Adoption Class #3

This past Saturday we covered Parenting skills, Resources, and Children with special needs.

My father was able to join us this week and its great that my parents are involved and willing to get the clearances that they will need to help us while we are fostering. I'm not sure we've covered this, in the program we are going through, we will be adopting from foster care. Because of that, we will need to be considered foster parents for at least 6 months and possible longer as the legal system works its way out. This will mean that many agencies will be walking through our door to check on our house and the child(ren) during the fostering period. It also means that anyone who babysits or provides daycare etc, must have child abuse clearances and have fingerprints on file with the FBI.

The parenting skills part of the class was a good discussion. There will be a number of things that we need to make sure we adhere to, according to the county or state that we are adopting from. We have a little bit of reading ahead of us.None of it looks, on its face, like we will have any issues being in line with the guidelines.

The resources part of the class discussed the support groups around the area that we might want to join or at least explore. We also did an exercise where we listed out our circles of support. This consisted of us in the middle, then the next ring who we would contact if we couldn't figure out an issue ourselves, then the ring kept expanding out, essentially listing out all of the resources we have as backups. It was a worthwhile exercise.

We also covered a section on parenting children with special needs. I think it may be likely that we will end up with a child(ren) with special needs, because we both feel we have something to offer here. We have both had our own medical issues and with Susan's background being a nanny and then a nurse and my lifelong experience dealing with doctors/nurses/pharmacies/insurance companies, we believe this give us a good basis to work with a child(ren) that need what we can provide.

The problem here is deciding exactly what we can handle. How severe of this or that, or multiple issues with this or that. What we think we can provide and what prognosis they would have with our help. It's all a judgement call, and it will be very hard to make. It was heartening to see that many others in the class were looking to help children with special needs.

A note about class #2. I hadn't really written anything on it before. Mostly because Susan's explanation pretty much summed it up. Both of my parents were there. It ended up being more of a discussion class instead of what I would call a class class. (i.e. someone presenting material in a structured way with some discussion as we go along). I find the discussion class hard to follow, or at least hard to sum up. At the end of each section we are given a sheet to fill out. How did the section affect us? What did we learn about the children? What did we learn about ourselves? Do we have any questions? All of these are hard to put together when there is not a firm structure around the class, that emphasizes what the point is that they are trying to get across.

One thing we did do in week #2 that really illuminated things for me, was a chart we filled out as a group. It had 5 columns in it. The first column we listed a specific abuse that could happen to a child. The next column was how they would feel because of it. The third column was how they may act because of what they are feeling. The fourth column was how you might feel when a child is acting in column 3. Finally in column 5 was what action you may take when you are feeling like you do in column 4.  Once the chart was filled out, we blocked off the middle 3 columns and you could see that you might be acting in a very inappropriate manner because of an abuse that the child had suffered.

Let me see if I can make this clearer:
action - a child is physically abused, hit etc.
feeling - the child feels powerless
action - the child dominates others to gain power back
feeling - the foster parent feels like they can't control the child
action - the foster parent withdraws / or the foster parent yells, screams etc.

So you have a child that was physically abused, so you are yelling at them, or withdrawing from the situation. The exercise really makes you take a minute and examine why a child is acting this way or that and what you can do to constructively help. It also makes plain that we need all the information we can get about the child(ren) and what has happened to them so we will be in a position to help.

Now on to paperwork, house work, certifications, and clearances....