A year is probably too long to catch up, but I’ll give the last twelve month’s fostering a paragraph of its own.

Little Jamie ended up staying almost four months, and in that time he and I developed a lovely relationship.  Despite his autism he was very responsive to our interactions and I was happy to see his sign language and speech develop considerably during that time.  But when his first foster mum finished her medical treatment she was keen and ready to have him home, so we transitioned over a week, then said our goodbyes.  The next few months saw no placements – very few babies and toddlers came through our agency during that time.  So, after a little discussion with the family, we decided to put our “preferred age” up to six, and a few days later we were placed with a five year old girl I’ll call Beckie. That was in mid January  so Beckie has now been with us six months. Angel still comes to us for respite one weekend a month – he loves Beckie (but I’m not sure the feeling’s reciprocated).

Although this is the first time Beckie has been in fostercare, it would appear she has had a fairly disrupted early life, often being cared for by friends and family members for significant lengths of time when her Mum was unable to do so.  I think an older sister, now seventeen, has paid a large part in her care as well, and Beckie seems very attached to her, and seems to miss her more than she does the rest of her family.

The early weeks with Beckie were pretty easy.  She was quiet and undemanding,  happy and contented.  She seemed  remarkedly easy going and very adaptable.  A  good thing, as in those first few weeks with us she started Prep at the local school,  had thirteen badly decayed baby teeth removed under general anesthetic, and was involved in the lead up and actual wedding of our oldest daughter, Jess.

In those first few months I concentrated on helping Beckie to feel like she belonged in our family, giving her as many “normal” family experiences as possible. She responded well to a fairly structured bedtime routine, and boardgames and story reading  became integral to that. She wasn’t very ready for school so we often spent time doing activities and games to help her learn her sounds and numbers, and to improve her fine motor co-ordination. Now, half way through the school year, her improvement has been quite noticeable, and she spends most of her spare time on these activities (yesterday’s rainy Sunday afternoon she spent  making cards for all her friends at school,  asking me to spell all their names as she wrote in each one) .

I must admit the last few months Beckie hasn’t been quite the cheery and easygoing little girl she first appeared.  As she’s settled into the family she seems comfortable to let her guard down, so we sometimes experience  contrary and defiant behaviour that was previously unseen. I think she also struggles to balance the ongoing relationship she has with her birthmum, who she sees weekly for a couple of hours, and her growing attachment to me. Kids sometimes pull back when they realise they’re growing closer to their fostermum, maybe in a sort of emotional loyalty to their “real” mum and to protect themselves from being hurt. I see this quite clearly in Beckie.  We will have a couple of good days where she’s very happy and cuddly with me, then she suddenly does an about turn, refusing to comply to the normal demands of getting ready for school or bed, telling me she hates me, not wanting me to touch her or clean her teeth or brush her hair, activities she normally loves me to do.  Eventually her anger just dissipates or turns to distress and she lets me soothe her with cuddling  and rocking, and it all comes good again.  It seems like a cycle we just have to have.

Portia, who turned sixteen last week, is in year ten and very involved in her sports, music and drama – plus she has a parttime job  working in a local bakery five hours each Saturday.  So long as she takes her Concerta every morning, she stays on top of it all.  By the end of the day she starts getting a bit hyped up and disorganised, and that’s when she starts annoying her brother and sister with her jibes and nagging.  Luckily she usually takes herself to bed about then.

Seth has had a difficult start to the school year.  After seven blissful weeks of school holidays over the Summer he started in year eight the first of February.  We immediately struck trouble – in the first weeks of school he ran away four times, usually following an altercation with a teacher.  The kid who used to switch off and lay his head down on the table and refuse to work when he got overwhelmed  had begun to act out instead.  Not exactly aggressive, but definitely oppositional and belligerent.  And teachers were not willing to deal with that!

I attended meetings at school and we discussed what was happening to Seth – a new school year with a lot of new teachers who just didn’t know FASD  (because I hadn’t the chance to properly introduce them to it – very few professionals in Australia do know about FASD), an increasing gap in his ability and understanding and the demands of the year eight curriculum, the contrast of school with the freedom of the summer school holidays, and the raging hormones of an almost fourteen year old . We were stuck with the limitations of a state school system that only provides real special education in schools specifically for kids with an IQ under 70.  Kids like Seth are offered the services of a teacher aide (he shares his with three other boys in the class) and a modified program i.e. lower expectations and easier worksheets within the regular classroom with a curriculum aimed at the typical year eighter.  Seth was sitting in a maths class with kids learning about fractions and decimals whilst he struggled with a page of  equations requiring number facts to 100, without the concrete materials he would need to complete these sums (which he’d be too embarrassed to use even if it was made available).  He usually managed to get through half the day, but by the end of break at 12 o’clock,  some little frustration would result in a blowout and he’d do a runner!

The school tried hard to come up with some solutions to the problem but none of them could really address the underlying difficulties of teaching a kid with all the learning difficulties of FASD. Basically  Seth ended up home again for the next three months, not even home schooling – just no schooling at all.  At the end of May we got him along to a small community school about twenty minutes from home, for kids who have not met with success in mainstream schools.  He tried it out for a week or so and agreed it was better than his old school, so we enrolled him and he’s now been there the first two weeks of this term.  He’s not enthusiastic but he does get up each morning and leaves on time with Ian, who drops him on the way to work.  He’s in a class of twelve, with each kid working individually. The mornings are spent on numeracy and literacy, the afternoons he chooses from a number of electives – designed to build upon the kid’s interests and strengths.  It seems like Seth is staying safe and sticking to the computer programs.  Hopefully he’ll be adventurous and take on some art, music, or martial arts program in the months ahead.  I feel hopeful that this school will be able to work with Seth, despite his significant learning disabilities and consequent behaviour problems, and keep him somewhat engaged for another few years before helping him move into employment.  Is that too much to ask?

In the meantime I try to educate just about everyone I meet on FASD.  We were allocated a social worker (through the Department of Education) to help us work out Seth’s schooling needs.  She’d hardly heard of FASD before meeting Seth, but took it upon herself to go off and research, so that should hold her in good stead for the future when she may well meet other alcohol effected kids, even though they may not have a diagnosis (there being no real FASD diagnostic services in our state, or even the country, that I’ve  discovered) .  I’ve tried to educate Seth’s pediatrician, but she didn’t seem all that interested except to try him on a few medications, ritalin and straterra, neither of which seemed to have any noticeable effect. The principal and integration teacher at his old school certainly know a lot more about the effects of alcohol on a child’s brain than they did previously – it may help them to understand other children presenting with similar learning difficulties in the future.  And every foster carer I talk with learns a little more about what they should be looking for when children come into care, even if I can’t refer them anywhere for diagnosis and services, as I would love to be able to do. Since Seth joined our family as a tiny baby over fourteen years ago, I have endeavoured to learn all I can about FASD, for his sake, and to support  all those other parents out there also living with the damage from fetal alcohol. Some hobby, hey?

My older four kids, by the time they got to secondary school, had an idea that they were at school to learn, that there was satisfaction in a job well done, and that skills and knowledge had advantages down the track.  I guess because of his FASD Seth doesn’t look past today and certainly has no sense of the big picture.  Telling him he needs to learn maths this year so he can do next year’s maths and maybe go on to do a computer course at College (which will require some maths) just doesn’t convince him. And even if his homework is relatively interesting and stimulating he is not easily engaged.

So in the end I have to resort to bribes and threats.  Mostly this revolves around his computer time, the currency that means the most to him. I’ll put a note on his computer screen saying “You may go on the computer as soon as you finish your cultural project”.  He’ll argue and whine and attempt to negotiate – “I’ll just play this one game then I’ll do my homework”, and I try to stay calm and consistent and remind him that if he quickly does his project now, with me helping him, he’ll be done in an hour and can go back on the computer.  Instead he gets upset, slinks off to his room or goes out on his bike, returns later and starts the whole argument again.  By the time he realises there’s no alternative he’s in such a cranky mood that he puts little effort into his work, needs to be guided through step by step and ends up with a very poor project which he has no pride in and usually ends up forgetting to hand in on time!

I’m feeling very frustrated with the situation, and wonder how we’re going to get through the next few years working this way. I can’t see Seth learning anything through his homework and his immature attitude seems to be worsening with adolescent defiance, not improving with the acceptance and wisdom of age which I noted in my older “neurotypical” teenagers when they got to this age.

Some people tell me that homework should be his problem not mine and that I should let the school deal with it by giving him detentions and suchlike.  But Seth isn’t good at understanding consequences and I feel like that will just increase his anxiety about school and his reluctance to be there. We step on eggshells with these kids.

Anyway, I’d best go off and finish the housework. Seth will be home from school soon and the two of us have a lot of homework to get through tonight.

Home schooling Seth with a toddler around was difficult enough, but we were renovating at the same time which added extra noise, mess and stress to our lives.  I was so busy most of the time keeping Angel out of trouble as our old kitchen and family room were slowly demolished that I often had to leave Seth working alone, usually on the computer, which meant he never got much work done.

When Angel went off for a couple of hours access or went down for his afternoon nap I attempted to spend some active learning time with Seth.  But wouldn’t you know it, that would be the time the builder would call me out to discuss some tedious but important aspect of the renovations. By the time I got back to Seth he’d lost the little bit of enthusiasm we had built up and I’d wear myself out trying to reignite his interest, usually to no avail.

Is this typical of kids with FASD do you think?  Seth is very difficult to engage, and he doesn’t possess a lot of curiosity about the world.  He showed a little interest in a few aspects of bodily function (typical of a twelve year old boy) so I went out and bought a rather expensive and exciting book (a DK book called “ALIVE – the ultimate pop-up human body book”).  I figured even if we just read it together and explored all the little pop-up sections and the working bits he’d learn something about how the body works, but getting him interested was like pulling teeth!  I got excited about stuff I hadn’t looked at since year eleven biology, but he didn’t share my interest.  Even when I traced around his body (onto a wall that would later be painted over) and we used the book to draw in the main organs  in his body, he kept asking me how long was it going to take,  when would Portia be home, could he go and ride his bike…

In the end most of Seth’s learning came from his interest in computers and cameras. If I could use either of these in the process of him doing an activity it would be a little more successful than if I didn’t. (Thank goodness for modern technology!)  He shares these interests with his big brother and they spent one day together in early December making a video for a competition run by Big Brown Box. Wasn’t Seth thrilled when they won the competition and he’s now impatiently awaiting the delivery of a new computer as part of their winnings.

As much as I enjoyed spending time with Seth during his homeschooling stint (but feeling forever guilty that I wasn’t teaching him enough), I must admit I was glad when mid December came around and we decided it was time for him to graduate from Primary school. Our State schools don’t break up till a few days before Christmas but the private school system tends to finish a week earlier – so that’s the timeline I followed.  The whole family went out to dinner, we presented Seth with a certificate and a book and he began his seven week break before commencing  Secondary School the first week of February.

Just two days before Christmas our renovations were all complete including the new kitchen and an enormous under cover deck which is perfect for family gatherings and a great place for toddlers to play.  We set up a plastic cubby house for Angel and bought him a ride-on tractor with a trailer. After months of not being able to let him outdoors to play, except out the front on the asphalt driveway,  I could now just close the child-proof gate and let him wander in and out as he pleased.

Not for long though. Soon after that was Angel’s court case, and a decision was made that he would go into his Grandmother’s care after four weeks of transition which included increasingly longer overnight stays.  So during the end of January and the first few weeks of February Angel spent most of his time with his birth family, coming back to us for a few days at a time before returning to Grandma again.  He seemed fairly settled in both homes, although he was always very excited to return to us and cried quite pitifully when the worker took him away.  But the reports from his protective worker were positive and she felt he was building a good relationship with Grandma so when it went to Court on the 18th of February custody was awarded to Grandma and he returned home the next day.

Life is quiet without our lively little boy, and at times I miss him terribly, but I reminded myself that the outcome of reunification is what we as foster carers strive for.  But it’s hard parenting a baby for nineteen months then having him leave.

So now we’re taking a break from fostering and I’m having a catch-up time.  Portia and Seth have been at school for six weeks, and Angel’s been away for most of that time.  With the renovations complete I have a few building and cleaning and sewing jobs to complete which would be impossible to do with a toddler around.  I hope to cross them all of my list by the end of term as we’re going camping for a week over Easter and when we come home I’ll let the agency know we’ll be available for placement again.

In the meantime I’ve been doing a bit of extra training, mostly around infant care, although we’re looking at taking on a toddler to preschooler next time rather than another little babe.  I’m rather keen to try out all that training I’ve done (including  seminars by Bruce Perry and Kate Cairns) on reparenting the traumatised child and building up a relationship with an unattached child which will be much more pertinent to fostering an older toddler than a small baby.

Meanwhile, I have plenty of time to read my favourite blogs, and no excuse not to regularly post in mine!

I worried that it didn’t fit the recommended criteria for a classroom suited to kids with FASD, being fairly open and stimulating with a busy, flexible time table but I hoped that the very experienced and creative teaching would make up for that.  And in some ways it has.

Seth was homeschooled for half a year before attending this school after we pulled him from a state school. The state school just wasn’t meeting his needs and his self esteem and interest in school were definitely affected, but at that stage we didn’t have a diagnosis of FASD  (specifically ARND)  so we didn’t even understand what his needs were.

Our six months homeschooling was not all that successful as I had a lot of difficulty motivating Seth, keeping him on task and providing him with the peer socialisation he craved back at his old school with all the mates he’d known for five years. So this little school which two of our older children had attended happily for a few years seemed the answer to our problem. Seth settled in fairly happily, made friends, and started to develop a more positive self image and attitude to school.

But there have been some problems, mostly of a behavioural nature, and I’ve occasionally blogged about them. Seth, typically, is impulsive and not very aware of the appropriate nature of his actions. He’s not aggressive or violent, but he is a dare devil and an adventurer. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t do things that are exciting even if they are inappropriate.  Being out-of-bounds, taking art supplies from the classroom, buying his friends drinks with money he shouldn’t have had, are just a few of the incidents he’s been involved with lately.

Nothing he did was done alone.  He always had other kids happy to join him, and maybe sometimes they even instigated the activities, but it seemed Seth was a common denominator.  What is more, once he was caught out Seth became quite angry and defensive and, if overwhelmed, he’d simply run.

The final straw occurred while he was away on a two night school camp.  We received a phone call on the second day asking us to come and pick up Seth as he’d got into a bit of trouble. He and another kid had been reported to “joke” about getting up in the night to damage a teacher’s car because she’d yelled at them.

Hubby picked him up.  Seth was upset and wouldn’t get out of the car once he arrived home, but I talked him round and he came inside but refused to talk about what had happened.  Over the next few days I tried to have quiet little discussions with Seth about all the incidents of the past few weeks. Some he told me about, others he denied, and some he just seemed to have forgotten!

On the Monday we had a lunchtime appointment with Seth’s teacher and the principal. It wasn’t good.

They won’t have Seth back as they feel his behaviours require too much teacher supervision and intervention and impacts on the other kids too much. In a very democratic and free school like this Seth is not a good fit.  I understood but I was devastated anyway.  Where to now?

We had hoped that Seth, who is actually due to move up to secondary school next year, might have had one extra year at primary school to help him learn a little more and be a little better prepared for the transition to a new school.  Given that is no longer an option we’ve decided to enrol him at our local secondary college for next year and fill in the next term and a half with homeschooling again.  There seems no point in searching out another school for just four months, so again I face the daunting task of teaching a child with significant learning difficulties, this time with a distracting toddler running around.

The local secondary college he will be attending has to apply for educational funding for Seth on the basis of the various assessments he’s had in the past eight months.  The more funding he gets, the more time he’ll have allocated with a teacher aide.  I know he can only work with the constant attendance of a patient adult, so I’m hoping our application gets a good response.

The school will also modify the program for Seth. Instead of a second language he will be in a small group for remedial English.  He will have his own maths curriculum to follow (probably based on the grade four program) and he will not be expected to participate in the whole grade activities, although he’ll still be in the classroom. I will put together a kit about Seth specifically, and FASD in general, and have been promised all teachers in contact with Seth will be advised to read and learn from these, so I hope that does really happen.

I’ve also asked that they build in some structure to his recess times, explaining that such free time is when he gets into strife.  They talk about directing him into the optional lunchtime activities, such as roller skating in the gym, juggling class, handball competitions, and library sessions.  They will also keep an eye on him and monitor the kids he hangs out with, knowing how easily influenced he is.

Seth himself knows that unstructured time is a danger to him.  He admits that having unsupervised time goes to his head, that he looks for interesting things to do and that he gives no thought to what will happen afterwards. On that basis I hope he is co-operative about having his time structured for him.

Meanwhile, he is home with me all day with twenty four hour supervision, so he isn’t getting into any trouble at all.  We run our classroom fairly loosely, basing our time table on Angel’s sleep times and access visits (for which he is picked up and returned home, so I don’t have to leave the house) .  During these times I give Seth specific instruction in language and maths while we are both able to focus (I’m certainly a lot more focused than he is!) and then the rest of the day while the toddler’s roaming about the place we do cooking, crafts, reading, board games, walking and some shopping and cleaning. On Wednesdays he comes to Playgroup with me and either reads in the car or plays with all the little kids.

He takes regular breaks throughout the day to do a bit of gymnastics (the mattresses from his bed stay permanently on the family room floor) or skateboarding out in the driveway.  We are renovating at the moment and his latest fun game is to skip about on top of the joists of the unfinished deck, throwing in the occasional handstand. He is happy and contented, relatively co-operative and enjoying his days with Angel and I. I don’t know if this relaxed school style will make it harder for him to transition to high school in five months time, but I’m not going to worry too much.  I’ll just relax too, and enjoy this extra time with my sweet boy.