So the girls are finally getting some much-needed therapy services and it's about freaking time excuse my mom-cussing self! Little A has had some therapies going for a few months but Big A has had nothing till now. And boy is it gonna make my life even crazier than it is, if that is even possible. I'm trying to add in speech, occupational, and physical therapies onto an already full schedule. And getting kids to three different schools already. I'm not sure how this is going to work but we'll see. I made the call to a housekeeper today. I feel failure-ish on the housewife side of things because I just can't seem to get this house clean and keep it managed but H has been encouraging me to do this so I'm gonna go for it. I will say again how impossible all this would be without the support of my husband. This fostering thing is not easy, and sometimes it is pretty hard on our family, and our marriage. But his amazing support allows us to help these little girls. When people give him props on "this amazing thing you and your family are doing for these little girls" or something similar, his response is "It's not about us." And as hard as it is some days, he's absolutely right. If we were doing this for us I'm pretty sure we would have quit years ago.
I think I'll take the time to go back to the beginning.
We received a call from a SW looking to place two little girls. We knew very little, one was almost 6, one was almost 2 and they were sisters. A domestic violence situation had occurred in the home resulting in the girls being removed and needing placement. (They were both experiencing severe neglect but it was the DV incident that brought to the attention of authorities initially. Social Services chose not to return them to the home once the neglect was determined. But really, it could have been years before the neglect was noticed and reported. Big A was 5, almost 6 and should have been in Kindergarten. Her mom told SS that she couldn't send her to school because she wasn't yet potty trained.) When you get these calls, you almost never know if the placement will last for days, weeks, months, or years. You also don't get many details at all besides ages and gender. And you have to make a snap decision based on this non-information. I got the call, called H and he said, sure, let's go for it. (He has since said that I am never to do this again --call him at work when he is busy and expect a yes or no answer without really discussing it. Oops. And ya, I totally agree with him, 6 crazy months later... We learn something new with each placement. We are slow learners and these are big lessons!)
When the girls arrived the day after we got the call, they were a little wary of us but also very curious and immediately adorable although we would find out soon they were not always adorable. (Ha! ;) Little A was squirming in the placement workers arms which I later realized was because she just wasn't really used to being carried around and so didn't know how to be held. And screaming. Oh The Scream. I really do believe it is made up of the highest-pitch I am able to hear with my own ears. Well, at least I used to be... There for awhile I had to start wearing ear plugs because my ears were ringing during and right after The Scream. Lately she is able to communicate better and is just more balanced overall and so we don't hear The Scream as much thank the Holy Lord God Almighty. She would pull that sucker out at any ol random time she saw fit and just go to town on my (and anyone else within a square mile) eardrums. I really do believe that if she was still using that regularly on a daily basis like she used to I really would have been driven crazy. I was close. But things are better now and I think we are all not sad at all to see The Scream go. Or at least decrease dramatically.
Big A had/has long blonde hair (which is still the bane of my existence, maybe best saved for another post...) and a very sweet smile that was worn only for special occasions at first. She was VERY hard to understand and it took us weeks of careful listening to begin to understand much of what she said. And that was kind of a good thing at first because she would tell the dog to "get out of my f#$%ing way" among other gems of foul language and so I was glad that most people couldn't understand that. She would also hit the dog and cats and grab at them and push them and pull tails and ears so I had to watch her every second for months. My old cat Jainey started hanging out in the laundry room all day just to avoid being abused. That part was really hard for me because I could tell the animals weren't happy with the situation there for awhile and that just wasn't fair to them and of course they didn't understand why this was happening.
Big A's verbal skills increased quickly within months because really, her speech was so poor she had no where to go but up. We believe it may just be because she didn't have anyone to speak to and wasn't spoken to all that much. The fact of the matter is we don't know. Both girls were isolated and neglected but to what degree we don't know. Neither had been to a park, the grocery store, the pool, the mall, the library, a friends house, birthday parties, a restaurant, etc. All the places where all kids go on a regular daily basis were totally foreign to them. I only know this because their reactions to our first visits to all these places was pure awe. Big A did not know how to act around other children or any social situation for that matter. The first time she met another girl her age, (Thanks KR for bringing L and C over to meet the A's. And thanks AJ for inviting us over to play with your kiddos too! I'll also take this moment to say this fostering stuff would be impossible without friends and family to support us!) she walked over and pulled her hair and proceeded to jump all over the living room and furniture like a wild monkey. It's the only description I have to describe her actions. It was terrible and amazing.
They really did act feral and as much as I hate to say that, it's true. And so sad. Little A didn't move (voluntarily) from our front entry way for weeks. She just wouldn't really walk or run around at all. She would stand and rock from one foot to the other and wiggle her fingers in front of her face and hum and avoid eye contact completely. She liked to stand at the door and stare out of the window for as long as we'd let her. No smiling, no talking, no laughing. The first few times we took her to the park she refused to move away from the stroller and preferred to stand there and play with the clips and straps on the stroller. It took many visits before she would even try to use the play equipment. She would also (and still does) rock in her pack and play crib at night for hours (it's much less time now, thank goodness.) She couldn't feed herself and would not eat solid foods. Not even a cheerio. We had to spoon feed her baby food. She still drank from a bottle and wouldn't take a sippy cup. She didn't even know how to hold on to a cracker and take bites and chew and swallow it.
Neither girls were used to wearing clothes and so it was a big adjustment for them. Potty training for big A was challenging but she was so ready for it that she caught on fast. Big A didn't know how to dress herself and it took lots of coaxing. She still is afraid of buttons and snaps. She tells me they're bad. Zippers, for some reason are fine. (Which I find strange because zippers seems scarier than snaps and aren't buttons cute? I guess I don't know.) But she will dress herself now and doesn't have to always be wearing shoes every minute of the day like she did when she first came. She would put on her pink converse high tops in the morning and would obsessively refuse to take them off till it was time to go to bed. Still not really sure why she did that. She would also stand inside her bedroom door in the mornings whispering "Please let me out, please let me out" over and over. Over time and with much reassurance she realized that it really was ok to come out of her room in the morning to use the potty. She would also ask me every night at bedtime (for months) if I was going to wake up in the morning. After awhile she changed that question to a statement. "You're going to wake up in the morning."
Both girls are easily overstimulated, can't really focus on anything for very long at all and do best with a very regular and consistent schedule. Sometimes one little change, like their birth mom not showing up for a visit or being in a new environment, meeting new people, or even taking a different route to get somewhere will set one or both of them off in some weird way and I can never really predict when things will melt down. (They have three parent visits (monitored by SW's) scheduled weekly and this schedule was put into place within a week of the girl's placement in foster care. The parents, who took such poor care of these girls that they are so emotionally, physically, and socially delayed that they NEED this therapy-- therapy that took between 4 and 6 months to begin-- were given these visits immediately because it's their "right." What I want to know is what about the rights of these girls? I still think that the system is so broken because of this backwards way of thinking.)
They still don't really know how to play with toys or use their imaginations and they mostly just follow me around the house and fuss when I'm not right next to them. I did hear Big A playing in her room the other day during quiet time and I was all excited except then I heard her dollhouse daddy say to the dollhouse mommy "You f#$%ing bitch!" I was proud of her though because 1. She was playing! and 2. She told the dollhouse daddy "That wasn't very nice." See, she's catching on to this manners thing! She does sometimes play with a toy horse collection she has, but they always fight aggressively which is disturbing but hey, she's playing!
Now some good news. Big A is so much easier to understand and even has friends at school. She got over some pretty big behavioral issues and can now function in a regular kindergarten classroom. She LOVES school. Before Kindergarten started she was in preschool over the summer to prepare her and boy did it make a huge difference. They helped her learn to share, take turns, use manners, etc. I give much credit to the preschool and their staff for the amazing support of both of these girls. Without that place it would have taken much longer to get them to the social level that they are currently at. Big A started in a class with 3 year olds so that she could catch up to them and move on, Little A started with the 1 year olds. The school took on the challenge with open arms and surrounded the girls with love and support and taught them how to live like little kids should. Both girls are now in classes with their appropriate peer groups. Little A can now feed herself regular 2 year old foods, drink from a cup, and she can even say a handful of words and sign a few of them. She runs around and loves to make eye contact and smile and laugh and hug and sing. She loves my son Little H :) and he has taught her to high-five and recently the fist bump which is simply the cutest thing ever. She can swing and slide and loves the park. Big A loves the park and shopping, ballet club at school, and even hiking. She smiles a lot more and though is serious much of the time, she actually has a funny little sense of humor sometimes. She and Super Dog are pretty good friends these days. :)
