The Lost Cause

I don’t remember if I wrote about finding a new therapist specifically for the parenting/bonding/behavioral issues with Chica Marie. It was a decision based on the suggestion of the case worker supervisor from CHOR on her first visit to our place the beginning of August. This was before therapeutic foster care was decided. Yesterday I had my second session with the new therapist and I’m not sure how I’m feeling about it. I left the first session feeling totally hopeless as the counselor said numerous times she wasn’t sure how she could help me. Mostly, I think she was saying this because our appointment came after the therapeutic foster care decision had been made and I expressed how tenuous our situation was at the moment. Still, I when I left I was pretty sure there was no help and no hope for us. Tomorrow it will be 4 weeks since the decision has been made making things feel less tenuous, but only as a ruse as things are moving behind the scenes I am sure. I asked for an update last week and no one at CHOR has heard anything. Lovely. At least our case worker is back from her medical leave; back into this big mess, that is…..

 

The therapist started off our appointment by saying she had some ideas on how to help me/us. I didn’t tell her how dejected I felt after our last meeting. Yet, to me there seemed to be a lot of contradictory comments/ideas at the appointment yesterday. On one had the new therapist suggested CYS doubts my home is a good home for Chica Marie because I’m overwhelmed with three kids, especially with one having high needs. On the other hand, she suggested I plead my case to have time to work with her and see if the therapeutic techniques she will teach me can help at all. I admit, I got frustrated with the comment about our home not being the most appropriate for Chica Marie. It made me defensive because, if Chica Marie were my biological child no one would say that. And, plenty of families have a black sheep or two (ahem, my brother The Alien), so you could argue there are children who don’t fit with their biological families for one reason or another and yet they are not whisked away into therapeutic foster care. Her observation that I’m overwhelmed with three kids as a single parent also ruffled my feathers. I’m not going to say it isn’t hard because it is, but I’ve been doing it for three years now and if anything, it’s easier because we have a system and the little guy is older and slightly less needy. She asked me to describe a typical scenario when Chica Marie might get upset. I described how it is when we first get home. Typically, Love Bug is screeching for food, juice or attention – usually all three. I just want to put my work stuff away and change into my old clothes so I can start dinner. I have Chica Marie change out of her school clothes and usually ask her about her homework. Sometimes, this causes her to erupt and that’s where the therapist paused my story and suggested I not have her do her homework at that moment in time. So, I explained how if I don’t have her do her homework at that moment, and I wait until after dinner this is not a good time for me. I want to get the dishes done. And once the dishes are done and the kitchen is cleaned up, it is usually time for the kids to get a bath so I can get Chica Marie’s hair done (it takes me some time, depending on how intricate of a style I do) and get the kids to bed. I did push back when the therapist suggested the dishes can wait or I should have Primero do them. Lately, Primero has been doing the dishes more often but, short of a princely bribe, I won’t be able to get him to do the dishes every night. And, at this point is where the therapist suggested I’m a shit mother because I don’t want to wash the dishes at 9:30 at night. Ok, ok, that’s just my conjecture. But, I did feel pretty damn awful when she suggested by not throwing myself on the sword and rerouting my routine I wasn’t doing what Chica Marie needed, thus I wasn’t a fit mother for her and I was probably too overwhelmed to be a mother period.

 

On the complete polar opposite of this declaration, the therapist suggested I try to talk the county out of putting Chica Marie in a therapeutic foster home, citing my dedication to her. She suggested I fight for Chica Marie, fight her removal and try using this new level of therapy as an excuse to keep her in our home. She believes Chica Marie is just pushing boundaries and doing her worst because she is trying to see what my breaking point will be, when I will give up on her like her biological mother did before me. That makes it sound so much more detrimental to remove her, even temporarily. She said she would write a letter advising of the treatment she would be offering, if that would help persuade the county to pause the removal. She asked for 6 months. Six months to do what no one else could do in three years. I can try, I can talk to the staff at CHOR and email the county worker. But, I know I am limited in what I can do and, to be perfectly honest, I’m unsure about trying to go toe-to-toe with the county again. The last time I tried standing up to them ended in disaster. Granted, I made some pretty big mistakes, but just knowing how those mistakes came back around when I was starting the adoption process or Primero makes me worried about how it could affect me if I tried getting rowdy again. The county still holds the power. If I kick that hornets’ nest I risk both Chica Marie and Love Bug. This reality often stays my hand when I most want to fly off the handle at the seemingly illogical decisions of CYS. Chalk it up to a lesson well-learned. I can plead my case but I need to be careful because there are numerous ways this can backfire. The county could question the validity of what I reported previously, thinking I was making mountains out of mole hills. They could react because this option wasn’t presented sooner. They could do with the above plan, give us six months and then, if things aren’t better, wash their hands of us because we didn’t take the help they offered when they offered it. They could cite not wanting to hold up Love Bug’s adoption, so if I’m a good mother for Chica Marie, I’m a bad mother for Love Bug. And, there are probably other things that I haven’t even thought of that could ripple out from this decision. It’s hard to know with so many players in the game. The system sucks.

 

So, the plan for right now is for me to go back to see this therapist again, hopefully with a more concrete understanding of what is happening and when. She is hoping to be able to teach me Filial therapy techniques that I can use for “special play time” with Chica Marie, helping to strengthen our bond thus hopefully lowering the behavioral issues. She won’t need to see Chica Marie to do this training, it will be focused on teaching me, so I can help her. This makes sense to me, this feels like the thing we’ve needed. Is it a day late and a dollar short? Maybe. Is the name of the saint of lost causes Ashley? Because I feel like I’m the queen of the lost cause; my tenacity often times makes me question my sanity. I’m hoping the county continues being unable to find an adequate fit for Chica Marie. The longer that drags out, the more I will be able to keep working on things from my end. I’m going to talk to our case worker when she comes out to our house tomorrow night. I’m hoping to use her response to gauge how this whole thing might fly with the county. If I could at least get her for an ally, that might help me. I don’t know, but I can’t not try. Prayers for the lost causes!