The Perm Plan meeting or should I say Child and Family Team Meeting as they are called now went very well. A lot was discussed. We are on track for TPR in 3 weeks. We have decided to get both kids in for psychological evaluations and start therapy again for both. We will be meeting with our adoption worker the beginning of Aug to update our homestudy as it expires the end of Aug. We will also start working on getting all subsidy paperwork completed and getting the kids diagnosis for "Special needs" completed. The meeting lasted 30 minutes and I was very pleased with it. This is only my second perm plan outside of our local county. boy, do they run things better than our county. They actually start theirs ON TIME!! :-) They believe people have lives and if it's scheduled for 2pm - it starts at 2pm. After what transpired last night - I am truly on board 100% with the therapy issues.....read on......
Well the phone call I guess wasn't bad...it was the aftermath from the phone call. Emilee and JP have been wanting to call "Donny" and "Connie" their foster parents from their last home. Emilee lived with them for 16 months and JP for about 12. The phone call itself went good. The aftermath - not so good.
First for Emilee….
She talked for about 7 minutes. She told them about all the animals we have on the farm and about playing on the swingset. She also told them about her new daycare and the substitute daycare that they went to and learning to swim. She was crying the second she handed the phone over to JP to talk. I was able to re-direct her to playing with the kitties and the crying stopped within a few minutes. At 7:45pm it was time to start getting ready for bed. The crying started all over again. She cried until close to 10pm. She was up and down out of bed 12 times crying that she wanted Donny and Conny. In her words last night…. “I hate living with you. I’m going to run away back to Donny and Conny's house. You shouldn’t have taken me away from Donny and Conny. It’s not fair. You don’t love me. Donny and Conny love me.” I heard this over and over and over. Finally I got her to settle down a little bit and told her we could send them a card if she wanted to make one. That seemed to help. This morning she asked if we could call them again tonight and I told her no. She started crying again. I told her that we couldn’t call them every night and that we would call them again, just not tonight. That seemed to be ok for her.
Now for JP….
He talked for only 5 minutes tops. I didn’t hear a lot of what he was telling them because I was with Emilee while she was crying. At bedtime, he threw a major temper tantrum. He never cried any tears. He just yelled and screamed and kicked the wall. In his words, “I hate you. I want Donny and Conny. You can’t make me stay here. I want to run away.” His tantrum lasted about 45 minutes and finally he settled down. When I went to check on the kids before I went to bed (about 10:30pm) he was sleeping on his floor and his room smelled of urine. I woke him up thinking his jammies must be wet but they weren’t. His blankets weren’t wet. I asked him where he pee’d in his room and he said he didn’t. Well it didn’t smell like that when he went to bed so I know he did somewhere – I just couldn’t figure out where last night. This morning he got dressed, went in the bathroom, lifted the lid on the toilet and stood there and pee’d in his clothes. When I asked him why he did that, he said he didn’t know. I got him cleaned up and changed into new clothes and we went back into his room. I asked him where he pee’d in his room so that we could clean it up. He said he didn’t know. Tonight he and I will be tearing his room apart until we figure it out.
I knew this was going to be a tough phone call to make. I guess I just didn’t understand how tough it was going to be on them. After seeing their behaviors last night I do really think Therapy is a good idea for both of them. I think their relationship with Donny and Conny is important; however, at this point, I think the phone calls are too much for them to handle. I think we need to address some of their other behavior issues and try to explain to them why they live with us and not Donny and Conny anymore. They are smart kids. I think if we can get into some therapy that will also help hubby and I to know how to handle these behaviors better. We are learning every day right along with Emilee and JP. I think I will email Donny and Conny and ask if we can send emails and pictures maybe every other week or something for awhile and see how that goes. What are your thoughts? I know we need to address the behaviors after the phone calls too, but until we (hubby & I) can get some more knowledge on how to deal with these, I think we need to stick with emails/letters and start with one thing at a time. I think JP especially is just getting overwhelmed. He has met so many new people in the last month and he doesn’t know how to express his feelings and I’m worried about him. Kids in school can be mean and with the anger he has at home when he is told no, I wonder what will happen when he is told NO by his teachers for something.
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