Professional Development
Workshops/How To Work With Families » Foster Parent Training - Options For Youth
Let Us Introduce Ourselves - We Are the Willis Family
Job and Family Services - Foster Family Training
The ABC’s of Positive Parenting for Foster Parents
|
Henry - 42 years old Marilyn - 40 years old Marcy and Megan - 16 year old twins, natural children of the Willis family Kyle and Kirk - 6 year old twins (adopted) Danny (foster child) - 24 months old |
In this story, you will find these topics discussed: autism, child abuse and neglect, developmental delay, failure to thrive, foster care, infant trauma, and sensory handicaps.
Marilyn tells her story: Danny was eight months old when he was placed in our care as a foster child. At the time, we had two teenage girls of our own and the twins, whom we had not yet adopted, living here. They were all doing well, so we offered to take this baby, as a temporary thing. Danny was small, real small. They called him a "failure to thrive" baby.
I remember so well when Danny came here. He was so closed off and not responsive at all to us or anyone. He just lay in his crib and stared. He ate and slept and didn't reach out for toys or laugh at us when we bent over him to pick him up or change him. It was awful. I just decided with my husband that we would not push Danny, or approach him very fast or hurry him, that when he was ready to feel secure and safe, he'd let us know. We waited a long time -- many months.
He didn't crawl, but he sat and scooted a little, and seemed scared all the time. He had the cutest serious look. His eyes raced around his head like he was in a big hurry. I remember watching him and thinking that I now understood that babies really do think. His eyes and the sounds he
made -- it was plain that he trusted nobody and that he was warning people not to hurt him.
Foster children, in our experience, are more alike than different. It makes no difference about their race or skin color or ethnic background. They are all wounded or hurt in similar ways, and it shows. Although, I got to admit part of that observation is based on the fact that we're foster parents for our county's specialized foster care program at Children's Services, and they basically handle that kind of infant or toddler. The kind of little kids we have cared for seem to have similar problems.
My husband is a night delivery man, so he can help with the kids during the day, and, you know,
I needed him. Most days, I would go to work at a local Convenient store at seven after getting the rest of the kids fed and ready for school. The big girls walked the twins to school and Henry would sleep until Danny was ready to get up, around ten in the morning. Henry is a saint -- he took everything very slow and spent hours washing, feeding, and playing with Danny.
After we got him through the screaming fits at night, which took the better part of four months, Danny slept pretty good, but he took a long time to eat anything. It used to take me an hour to get six or eight bites of food in him. As he got used to the teenage kids running all over this place, he began to eat better, and to smile, and respond to the noise and confusion around our house. There's plenty of love here, but plenty of confusion, too.
Kyle and Kirk, the younger twins, were our foster kids for three years before we adopted them. They have handicaps, including partial deafness, considerable vision loss, and lots of evidence of childhood trauma, pure and simple. Deafness causes a lot of loud noise in any household, but especially in ours.
Kyle and Kirk talk as well as sign, and we encourage them to make use of what hearing they have, so the TV and radio are loud -- thank God for earphones! We use lots of magnifiers and fluorescent enlarged print books and papers and all the stuff that the agency gives us, like eye pieces, "speak and say" and as Danny gets older, he’s listening better.
Danny became more active after his 14-month birthday -- no one knows why. He’s a wiry little guy. His temperament is high energy, very regular about everything and persistent, but he can also be passive and quiet. It didn't seem those traits should go together, but I figured it was the abuse and the bad times that made him like that. His personality took a long time to come out, but when it did, he was a moody and determined toddler with a very short attention span.
Danny’s speech is loud and hard to understand, but he has a vocabulary of words like “mama,” “ingy,” “bot,” “ah-yea,” “cornflakes,” “Danny,” “bye,” “milky,” “caka.” He walked when he was around 16 months old, and as soon as he did, he began to take objects from all over the house and hide them, or eat them. This included dust or cardboard or anything that he wanted to have in his hands. He picked at his clothes and bedding, destroying everything around him in a matter of minutes.
This pack-rat thing makes us really wonder if he had been given even enough food or basic necessities, and we concluded that he had been very deprived all his short life. All the family, including my mother, who calls Danny her little "bundle of energy,” had to work very hard to reassure him that he was going to be safe with us, and would have enough of the basics.
We aren't sure what kind of intelligence level he has, but we are sure that Danny has plenty of smarts. I'll give you an example. We were amazed last December, the day after we picked up some Christmas toys from layaway and put them in the attic when the kids were in bed, that Danny wanted to go up there. He was frantic to go up there, as if he knew something was there! So we took him up, and in minutes, he found the toys. He was only 22 months old!
The bad news is that Danny seems oblivious to playing with anything that he has to go and find.
If something is in his path, fine -- he'll play with it -- but he doesn’t do anything intentional or purposeful. He doesn't pretend when he plays. No blocks or games or dolls or outdoor things interest him. Danny is terrified of change in his routine and obsessed by hiding small objects and stuffing anything in his mouth.
His EI program is small and we both attend once a week, but there isn't much improvement in his skills or his behavior. I'd like him to ride a Big Wheel and be outside with me playing while I work in the yard. I'd like him to talk in sentences and stop the hiding and a lot of other things, but he is slow -- very slow to warm up or to learn new things.
I don’t know how Danny can get past these behaviors and learn to react normally to people, places, and objects. He doesn't seem to be aware of people as people. I wonder if that is what trauma is all about. Maybe he is blocking something out.
Now that he is a two-year-old, Danny has been referred to a different infant-toddler therapy program in a school for children with health issues and multiple handicaps. I need to help the staff write a more structured learning-type IFSP, that includes our goals for Danny at home and at school. Danny is too young to be labeled as autistic or emotionally disturbed, isn't he?
I want some family goals to be put into his IFSP plan, like playing outside with supervision, helping me do real things like wash lettuce or mix bread dough in the kitchen, or talking to my mother on the phone. It seems the old IFSP was full of unimportant goals, like it said, "Danny will learn to unbutton his shirt after three reminders" or "sits in group and listens to a story once every day." I want real family life practical ideas. Danny needs to wash himself, get some toilet training, things like that.
I’m afraid that the people who give him therapy will argue or disagree with me. I want to cooperate with them, but I still want to make sure we get our family's needs and wishes met.
I have to confess that the therapists and teachers treat us as outsiders, so I don't get along with them very well, and neither does Henry. They probably think we do this for the money, which isn't true.
