonated with us) that people choose to disrupt. Then I found forums. The first round that I found basically had people posting that anyone who considered disruption wasn’t a person fit to be a parent. Digging deeper, I found discussion boards on RAD kids that said, anyone who says that doesn’t understand what it is like parenting these kids. Finally, I found a board of seasoned, successful foster parents who had also had to disrupt adoptions for reasons similar to ours.
We had been told by so many people including teachers, social workers, medical service providers, etc what a great job we were doing. I was pretty confident that we WERE fit to be parents and that we were great parents to T-4. I also became more aware that we just couldn’t handle T-7’s special needs. To those of you that don’t know about RAD kids, this may sound horrible, but she is unlovable. The mantra of parents of RAD kids is “fake it until you make it.” Not only did we not want to fake it, we were having some doubts that we would ever make it.
The girls’ therapist had said a couple of things to me throughout my course of contact that stuck with me. Although it was impossible for me to integrate what she said immediately, it did stick with me. First of all, she (and several other therapists) had told me that it wasn’t always this hard to do fost-adopt. She saw T-7’s ADHD-ODD-like tendencies to control their sessions. She watched T-7 run down the sidewalk away from the adults that could keep her safe. She watched her move from one toy to another in the playroom with the play patterns of a four year-old. During an advising session, she told me that she thought I should decide how long that we would keep on doing this. She saw the havoc that it was wreaking on us and the lack of progress that we were making.
It was the contrast of the leaps and bounds of developmental progress that T-4 was making that really demonstrated how little T-7 was. Behaviorally, T-4 had actually surpassed her. Academically, of course, she had not caught up, but we saw her learning and growing cognitively every day when T-7 had stopped. She had never once been able to describe something that had happened during the day and rarely demonstrated being able to retain information learned at school for the next day.
More and more, we felt that we had been set up for failure from the beginning. Our social worker had advocated making our relationship fun and bonding, but T-7 wasn’t really capable of having fun, she always sabotaged it by playing “bad kid”. What we did feel that T-7 needed in the end was more of a “tough love” approach, which we weren’t really prepared to offer and is much more difficult to have when you have started out with a love-fest. The attachment books that we read suggested starting with a bare-bones and structure-based approach for your new foster kids, since it is easier to get less strict than more strict.
I’ve finally caught up on my writing (and J- has helped!) We have 5 lengthy entries written and will be posting them over the next week of so (rather than backdating).
The last week of April, we’d had it. We realized that everything we were doing at that point was out of desperation. Trying to find a way that would get through to T-7, trying to see if we could find a way to make things work. We didn’t have a long-haul perspective on this and honestly, we simply weren’t willing to deal with serious behavioral problems and attachment issues. We never had been. And we were really tired from having dealt with them unexpectedly and unprepared for so long.
We did a whole lot within a few weeks to implement changes specifically directed toward kids with attachment problems, as I previously discussed here. Some ventured into a brick wall (no changes to birth parent visits), some happened (we split their rooms, started working with an attachment therapists and began doing what I would call “attachment parenting”, and began the psychiatric evaluation), and it became clear that some were just going to be a very long process (attachment work and getting meds). We were hoping for immediate change. We didn’t get it.
Actually, T-7’s behavior only seemed to get worse as T-4 got better and we got better at controlling things. J began timing her “meltdowns” at 20 minutes. The severity varied, but they did happen regularly, no matter what happened in between. I am not sure if this got worse or if I started to notice it more, but she was increasingly adverse to affectionate touch, although sometimes she asked for a hug, usually as a way to control the situation in some way. I was decreasingly able/willing to ignore her talking back and arguing and we were getting along very badly.
So the last Tuesday in April was the big therapy day. We had an appointment with the attachment therapist in the morning and PCIT in the afternoon. Attachment therapy went reasonably well. T-7 exhibited some of her difficult behaviors, which the therapist unsucessfully tried to deal with. When we spoke with her later, she felt that T-7 had a clear case of Reactive Attachment Disorder. She also said that she realized what she saw in T-7 was the tip of the iceberg.
I wrote a bit about the PCIT therapy session on that day here. We added Barbies to the mix of toys that we played with and got a violent reaction from her. She screamed at me and attacked me because I didn’t allow her to control the play with the dolls. What I didn’t write about was the trip home from therapy that day and how it became the last straw. The one that broke the camel’s back.
It became clear that we were not going to get any successes out of therapy that day, so eventually the therapist, M- came in the room to calm T-7 down and put the toys away. T-7 immediately ran down the hall and out the building ahead of us. She was out the front door when we were about halfway down the stairs. From then on, she began a game of “running” away from us. She took off down the sketchiest street in Berkeley (while staying in our sight) and began talking to strangers and doing just about anything to distract herself from what she was doing.
We decided that I should get in the car and begin driving off to see if she would get upset and want to get in the car. Didn’t work. I parked around the corner out of her view and J- and M- also moved around the corner. When T-7 came around, Jeff grabbed her and took her back into the therapy office. After a while, he brought her out of the car and put her in. She was fully capable of getting in and out of her carseat and using her seatbelt (which was definitely a turning point in our ability to control her for her safety), so she wasn’t about to stay in the car. We needed to get home for the sitter (and T-4), she he ended up holding her hands together and walking her home, while she screamed and bit him.
While I was driving home, I saw a police car. I had actually considered calling the police earlier, so I went ahead and grabbed them. I am not a big fan of cops, as you can probably figure out, but I knew this was going to be the only way to diffuse this situation. As soon as she saw the cops, she stopped strugging and began crying and hid behind J-. They talked to her for a few minutes trying to calm her down and eventually told her to get into the car. She did immediately as she cried, “But I don’t want to go to jail.”
Ever since the incident that I had in December, I have been terrified of somebody calling the police on us. We have had a few instances where both of the girls have caused problems in the car and we have had to pull over. Since T-4 could not get out of her carseat, it created a natural safety restraint. T-7, on the other hand required someone to hold her. The last time we had taken them to visit their birth parents, we had to stop several times and T-7 had a 45 minute tantrum in a parking lot. Needless to say, I was very self-conscious to know that my caucasian husband was restraining and walking with this 7-year old african-american girl in our mixed neighborhood. The saving grace was that when she screamed at him, she did call him “dad”.
For me, this day was a dealbreaker. It had become clear that even the not-so-quick fixes would take a long time…years. I knew that it was beyond me to handle these public situations that T-7 got us into and I wasn’t willing to have J- deal with them either. I was not willing to parent this kid and it was time to say “uncle”.
A few weeks ago, I took a walk in the park with T-7 and our two dogs. We’ve done this a number of times, though I’ve often had to wrestle/drag her back to the car, even with a lot of preparation. This time, I had a plan.
I chose a very precise walking pace, much slower than I would normally walk, and maintained it throughout the course of the walk. T-7’s m.o. had now become very clear to me: she is unable to match the “rhythm” of another person. When we walk from school or her afterschool program, she runs ahead or lags behind. If we’re in a store or a street that requires holding hands, she tugs and complains. This has a technical description: an inability to enter into “intersubjective [dyadic] affective states.” The idea here is that very young children learn their emotional range by participating in dyadic affectivity. By sharing an experience with a caretaker, looking in their eyes, laughing together, being held when she cries, the child distinguishes and learns to control and enjoy her mental environment. A child with an attachment disorder has never developed the ability to have coherent emotional states, due to neglect. After all, it takes hundreds or even thousands of intersubjective experiences for the child to be able to regulate her own emotional life. Children of neglect are thus typically “dys-regulated,” out of control, and they have no capacity to self-soothe or endure frustration, or to take pleasure in their own self.
On our walk, T-7 did exactly as predicted. She lagged behind, calling out to me to “Wait! Look! Stop!” I didn’t. She ran ahead, even turning corners so she was just out of sight, in the hopes that I would speed up or call out after her. I didn’t. She would return to me and walk alongside—but never in time with my step. Instead, she would take my hand and tug me back or forward. She even would step in front of me or bump into my side, all in a sort of unconscious effort to control the rhythm (actually, to produce an arhythmic chaos) of our walk. But my chosen pace was the right one, slow enough to give me the balance needed to remain on course, even with T-7’s 55 pounds bumping my side or tangling her legs in mine.
I could sense her frustration beginning to mount. The tricky moment had arrived. Would she turn and run the other direction? Would she lie down on the trail and cry? Would she find some stranger to talk to, perhaps begin following them for a bit? Would she start pushing and punching me aggressively? Bribery is useless at this point, as offering her a treat in the car or when we get home never stalls her tantrum. I sat down on some rocks by the water and waited. She poked listlessly at some nearby bushes. I waited. She sat down and bumped my shoulder repeatedly. I waited. She got up to play with a passing dog. They moved on. I waited. She then told me she was tired and wanted to go home right away. I nodded and resumed my slow, measured pace. She asked to be carried. No, my back hurts. (Being carried is her favorite method of transport, since with every step she can shift her weight and thus force adjustments by the carrier.) Defeated, she walked along to the car, and we drove home.
Children with an attachment disorder attempt to dys-regulate their environment at all times. One way I’ve heard it described is that “since their internal world is a chaos of a nonintegrated self, the only time they are ‘at-home’ in the world is when they can produce an external chaos to match their internal state.” T-7 cannot hold a gaze, play a game, take turns in a conversation, or stay quiet for more than a few seconds. Before bed, when we sit on the couch to read a book, she complains that my voice is too loud, too soft, that she doesn’t want to read this book, that I’m using “too many voices.” (I’ve been told that varying intonation when reading stories stimulates brain activity, and found her resistance to this very interesting!) She rolls around on the couch, grabs at the book, plays with a doll or toy, chews on her sleeve. Occasionally she can relate what has happened in a story or even a single paragraph, but not often.
D- and I were never especially idealistic or romantic about the relationships we would create with our children. I never expected that life with children of neglect and special needs would be “a walk in the park.” Though I recall some of my own happiest early moments walking along a beach with my Dad, listening to stories and watching swimmers and sunbathers, I never entered into an adoptive placement thinking I could or even should reproduce these moments. In our case, “a walk in the park” is just one more site in which the magnitude of T-7’s problems became visible.
We came up with this as a resource for friends who are in the matching process right now. This was basically written by J- and edited by me.
Find out as much as possible about previous placements and disruptions, and in particular, try to have your social worker review all the material. In our case, there had been so many changes in social workers for the girls (and mixed in was another foster family agency as well), that you should be able to put together a reasonable story about C-, rather than expecting disclosure to be a final and definitive information session.
Ultimately, we believe that we were dealing with the wrong person, and that there were other social workers and therapists who would have better served our understanding. The social worker is only expected to do monthly visits, it is the therapists, teachers and foster parents that area actually participating in their life and will give you a picture of who the kid is.
In some cases, there are IEPs and other sorts of documentation, and the reasons that any services were requested or granted are huge clues to the kinds of difficulties you might face. For instance, one document I recently viewed described a need for respite in a previous home based on the need for “24-hour supervision” of T-4. This is a huge clue that she is unable to be left alone, that she has a disturbed sleep schedule. Things like this might have helped us interpret the initial description of her as “really knows how to push her sister’s buttons.” Ha ha, sounds funny, kind of cute, right? But actually, she can reduce her sister (remember, her older sister by two and a half years) to tears in seconds, and does so with a vicious regularity.
Here are some very specific questions to ask, not necessarily of the social worker, but also of the foster mom if possible:
“Please describe to me, in detail, the girl’s daily routine around waking, breakfast, bathing, toothbrushing, and going to sleep.” These can be huge sites of conflict, and we are now familiar with many stories of foster children who have very serious night-time disturbances. We did not know that we would spend between one and three hours (each!) of devoted time every night to get the girls to bed.
“May I have a written report from her current and previous teachers on her levels of attention and grade-level achievements.” We were told that T-7 was doing “very well” in school, when in fact she’s a basket case, has been well below grade level, and deeply objects to even minimal school work.
“Please describe to me specific incidents of the described strongheadedness.” How does she respond to frustration? Does she tantrum? If so, how do the tantrums manifest, e.g., are they in public; how long do they last; do they involve breaking things, intermittent or incessant screaming, or physical violence toward others such as hitting, kicking, or biting? “How well does she transition between different activities?” Does she run and hide, in the house or out? Does she refuse to comply? Does she talk back? “Does she sometime require either physical restraint or being picked up from place to place.” If so, how does she respond to this? “Strongheadedness” can be a code for oppositional, defiant, and control-seeking behavior, and has been a plentiful fount of simple unpleasantness for us, when it does not balloon into tantrums, as it often does.
“What are some of the activities she has been involved with? What kinds of games, if any, is she able to play?” Has she taken care of family pets, been in an afterschool program, learned to kick or throw a ball, ride a bicycle, dress a doll, draw or paint? Both my girls are developmentally behind in basic pre-school skills and imaginative play capacities. They are catching up, but it helps to know just how “old” your new child “is.” We thought we were getting a 4 and a 6 year old, but really when they moved in they were developmentally all over the place. Mix that with regression (not unusual upon adoptive placement), and we found ourselves unable to generate age-appropriate behaviors from them.
And here are some comments on adoptions out of county:
We underestimated the difficulty of the travel. Even with family in Sacramento, visits are very difficult and trying. We were driving out there twice each week: Tuesdays we drove there and back ourselves, and spent a few hours with the girls. We were also driving there and back each weekend to pick up the girls and bring them back to our home. That was three days a week of substantial driving (the trip was nearly two hours, could be more with traffic, and the visits are basically as far out in Sacramento County as you can get). This meant getting dog care each time, disrupting our own eating and sleeping, and increased car maintenance at 600+ miles per week. It also meant driving out to meet the social worker, do the disclosure meeting, driving again back and forth to pick up the girls’s possessions, bringing T-4 back for a medical appointment… And now, any trip out there with the girls means nearly four hours for them in the car (more if they spend much of it screaming and we have to pull over!). Will you have parent or relative visits?
Accessing services via medi-Cal has been VERY complicated, and most of the complications had to do with agencies in Alameda that require Alameda residence status. The Medi-Cal bureaucracy is huge and disparate, and what one agency pulled up on its computer was (and still is!) usually different from what another pulled up. Our agency was initially very negligent on this score (”oh, they changed the rules and nobody understands it, and anyway, it’s your responsibility to take care of” — when we were thinking “uh huh, and you’ve been doing this for thirty years and have no idea what the fuck you are doing?”). Eventually, they did some important work that helped us get T-4 initial school covered, but the period of working through this was perhaps the worst few weeks of my life. Even so, I made a lot of mistakes, some of which I am still in the process of rectifying.
This is a part of 2, perhaps, but D- indicated that C- was not presenting for any therapeutic services. This is absurd. Most “normal” kids need therapy; all foster kids do. Get this set up in advance.
Also, adopting out of county means more distance between us, our social worker (M-), and the reams of people who are involved in the case in Sacramento. If C- is not post-.26 (legally free for adoption), then don’t believe what anyone tells you. Our girls were initially offered up as “will be smooth sailing to .26,” and then at the disclosure meeting it was “well, the parents will fight it, but it doesn’t mean anything.” While this could include delaying .26 termination resolution (taking it to “trial”), it also means that they appealed placement out of county, prevented transfer of educational rights, and asked for reinstatement of reunification services (the answer was “no,” thank goodness).
We spent most of our disclosure meeting discussing T-4’s medical history to make sure that she didn’t appear permanently unable to live independently. This was a mistake. We knew going in we were prepared to assist her in rectifying her long-term medical neglect, and though we have had to do a lot of work around her medical issues, it has never been especially onerous to us. What we should have discussed were the behavioral issues that were being hidden from us or minimized.
I sometimes like to say: “well, the social worker didn’t lie about everything, as there were some half-truths mixed in!”
A book that has been great for me the last month or so is my last tip: Daniel Hughes, “Building the Bonds of Attachment,” 2nd ed. I don’t know how much it would have helped me before the girls moved in, because I understand things now I never could have six months ago. But it is also excellent reading, and D- is planning on re-reading it. It is a narrative of the first 7 years of the life of Katie, who is a fictional composite of many foster children. “Katie” is even more pronounced in her attachment insecurity than my girls, and manifests it in ways that are more destructive. But, “she” has taught me a ton about why my girls are unable to do some very simple things, and why their initial external “charm” serves to cover over a profoundly dis-integrated sense of self, inhibiting them from experiencing self-satisfaction, and implanting shame deep into their core personality.
I no longer believe that anyone who has experienced several placements at a young age will be entirely free of attachment issues, and that they will manifest as behavioral issues in one way or another. As I said above, if C-has not been receiving therapeutic services, somebody hasn’t been paying attention, and if they haven’t paid attention to that, you need to know what else they have been missing.
On New Year’s Eve, four very different people journey to the top of a famous suicide jumping spot. Each of their lives is overshadowed by lost promise, emotional isolation and few coping skills. None of them have a path ahead that looks any good and they join together, not admitting that they are there to save each other and not fully aware that they are trying to save themselves.
