A Story
This is not a happy story with a happy ending. It does not make me look like a wonderful person. But, it’s a story that needs to be told, because if you’ve ever been in this situation, I want you to know you are not alone.
About four or five years ago, my husband and I decided to adopt again. We went through an agency that specializes in placing special needs children, especially children out of foster care. Our fourth child had been adopted out of foster care, and he is a delightful addition to our family.
After our homestudy was completed, we received information on an eleven year old girl. She had been in foster care since she was five or six, and had also been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. She was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. She took four different medications: two different levels of Ritalin (totaling 80mg per day), another medication to kick the Ritalin into higher gear, plus an antidepressant. She was in her second foster home.
We visited her. She seemed very nervous, but my husband and I figured she would eventually settle down, as had our son. She was a whirlwind, speeding from one activity to another, and always walking ahead of us when we went out. She chattered constantly, and baby talked often. She was very demonstrative, giving hugs all around.
She visited us. She was from a semi-rural area, and had only rarely seen people of color. We live near a major city, so we live in a racially mixed area. She would walk up to people, and loudly exclaim on their looks, demanding to know their heritage. No matter how many times we told her she was rude, she would not listen.
Within a couple of weeks, she had moved into our house. My older children tried to help her "fit in." She turned 12 shortly after moving in, and my daughters taught her how to apply makeup, fix her hair, and dress "cool." She was having none of it. I could barely get her to bathe daily.
Twice she opened the bathroom door as I passed, exposing herself. I told her both times that normal adults do not want to see their children naked. She had obviously been sexually abused, even though her social workers denied it. She later told me it was one of her mother’s lovers who abused her as a young child.
Money started disappearing-from my purse, my husband’s wallet, my sons’ rooms, and our daughters’ purses and dressers. We always found it in her things. She stole an expensive calculator that my older daughter needed for school (the calculator was required by our county school system for Algebra II). We learned to take our wallets and purses everywhere with us, even to the bathroom.
She made racist remarks to other children in the neighborhood, and wrote "KKK" on a five dollar bill I had given her for lunch money. She had intended to pass the bill on to pay for her lunch, before we intercepted it. She started to fight with other children at school, claiming they were picking on her because she came from another part of the country. The teachers quickly figured out she started the fights. The fights at the bus stop got so bad she refused to take the bus, and instead rode with her brother on his special ed bus to school. We only allowed this after she talked our son into walking home from school with her one day. It was a 2-3 mile walk, and he is on leg braces. In addition, he has learning problems that prevented him from thinking about the consequences of trying to walk that far on his braces.
She also tried-and almost succeeded-to come between my husband and I. We had been married 20 years at this point, but I couldn’t believe how she upped the stress level in the house to the point where everyone was fighting most of the time. She would lie about everything, for no apparent reason, even if it wasn’t something she had done wrong. She required constant supervision to keep her from hurting herself or our younger son, or from stealing.
Did we try therapy? Oh yes. She had weekly therapy with a therapist who specializes in helping special needs adoptees. She also was transferred to a therapeutic school, where she received therapy as part of her school day. The adoption therapist also talked with me, and the school therapist with my husband. She was diagnosed with Attachment Disorder and Bi-Polar Disorder.
Fourteen months into this placement, the adoption was still not finalized. One day, she went after my older son with a knife, and then tried to turn it on herself. She was admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care. I thought, "Ok, now they’ll adjust her meds THEN send her home." Well, we have an HMO, and they wanted to send her home 12 hours later. Our agency tried to intervene, but the worker was told it was not the doctor’s job to keep her in the hospital, nor to find a place for us to transfer her, so she could be stabilized and brought home.
Our other children were traumatized. They didn’t want her home. The school she went to also had residential placements, but we were told it would be three months before they would be able to take her.
Our house was also peaceful again. We wanted it to stay that way.
We terminated the placement. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital back in her home state and was in there at least three to four months. She was again placed in foster care, but the last we heard she was back in the psychiatric hospital.
I wonder if my faith had been stronger, or if we had been stronger people, if we could have kept this child. I know I was getting ready to ask my doctor for anti-depressants. I will tell you it took my husband and I almost a year to repair our marriage. Will we adopt again? I want to, but this child so traumatized my husband, he won’t discuss it. Our son who was adopted wants us to adopt again-he always has. He likes the idea of a sibling who has been adopted; a sibling who understands what it’s like to be in foster care, and then to live with people who are not your birth family but who love you and are your family.
Hopefully, someday I can rewrite this ending to include another child in our family. But for now, there is no happy ending.