Broken Trust

Being a parent is not an easy task. Being a parent to a teenager is difficult and can be a very trying. Being a parent to a foster-to-adopt teenager is a whole new level of challenging. It is rife with pitfalls of hauntings from the past and eager expectations that shatter as they don’t come to fruition. It is certainly not for someone who isn’t strong willed or emotionally stalwart. As a parent of any child, you must be prepared to love deeply at the risk of heart break and despair ravaging your insides and disappointment cutting you to the core. Then, you have to scoop up what’s left of your humanity and dump it back into the child who just stomped all over your heart. I say again, being a parent isn’t easy.

Yesterday was my annual evaluation. It didn’t go as planned. I didn’t come right out and ask about Hermano moving in, but there was talk around it. My family worker questioned if I had plans to move into a bigger place as I had mentioned before (um, what? I don’t remember saying anything like that….) and I explained how difficult that would be. I then said if I did somehow pull that off then Hermano could come stay with us permanently. To which my family worker replied, “well, there’s another sibling to consider as well.” What?! She meant the baby’s older sister who just turned 8 last weekend and had spent the night with us due to transportation issues. Her current foster parent (this is her third home since she moved out of the foster home who baby-sat the baby just 2 short months ago) refuses to interact with the bio mom. So, that leaves me. It’s fine, I’m ok with helping out, I know how things are sometimes. But, this was kind of a shock to me, this idea of getting a bigger place for the sister. And it scares me. It scares me because if the kids don’t go home and they are to be adopted and the county decides they want all three of them together and I can’t accommodate the sister, they could and would take the little ones from me no matter if I wanted to adopt them or not. So, I contemplated renting out my house (my mortgage is under water so I can’t really sell the house) and finding a bigger place to rent where there are extra bedrooms. It’s total madness. I’m beginning to feel like the old lady who swallowed a fly and then needs to further digest larger and larger predators in an attempt to exterminate the fly, which no one knows why or how she swallowed in the first place. Between the three kids I have in my home right now there are an additional 12 siblings floating around. Primero has Hermano, plus another older brother, an older sister and two younger sisters for a grand total of 5 siblings. The other two are the youngest in a family of 9, so there are 7 older siblings including the one I know. Not all the children are in foster care and some (like Primero’s oldest brother) are old enough to live on their own. Still, it’s insane to think that I can just keep adding siblings to my roster. But, now that the idea has been introduced to my brain, I won’t be able to rest while thinking about it. Until I’m told otherwise, I will worry about the county taking the babies away to have all three siblings reside together. It’s just another example of how fickle the system can be. 

In addition to the evaluation and my inability to be direct, Primero dropped a bombshell on me while I was putting the little girl to bed last night. He made me promise not to get mad and then he told me he had seen his bio mom. Twice. He went to an AA meeting with her on Wednesday and yesterday they spent two hours together. He never asked, he never mentioned anything to me until it was already over and I could do nothing about it. I didn’t keep my promise to not get mad. But, I wasn’t so much mad as I was hurt. Deeply, deeply hurt. I trusted him to walk from his cyber school center to his after school program. And now I cannot trust him because he was out traipsing about town with his bio mom behind my back. And worse still, when we talked about things Tuesday when she was paroled, he said if he was adopted he could see her. I said that he could see her but with supervision. And the very next day he sees her with no supervision without me knowing about it. And he thought I shouldn’t get made because he told me about it, when he could have kept it to himself and never told me. When I confronted him he got belligerent, defiant and cocky stating I had no reason to get mad, I should be ok with it and if I lost my trust in him it meant he would need to revert to how he was in his previous foster home. He would do nothing, he would not participate in family life, he would just lock himself away in his bedroom and drop out of all activities. I had never seen him act this way. He was just rubbing salt in the wounds of my heart with his terrible attitude. He was cruel and vindictive in a way that reminded me of my teenage brother. My heart shattered. This wasn’t my sweet boy acting this way. This was some monster who had taken over my son. I was so exhausted and so drained I couldn’t even cry. I am still feeling a profound ache from the whole ordeal. Primero thinks I should be over it. He thinks he should be allowed to spend time with his friend tonight. Initially I had said yes, but then I changed my mind. I told him he could be there for a little bit but not as late as I had mentioned. I’m picking him up after the little girl finishes therapy. I drive past his friends place on my way home, so I will get him then and when I get home I just want to crash. I don’t want to leave the house again to pick him up like I do all the other nights of the week. I feel like something has changed. Is it me, is it him, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the broken trust. Maybe it’s just me being overwhelmed by all the issues that I can do nothing about. Maybe I’m just too tired to figure it all out right now. I don’t know if I’m hurting more from the deceit and loss of trust or the nastiness of his reaction to my displeasure. I try to do my best. I try to set aside my feelings to be sure I’m doing what I can to promote a welcoming environment for Primero’s family. I let him spend time with his aunt (who was his aunt by marriage) and with his older siblings. I took him to see his uncle on Thanksgiving and I’ve had his brother stay with us twice now and hopefully again for Christmas. I’ve never said no to him hanging out with his siblings. I don’t know why he did what he did because I would not have denied him seeing his mother. I did believe that she needed to initiate contact through the case workers, but it turns out I would have been allowed to let him see her. My only stipulation was that it be supervised. So, it’s a big pile of stinking mess. I wish it had never happened. My brother turned from a sweet kid to an unrecognizable alien at age 15. My greatest fear since then was that I would have a son who would do the same thing; become a young adult and eschew all family activities forevermore. I sincerely hope this is not the case.

So, for now I am tending to my internal wounds, trying to piece back together my heart. Maybe if I get a good night’s sleep I will feel better. I pray that Primero and I can weather this storm and come out stronger on the other side. I pray this is a lone incident and not indicative of what’s in store for the next several years.