In the last visitation the twins had with their mother, a very short conversation resulted in a lot of emotional turmoil.
The kids came home from visitation, and as I was putting dd8 to sleep, she told me she’s going to live with her mother.
“Hmm…who said you’re going to live with Ima?” I responded.
“Ima. She said when we get bigger we’re going to live with her.”
Oh. One of the things that supervised visitation is supposed to prevent is something like this. I explained that when they are very big, big enough to get married and live by themselves, maybe they will live with Ima. Maybe not. But in any case, not for a long, long, long time.
They then asked somewhat accusingly me why I took them away from their short term foster carers. For the first time, I explained that they were taken from their parents because they didn’t know how to take care of them, and then this couple took care of them while the social workers looked for a family for them.
“But she wasn’t our mother?” “No, she was a very nice lady who cared about you very much and took good care of you, but she wasn’t your mother.”
I thought I had been clear. But then I got a call from dd’s principal the next morning, asking if we were moving.
“No, why?” “Because dd8 announced to her entire class that she is moving to Kiryat Shmonah, and then came to my office to tell me.”
Oy. I explained the situation to the principal, and then called the supervising social worker at the visitation center to ask exactly what had been said by their mother.
She told me that the mother told the kids that she had to prove herself still, but when they get older they’re hopefully going to live with her and their father (in separate homes). She told them right now her home isn’t big enough but she’ll get a bigger place and then asked them to describe the kind of decorations they’ll put in their rooms.
After that, ds8 told her, “I don’t want to live with Mommy (me)!” “Why not?” the social worker and mother asked.
“Because I want a Spiderman bedroom!”
I told the social worker that the kids don’t understand time and this conversation had been deeply unsettling for them, since they think the move is imminent. She told me the mother didn’t say anything wrong, she didn’t promise, she told them ‘hopefully’ they’ll live with her when they get bigger, and the kids need to know that they might not stay with us forever.
Save me from well-intentioned social workers who know not what they do! This conversation should have been stopped immediately, but she didn’t know. This is her first time working at a visitation center, and unfortunately, this conversation dramatically eroded the security the kids feel living in our home, feeling this is their home.
When dd8 came home from school, I reminded her that Ima said they would live with her when they were big. She told me that she was already big. (She’s right – she’s a day bigger than the night before.) I told her that Ima needs to learn how to take care of them, and she reassured me that Ima learned how to do that.
At this same meeting, ds8 once again was chastised for referring to me as ‘his other Ima’. She told him he can’t call me that because I’m not his Ima; I’m his Mommy.
This is hard for him to understand. In our home we speak English and he calls me Mommy, but he was translating to Hebrew since he was with Hebrew speakers, and Mommy translates to Ima. So he understood from this that I’m not his parent.
This necessitated another conversation about who am I to them. I explained they have two mothers, me and their mother. I explained what a mother does, and what makes someone a mother. I explained why their temporary foster carers were not their parents, even though they cared about them very much.
The next day, dd8 commented, with no intent to be offensive or hurtful, but just in a way that she was clarifying for herself, “So you’re just the lady who takes care of us.”
In their minds, they now no longer have a stable home and I’m not their mother.
The day before I had told dd8’s therapist that we would take a break until after the holidays, but this was so urgent that I asked her if we could have a session on erev Yom Kippur to help dd understand and process these issues. It was so urgent that her therapist agreed.
I am so, so grateful for this therapist. She is wonderful. She told me she can’t force dd to talk about something if she doesn’t want to, and has to wait for her to bring it up. I asked if it was okay if when I dropped her off, if I mentioned to her that dd had visitation with her mother and her mother said she would be living with her. She agreed that would be fine, and we hoped that would create a lead-in to help dd with this issue.
She called me in at the end of the session to show me dd8’s new baby. She explained that she (the therapist, playing a role) had a baby she couldn’t take care of even though she loved her so much, and she had to find a new mother to take care of her baby. Dd8 is the new mother.
When we ate breakfast together today, dd8 asked me if I remember the name of her doll (the one at her therapist), then we talked about if her doll was sad to leave her first mother. She said no, and I told her that the mother was sad when she couldn’t keep her child, and the child also feels sad.
Then we talked about if there were other emotions the baby might feel. We segued into how dd felt when she was removed from her home, and talked about if it was scary when the policemen came to take them away. My husband walked in during this conversation, and we shared with him what we were discussing.
Later in the day she went with my husband to do an errand, and they spoke about this topic while they were out. On the spot, my husband made up a song to the tune of a popular children’s song, and here is the song:
- Hashem gave us two presents
- Do you know who they were?
- (Name) and (name)
- He gave us him and her.
- He asked some other people
- “Do you want these gifts of mine?”
- But they said “No, thank you, for children we’ve no time.”
- Then to Mommy and Daddy
- (Name of our social worker) did go
- They said, “Oh they sound so cute, we will love them so!”
- Then to Mommy and Daddy
- (Our social worker) did go
- They said, “Oh, they sound so cute, we will help them grow.”
It’s an ongoing conversation with them both. We want them to know it’s okay to miss their parents, it’s okay to have mixed feelings and wish they could live with them (they told me they don’t want to live here, they want to live with their mother), it’s okay to be sad or angry or whatever else they are feeling.
We don’t want them to feel they have to keep it all inside, push down those feelings and put on a happy face. This is part of their lives and they need to have a space to talk about it and have a space to talk about those hard emotions.
I spoke to two therapists about this, and both were disturbed that the conversation had been handled at the visitation as it was. Dd’s therapist will be calling her to discuss it, and the other therapist has been in touch with our social worker to begin the process of creating the official narrative about why they left and the process of moving here with all of the adults, so that the children will hear the same version from everyone, instead of each adult explaining it in their own way. Then this narrative that is shared with others, like teachers, and it will help create consistency for the kids.
So in the end, good things are coming from this topic coming up in the way it did.
Avivah
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