Sunday morning was the family visit and all 5 of the siblings were to get together to play at the park. We were there with our 2 and the oldest 2 were there. It would have been nice to see the 7 year old to see how she is doing with her dad.
Not having the biodad of the 7 year old there was kinda nice though. While the kids all played we were able to talk with the foster parents of the teens.
These people are amazing. They have 6 kids right now ages 11 to 17. Their biokids are grown and they just continue to take teens in and continue to support their bio, adopted, and former foster kids well into their adulthood.
Having the teens they are able to have a more concrete picture of what life was like for all our kids. It was terrible. I just look at their teens in amazement and just hope that they will be able to put their lives together. The oldest just turned 17. She is at a 10th grade education level because of truancy. It doesn't seem that there are any learning disabilities, but she is so broken inside. After all she had to live with she feels that she is responsible for all of them going into care. When her biomother reached her after her attempted suicide she told her that she was going to be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of her life and thus she ran. This family was being tracked by CPS for years. I am angry that it took this long to rescue these children, but the oldest still thinks it was her fault.
In addition to being academically behind another concrete example of the neglect was the crazy amount of dental work she needed to have done. Four root canals, crowns, cavities. The poor girl. Her brother (15) had 15 cavities.
The entire visit the oldest avoided us. Stayed on the playground and didn't come near us. I hope that as we visit this changes. While the bioparents may loose their rights I don't want the young woman to feel that the two that are with us will never see her again. Depending on how things go at the next visit or two we may even consider having them come visit here over the holidays since their foster dad works in town and may be able to drop them off for the day.
Brother... now he has some further issues. He was told by his mother since he was 2 years old that he is bi-polar, and thus he behaves in such a manner. She also told him that she drank and it is obvious that he has fetal alcohol. He came over and visited with us a bit and doesn't seem as scared or angry with us. Poor guy gets stuck on stories. We heard over and over again about his cat he left behind and how she is now pregnant because the bioparents left her outside. When he came into care all he had with him was his X-Box. That was how he lived. In a basement with a small path to his pallet that he slept on with his X-Box and cat. The kid needed to be taught how to play outside, how to ride a bike, how to interact with people. We did learn that he loves to draw and will spend hours drawing Mario (from video games). He doesn't realize how similar he is to our Sissy.
With all the challenges we have with the little ones I can't imagine tackling these with teens. The teens foster dad has to deal with issues such as teaching how to bathe, but also having to respect a teens privacy and not coming across as a creeper. We have to keep the fridge locked to not have all the food eaten (not such an issue now), but they have locks and keys on all their food or their 6 would binge and eat everything. They have to deal with electronics, keeping cell phones out of the hands of their kids, managing video games, TV time and we only have to scan to see that Daniel Tiger isn't talking about family. If we think it is hard, I can't imagine what 6 teens would be like.
Hopefully over the next few weeks we are able to break down some walls with the 17 year old. Every week that goes by is a further indication that the bioparents may lose their parental rights and if that happens I really would like to have a separate relationship with the teens so that they all don't lose each other. That is another thing we got insight on from the foster parents. They have been doing this for years so they have a pretty good read on how cases are going... they don't see it going in the bioparents' favor.
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