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Parenting is a choice--one many people make to soothe a part of themselves. The fantasy of becoming a parent--how it will fix me, make me grow up, help me see my own childhood more clearly--are some of the reasons people want to have children. Not the best intentions, really, but not a federal offense, either. People are human, so this happens.
But parenting is about the child. It's also about parents taking care of themselves enough in the first place, so then they can turn around and really get to know their child, and help that child, well, get to know him or herself. No surprise (or maybe it is?), that's one of the top reasons being a parent is the hardest job around. If their intentions are unclear, parents run the risk of putting their own needs onto their kids—kind of like a color overlay in a science book—so their needs are on top, the kid's beneath somewhere. Likewise, they also risk getting squashed by their kids because as parents/adults, they have no concept of what they need to take care of themselves.
Messy. But not uncommon. And not unfixable. Becoming aware is the first step.
I bring this up because of a post that embodies this whole messiness I describe above, written Amy Ferris, author of Marrying George Clooney. On her blog, 3:00 a.m. Musings From a Midlife Crisis, she writes about almost adopting. In reality, she likely wasn't that close at all, not inside, at her core, anyway. In her post titled Non-Returnable, she writes:
"I woke up a few days earlier wanting to have a kid, I was hormonal and lonely. Hormonal, lonely and cranky and older than the day before. Not a great combo, I want a kid!!!!"
I asked Amy what prompted the post. She said: "...my desire to share what is very complicated and often shameful--those feelings that mesh together - not having children or a child (biologically), having the passive-aggressive desire to have children, and then ultimately coming to the truth of not really wanting a child.
"I think many women go through so many emotions connected to this, and we feel deep shame when we say, 'You know, i don't really wanna have kids.' And then I read a piece about a woman who adopted a baby, and a few months later, decided that she did not want the child."
This made her think about, as she calls it, her "fostering" experience.
"[I] felt the deep desire to share it, the ‘digging down into the truth dirt.' And how we often use children/babies to fill a void, a need, a desire...to mend a marriage. A child is non-returnable. our emotions are transient."
I hope you'll hold Amy's words gently in your heart as you read more of my interview with adoption social worker, from Orange County, CA, Sharon Landis. Also, read PART 1 of my interview here, and we wend our way through trying to better understand the foster care system from the inside out, and how it really impacts kids and grown-ups alike.
Meredith: In your agency information you mention that prospective parents will "Gain an understanding of permanency timeframes and the importance of the "child's clock" in making permanency decisions. Learn about "concurrent planning" as a strategy for achieving permanency in a more timely fashion. Find out ways to promote a child's life-long connectedness to their family when reunification to their birth family is not in the child's future." This is so important and so often misunderstood by. Can you please explain what is going on in the child at this time.
SHARON LANDIS, MSW: As a precursor to becoming licensed, all prospective foster and adoptive parents must take mandatory [and renewable] training [that encompasses issues] about caring for children in child welfare.
The Adoption and Safe Family's Act of 1997 limits the amount of time that a child can remain in the foster care system and also provides for the development of a permanent plan along with a reunification plan. This is called Concurrent Planning.
What this means is that while we offer services to the birth parents to help them change whatever it was that caused the child to be at risk, we also seek to identify an adoptive family if we can't reunify the child with the birth parents.
"A child's sense of time is different from an adults; childhood is short and simultaneously, a tremendous amount of development and maturation is going on internally for a child."
When a child is maltreated, she said, and is removed from his family for his protection, this act can adversely affect the child's development process as well as his/her sense of safety, attachment and healthy identity. We encourage families to stretch and reach for understanding about the dynamics that color a child's world upon entering child welfare and placement in out-of-home care; i.e. grief and loss, confusion, acting out behaviors, survival coping skills and dreams/hopes/fantasies about their birth family and reunification.
We encourage families to learn to focus on meeting the needs of children first--finding out what's underneath the behavior and meeting that need such as helping them feel safe, empowering them, helping them feel a sense of connection, etc. before they can help change the challenging behavior into healthier behaviors.
Meredith: Isn't it also a double bind and a tall order (for anyone)--trying to mourn and attach at once?
SHARON LANDIS, MSW: "Yes, it can be seen that this could be a "double-bind" and "tall-order" for children trying to mourn and attach at the same time. It may also be a time when children feel stretched and confused about divided loyalties between birth parents and their prospective adoptive parents and/or foster parents. That's why the child needs a foster parent who is prepared to meet the child's needs and get their own needs (for intimacy/validation/etc) met outside of the parent-child relationship.
True intimacy comes when we trust others to meet our needs, regardless of our behaviors, and know they will remain connected to us.
Grief and loss experiences, when there is a healthy climate within the home that facilitates open sharing and communication, can open up the doors to trusting relationships and provide attachment moments when a parent/caretaker is there consistently to meet the child's needs during their grief journey. If a parent continues to remain focused on understanding why the child is behaving a certain way and seeks to reassure the child that they will remain the parent and consistently meet that child's unmet needs, eventually the child will start to trust the caretaker and the attachment becomes stronger. Over and over as a caregiver meets the needs of the child, the relationship is cemented and the child begins to change his/her world view that it's scary and untrustworthy into that he/she does have value as an individual, is loved and does have power to make healthy behavior choices."
Keep this in mind: "The parent encourages this sense of hope with his/her unconditional acceptance of the child as he/she is in the moment and reinforces future change by his/her steadfastness of structured parenting skills and positive regard for the child."
Next time: Reunification
