This is the second in a series of blogs that discuss the traits that an adoptive parent of a special needs child must have. The person needs to be adept at adjusting to sudden developments, anxieties and hardships. All of these things will come, the only question is when.
When one of our children came to live with us, he almost immediately started having fits and rages. It was unlike anything that I had seen before. The slightest upset, and frequently nothing that we saw, would trigger them. He had these episodes for up to an hour at a time, four or five times a day. Our foster care training had not prepared us for anything like what we experienced.
One of the other boys came a few months later. He also had fits and rages, but they were ususally directed at someone. Suddenly, we had fights, biting, broken furniture, and more wild screaming. We also had to worry about the newborn getting somehow hurt in the chaos. On the run, we were constantly having to adjust, to hold the one causing the problem or shield the one in danger, and this was with two of us there.
The state authorities did absolutely nothing to help us while this was going on. When they did get involved, it was always to inject a new requirement or schedule a pointless meeting. There is nothing that increases the anxiety level in a new foster / adoptive home more than to have the phone ring with the caller ID saying that the state was calling.
We called our advisor at the adoption agency daily with “What do we do when….?” questions. We were constantly adjusting at a moment’s notice to the latest crisis and learning techniques to problems that we had never encountered.
None of this was the fault of the boys. They did not know any level of stability. They were four and a half, two and a half, one and a half, and newborn. The adults who had been involved in their lives did not look out for anyone but themselves. The boys didn’t know when they would be moved next, who would be disciplining them and how, or when they would eat next. They had just been dropped in our lap.
I am not doing a very good job of recruiting, am I?
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