The Meltdown

happened last night....

Ok let me back up just a second...

the kids were at the respite home from Friday night until yesterday about 4:30pm. Friday night drop off went MUCH better than I expected. Emilee needed 2 hugs from me but otherwise, no tears, nothing. They were off and playing right away. Good deal!

According to the respite home, the weekend went very well. JP was very good. No problems at all. Emilee had a few issues but nothing too out of the ordinary. Just a few things they thought were odd with her manerysms (?sp). They were right in thinking the way they were - it is how she is ...it all stems back to her life with bio mom and what she was exposed to.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon 4:30pm. I picked them up. All seemed fine. The kids were happy to see me and I was happy to see them. We got home and they gave daddy hugs and then went about playing outside (it was in the 50's! :-)) Supper came and went with no issues. Then it was bedtime and the meltdown began (only we had NO IDEA where we were headed)

Emilee was overly pokey in getting to bed. Then once she did...she didn't stay there for long. Her head hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her arm hurt. You name it...she claimed it hurt. I asked her when it started hurting and she said at E&D's house. Well sorry...but if you were hurting THAT bad you wouldn't have been playing outside like you were and you wouldn't have eaten supper so well. So back to bed she went.

Then she started talking about puking all over her bed and the floor in her room. We ignored her. Then she got up and came out of her room again. We took her back to bed. This went on for over 30 minutes. Her getting up...us taking her back to bed. Finally we started sending her back to bed without taking her there. That made her even more upset. She wasn't getting her way anymore. Then she started hitting/kicking us and the walls/doors/etc. Then we became frightened for our safety and hers/JP's. That was the nail in the coffin so to say.

I didn't sleep all night. Why should I be feeling this way in my own home? I thought back to a fellow blogger friend who recently went thru a somewhat similar issue. I remember reading her thoughts/feelings on what she was going thru and it really was comforting to me. As a somewhat new foster parent (2 yrs is all we've been doing this), it helps me so much to read about what other foster parents are going thru and how they are dealing with it to help us IRL.

I have been on the phone ALL morning. I have cried many many tears. I'm lost. I don't know what to do. I love this little girl and I think of her as my own and yet I don't know how to help her. Today being "Vetran's Day Observed" all of our lovely social service offices are closed. Thankfully I have the cell numbers and home numbers of my local sw and her supervisor. They are wonderful. My local sw is in Utah visiting some kids that are placed there and she was more than willing to make phone calls for me from there to help me out! What a wonderful woman she is. I'm lucky and I know it. Finally I was able to track down the a sw from the county where the kids are from. Isn't it fun to call the police dept and try to explain who you are and what you need and then you get a sw who doesn't know you or the kids very well and you have to explain everything to her. Luckily she was great to talk to and agreed to go into the office and wait for a fax from the hospital where I was able to get Emilee in tonight for a needs assessment. I have heard this hospital has a great unit for kids. I hope they can help Emilee (and US). This has been a very difficult day and I presume it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

If you're still reading...thanks. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Now i need to get ahold of our adoption worker and let her know that we can no longer accept adoption placement for Emilee at Christmas. We aren't backing out of it...but if she's like this at 7 what will she be like at 13? We need to get her some help BEFORE we sign that dotted line and help is harder to come by. Hopefully, they will stay on top of things since all parental rights have been terminated and they are really wanting to get this adoption finalized.