GET OUT

I hate the foster care system!  I hate it and there are not enough synonyms in the English language to fully explain my depth of hatred for a system that is ruining or has been ruining my son.  He is 16.  He has been in state care for almost 5 1/2 years!  The last year has been with me.

We are finally through step one, the termination of parental rights.  Rights which were supposed to have been terminated long ago, but the birthfather "came back to life." .... Nothing was being done until we said "We want to adopt him.".  Now he has been with us 11 months.  Rights are terminated.  He turns 17 in less than one month.  And all we can do is sit still because the foster care contract is switching hands in June and everyone is in a tizzy and things will take time to get ironed out.

Add to that the fact that this child exhibits and deals with some very big issues that make life very hard, and you have one mad Mama!  My hands feel so tied.  HE is not afraid to hurt himself to spite me, or to "protect" himself and claim it is what he wants.  The prime example being he wants to be adopted and likes us when he is able to get his way, EXACTLY his way.  This usually involves my car, my money, and my having my husband mad at me.  If he doens't get his way.. he hates us, calls his worker, and can't wait to leave.

Now his worker came out today, tells him he doesn't have to be adopted, it is up to him.  The judge can't let him be adopted without his consent.  WELL THANK YOU  for that piece of information!  Let's just give this 16 year old, going on 5 ALL the power to decide how his life will go!

What does she care?  She hasn't invested EVERYTHING she has in this child for 11 months?  It isn't her window, her car, her car radio, her closet doors, her walls, her expensive and beautiful dresser, her coffee cups, her millions of other little things lying about broken!  IT isn't her tears that hit the pillow at night.  It isn't her little ones that flinch sometimes when he walks by.  It isn't HER life, HER heart, HER pride, HER marriage, HER family that is battling finding the balance between surviving and drowning, between helping and hurting.

So yes, I HATE the stupid, worthless, unsafe system!  There is a real chance that by court on Tuesday that he will be mad at me again, and so his "Yes, I want to be adopted" that he gave this morning, could change again to "NO, I don't want to.  I want out of this "effing" house."

How can you let a child decide where he will live, and if he needs a family, this family who has been good to him and for him, if he can't even decide his own curfew, can't hold a job, can't figure out planning between point A and point B?  Hello stupid people?  Are you getting this?  Is this making any sense?  Are you really, truly going to sit back and let my child destroy the ONLY thing and the ONLY family that has stood by him through shit that no family should have to deal with???  

I am scared to death.  I love this boy with all my heart!  I don't get a fostercare payment, we are doign this out of kinship care.  SO instead of the $900 + that his last 2 homes received, we get a paltry $84/month.  Thanks, that covers pretty much nothing!  So it isn't about the money!

I would walk through fire for this son of mine.  I basically have, or at least it feels that way.  His rages can sure leave me feeling signed by the heat.

Yesterday I told him he couldn't drive into town.  We are having trusting issues, as in he keeps breaking my trust.  He wasn't grounded, just had to find a friend that would come pick him up.  He was livid, and before we were back to a good place he had broken a stereo speaker AND a very nice and expensive pine dresser... with a baseball bat!

 He then threatened to "bash my head open" with the bat if I didn't... how did he put it?... "Shut my stupid "effing" mouth."  I told him "If you need to hit something else with the bat, could you just hit the couch?  It will be less bloody." Never thought I would be in a position to say that!  He would not ever hit me with it... at least not unless I backed him into a corner, and then it would only be about survival.  I would never scare him like that.

But I am tired of parenting this child with a whole mess of cooks trying to make the stew!  You CAN"T parent a child like him in this way!  THEY play the system, THEY triangulate, manipulate, and aren't interested in your feelings when they are just trying their hardest to survive!


I need the states hands OUT OF THIS POT before it is too late!  Praying God has this because I don't see a good end.