Love is blind. So is adoption. Especially from foster care. We received a typed up “referral” from our adoption agency, via a nearby county in our state seeking a home for two siblings, Kelley (age 2) and Gabi (age 3).
Gabi’s name was spelled wrong on the paperwork. There was basically no information about the children or their history, even though we later discovered the kids had been in the system with the same county only about a year before this. They came with an entire SUV trunk full of clothing and toys that smelled like a mixture of chemicals and urine (which internet research suggested was the smell of Meth), but had no medication for their listed medical issues. Gabi easily had twice as many possessions as Kelley, which seemed odd.
When they arrived at our home, both children seemed to have difficulty just standing. They looked drunk. Three-year-old Gabi constantly looked for things to jump off of- Stairs, retaining walls, cars, anything! She acted out tying off an arm and injecting drugs, and pretended to smoke a stick from the back yard. Two-year-old Kelley could barely stand or walk, and drooled so heavily the drool soaked through multiple shirts per day. Their speech was hard to understand, and almost sounded like a strange accent.
They had a trauma bond and a very unhealthy way of interacting. Gabi was an active abuser, and Kelley was an active target who continually and deliberately, antagonized and sought out her angry sister and submitted to her abuse. It was the dynamic often seen in battered women who return to an abuser over and over, repeating a cycle of abuse. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see in a tiny child.
Their first day in our home, Gabi had a massive tantrum and kicked, flailed, gave me a fat lip, cussed me out, screamed, and eventually fell asleep on the time out rug. That night, Kelley fell right asleep, but Gabi was terrified. “Please don’t put poisonous snakes on me if I’m bad! Don’t throw me down the stairs and lock me in the basement. Don’t hit me and throw me in the rocks, or set me on fire.”
The violent behavior of three-year-old Gabi toward two-year-old Kelley was severe. We were notifying the caseworker and our adoption agency worker several times a day of incidents and threats. It was so severe that a county worker who visited our home said “When the two-year-old is seriously hurt by her sister, we will be right here investigating you for lack of supervision, though clearly there is nothing more you can do. I recommend you give notice to remove the aggressive child.”
We weren’t quite ready to give up, so we decided to enroll Gabi in full-time daycare. We wanted to make sure we had at least 2 adults in the home when both children were home so we could keep them separated.
It didn’t work. Meals were battlefields. Gabi was a night-wanderer and we would wake up at 3 am to noise and lights and discover her in Kelley’s room. They had to attend supervised visits together with their bio-parents, which meant an hour each way in the car together and an hour together in the visit. Daycare was closed on the weekends, and occasionally my husband or I had to go somewhere. Whoever was left alone with both kids was hard-pressed to prevent injury.
The county set us up with an in-home play therapist. She came to our home and played guns or swords with Gabi (whatever Gabi wanted) for an hour a week, and when “therapy” was over we were left with an even more wild and aggressive child to deal with. The therapist insisted that strangling people, kicking her sister down the stairs, cussing people out, smearing feces, throwing everything, and threatening to “cut you up and set you on fire” was “normal 3-year-old behavior,” and she made it seem like we were being petty and over-sensitive and should just live with it. It was absolutely not helping.
We asked about full time day treatment for Gabi, more intensive daily therapy, or even residential treatment, and bottom line, the county wasn’t interested in our advice or opinions. Despite my BA in Social Work and experience working in Residential Treatment, schools, daycares and special education, they just saw us as whiny newbie foster parents who didn’t know anything. They made excuses, suggested just giving it time, and didn’t pursue any additional help for Gabi.
We saw the pediatrician for an emergency med review (Gabi was on Clonidine before she came to us), and began to notice that within 30 minutes after she took the Clonidine, Gabi was in a full-blown rage. It was not helping either, and the doctor said that was the only med option recommended for a child so young.
Daycare soon contacted us and said that if the violent behavior continued there, they would not be able to keep Gabi in the program. Both teachers had bruises from working with her and other children had been hurt. The play therapist still insisted that we were seeing “Normal three-year-old behavior.” Now tell me, do they kick ALL the three-year-olds out of daycare?
We knew daycare was the only way we could possibly make it work with both kids under one roof, and even with daycare it wasn’t really working. I had lost 30 pounds because of chronic stomach issues caused by stress (daily dry heaves, diarrhea, and vomiting). We could not sleep at night at all because of Gabi’s night wandering and the fear that she would kill Kelley while we slept.
We were heart broken, but gave 30-day notice that the county needed to find a better placement for Gabi. We had begged and pleaded for more intensive help to keep Gabi and Kelley safe together, and our pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
The system has rigorous rules in place to ensure that siblings are always kept together. It’s supposedly in the best interests of the children, but in our case and many others, it is NOT. Many siblings continue to act out their trauma on each other, and the coping mechanisms that kept them alive in a crisis are not healthy ways to interact in normal life.
The county was intent on keeping them together though, so they sent the kids through 3 different foster homes in about 3 weeks. Kelley came back to us a completely different child after that. We will never know all the details, but this is what we have been able to piece together. Kelley was hospitalized for pneumonia with the 1st foster parent, who had them for 9 days. The 2nd foster home had them for 14 days, and they were removed when Gabi ended up with a handprint bruised into the side of her face. We strongly suspect that there was other abuse as well. The 3rd family had the kids for 3 days. They showed up for a visit with bio-family with all the kids’ belongings and informed the county worker that they would not return for the children because of their severe behavior issues.
Every single foster home stated that Gabi and Kelley were not safe together. The county had to get bio-parent permission to separate them, which they did after the last failed placement together. We got a call from our adoption agency worker. They had received separate county referrals, seeking 2 separate homes for Kelley and Gabi, and our adoption worker wanted to know if we would take Kelley back. We were told since the kids could not be together, and neither parent was participating in their mandatory treatment plan, that we would definitely be able to adopt Kelley. We were so relieved!
But the fight for our child was not over. Unexpectedly, after 10 months of refusing drug testing, Kelley’s biological mother passed two drug screens. She was declared “Sober” and immediately visits with both kids ramped up, and the county was ready to send this suddenly sober mother two children that four trained and licensed foster homes could not handle.
As the visits ramped up, Kelley spun out of control. After one visit, Kelley went to preschool and pinned a child to the wall by his throat, and pulled another child to the floor by her hair. We diligently documented Kelley’s reactions to visits: difficulty sleeping, violent outbursts, waking in the night crying “I’m scared of the other mommy,” nightmares, and fear of being attacked by Gabi. We kept track of every single visit that was cancelled or a no-show. In court, the caseworker praised bio-mom for not missing a single visit, when she had missed 7 visits in 3 months.
At meetings and court, everyone was in agreement that both kids should “return home” except for us. No one was listening to us, and no one was listening to Kelley! We continued to press the county, asking how they thought it would look when Kelley ended up seriously injured or dead at Gabi’s hands, and the records showed that 4 foster families had strongly advised the county that the children were not safe together.
Absolutely heartbroken and furious, I drafted our resignation letter as foster parents. I told them we would not stand by and watch them destroy this child. If the county’s plan was still reunification against the advice of 4 foster families, despite the fact that bio-mom had only passed 2 drug tests in 10 months, couldn’t make it to visits every week, and was reportedly binge-drinking, then they would need to find another foster family! We were in this to HELP this child, not to watch the system destroy her. At this point we knew we were going to lose Kelley one way or the other, and this was the last possible way to get the county’s attention.
Finally, we got through to them. The county hired a therapist to evaluate whether or not the kids could live together safely. We were able to sit down with the therapist and share all of the violent incidents we witnessed between the two kids, and all our documentation on Kelley’s reactions after visits. The therapist observed the kids together in his office, and recommended that there be no contact between the kids until they’d had long-term intensive sibling therapy. We were hopeful that this was the beginning of the end of the nightmare for our child.
There was a delay while the system slowly processed this new information, but eventually the decision was made that Kelley should stay with us and be adopted, and Gabi should return home to her biological mother. After that plan was made, it took about another 10 months for Kelley to be legally freed for adoption.
We were in limbo, fostering our child for nearly 2 years, and that time of uncertainty did quite a bit of damage in terms of attachment, behavior issues, etc. Kelley still has a lot of challenges to work through, but we love her, and there is no quitting, no matter how hard the road is. Things are not all sunshine and rainbows even now, but at least we know that she is our child forever, and she knows that we are family forever. And that is a great place to start.
The Village and The Vineyard 