She's Back

Tator made it home last night at about 9:30pm. She can in with 5 large boxes of clothes and a large black trash bag full of stuff. I have not went through them yet. We did dig through them enough to realize her sleeping pills were not there. I called the house she had been staying in and they said we were supposed to pick them up at the clinic before we left. That would have been a nice thing for them to tell Shawn before he left with her. He didn't even think about it. He said he was too busy trying to figure out how her was going to fit all her stuff in the van.

Shawn talked with her on the way home about the camp. She asked a lot of questions. She acted like she is really not sure she wants to go. Very early this morning she picked up right where she left off 4.5 months ago. No violence, just game play, testing us, showing us life is still all about her. She will have to go to camp, she is not ready to be here.

The past couple days I have had a lot of anxiety about us taking her to this camp. My concern is the travel time that is involved. I have no idea how this is going to work. Child care for the other kids is going to be a big issue and none of the time we are going to be on the road is over the weekend. So I am not going to be able to depend on my husband for child care or drive time. I keep asking him how we are going to do this and all he says is, it will have to work.

One of my children is not capable of riding in the car for 18 hours. He just can not handle it. I'm not even sure that Tator can handle it.

I'm also concerned about the financial strain this will cause on us. Because of pick up/drop off times I will almost have to stay over night there when I go down to pick her up then again to drop her off after her 4 day home stay.

I am trying to have faith that God will work it all out. I feel he has brought us to this camp and this is his will. I'm just having a hard time trusting him right now.

Tick Tock

A couple days ago I told my fellow trauma mamas all I could hear in my head was the sound of a clock ticking. But the more I thought about it the more I realized it sounded more like the sound of a fuse on a bomb becoming shorter and shorter.

I have prayed nonstop. I have asked you to pray and we have felt your prayers.

Today we went to see an attorney. We asked him a lot of questions. From what happens if we give the agency temporary custody to what happens if we throw in the towel and give them permanent custody. And many other things that have to do with insurance and different ways to keep her in the residential longer.

A couple months ago a friend told me about a camp a few states away that works with troubled kids. It's a Christian girls camp that lasts anywhere from 16 to 22 months. Their main focus is teaching the girls respect, getting along with peers, life skills, etc. They said they thought they could help Tator. She has 3 out of 4 of the diagnoses that were listed on the camps site. They have had luck with some if the girls who have come with attachment issues. Some they could not help. I don't believe this will help her attachment to me, but since our last therapy session I have been trying to figure out a way that we can live together weather she is attached to me or not.

I sent in the registration forms last week and called the director again on Monday asking him if he thought she could get in he said they were having a meeting on Tuesday. I should call back Tuesday afternoon.

After we left the attorneys office I knew this was the only choice we had to keep custody of our daughter. I dropped Shawn at his truck and called them. Holding my breath the whole time.

She has been excepted and can go the Monday after Thanksgiving. We are pretty sure we can afford it. Because we have such a large family it will only cost us about 100 dollars more than our subsidy that we get monthly for her. Our main concern is the drive time. The camp is a few states away. A nine hour drive one way. We will have to drive down every 6 weeks and get her for a 4 day home stay. 36 hours is a long time to be driving in a 4 day weekend with 4 little kids. Not to mention Tators road rage that I'm sure has not disappeared.

We are committed to trying this one last thing. I talked with a lady last night who used to drive 12 hours one way to get there. She said it was well worth it. Her daughter left her home as a very disturbed 10 year old and came back almost 2 years later as a totally different child. 

This weekend we will drive 2 hours south to pick her up from res. then 2 hours home. To then drive 9 hours south, spend 2-3 hours checking out the camp. Then turn around and drive another 9 hours back.

The camp says she has to be willing to come there. They are big on that, she has to feel like it was her choice. Now we just have to pray she is willing to go. I have no idea how she is going to take to living in the wilderness. Expecaly with winter right around the corner. I'm really hoping that she agrees.

If not this might be the point in which the fuse reaches the end and everything explodes.

I'm sorry I have not been able to keep you updated here. I know there are some of you who coming here because you are following what are family is going through and I have done a very poor job at keeping you updated. Sorry.

I am still struggling. Last weekend we had another therapy session with Tator. Shawn and I had separate sessions with her because we took all the kids with us this time. Tator's birthday was the week before and she wanted to go to chuckie cheeses. We wanted to celebrate her, like we do all the other kids.

So to spare you the long story, therapy did not go well. I went first with Tator, then Shawn. Both sessions Tator opened up and cried, true to her feelings, and honest. The problem was she was totally honest in telling us there was no room for me in her life. Some room for Shawn, but not me. She wants her birth mom and always will. She is stuck. Stuck big time and the therapists aren't even sure how to help her out of the fantasy that she has created about her birth family and her being with them.

 I was hurt. Crushed. It was not her anger talking, it was her being more honest than I have ever seen her. There was another conversation with her where I remember her being this honest and It was when she asked me to find her another family. I know her well enough to tell the difference between her true feelings and her need for control. These were true feelings.

You know how people say their heart is broken. I always thought that was just a saying, your heart couldn't really hurt or feel broken. Well it can, I discovered that about a year ago, and that's how it feels now.

We did go to chuckie cheeses after therapy and I did manage to hold it together until the drive home, but it has been a hard week. It wasn't until Thursday that I started to feel like I could function again. I still haven't been able to make it through a day without loosing it and just needing to sit down and cry.

I know she struggles. I know she is hurting. Believe me I know. I have been the one holding her hand (well attemting to) and trying to help her through this for 7 years. 7 years! To see her open up and be so honest about something I have always known she felt. She still believes her coming into foster care was my fault and I stole her from her birth mom.

I have felt a lot of emotions this week. Starting with wanting to give up. Feeling as though I have hit rock bottom and I can do longer do this. I know longer have the energy. I am still there, but am trying to find a way to make this work.

In 4 days the money runs out. We will have 3 choices. Sign her out and bring her home, leave her there and start to run up a tab we will be paying for for a very long time, or give JFS temporary custody of her and start a case plan.

My energy is truly gone. I am so disappointed in our system and so frustrated that in our area there are no other choices. No other help. If we want to keep custody of our daughter, we are basically alone to do it.

Shawn and I are weighing all our options, praying and talking a lot of things through. We are searching for guidance from God.

Please pray for our family this week as we make decisions that could effect us for the rest of our lives.

 

Under pressure

I have been struggling with this post for days. I have typed, erased, started over, etc. more times than I can count. It's a good thing I don't have enough confidence to publish a post as soon as I type it, because there is no telling what you would get.

The bottom line is we are under a lot of pressure right now as to what to do about Tator in Res. She has 15 days left and then the money runs out.

Child protective service is talking to us about giving them temporary custody of Tator so she can get the treatment she needs. We have and are still giving this a lot of thought, but are just not sure this is the right thing to do. CPS has told us the first thing they will do is take her out of Res and put her into a foster home.(all in the name of money) So already she is not getting the treatment that she has been, thus the reason we were signing her over. She will still get therapy, but not as much or the different kinds that she was while she was there.

I have been reading The Second Time Foster Child by Toni Hoy and it is making me think a lot about this decision. How unfair this whole thing really is.

There are so many things that go with this decision that make us uncomfortable. I am really struggling with this, it just isn't right. I would not have to give up custody of one of the other kids if they had an illness and needed treatment. I don't understand why I have to give up her.

When she was a foster child the goal was permanency, a forever family. Why now, because she has a mental illness, does she have to again become a ward of the state to get treatment?

2nd family therapy session

We had our second family therapy session with Tator last weekend. I was looking forward to it. All week she had been telling me how she had learned a new coping skill, journaling. I thought this was a good idea because she loves to write and tell stories. I had thought of this before she left here, but the fact that she gets upset and goes from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye always made me wonder how we could get to that place where I could hand her a pencil and paper and have her start writing about what she's upset about. So when we went into therapy she had pretty much decided that journaling was going to be her answer for everything.

The therapist started out by having Shawn, Tator and I all sit at different spots around the table. Tator and I sat across from each other and Shawn to my left. We were to paint a picture of something about us or something that made us happy. Shawn painted a picture of a buck and an arrow. I painted a picture of the eight kids and I outside playing kick ball with Baby Coco sitting on a blanket beside us. Tator painted a picture huge picture of a castle and a princess with a huge tiara.

I don't know if I ever blogged before about the fact that she has always thought she is a princess. I remember one time in particular when she was very young. She had gotten in trouble and I asked her why she thought she didn't have to listen to any rules. She said because she was the queen and that made her special. We dealt with this issue a lot when we were in attachment therapy.

Anyway, long story short the more we talked she made it clear that she still thinks of herself as the queen/princess and she is more important than the other kids in the family. Her very large painting, that spilled down into mine, and I had to paint around it, was proof of that.

Painting was only one part of the session. While talking with Tator the therapist tried to set her off, but Tator is too smart for that. She held it together. The therapist would ask her questions about what she was going to do when she came home and felt herself getting upset. Her answer was always, journal. The therapist asked her how she was going to know if she was getting upset. She would reply, like it was no big deal, I just will. She was clearly not with us and had no intentions of talking about anything. She had gotten a BK crown right before the session and she just kept throwing it in the air or against the wall and laughing for no reason. I had finally had enough and told her she was done with the crown and I took it. That made her a little upset but not enough to set her off. She then sat there ripping up the painting and stomping her foot as she stared at the ripped up paper.

The therapist asked me how I was feeling and I told them. I said I felt Tator didn't want to come home and wasn't sure why I should believe she was ready. This was making her mad, but not enough to show us how angry she was, she still refused to talk just sat and stared.

Her answer to the therapist every time she asked her what she was going to do every time she got upset at home, she answered, journal. I finally asked her what she really thought would happen if I handed her paper and a pencil when she was mad, she never missed a beat when she answered, hurt you with it. The therapist finally asked her if she had any intention of using her coping skills when she got home and she said No.

It was a very deep and heavy session. I have though about it ever since. When Shawn and I got into the car we both were thinking the same thing. There is no way she is ready to come back here in 3 weeks. We do not have many choices as what to do. The money will run out. The way we see it now we only have 2 options and neither one of them I am ready to blog/talk about yet.

RTC- week 5

We had our first family therapy session a little over a week ago. We talked with the therapist for 50 minutes and Tator came in for the last 10 minutes. I really like the therapist and I think she can really help us. 

We used puppets and acted out a scenario of something that would have happened at home and how Tator would react. The therapist was hoping she would get triggered, but she never did. I know it is going to take more than that to trigger her during a session.

Tator is very honest and doesn't try to hide anything that happens at home. But she was very detached from the situation. She just staired out the window and said I don't know to every question she was asked. It was very obvious that she has not or is not ready to deal with things that involve us. 

Shawn ans I have been very worried about the fact that the rest of the money had not been approved and she was going to have to come home this week. We found out Friday afternoon that the money has been approved and she will be able to stay until the middle of November. Which isn't that much longer but it is a few extra weeks of therapy that she could really benefit from.

We have another family session this weekend and I am excited to see how it goes.

A visit and A meeting

Sunday we went to see Tator. We took her out for lunch and to the park to play. She seemed happy to see us. She talked nonstop about residential, how much she liked it and all the different things they do there.

She seemed very tired and distant most of the time. She never asked about home or anyone here. She did say something about therapy that caused us some alarm. She told us that the only thing she was learning is that she needs to keep all her anger in. She talked about some of the things there that are making her angry. My thought was that she is keeping it all in to unleash on me when she gets home.

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Monday morning we had a meeting with our Mental Health Board and the res. was on the speaker phone. The meeting is still very much a blur to me and I am still trying to process it. I went in there upset about a number of things, first being that we had not started family therapy yet. That was addressed and we will have our first session on Sunday.

The one thing I remember the CMH worker saying in the beginning was that we only had funding for 20 more days. That was a shock to me, I had been thinking 45 since we had originally been told 69 days. I did know that we needed approval for the rest of the money, but everyone had said we'd be approved and everything would be fine. I assumed that had happened.

This only added to my stress. I don't believe I said anything other than my concerns and was never out of line, but all the sudden as soon as we were off the phone with the res. they turned to me and jumped me about all my anxiety. They said I should have taken care of that by now. Excuse me I had some issues about them changing the dates from 90 to 69 and now to 45 days. Not starting family therapy, her comment about holding her anger in and a couple other random things. You don't expect me to be a little stressed by now. Excuse me, but you just mentioned in passing that my daughter, who has threatened and tried to kill me is coming home in 20 days and we will have only had one family therapy session.

I am numb and tired. I am sorry that I still, after this short time of treatment do not believe she is ready to come home. I wish, with everything in me, one of them could walk in my shoes for awhile. Because, at this point, I would gladly give any one of them my shoes. 

RTC-week 2 and almost 3

Tator continues to do very well and is enjoying her time away. She is very cooperative in therapy and continues to have no problems in school.

There isn't much to report. I emailed the therapist last week asking how family therapy worked, and when we would be starting. She never emailed me back. I emailed her again monday morning asking if we could have a session this weekend. She emailed me back today saying, not this weekend and never mentioned when we would start.

I am having a hard time understanding how we are supposed to work through a lot of our problems in only a few weeks before our funding runs out and she is released.

I got a copy of her assessment in the mail that they did on her when she first got there. There were some new mood disorder diagnoses that I had no idea what they meant. There was no mention of Reactive Attachment Disorder so i'm wondering if they even know what they are dealing with.

When I call and talk to her she has no interest in me. I'm hoping that is just her way of coping, but I wouldn't be surprised if she really doesn't want to be bothered by me. Boy will she be surprised when she is released in a month and is stuck with me. Of course I know, I am going to pay for it. It meaning both, putting her there, and what she will perceive as me making her come home.

Paniced and Frusterated

We have been told sense we started talking about RTC for Tayler that our funding would only be good for 90 days. There was the possibility that we could find funding somewhere else, but there were no guarantee's. Our CMH board also talked with us about the possibility of giving up our parental rights to JFS for the time she is there, because by doing that it will cost the county less and she would be able to stay and get the help she needs. They talked like this was not really a big deal and we would get custody back when she was discharged from RTC. Of course we have never had to deal with anything like this so we have no idea how it works.

We questioned our adoption workers about this and they said it is a bigger deal then they made it sound and it's not that easy to get custody back.

Our CMH worker called yesterday and said that the funding will only cover 69 days instead of 90. I have been in a panic thinking about what will happen in 90 days, now I have to think about 69. No one ever told us 69 days.

We are in a panic and have no idea what to do. In 69 days I feel they will have only scratched the surface of her problems. 90 days would be a stretch.

I am scared I'm not going to be able to get the other kids the help they need before she comes home and takes up every minute I have. I'm still trying to figure them out and how they have been effected through all this. I am scared she will come home and have not worked through some of her issues. Raging and violence being the main ones. I am scared that my PTSD will take over again and I will no longer be able to think straight.

So for right now, I am trying to remember to breathe.

RTC-one week

I talked to Tator a couple times this week. She is doing good. When I call, I talk to one of the house staff first. Both times I have asked them how she is doing and both times they said really well. The second time they even said she likes it here. I wasn't sure how to respond to that. I mean is that a good thing, that she LIKE it there. I don't want it to be miserable for her but really.

I was very upset after the first phone call. I know she said the things she did to upset me. Things like so and so went to Kohl*s and bought me new clothes (I had just bought her clothes from Goodwill and she had commented on that when I gave them to her) they even bought me spongeb*b pj's (she knows I hate sb) and I have them on right now. So and so is going to take me and one other girl to Chuckie Chee*ses for my birthday. (that is where she asked us to take her) There were many other things like this that she said ending with, after about 5 minutes of talking, are you ready to go now because I am.
I was upset, but I didn't let her know that.

The 2nd time she was very distracted and busy shoving cookies in her mouth as I talked to her to really pay attention to me. I would ask her questions and she didn't answer or say an answer that had anything to do with the question so I finally just told her maybe she should do the talking because she certainly wasn't paying attention to me. Then she had no problem talking and telling me about all the fun things she was doing there. When we were done talking I told her I loved her and she said Bye and hung up.

I emailed with her therapist and teacher this week. The therapist said she saw her a couple times this week. She said she was very cooperative and is very respectful to the staff. I'm not surprised.

The teacher said she was tested this week and she is at the beginning of a 2nd grade reading level. Which surprised me because she is starting 3 grade and I thought she was a very good reader. She also said there were a few very minor problems with her paying attention and trying to make things about her. This didn't surprise me because this was a complaint her teacher last year had. But I think for the most part he just let it go, she never had a consequence for it.

I think if this is a minor problem already, it will soon become a big problem.

Mixed emotions

Friday was a day of many emotions for me. We checked Tator into a Residential Treatment Center. When I got home that night and got everyone settled into bed I logged on to the computer and there was my whole trauma momma community asking me how it had went. It felt so good to know they were all thinking about me.

Some of them had said that today would be a day of many emotions and they were so right. I never had though about it until then.

The car ride up was full of anxiety and frustration for me. Anxiety because Tator has a lot of issues in the car, I don't think I have went into it a lot on here, but having her in the car has taken my PTSD to whole nother level. She was fine on the way up, talked and was in a good mood. But every time she was quiet and I would try to relax I could hear her moving around and It would make me nervous, wondering if she was getting out of her seat. Shawn had taken the afternoon off to go with us so I felt somewhat better, but I was still nervous.

I was also feeling very frustrated. Forgive me because this will sound very selfish, but I could think of a million other things I wanted and needed to be doing. I was frustrated with the fact that I had to inconvenience 2 other moms to keep my kids for the day so we could do this. I was also very upset with myself because I was feeling very pessimistic about the whole thing. I really feel like Tator will do very well in the treatment center and thrive on the structure there. I think she could adjust to the way of life there very easy and have no desire to come home. With that being said we also realize we are at a point where we have no other choice as to what to do with her. She is not safe in our home right now and she is not welcome here until she is. It is not fair to the other kids. Anyway she will be getting a lot of therapy there so i'm hoping that helps her and she does want to come back and be part of our family.

When we got there the first person we met with was the intake worker. She introduced herself and shook our hand looking right at Tator and saying "you are so adorable." There again more frustration. As we filled out the paperwork and answered questions they gave Tator a doll and blanket. I was glad. Tator doesn't have anything that is special to her at home and being a foster mom for many years i'm used to that being the first thing that happens when the kids comes into care. So I figured it was what they do with all the kids that are admitted.

As the process when on and we met with her teacher and nurse she started to regress and act like a baby. Taking the doll and blanket and cuddling them to her face. Looking with such sad eyes. I realize she was very unsure of what was going to happen, but I wanted to puke. Everyone kept looking at her and Ahhing over her. Come on, really???? Have you not seen this 100 times with these kids. If this was really her, would we be here??? Would you be doing the paperwork/vitals to have her admitted into a residential treatment center????? I wanted to run out of that place so bad. I was so angry.

Then we went over to what they told her would be her "cottage." Ok, now she is not totally deprived of the outside world, she knows what a cottage is supposed to look like and that was not it at all. The house had ugly colored walls and absolutely nothing on them. The table and chairs were bolted to the floor. And there was only a couple pieces of very large furniture. My first thought thought was, well she definitely won't be able to shove these chairs and table around like she did at our house. There were about 7 staff standing around and one of them looked right at us as we walked in and said "oh, she doesn't belong here." As I mumbled to her "don't let her fool you" I was thinking the same thing. What had I done??? There were a number of girls sitting around, just kinda stared at her. I couldn't stop wondering what they were thinking as they checked out my very small, beautiful big blue eyed 8 year old daughter. As we toured the upstairs, which was just plain bathrooms and bedrooms, a girl was raging in her bedroom as a staff worker sat in her doorway reading a magazine. It made me think of all the times I sat in the doorway reading as Tator raged in her room, just like this girl was doing.

The smell of the house was just like Tator's bedroom at home and I knew I had to get out of there. I wanted to cry, it was horrible. This was not a cottage. Why would they tell her that? I knew it would be very different but it wasn't what I had expected and I had wished they would have know what these places were really like. But I had no way of knowing, I had never been to a place like that. No wonder Tators old attachment therapist used to tell us it was too bad we couldn't take her for a tour of one of those places.

The part of  me that wanted to rip her out of that place and take her back home with us, knew this was where she belonged. For right now anyway. She had to stay, she needed the help they can give her.

When we came back downstairs she came out of the room she had been in and she just clung to us. We went and sat down at one of the tables and said to her again, "you understand why your here?" She said she did and we talked about what we were all going to do so she could come back home.

It was all I could do to get out of there without busting into tears as she walked to the door with us, not listening as we kept telling her she was staying. Until finally a staff worker moved over in front of her so we could move passed her to leave.

I cried all the way home. Not wanting to admit that she needed to be there. A child with her behaviors, no matter how old, needs to be in a place like that.

I hope she accepts help this time. I hope she wants to be part of our family enough that she works through her stuff so she can come home. But only she can do that and no one can make her. Her length of stay there will be up to her and only her. We have tried and after this I don't know what else we can do.