Posts in month: February, 2010

Foster kids are the ones that fall into the cracks.  Though the foster care system does a good job tracking them, the rest of us don’t seem to notice them at all.

Have you ever met a foster kid?  He’s the one that has been moved from home to hospital to program and back to another home.  She is the one that finds a lot of difficulty bonding with a family because she knows she will be uprooted and moved again.  They are the ones that have lost their self esteem.  What can we do to help them rebuild their confidence?We received a letter written by one such foster kid who has been shuffled around all his life.  In it he describes being taken away from his parents when he was only 2 years old and in the process he and his brother were split up.  He was placed into a foster home for only a short period of time but was then moved to several other places; he has forgotten how many.

This boy, CJ, talks about the first time he went into a program; he was 7 years old and very frightened.  He was carrying everything he owned in garbage bags and he says, “Someone must have thought it was trash and one of the bags that had my toys in it got lost”.

From here he moved to another foster home and then another.  Every time he used trash bags to carry his belongings and in the process pictures of his real family were bent or torn.  He believes that in the next two years he was moved 8 times and still with those trash bags.  Today he is in a home with a loving and caring family and he hopes that he will be there for a long time.

As the letter goes on it describes his emotional pain, the different medications he is put on, and the homes he is placed in and subsequently pulled out of.
CJ is quiet and reserved.  In big groups he will sit in a corner by himself or stay very close to his foster dad.  He doesn’t form attachments very easily and it took him a long time to even be willing to call this man “Dad”.  In school he, like other foster children, is drawn to those like himself.  He senses they will understand who he is and where he is at.

There are 500,000 foster kids just like CJ in the United States alone.  Each and every one of them is crying out for help.  There are many reasons why they end up in the foster care system.  These include:

• No parents

• One or both parents has problems such as drugs or alcohol

• The child may have a disorder that the parents cannot handle that result in explosive tantrums, physical violence towards themselves or others, or something else

• Child and/or sexual abuse

A lot of foster homes find themselves unprepared or unwilling to handle tougher cases so, like CJ, these kids move around a lot.  They go to places that try to help like hospitals, group homes, and special programs and each time there is a breakthrough foster families are tried again.  But in the process these kids lose their self esteem and they are afraid to bond with anyone because they don’t want to experience the pain of losing yet another loved one.

What can you do to help?

• Learn more about these kids

• Mentor a child

• Befriend one

• Volunteer at a program or group home

• Welcome a child into your home

My son and I spend a lot of time with several kids.  There is a foster family not too far from us and we witness first hand how the parents interact with them.  We have been swimming, mountain climbing, and just plain barbequing with the boys.  They thrive on the interaction with us especially since my son has some of the same issues that they do.

There is also another way you can help.  An organization called Suitcases 4 Kids has a mission to provide each child with his or her own suitcase, backpack, or duffel bag.  They rely on kind hearted people in the community to donate them.  Foster kids, like CJ, generally move around a lot.  I have known some that have been put in 14 to 21 different places by the time they were 13 years old.  And each time they move with their belongings in trash bags.  Talking to social workers I have found that this is very common and they find it heartbreaking.

I have been working with Suitcases4kids for awhile now and I always find it gratifying when I drop off suitcases.  There is always at least one foster child around who will take them from me and bring them into the office.  And their eyes grow big as I hand each to them and they are always very surprised and grateful.

What are you doing with that extra suitcase, duffel bag, or backpack?  Send it to one of these children. Go to Suitcases4kids to find out how.

Today we hit a milestone of sorts.  Max woke up this morning complaining of an upset stomach, sore throat, and headache.  My wife said that he felt very hot when he got out of bed.  However, he did get up, get dressed, and complete his homework; but he’s just not feeling well so today he is getting his first sick day home from school ever.

This is not the first day he has ever been out of school; he has spent time in the hospital for his bipolar disorder.  But at 8 years old he has never felt so sick physically to want to stay home.  He loves school so he must really feel bad; even when he is a little sick he insists on going. Though it will disrupt home life today it almost feels good that he is having a “normal” child illness.  After his homework this morning he curled up on the couch and watched the Olympic bobsledding recorded last night.

We don’t know how he got sick yet.  We’ve come up with several thoughts:

1. Max and I spent Saturday night at the Boston Museum of Science on a Cub Scout sleepover.  It turns out that several of the kids there had just gotten over illnesses the week before.

2. Just being at the museum and touching all of the things that other people have been touching could have caused this.  No telling how many people there were sick.

3. He woke up Sunday morning with a headache.  We just figured he hadn’t slept very well on the museum floor.

4. As part of the overnight, on Sunday morning we got to see a movie at their Omni theater.  The screen is built like a globe cut in half.  It is set up with stadium seating and it felt like we were only inches from the screen.  Not only that, the movie was very bright.  As a result on top of the headache he got an upset stomach.  After the movie he spent 20 minutes just lying down on a bench before asking to go home.

5. Last night Max and I went swimming at the YMCA.  He ended up swallowing a lot of chlorinated water.

These are just possibilities.  It could be any or all of them that have caused the problem.  Or even something else.  I was reading a Raising Bipolar post today about how some medications can cause stomachaches (among other things).

My wife and I will have to keep watching to see what happens.  For now Max is quiet.  He’s not running around getting into things.  He is not yelling or insisting on doing one (or more) projects.

This may not last very long.  Max does get sick but he gets over things quickly.  A 24 hour bug never lasts more than 12 hours.  Last fall he came home from school with all of the symptoms of H1N1; he got over it in a day.  We believe this was what he had because at the time several kids in his class and on his bus had it.  3 or 4 days later I got it and was down for 2 weeks.  This all happened before the flu shots became available.

So only time will tell on how long this lasts.

Parents need respite from raising their kids.  Most have a natural outlet.  Their kids spend time at their grandparents or their friends houses.  It gives them time to energize themselves and be refreshed when the kids come home.

But what do people of kids with disorders do?  Quite often the grandparents aren’t equipped to take care of them and the kids don’t have friends to stay with.  Certainly these parents worry about sending their kids away.  What can they do?  If they are unable to find some rest they won’t be any good to themselves or their children.

My wife and I have been working with the local Department of Mental Health (DMH) office.  They had suggested a place for our son Max to go to on weekends to give us time alone.  I wrote recently about our initial attempts to get him to it and the subsequent meeting with DMH. Though he went twice; the third time we couldn’t get him anywhere near the place.

We could not schedule the time originally agreed to, the Friday after our meeting.  We were, however, able to set up an overnight for the following weekend.  On that Friday Max’s mentor picked him up as usual and they took off for their afternoon fun-time.  While they were gone the family therapist stopped in to get his backpack as we had planned.  She then went to meet the other two to pick up Max.

From there things fell apart.  He was not ready for the change.  He expected to be dropped off at home after his afternoon; not to be picked up by someone else.  And he did not want to go back to that place.  It is more of an institution than a welcoming home for the kids.  Max has to sleep in a dormitory with a dozen other boys; some of whom live there permanently.  And, as mentioned previously, all of the wonderful things that the parents were promised were planned for the kids don’t happen.  It’s more of sitting and staring at a television set all day.

In the end the family therapist dropped Max at home and we drove him there ourselves.  He cried bitterly when we dropped him off and they had to restrain him as we left the building.  We called when we got home to make sure he was okay.  We were told he settled down 5 minutes after we left.  This was of little comfort and we spent the rest of the night trying to calm down.  This was respite???

Not long after we got up in the morning the calls started.  Max wanted to come home; when were we going to pick him up?  We promised that we would be there by 11 a.m and he cried.  It then hit us with a sledge hammer; this was exactly the same experience as Max’s first and second hospital visits.

And as I suspected when we picked him up it was another day of just television.  Max had not even been allowed to work on crafts…it was not on the schedule!  We got him out of there as quickly as we could.  Max was a perfect angel for the rest of the day perhaps fearing that we would send him back.  But just as I do not ever want him to go back into a hospital I won’t ever bring him back to this place.

DMH was surprised when they heard the results.  They hadn’t believed us when we told them what was going to happen.  The only good thing that came out of this (if you can call it that) is that they now can see for themselves why this kind of respite won’t work for Max.  But they were quick to point out that he settled down within minutes of us leaving.  I am not convinced that was because he was okay; I believe he was just resigned to the situation.

Not to worry, they tell us, there is another option.  There are families that will take these kids in for a weekend to give the parents some respite.  These are regular homes where the “respite kids” mix and mingle with the families, play with them, eat with them, and generally have a lot of fun over a weekend.  It is like sending them to their cousins’ homes for play-dates.

Well, we are willing to meet with the family they have in mind.  We’ll talk to them and see if it a good fit.  But with Max’s hyper anxiety I don’t know if he’ll last a whole weekend without his Mom.  We’ll see…

As I write this I’m being subjected to more ear splitting screams from Max.  He is enjoying himself and he wants everyone to know it.  The issue for us right now is that his new psychiatrist is cutting back on his stimulants.

You see, Max has some issues.  Among other things he has been diagnosed with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Aspergers.  He is 8 now and has been on medication for 2 years.

We knew he needed a med change.  His attitudes have been getting worse.  At the same time I always believed he is over medicated.  His previous psychiatrist just seemed to want to prescribe more and more and keep increasing the dosages.  Things just weren’t right.  The new psychiatrist is of the school that believes:

1. the bipolar condition cannot be addressed until all the stimulants that were prescribed for the adhd have been stopped.

2. stimulants cannot be prescribed for someone with bipolar disorder.  What happens is that they aggravate the bipolar condition and in alot, if not most, cases the end result is suicide.

3. bipolar and adhd do not exist.  What appears to be adhd is really part of the bipolar mania.

Needless to say my wife and I are now researching the benefits as well as the risks.  In the process I’ve come across this quote from the adhdhunter:  “Medication, if used, is not a crutch – it is an opportunity for our children to relieve some pressure while they develop new skills and tools for coping with the effects of ADHD. They need skills, not just pills.”

We have started cutting back on the stimulants.  One result is the excited screaming.  I have been warning people who work with him, such as his mentor and his child advocate,  that he is in a place that he might be difficult to handle.  We have mentioned to the psychiatrist that he is becoming more difficult for the school to handle.  That is, he has gone from being a model student to now having to be redirected constantly.  His response is that it is better to have this problem in the short term rather than seeing the end result mentioned above.

Easy for him to say!  But it’s true, I don’t want anything bad to happen to Max but it is still tough living through his rampages.  But I think to some extant we have been using his meds as a crutch.  Looking at how he behaves when he wakes up in the morning compared to how he is the rest of the day it is so easy to accept the quiet times.  As a result we haven’t been working with him to pick up the skills he needs to work with his adhd.  That will all have to change now that he is being weaned off of the adhd meds.

As a counterpoint to that we will have to watch the changes that will be made to his bipolar medication.  A close friend of ours, whom Max knows quite well, is also bipolar.  He is in his 40s and has been dealing with it most of his life though the diagnosis was not made until 4 or 5 years ago.  As a result he spent alot of time self medicating (read alcohol and drugs here).  Even now when it is time for a med change he slips back into his old ways for awhile before taking control and making the changes that he needs.

It’s a long road we have to travel.   I have found that my temper is not as even as it should be as we go through this.  Alot of times I find that I am forgetting what good parenting is all about.  It is just as hard, if not more so, for Max as it is for us.  He is constantly doing things that he knows are frustrating for us and we are always angry with him.  Right now he doesn’t seem to have any control.  The ADHD stuff is bearable but the mania isn’t.  Once the psych solves the bipolar issue things should get better.

Med changes aren’t fun but neither are the results of not doing anything.