[doctorcat]

When we had our foster parent training classes "trust issues" were really stressed. We did exercises to simulate the kids being moved around and losing physical and emotional "things". The physical things were all the childs worldly belongings they traveled with that would get lost or forgotten in their multiple moves. The emotional things were all the memories that would get confused or lost in the child's life journey. The bio-parents taught the kids not to trust and the system continued there schooling. Our trainer, a sw who adopted kids from birth and older kids from the system, was a wealth of knowledge about resiliency and attachment. It came from her first hand knowledge of her four adopted kids who all had the ability to attach. She loved the book "The Five Love Languages of Children"(I think that is the title. I forget the author.) She kept stressing "love this" and "love that", PUT the diagnosis titles aside because the specialists always forget "love" in the treatment. She was almost like a cheerleader. We wanted to be successful in our placements and be like her. We had profound respect for her. We had a lot of love in our strong family.

What we didn't get out of training is a clear understanding of these disorders and how they would impact our family. We were deceived by cws, twice....two separate disruptions. We never heard the terms RAD (inhibited and uninhibited form), ODD, CD, ADHD, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Multiple Personallity Disorder in our training classes. Love, love, love was the magic ingredient. My husband and I are to highly educated parents. We entered this blind, blind, blind, and stupid, stupid, stupid. We had those rose colored love glasses on that would conquer all.

When we matched with our first child it was a transracial placement. She was a 12 yr. old AA girl and we are cauc.. The questions asked to us was "Did we know how to take care of her hair and did we have a AA salon picked?" Also the question was "Did we have a AA church picked and did we know of one?" The questions we DID NOT get asked is on the first placement was "Are you ready to raise a mentally retarded, aggressive teenager?" We had been told she was very intelligent, non-aggressive and wanted to be a doctor or nurse and WANTED to be adopted. I was to be her mentor. We thought we were doing and incredible thing, so wonderful, so thankless. We had no paperwork on her before we accepted placement. We were love blind, blind, blind, and really stupid, stupid, stupid but so was our agency.

We were never told in training classes, "Do you think you can trust the cws?" No disrespect to cws but there are bad apples in the bunch and we got lucky twice with some real wormy ones. I never thought we would be taken advantage of as badly as we were...twice. Those rose colored love glasses I think kept us from seeing this also.

We educated ourselves and read a lot of books and articles before the second placement. We were not going to have this happen to us again. The question we heard then was, "Are you crazy? Haven't you learned anything after the 12yr. old child try to strangle your youngest child (who was seven at the time)?" We forged ahead with our decision to try to adopt again. This was OUR family's decision. The questions we asked ourselves was, "Can we go about daily in life knowing that there are kids that need families and we can provide that for them?" If we didn't try to give a child a home that would be a sin.

Our new cw felt she would protect our family, especially our younger kids who were physically abused by the first placement. Our second placement was worse than the first. When our cw advised us to accept this placement my husbands glasses were becoming photo-grey but mine were still the love blind same. I missed the RAD and Bipolar Disorder along with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and possible Multiple Personallity Disorder that was hidden in the diagnosis of ADHD and ODD and toxic over medicating with Adderal XR.

One question you left out is "Are you ready to deal with the suicidal threats and the kid threatening to jump out of a moving car as you drive to the therapist? and "Are you ready to deal with the homicidal threats? The physicians at the psych unit that treated him when he had a emergency admission after trashing the house in an intense rage just brushed this off. He was a charming master of manipulation when he wanted to be. His one caseworker brushed it off saying, "These kids hear a lot of stuff in the system and they repeat alot of stuff." Helloooo, are we the only ones thinking this kids needs serious help?

I had my eyes checked and got a new prescription for my glasses.

Doctorcat-Mom of four bio-sons 18,16,11,&9.