More thoughts on adoption and why it didn’t work

After my long recent post, I figured I was done writing about adoption.  But it turns out that I have more to say.

Some things that my friend Joy has said and some other people’s blog posts (particularly this one, and also this one and this one) have influenced my thinking lately.  Even though I saw a therapist and got reassurances that my reactions were normal, it means so much more to hear from other adoptive parents about their difficulties with attachment.  There’s a lot written about kids having difficulty attaching, but for adoptive parents to openly acknowledge that they had difficulty with attachment is new for me.  When I described my difficulties at the CAS-run adoption transition support group last spring, none of the other parents gave any indication that they ever felt remotely the same way.  I felt like everyone else was happy and loved their kids and was managing the stress well and I was the dissonant chord in the room.  After the first day, I didn’t talk much about my feelings because I felt like no one there wanted to hear it.  Considering that’s how I felt around other adoptive parents, I felt even more like I shouldn’t say anything to people in general.  Telling people that we decided not to go through with the adoption is still difficult (though there are fewer occasions that we need to tell people anymore), because I feel that people expect adoption to be this super happy thing and they will judge me negatively because it didn’t work out that way.

Knowing that my experience is not uncommon is a huge relief.  But still, I had this lingering concern that I was somehow deficient, that there was something wrong with me.  Other adoptive parents had difficulties with attachment, but they persevered and ended up with happy (or at least functional) relationships with their kids.  I didn’t.

Then I saw our situation in a new way.  Since making the decision not to proceed with the adoption, I kept insisting that it was because of my attachment problems, not because of D’s special needs.  It seemed unfair and discriminatory to decide not to commit to him as soon as we had numbers quantifying his delays, and I had been struggling with attachment issues for months.  But the truth is that my decision not to proceed was because of both my attachment difficulties AND his special needs.  I think I could have overcome one or the other.  I had already worked through the attachment stuff with the therapist and gotten to a point where I had decided to continue with the adoption; if the special needs stuff hadn’t been there, I would have carried on and things would likely have worked out.  On the other hand, if I had attached to him strongly, I wouldn’t have reacted the same way to the results of his developmental assessment.  I don’t think our adoption attempt failed because of some deep flaw in me, but because of the difficulty of facing both of those challenges at the same time.

Realizing this makes me feel better about the possibility of adopting in the future.  Our situation was rather unique, both because D didn’t speak English and because we were the first family he was placed with after he entered care.  If English was his native language and/or he had lived with another foster family first, it’s more likely that his delays would have been identified before he was placed with us.  If we pursue another adoption, it’s unlikely that we would have another child placed with us with such significant unidentified needs.  It’s quite possible that I’d face hurdles with attachment again, but I would be better prepared to deal with them.  Knowing that it’s not so unusual and that many adoptive parents who struggle with attachment are able to build healthy attachments over time would give me the hope and perspective I would need to keep going.

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Another good-bye visit

Yesterday was the good-bye visit with D’s birth father and paternal grandmother.  As with his birth mother in the fall, D had a portrait taken with his birth father and had some playtime at the CAS office, which was recorded on video.  We and his birth father will both get copies of the portrait and the video.

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Subsidy

This morning, our social worker brought over paperwork for us to sign; we have been approved for an adoption subsidy for D.  When she first mentioned applying for it last month, I felt weird about it.  We didn’t even know that these subsidies existed.  We certainly weren’t out to try to get money for caring for D.  In fact, when we first started the process, we didn’t even realize that we were going to be paid for fostering him.

Then I found this article in the Toronto Star.  In case you don’t feel like reading it or the link has expired, here are a few statistics from the article.  It says that about 82% of children in the care of Ontario Children’s Aid Societies have diagnosed special needs and that foster care costs an average of about $45,000 annually per child.  Foster families receive about $18,000 annually per child, but the average subsidy for adoptive families is $4350 (it’s not clear whether that’s the average for all families who adopt, including those who get no subsidy, or whether it’s the average amount of subsidy for those who receive a subsidy).  Some Children’s Aid Societies offer generous subsidies and some don’t provide subsidies at all.  In 2009, a “provincial expert panel…called for adoption subsidies for all parents who adopt children over age 2 and for every child with special needs.  Led by David Johnston, now Canada’s governor general, the Expert Panel on Fertility and Adoption estimated that annual post-adoption subsidies of between $9,000 and $15,000 would save taxpayers $26 million annually within five years and $36 million annually after that.”

I feel better about accepting the subsidy after reading those numbers.  D does have special needs and it is likely that he will need continued support for them.  The plain truth is that he is more challenging to parent than a typical kid, as are many of the kids in foster care (through no fault of their own).  These kids deserve permanent, loving, stable, supportive families; it’s not fair to them if the system is rigged so there is a financial incentive to keep them in foster care.  The parents who are willing to step up and commit to these kids should have access to resources to help them do it, even after an adoption has been finalized.

Our social worker says there is an expectation that the province will be standardizing subsidies sometime in the next few years.  I think that’s a great idea.  It’s not fair that some people get subsidies and others don’t, when it has nothing to do with the needs of their children but just the policies of the particular CAS that happens to serve them.

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AP Day details

Yesterday we went on adoption probation, or AP.  That means that D is no longer our foster child.  I’m not sure exactly what our legal relationship is, because CAS is still involved and still has to sign off on major things, like surgeries, but we’re pretty much his legal guardians now.  We can use his new name now.  We don’t get paid for foster care anymore and we are now responsible for his prescription costs, costs of extracurricular activities, and so on.  Our adoption is scheduled to be finalized on September 23rd, at which point he will be our son and we will be his legal parents.

CAS requires kids who are leaving foster care to have a medical exam, just as they require them to have an exam when they come into care.  Since his entry medical in October, D has grown two inches and maintained the same weight.  That’s what I had hoped would happen, as he was a bit pudgy when he came to us.

On Saturday, Peter, D, and a neighbor kid were playing hockey in our driveway when the neighbor kid missed the ball and whacked D over his left eye with his hockey stick.  He has quite the black eye to show for it. Great timing, eh–two days before we were going to the CAS office.  Of course they understood, but it just doesn’t look good to show up with a big bruise on your foster child.  Our social worker had scheduled a good-bye visit with D’s birth father, including photos, for Thursday; she is going to reschedule the visit for a couple weeks from now so D will look normal in the pictures.

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Lots going on in April

Well, I couldn’t take the “after” pictures of the kitchen on Thursday.  Our counter tops were damaged and they had to order new ones.  They are now supposed to be installed next Thursday.  So I’m still washing dishes in the bath tub (not all of them, just the things that can’t go in the dishwasher).

The boys and I are trying new things this month.  Both boys and I are involved in a family music class offered by one of the local Early Years Centres.  It’s a four-week program and we just started it this Wednesday.  However, next week will be the last time we attend, because D is FINALLY going to start speech therapy and the timing conflicts.  He’ll be in a 6-week small group therapy program.  After waiting this long, I feel like that’s not really enough, but at least it’s something.  D is also taking a preschooler dance class through our city’s recreation department.  I signed him up for it back before I knew he was going to go to nursery school, figuring that it would be good for him to be involved in some sort of organized activity.  I chose dance because he loves music and is a good mimic, so I thought he would enjoy it and could be successful at it despite his language delays.  He started it on Tuesday and he can’t wait until his next class.  Peter is going to be starting lacrosse on the 16th.  As for me, I started my new activity on Thursday.  I’m taking a Bollywood dance class through the recreation department.  No, I’m not joking.  I really am.  There were a limited number of classes I could take that didn’t conflict with other activities on our schedule, and I wanted something active, so it was either that or tennis.  I figured that even if I made a fool of myself (I’m not a dancer), at least it would be with a group of strangers.  I was nervous about going to the first class, but I am by no means the worst one there and it was kind of fun.  Don likes the yoga pants I bought to wear to the class.

Speaking of Don, he leaves on Monday for a conference in Seattle and he’ll be gone for a week.  I don’t enjoy doing the single parent thing and I miss him when he’s not around, so I’m not looking forward to it.  To make matters worse, he recently sprung on me that he’s going to be gone for a week at the end of May, too.  Booooo!

This isn’t about April, but I’ll throw it into the same post.  We have a new date to go on adoption probation–May 9th.  Since that’s settled, we’re going ahead with the plan to have D baptized on May 15th.  We’re looking at September 23rd as the probable date for having the adoption finalized (they don’t finalize adoptions over the summer).

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Six months

Friday was the six-month anniversary of D coming to live with us.  I’ve been busy with the move and unpacking and all that, so here’s my reflection a couple days late.

I know I keep saying the same thing, but D has made tremendous progress over the time he’s been with us.  He’s potty-trained.  He eats a much wider variety of foods with much less resistance.  He can dress himself, including shoes (with velcro) and coat (putting it on, starting the zipper, and zipping it up).  He’s able to carry on a fairly reasonable conversation in English.  He knows his colors.  He sings a variety of classic children’s songs like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “London Bridge is Falling Down”.  He enjoys looking at familiar books and retelling the stories from memory.  He can read simple CVC words (like “run”, “sat”, “pig”).  None of those things were true six months ago.

As a very rough, unscientific estimate, I would say that D’s language and behavior were at about a 2-year-old level when he came to us at age 3 1/2.  Now, at age 4, I would say he functions at about a 3-year-old level.  The discouraging way to look at it is that he is still quite a bit behind his chronological age.  The encouraging way to look at it is that he’s made about a year’s worth of progress in six months.  We don’t know what his potential is.  All we can do is love him and keep providing appropriate stimulation so he can keep progressing as far as he is able.

The first month was the most difficult for him, as he was grieving the loss of living with his grandmother and adjusting to living with us and the new expectations we had for him (such as eating more foods and doing more things for himself).  Since then, he has settled in very well and seems quite happy to be part of our family.  He adores Peter and imitates him constantly; it’s good for him to have Peter as a role model.  By all measures, D seems to be thriving here.

The last few months have been more difficult for me, as I struggled with post-adoption depression.  Apparently it’s not that unusual, but I don’t remember ever hearing about it before I experienced it.  I wish I had known about the possibility; I might have recognized what was happening and gotten help sooner.  It was scary to go through, but I’m feeling better and things seem to be back on track now.  D’s adoption worker is coming tomorrow for our monthly visit and we’ll discuss where we go from here.

 

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Hanging in there

Our social worker has offered a variety of resources, which I appreciate.  We’re not using most of them yet, but we’ll get there, and I am hopeful that things will work out.

I’m going to the adoption transition support group again, which is four sessions in March.  The first one was last week, the second is tomorrow, then it skips a week for March Break (the schools are closed and lots of people go on vacation), then it goes two more weeks after that.  It’s good to meet other people who have similar experiences as I don’t often socialize with other people who have adopted through the CAS.  I’ve heard good things about the post-adoption support group (which is open to anyone who has had a child placed for adoption, the adoption doesn’t have to be finalized), but I haven’t been able to attend because it conflicts with Peter’s Beaver meetings and we only have one vehicle.

A foster care support worker has been assigned to help us out.  I’ve met her twice now (our social worker introduced her to me after the support group meeting last week and she came with our social worker for a meeting this morning) and I still don’t really understand what she’s going to do, but at this point, I’m not turning down any help that’s offered.

We have been approved for ten counselling sessions.  That will start next week.  We’ll see how that goes.

D will be starting nursery school the week after March Break.  He’ll be going for two and a half hours in the mornings.  I think it will be good for him, and even more importantly, it will give me a break.  We were offered respite care (for D to stay with another foster family for a couple days to give us a break), but we decided not to use it.  I can hang in there another couple weeks and then I think it’ll be easier when D is in nursery school.

Our social worker is also going to complete a referral for D to an agency that has a program for promoting attachment/bonding that she feels would be helpful.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear when D will be able to start speech-language therapy.  I am so frustrated by that situation (he was already in the early intervention speech-language program last year and has had two assessments since he came into foster care, but it’s been eight months since he actually had any therapy) that I e-mailed my MPP (that’s my member of provincial parliament, for my American readers).  I don’t know if that will get me anywhere, but at least I did something.

So that’s where we are for now.  We close on our house a week from today and then we have two weeks of crazy renovations and moving.  Then Don will be gone to a conference in Seattle for a week in mid-April.  Last year, when he went to Belgium, Peter did not deal with it well, so I don’t know what to expect this time.  Life is not going to feel “normal” until the end of April, at least.  I’m just hanging in there and hoping that these various resources will help when they get up and running.

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AP postponed

We won’t be going on adoption probation (AP) next week, as planned.  I’ve been struggling for some time and an incident occured yesterday that convinced me that we’re not ready to move forward with the adoption yet.  Our social worker came out today and we had a good talk.  We’re going to access some additional resources as we decide whether to continue with the adoption or transition D to another family.

This is a rough time for me.  I feel like I’ve tried hard to make this work and I’m failing.  Failure is a miserable feeling.  But I know that it’s not fair to anyone to try to pretend that things are going better than they really are.  The only way things will get better is to be honest about how things are going and get the help I need.  Thank you to everyone for your support as we try to figure out what is best for D and our family.

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Declaration of independence

I feel like I need to address the comment I made previously about sometimes questioning whether we’re the best family for D.  I hope that it isn’t taken the wrong way.  We made a commitment to care for him the same as we would a biological child and we do.  I believe we are a good family for him.  He has grown and developed in positive ways during the time that he has been living with us, and we expect him to continue to make good progress.  We’re happy to have him with us.

I think my questioning stems from our relationship with his grandmother.  Our situation is different from most CAS adoptions in that D’s grandmother voluntarily placed him for adoption.  When his information was presented to us last summer, one of the biggest risks was that his grandmother would change her mind (and she did get cold feet, stalling the process for a couple weeks).  So during the weeks before D was “apprehended” (or formally came into CAS care), we were very conscious of how we presented ourselves to his grandmother.  We tried to make her feel as comfortable as possible with us as people who would adopt her grandson and raise him, knowing that if she wasn’t comfortable, she could back out and we would lose the opportunity.  The first time we met her, she expressed two main things that she wanted–for him to maintain his knowledge/use of French and to have ongoing contact with him.  At that meeting, I told her straight out that we aren’t francophone, but that we would support his use of French.  We were entirely sincere when we said that.  I’m a French teacher and Peter attended a French-language school last year, so we definitely felt that we could support D in being bilingual, French/English.  We didn’t realize the extent of his language delays at that time, and I’m not sure that she really understood how delayed he was either.

We are glad that overall, D’s grandmother thinks highly of us as parents.  She has complimented us numerous times and seems to be pleased with the care we provide for D.  However, she doesn’t seem to like the fact that he now prefers to use English (which he can now speak much better than French).  She was visibly upset when I told her that the university clinic assessed his language skills in English and will be providing speech-language therapy in English.  We respect that the French language is an important part of her culture and something that she wants D to share, but we feel (and our social worker agrees) that it’s more important for D to learn English at this point–we are a majority-English-speaking family in a majority-English-speaking community.  D’s grandmother sort of talked herself into feeling a little better about it by commenting that since he’ll be going to a French school, it will balance out.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he probably won’t be going to a French school this fall (a decision which our social worker supports).  I feel like we’re letting her down by not promoting French more, and that’s why I sometimes wonder if we are the best family for D.  Our adoption worker had told us that we were chosen because we were the only adoptive family awaiting placement in our CAS in which someone spoke French.  They could have searched outside our CAS for a francophone family elsewhere in Ontario, but that would have made the transition period more difficult (due to a greater distance to travel for pre-placement visits) and would make it more difficult for D’s grandmother to see him regularly.  I assume they considered those things and decided it was better to place him within the local area.  They chose us because they believed that we could provide what he needs; I need to trust that they made the right decision.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world, to take someone else’s child and make them your child.  I think it’s a good thing for me to be sensitive to where D came from and what it has meant for his grandmother to let him go, but I think it’s been holding me back in claiming him as my own child.

Not too long ago, D’s grandmother took him out without us for the first time since he was placed with us on October 1st.  She asked and I just didn’t feel like I could say no, even though I didn’t feel ready for it.  It’s not that I was worried about what she might do–she used to take care of him full-time and she has behaved very appropriately towards him since he came into our home, so I knew she wouldn’t hurt him or take off with him or anything.  I was more concerned about how D would react to going with her, if it might affect his attachment to us.  She picked him up at our house, took him out for about 50 minutes, and brought him back, and it all went smoothly.  D seemed fine with it all; he seems to have completely accepted that he lives with us now.  In a way, seeing her take him out and bring him back helped me realize that he isn’t her child anymore.  She hasn’t taken care of him in over four months; she’s now working full-time again (she hadn’t worked in about three years, since she began caring for him) and seems happy to be moving on with her life.  He isn’t his birth parents’ child; they haven’t cared for him since he was an infant and they weren’t able to care for him appropriately then.  So whose child is he, then?  Technically, he’s the government of Ontario’s child, but soon he will be ours.  I’ve been very careful since the beginning not to “claim” him too soon, so I wouldn’t be as hurt if it fell through.  Even now, I have to explain that he’s my foster child and that we’re in the process of adopting him, because he doesn’t have our last name and because legally, I have to add “foster parent” after my name when I sign paperwork for him.  (And some things I can’t sign, like the consent for his surgery–that needs CAS approval.)  Once we go on adoption probation (AP), we get to use his new name, and we can have him baptized.  Of course, he will legally and formally be ours after the adoption is finalized in court, but I think he’ll feel like ours when we go on AP and we get to use our last name for him.

On the subject of his new name, that’s something else that his grandmother won’t like, but as our social worker has reminded me several times, he will be our son so we get to decide what we want.  We will keep his first name the same and will give him our last name.  Currently D has two middle names, one from his birth mother’s family and one from his birth father’s family.  His grandmother had asked us to keep the name that comes from her family.  However, I don’t feel like it’s fair to keep one and not the other, I don’t really like the name anyhow, and I wanted to give him a middle name that came from us.  So we’re going to give him the middle name that is Don’s grandfather’s middle name, Don’s father’s middle name, Don’s middle name, and Peter’s middle name.  To me, that seems like a strong way to claim him as part of our family.  However, I guess that means that if we have any more sons in the future, we’ll be stuck using that same middle name.

We were going to have D baptized near the end of this month, but we had to reschedule it because we’re not on AP yet.  The church doesn’t do baptisms during Lent, and we didn’t want to do it at Easter, so we’re looking at May 20th for his baptism now.  I asked one of the priests, who had to call someone in the diocesan office to see if it was okay, and got an answer that his baptismal name doesn’t have to be the same as his legal name.  Our plan is to use all three middle names (the one we’re giving him and the two he has now) at his baptism, as a way of respecting the name given to him at birth without having a long, cumbersome legal name.  Considering that his grandmother considers herself Catholic and wants D to be baptized (though she never got around to doing it herself), I hope that will be enough for her.  But even if she’s not happy with it, oh, well.  It’s not her decision anymore.

It’s rather a pain to register a child to attend a Catholic school here if they haven’t been baptized, so we’re just going to wait until May to deal with that.  It’s probably a good thing that it’s making us wait another three months, because I’m sure D will continue to make good progress in his English language acquisition in that time.  At this point, we think it’s unlikely that we’ll register D in a French-language school for next year, because all the French schools are full-time, 5 days a week, and we don’t want to put him in such a French-heavy environment if he’s still significantly delayed in English.  He needs to know *a* language before we worry too much about the second language.  We may register him at a regular English-language school or we may send him to the French immersion school that Peter attends now; either one would be half-time (2-3 days a week).  Our goal is to get him up to speed in English by the end of next school year and then transfer him to the French-language school for senior kindergarten, but we’ll just have to wait and see how things go.  We haven’t decided 100%, but we will probably move Peter back to the French-language school this fall.  It would be kind of annoying to have two kids at two different elementary schools, but we want to send each of them to the school that we think is best for them, so that may well be what happens.

This is a long post, but all this stuff has been swirling around in my brain for some time, so it feels good to get it out.

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