Pow-Pow- Power Wheels

Robert is a 5 year old boy who arose early before his parents.  Deciding he wanted to go visit his grandmother three miles down the road, Robert climbed into his little power wheel jeep and started the three mile trip down the 4 lane road.  A woman saw him out her window and called the police.  When the police pulled the little man over, Robert refused to provide any information except for his first name.  "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," he curtly told the officer.  Luckily, mom had since woken up and realizing her little boy was gone, called 911.  The family was alerted to Robert's whereabouts and the precocious 5 year old was safely returned home.  True story.

This anecdote strikes many chords: funny and scary all at the same time.  However, there is an additional piece to the story.  The child already had behavior issues that had been permitted to slide due to parental guilt and, according to the mother, already had a fear of police.  So, beyond a jaded awareness of "stranger danger", why might Robert's unyielding to the police be cause for concern?

Our social structure works on a basic communal understanding of healthy limits, right and wrong, rewards and consequences.  The premise of functioning adequately is acknowledging and working within this understanding.  We want to encourage the uniqueness in each person, celebrate freedoms, and inspire creativity.  At the same time, we want each individual to be respectful, conscientious, and safe.  Freedom and respect hang in a tense balance that frames our lives.

Children who enter into foster care often experience mistrust of authority which is then transferred to healthy authority.  Children have experienced abuse and neglect at the very hands of those entrusted with their care.  At a very early age, they have learned that those in authority are not just or safe in their responsibility.  Luckily, children are smart and adaptable; they alter their behavior to protect themselves and get their needs met.  Unfortunately, this independence lacks the maturity and insight of an adult perspective, potentially leading to dangerous circumstances.  A child may not disclose information appearing "secretive", he may engage in drug use appearing "delinquent", she may make overt sexual provocations appearing "loose".  Adults may interpret this immature or troublesome behavior as rebellion or punishable behavior, but really the behavior is a finely tuned way for the child to get what they need (control, security, acceptance, attention).  Since children have learned not to depend on others to get their needs met, children take it into their own hands.

For foster parents, remember that a child's ability to get their needs met is a strength.  The child is creative, adaptable, and resourceful.  Be warned, the child will not quickly trust you, nor will they quickly stop using the methods that have thus far worked for them.  Inter-dependence is hard to learn after you've established that you are the only one you can trust.  

• The best thing you can do is be supportive and patient.  
• Be an example of appropriate behavior and narrate what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. 
• Ask open ended questions that help the child discover why he or she makes certain decisions.
• Help a child paint a picture of what he or she wants in life
• Demonstrate that you are on the child's team by advocating for what is in his or her best interest
• Establish rewards and consequences that communicate that an adult is taking charge and watching out for the child

Don't stop believing in the possibility of change.  The longest and hardest part of change is coming to the realization and conviction that one needs the change.  Notice and affirm the small successes- being caught with the drugs, but choosing not to use them is a success.  It means you are doing something right!  Foster parents are deconstructing well built walls one stone at a time.

A Community Look at Foster Care

This past Saturday, the Waynesville Library, Appalachian Community Services, and Haywood Bound hosted an exciting opportunity to learn more about foster care in our area and the huge need for foster parents.  At last count, Haywood County DSS had custody of 98 children.  60% of those children are placed in local Haywood County homes.  However, 40% of those children are in homes outside of the county, away from family, friends, and community.  Over the last 6 months, in recognition of how important it is for children to stay a part of their community, DSS director Ira Dove has made a distinct effort to recruit foster families through collaboration of DSS and private foster care agencies.  This collaboration has come to be known as Haywood Bound.

As a part of the effort to recruit foster parents, Mr. Dove and several other community leaders came together for a panel event on foster care.  These community leaders included Dr. Steve Wall from Haywood Pediatrics, Tara Keilberg, director of Kids Advocacy Resource Effort (KARE), Scott MacGregor, a Family Life Educator and soon to be graduate of Western with a Masters in Clinical Mental Health with a focus on forgiveness, and Pablo and Maria Averza, therapeutic foster parents since 2006.  The panel was preceded by a dynamically honest dramatic interpretation by local actress Barbara Bates Smith of NC author Kaye Gibbon’s novel Ellen Foster.  Ellen Foster tells the story of a little girl, Ellen, and her journey out of an abusive past and into a foster home that Ellen sees as her sanctuary, “somewhere friendly” and where “nothing new bad has happened to me since I got here.”

The panelists used Barabara’s performance as a backdrop to talk about the issues of foster care in Haywood County.  In 2010, 479 children in Western North Carolina were placed in legal custody of DSS.  8,826 children were in foster care statewide, with only 7, 684 licensed foster homes.   Children have been taken out of their homes for reasons of abuse and neglect and placed in relatives’ homes, therapeutic and family foster homes, group homes, etc.  Dr. Wall shared his experiences of how he has seen foster parents make a huge impact on children’s medical stability and ability to socially interact.  A foster parent needs nothing more than patience and an ability to establish healthy boundaries.  For the things a parent doesn’t know, there is a whole team involved to assist both the child and the foster parents.  Ms. Keilberg shared how KARE provides support for foster parents and birth parents through parenting classes and advocacy work.  Truly, though a family is doing the work with a child day in and day out, foster parents are not alone.  Parents are provided appropriate training, regular supervision, and access to services to help support the child.

Mr. MacGregor explained the researched benefits of forgiveness and helped to define what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not.  Forgiveness is  not excusing the pain that was done, it is releasing the "right to revenge" and recognizing that every person is deserving of respect because they are created human.  Mr. MacGregor discussed how one can practice forgiveness, exercising by forgiving daily the little things (like someone cutting you off in traffic) so that you become strong enough to forgive the big things (like abuse or neglect).  Forgiveness has been medically demonstrated to improve the healing capacity of the body and mind.  Mr. and Mrs.  Averza echoed this sentiment, recognizing that it can be difficult to team together with struggling families.  However, the long time foster parents recognized the need for a child to have contact with their family and know that their parent is safe.  And, though attaching to a child and seeing that child leave again is difficult, the greater reward is modeling healthy relationships for that child and taking responsibility for and acting on a great need in the community.

The need for foster parents in Haywood County is an obtainable goal with the support of the community.  Haywood County needs 20 new foster parents in order to keep all of the children in their communities.  Look for Ellen Foster and Friends: A Look at Foster Care on your local Haywood County Television Channel.

 

"Boxing is the Love of My Life"

This summer something historic is happening.  For the first time women will compete in Olympic boxing.  Trying out for the team is Tyrieshia Douglas.  Tyrieshia grew up in foster care and is now in the running to be a world champion.  She and her four siblings grew up in separate foster homes after being removed from their own home due to parental drug abuse.  Tyrieshia first became interested in boxing after seeing her brother's box at the gym, amazed that they got to "beat up people for free."   When she asked to box, Tyrieshia was adamantly told "no" because she was a girl.  Eventually, at the recommendation of a juvenile court judge after she was arrested for fighting, Tyrieshia did start boxing and, at number 2 in the country for her weight division, has a chance to make history.

Tyrieshia's coach is like a father figure in her life; he has supported her in doing what everyone else thought was crazy and unfeminine.  Now at 23 years old, Tyrieshia is reunited with family, living with one of her brothers and on speaking terms with her mother.  Family never stops being family, but other mentors are priceless.  Without them, children may never get a chance to accomplish their dreams.  One foster family I've worked with did something similar for a little 11 year old girl.  They offered her every extracurricular activity in the book: gymnastics, ballet, cheer-leading.  The child's request?  Football.  The family, a two female home, were surprised but encouraging.  They decided that if football is what she wanted to do, then they would support her in that endeavor.  This tall, thin, blond, delightful girl became one of the best players on the team- nose guard, in fact.

"If you are strong enough to stand up against all the odds that you face, there is something within you that is special," says Christy Halbert, international women's boxing coach.  As parents, we often try to make our child fit within social boundaries.  This includes making them color in the lines, paint trees green instead of purple, girls cheer, boys play sports, sit down and stay still, don't talk, clean your plate without attention to how your body actually feels.  As tempting as it may be, do not slip into this trap.  See that something special in the child that is in your home, encourage them and help them to be "strong enough to stand up against all odds," you never know what they will become.  Our role as parents is to nurture the child's self-identity, build their confidence in who they are and their ability to make decisions, be creative, be self-aware and follow their dreams.  Anything less is bred from a spirit control.

Children who come into foster care are often so emotionally beat down that they have no positive opinion of themselves and no trust in their own thoughts or feelings.  They feel worthless.  One beautiful 14 year old girl I work with just recently stated, "nobody likes me, nobody cares."  She needs nurturers that will build self-worth into her.  She needs to see that people care and that people like her even if she doesn't believe it.  A foster parent has to teach a child how to pay attention to their feelings; often a foster parent must reteach the meaning of words and experiences- what is safe? what is love? what is satisfaction?

How does a parent walk a child from feeling totally worthless to feeling confident in themselves?  How do you do it for a 2 year old?  You squeal and rave over every little squiggle they make on a piece of paper.  You delight in the mud pie they serve you in the sandbox.  You react to them with the same amount of enjoyment/disappointment that they demonstrate.  This same principle applies whether you are 2 or 10 or 16 or 25.  We want people to respond with empathy, we want to know that we count for something.  We want to know that we matter.  The more a child believes in her own worth, the more she begins to respect herself.  The more she respects herself, the more she is able to respect other people. Self-worth and respect will help her to make safer decisions, to protect herself from inappropriate sexual behavior, to restrain herself when tempted to act out or not do anything.

"If you can get hit and hit a person back, you have to have heart. You might get hurt. That's heart to me"- Tyrieshia Douglas.  Kids get hurt all the time, they get hit in so many ways, but they stay in the fight.  Especially when they have a supportive team behind them.  That's heart.  The 11 year old nose guard went on to be adopted by a family member who will not let her play football.  She may not play football anymore, but she learned some valuable lessons that she will carry with her.  She learned her own strength.  She learned that people care.  She learned that she can accomplish what she sets her mind to do.  And she still visits her foster parents.

www.npr.org/2012/02/06/146482663/as-olympic-trials-near-womens-boxing-heats-up

Be Careful Little Mouths What You Speak

While sitting in the airport waiting for a delayed flight, I overheard a very loud exposition on people with mental illness.  The speaker, a fellow traveler, was marveling a group of young listeners with her experiences as a prison nurse and the appalling criminals she had met.  The oration included such radical statements as "all their heads should be cut off" and "people with personality disorders do not have a chemical imbalance like people with mental illness; they're sociopaths; they have a choice to do what they do."  I must address this situation because unknowingly this woman was impacting public stigma towards people with mental illness, a stigma that does not need help in the realm of negative impressions.

Kids in foster care are in the same position.  They do not need our help to look bad in the public eye, nor do they need our help to look pitiful or feel shameful or guilty.  Foster kids are often dealing with mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, disruptive behavior, reactive attachment disorder) on top of having suffered neglect, abuse, and removal from the only family they have ever known.  Kids deal with big adult issues the only way they know how, and often this means reverting to the coping mechanisms they've learned from they're environment, coping mechanisms that allow for survival not necessarily for social norms.  Successful coping mechanisms may include stealing, fighting, drinking and drugging, sexually inappropriate behaviors, hoarding food.  The list goes on and on.

To many people these behaviors are quickly interpreted with moral judgments (ranging from our dear traveler's "they're sociopaths and their heads need to be cut off" to the more common this child is "lazy", "rebellious", "ungrateful", or "a tramp").  Our job, as foster care workers and foster parents, is not to fall into this trap of placing value judgments on behaviors.  It is our job to see past the behaviors and help the child identify the feelings that cause them. We must be extremely sensitive to our words, our offhand comments both in our home and in public.  More importantly we must guard our hearts for "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7).  We influence our community's perception of the children we have in our care.  How we talk about them in public or to our spouses impacts the hurdles they meet in the community.  We cannot help those whom we pity or objectify with our judgments.

I would like to take this moment to say that we all have a choice to do what we do, but we make those choices based on our perceived reality.  This perceived reality varies from person to person.  Your reality is based on chemical influences (internal or external), cultural backgrounds, and family grooming, personal experiences and what they've taught you to believe. Someone with paranoid schizophrenia may experience a reality in which people are constantly spying on them which will result in some very out of the ordinary behaviors.  Children who believe that they are worthless and cannot get attention any other way may resort to sexual exploits that are unsafe or far beyond their age level.  We all have our own struggles and our own personal realities that we respond to, whether that is believing you are fat or ugly or unlovable, whether it is believing you will be denied what you want, or cheated out of what you work hard for, or rejected when you reach out.  We behave in response to the things we have been taught and the things that we believe about ourselves.

For ourselves, for each other, and for our children we need to speak and believe a higher Truth.  A truth that says we are capable, lovable, responsible, and worthwhile; a Truth that is not based on our behaviors, but on how we were created.  We are created Good.

Deceit, the Downfall of Loyalty

Very seldom does sports news intersect with social work.   Listening to NPR last week, I heard a sports editorial on the child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.  The commentator spoke of the loyalty Joe Paterno exhibited to the accused party, Jerry Sandusky.  The idea was stated that loyalty is valued and is often commendable, but loyalty would not be so valued if it did not come at such a high cost.  Loyalty comes with the risk of deceit, the risk of being let down and disappointed, the risk of finding yourself loyal to someone or something that cannot hold up their end of the bargain.

Foster parents experience this disappointment with children all the time.  Often a child will surprise the adults in their life and do incredible, amazing, out of character things.  A child will be vulnerable and share his heart, he might go out of his way to perform chores around the house, he might make a good decision to not use the drugs in his possession.  Foster parents hold a child to a different standard of expectations then the child might have previously known, and the child responds, blossoms.  In care taking, teaching, disciplining, and loving this child, in short, parenting this child, the foster parents begin to believe in the child.  The foster parents become fiercely dedicated to the idea that the child is doing well under their care.  The foster parents become committed to this child's future, fiercely loyal to the child and his ability to overcome all obstacles.  This is the way it should be.

But loyalty comes with a risk, the risk of deceit.  The risk that this child will not live up to all those standards and expectations.  The risk that the child will make decisions that hurt you, the foster parent.  The child might run away in the middle of the night, the child might steal from you, the child might accuse you or a family member of doing something you didn't do, the child might reject your offer of adoption, the child might go on with their life and never call you again.  This is the risk you take as a foster parent.  You take the risk of putting your life, your family, your word on the line, committing everything you have to the success of the child, only to find that the child might leave those aspects of you in disrepair.  We take the same risk with our own birth children.

This deceit, however, is what makes loyalty so valued.  If a child has one loyal person in his life, he can count on that person to love him unconditionally.  He can count on that one person to see the best in him, even when he can't see the best in himself.  He can count on that one person as seeing him as valuable,worth the risk.  Everyone needs someone in their life to be loyal to them and loyal to their best interest. Children need a loyal champion, someone who will not stop believing in them, someone who will not stop dreaming for them, someone who will not stop fighting for them.  Even when they are gone.  Deceit is a tenet of loyalty.  Loyalty, just like love, is a choice that we make.

Loyalty is not a choice to always believe someone, or to always defend someone.  Loyalty is the choice to stand by what is good for that person, whether it be to experience the consequences of his actions or to support him in reunifying with his birth family.  Loyalty gives a child a chance to believe in himself because someone believes in him and is willing to risk everything.