I feel a little embarrassed that I have left it so long to post – I’m not even sure why I stopped. But how about I give it another go?
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?