Tag: Alternative Options

When To Intervene

My neighbor does foster care and I am not sure if this is normal or something I should be reporting. (Disclaimer – from a post, this is not my own experience but I do think this is important.)

Yesterday, I heard a kid crying outside. After about 5-10 minutes, I went out onto my deck to see where it was coming from and it was my neighbor’s backyard. At this point the kid was sobbing, I hadn’t heard or seen any type of intervention from any adult, so I yelled over the fence asking the kid if they were okay. At that point, I did hear an adult, maybe also on their deck but I couldn’t see. The kid continued to cry for their mom and at no point did I see anybody attempt to comfort them. More kids came out to play and I stayed on my deck. This child cried for probably 20 minutes.

Now today, I can hear a kid crying in their backyard. After about 5 minutes, I look out my patio door and see again – there is no adult attempting comfort. I’m not sure if it is the same kid as yesterday, but at this point I’m trying to decide if I should call the county to do a check or the police for a welfare check. I started recording should this continue so there is documentation and the child is in the backyard sobbing that he wants to go inside. no adults come out, no comfort is made. the only thing that changes is more children are then in the backyard, playing but not with him.

I have no other context to go off of here. I know kids get upset. My kids get upset, but I feel like I always try and distract, comfort, or intervene in some way – but foster care comes with trauma – so I don’t want to cause these kids any more trauma, if I am overreacting.

From a foster parent – it is against our agency’s policy to prevent children from entering the house. Even if the county clears them of “abuse,” I would try to report it to their licensing worker, as well. Continue to document.

Discussing this with my husband as I have been concerned when my children were younger, about do-gooders misunderstanding context and presenting a threat to my own family. He said, the woman should contact the foster care agency supervisor and say that she doesn’t want to call police into the situation but that it distresses her as a next door neighbor not to be comforting this child. Would it be appropriate for her to do that and how should she approach it ? I don’t know if that is a realistic proposition but I am considering a desire not to inflict more trauma. I can certainly understand a child recently removed from their mother would be generally in a distressed emotional state.

When Circumstances Change

Expectant mothers considering a surrender of their not yet born child to adoption who end up in my all things adoption group are often counseled “don’t choose a permanent solution to what is actually a temporary situation.” Case in point, in today’s story.

So a woman had a baby when she was 19 years old. She surrendered him to adoption because she felt that she could not support herself and so by extension, could not support a child either.

5 years have passed and the original mother recently graduated from college. Throughout his young life, the adoptive mother has allowed the boy and his original mother to have contact with one another.

In a definitely misguided perspective, the adoptive mother encouraged her adoptive son to think of his original mother as a cousin or a friend. The complication here is this is a kinship adoption. The original mom is the adoptive mom’s cousin. 

Well, his original mother can now support herself. At the moment, she wants MORE contact with her son and for him to stay with her a few nights a week.

The adoptive mother is a stay at home mom and she claims her concern is that his original mother would utilize day care for him and only spend time with him at night.

The original mother and adoptive mother are now at opposite ends – the adoptive mother claims that if the original mother loved him so much, she would not have given him up 5 years ago.

The original mother claims it is cruel of the adoptive mother to refuse her request for a few nights a week with her son.

When the original mother brought up her financial struggles at the time the boy was born, the adoptive mother came back with “You don’t get to abandon your child and then decide you want him back 5 years later. I am his mother now.”

The original mother believes, given time, the two of them will bond with one another again and he will begin to think of her as his mother also. It has been proven that children are able to comprehend of more than one woman as being equally both of his mothers.

Now, the adoptive mother has threatened the original mother saying – “If you continue trying to steal him from me, I will stop letting you see him at all.” The reality is – the original mother can not legally undo a finalized adoption – so it is not possible for her to physically steal the child back from the adoptive mother.

One can certainly agree with the concern about putting him in daycare but this “stealing” language is very destructive. No one “owns” their own biological child, much less someone else’s child who one has adopted. He should be allowed to bond with his mom as often as he wants. The child should set any boundaries regarding the rebuilding of a disrupted mother child relationship.

There really has to be another way to satisfy both women. The original mother could pick her son up for the evening and drop him back off with the adoptive mother before work. Rigidity often prevents viable solutions to sticky issues from being considered. Always, the child’s best interests and well-being should be what governs decisions.

The truth is, the original mother did not abandon her child but was doing her best to do what was best for her baby at the time. Unfortunately, whether conscious of it or not, every adoptee has an abandonment wound. Because their original mother did leave them. Pure and simple. Understanding adult complications is not possible until a person is mature and living the realities of life’s hardships themselves.

The honest truth is that visits for the original mother and her child will promote a connection that is critical for the child after having been relinquished. Seeing that no harm comes of it would ease the mind of the adoptive parent. This is a situation in which a professional therapist acting as an intermediary might head off some horrific results. The child will grow up eventually and will know the truth. Better to keep things harmonious during his childhood.