Beat. Up.

[kyburg]

First off, if you are not getting the livescience feed here on LJ, do. If I post any links at all today, that would have been the source of them. Lovely stuff today, but you don't have to take my word for it.

I kinda of knew I was going to take it in the shorts this weekend.

First off, I have the agency Family Picnic on Saturday - and my one opportunity to speak to the agency owner/director Once Again about foster family contact/continuation (because, well, someone found me on Facebook - awkward). I know her stance on this. She made it abundantly clear the first two days we were home with Xander that DIRE consequences were ON THEIR WAY to my house if I didn't CEASE my insane blabbering that my kid had prior foster parents we wanted to contact to continue as much as we could what they had started with him.

Oh no. That would imply we were incompetent. True story.

So now, the stakes are different. Someone found us. Probably the one with the most English proficiency, to be blunt.

We went over the old ground, agency director and I. The more she talked, the more I realized she had been cautioned early on that the only Good outcome was to completely end every inkle of any prior history with foster family upon adoption and hadn't updated that notion since. That's at least 15 years out of date in domestic foster-adopts, and nobody does it anymore. The numbers just don't support it. In today's world, you keep attachment, because any attachment is good attachment. In severing those ties, you do damage at a psychic level that is hard to justify. Let me blunt - I can't.

And she doesn't have my background, which is heavily influenced by living on the Pacific Rim and hence have, gee, Real Chinese People (TM) that I can, yanno - check my work with? Still have family in Taiwan? Still visit the country often? Because, oh I don't know, they're Taiwanese as well as American? Kinda like my kid. What a shocker. I know, slap me.

No contact because those foster parents can be such a problem. They might actually ask for favors or something. (Think I can't say no? Watch me.) No, I've never dealt with Asian family pressures over money. NEEEEVER. You can tell by just looking at me, really.

None of this is working, so she pulls the trump card. It's in the contract with the agency in Taiwan that the foster families can't have any further contact. There. Hookay, my mind goes. If that's the case, why did the staff at agency-side in Taiwan not discourage it themselves? I mean, that was something they wanted too.

I guess that's going to make me comply, right? Not so much.

I'm just going to have to be very careful. And get the committee onboard with it - I'm not doing it alone. I need help with this, to be blunt. I just hope the bare outlines of my planning will be enough. My kid deserves what every other kid has - a past that is inviolate and accessible beyond a scrapbook, if it's possible.

So THERE.

Right now, I have to keep both agencies involved in any contact - and that's what I will do. What I will tell the Facebook contact is that we must comply with this - and counsel patience. If trust can be built into the relationship, then one can be forged outside of the foster parent context - and I'm going to suggest they put up pictures as often as we do. That's what Facebook is for, neh?

Outside of that, a lovely picnic. Kid had a great time, we got to touch base with a number of families who were going through placement the same time we were - and that's always a plus. I also got confirmation that 50 is not the end, particularly if you are adopting an older child (what, I've been offerred anything else - down girl) so #3 isn't out of the question.

That's Saturday during the day. Saturday, during the night? Sis has asked me to allow my kid to have sleepovers. Me, being the Mom who knows this kid - says, we'll do a dry run with us there too to see how he reacts to sleeping away from home.

Sis accuses me of hovering. I shrug.

But that was our dry run, and lo and behold, it was a teaching moment. For Sis - I already had a good idea of how it would play out.

Jim and I fell asleep in the guest room, he woke up to distress calls at 1:00 AM and I woke up to two sleeping boys in my bed. This was after a late go to bed at 10:00 PM, mind. The next morning, Jim has to go to work and leaves - and Sis and I spend the day together with my kid.

The details really don't matter much.

I kept saying I had no bread. So where was my cake? EVERYBODY has cake, you know! No cake? Well, obviously that was a personal decision not to have either bread or cake and some kind of personal failing. Had I consulted a CAKE consultant? (Nevermind there isn't bread.) Lifestyle choice! Yes!

We're discussing bankruptcy (not mine, someone else's), my retirement plan (which is literally not to stop working, ever) and when it comes to lunch?

Yup, I got stiffed on the check. Shoot, all that talk is JUST TALK! It's my choice and obviously I'm something something something blah blah blah GINGER. I just can't anymore. Note to self - separate checks next time. The end.

Kid won't nap and won't be comforted - so I pack us all up and go home. I was so glad to get back to my clutter and take a deep breath, it wasn't funny. I came to the conclusion my sister's decorating style is late Luxury Hotel Resort - complete with accent pieces and no signs of inhabitation. I ordered pizza delivery and waited for Jim to get home.

After we put a VERY sleepy boy to bed, I open up Facebook again. (Idiot here, right here.) And I get a ping from one of my older brother's boys.

He want to enable reconcilliation with my brother. He wants my help with Sis. This is also coming from the one I trust the least. Lack of trust is not a singular condition - there are few FEW people who get trust unconditionally and many family members don't get it (see above). He kept saying it was all done and gone, but ignored the 'I really don't know what the problem is' for some really whack statements about something something said sometime. Dude, my stance is always going to be 'the person who has the issue has to tell me what it is when I ask because I DON'T KNOW not walk away muttering and throwing epithets.'

I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. For that, I've gotten nearly thirty years of estrangement. Nothing. Swear on whatever you consider holy. If it's stubborn that's kept me from begging for attention on the matter, I'm that stubborn (did warn you about that). But you walk away from me saying you don't want contact, vaya con Dios, duuuuude. Threaten me with that, and you're likely to get a nasty surprise. Like, you going now? See ya!

I have no patience for it. As you can see.

But I counseled him to drop my sister a message on Facebook if he wanted her cooperation. We'll see. I'd just spent the day with the Cake Lady, after all.

My younger brother gets lost in Hollywood and calls my BIL in Diamond Bar instead of me. Um, like? I worked there, live closer - *whistles* - right? *waves off*

There's nothing like dealing with family to make one want to walk into traffic. And you wonder why I'm expecting to be dropped like a hot rock most of the time.

Feel free to tell me your whack. The last went down better with a shot of Jaeger, just saying.

Comments

[dame-of-dames.livejournal.com]

My sympathies.

*Have some soothing Fred Astaire singing*

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

Legally - does either agency have any recourse if you spoke to the foster family?

Good luck with the contact.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

They can stop referrals to *any* other families with my agency, and 'fire' the foster family (prevent them from receiving any other fosters). To me, directly? Not so much.

Peer pressure. It's what's for dinner.

[thenakedcat.livejournal.com]

The stateside agency's attitudes towards the former foster parents are definitely way out of date. There has already been a huge paradigm shift towards open adoption and a concept of family that can include people like foster parents in domestic adoptions. That paradigm is gaining ground in international adoptions, too, and that agency is probably already losing potential clients with such insensitive policies.