On Sunday, Henry got up early. He has readjusted his clock to a 6AM wake up. Apparently, his internal clock recognizes daylight savings even though the state of Arizona does not. He was very cranky by 10:30AM and Jeff managed to get him to sleep without much hoopla. Around 12:50PM, I asked my parents if they could pick Henry up b/c I wanted him to sleep as long as possible, and Jeff and I had an appointment at 2PM. They came around 1:30PM, which was great. By that time, Henry was up...prodded by me around 1:10PM...which only made him try to bury his head in the pillows. He is undeniably my child on the sleep front...a tad grumpy when someone tries to arise him from his slumber.
At 2PM, we met up with Foster Mom M. I'm not going to use her real name b/c many foster parents prefer their privacy. She is friends with our foster mom trainer for our MAPPs classes. Foster Mom M has been foster children for 7 years. She deals primarily with medically fragile infants, usually kids who were born having been exposed to drugs. She adopted her third placement D, who was born 3.5 months prematurely and addicted to meth. D is four years old now and doing very well. She had hydrocephalus and therefore has a shunt that drains the extra fluid from the brain into pelvis area for reabsorption. Foster Mom M has only taken care of infants, especially with the adoption of D b/c she wanted to make sure that D was the oldest in the house. Foster Mom M is going back to school soon, so that she can become a kindergarten teacher. With that goal in place and raising D, she has decided to stop fostering children (her last placement found a permanent home in January). She was told that foster parents usually get burnt out after about 5 years. She's lasted a bit beyond that. She will still be coming to quarterlies (meeting that take place every three months to keep foster parents' training active, which keeps them certifiable) b/c she plans to continue providing respite care on occasion.
Here's just a sample of what we learned/discussed:
(1) Ask for transitional time rather than having the child ripped from the foster home and placed back directly with the bio family for reunification. Apparently, transitional time often has to be requested.
(2) A lot of people do foster care for the money, even though the money is supposed to go directly for the child's expenses. She said that she has been surprised at how some of the foster care children appear at quarterlies...dressed in very worn clothes suggesting that the foster parents aren't spending the money on the kids.
(3) Make sure that your bio family comes first. If you are hesitant about taking a child into your come, then don't. She was almost given a charge whose description didn't match what was said over the telephone. The child in question was a shaken baby syndrome child and on several seizure medications. Because she also had D's needs to consider, she passed. She is a single parent. If the child had a seizure while she was giving D a bath or something, she wasn't sure that she could handle both children's needs at the same time.
(4) There is a lot of variance in the quality of CPS workers. Some are great. Some are terrible.
(5) Biological families will often view you (the foster parent) as the enemy.
(6) CPS sometimes makes mistakes. Sometimes they rip a child from a home and then ask questions later about the child's home situation. Sometimes they are very slow to ask questions. And sometimes, they don't ask enough questions about biological parents and reunify children with their bio familes even when it doesn't seem like the bio parents are going to do a good job (e.g., bio parents clearly displaying inappropriate levels of anger around others...gee, what do you think is going to happen to the kids behind closed doors if the bio parents already showing so much anger in public?).
(7) Having a foster child taken from your home is very hard. It is "like a limb being ripped from your body." And yet it is also important work.
Jeff and I filled out our special needs preference form when we left our visit with Foster Mom M. I think that we have a better understanding of some things that we think we can handle and some things not. Unfortunately, we just don't think we could handle a shaken baby syndrome baby at this time. And we are also skeptical about whether or not we could handle babies going through drug withdrawals, given that we have full-time jobs and Henry to consider. We are OK with respiratory issues, g-tubes (to some extent), injections (e.g., insulin), some developmental delays, etc. We are expecting some behavioral problems, but if the child is already showing extreme aggressive tendencies and/or abuse to others and animals, we will not be able to care for them at this time.
In the evening, we went over to my parents' house for my family b-day dinner. Henry had a great afternoon with Poppy in the backyard. As usual, they read lots of books.
Henry said Brian's name rather than referring to him as "Dude." He said Brian's name very well in fact. Erin was convinced that her name was going to be the very last that he'd ever say. But he surprised her with an "Erin" after the meal.
When my cake come out, Henry was sitting in my lap. I'm pretty sure that he thought the birthday song was for him, and he was delighted by it. He wasn't interested in the cake though after the candles had been blown.
This morning, Henry arose at 6AM. Sigh. I took care of him while Jeff worked as Jeff is on EST and we now have a 3 hour difference between here and Philly. Henry and I read "The Haunted House" and "The Magic Grinder." At one point, Henry dropped his bottle and said "Bottle fall down."
He's playing with Alicia and Karina now.
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