Avivah Werner

Category: Foster Care

  • Helping the twins process that this is their home and we are their parents

    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

  • Rosh Hashana and beyond….hard reckonings

    What a draining holiday I’ve just had.

    Even though the week preceding Rosh Hashana I was away for a few days to be with my daughter who had a baby, I still managed to have everything ready for Rosh Hashana without any pressure or rushing. It felt like an accomplishment.

    But the child care front is a different matter completely. Ds8 is in a new school and really likes it. I’m so grateful because last year wasn’t a good fit for him and it was a very hard year. The first week at his new school he had short school days, and then for the next two weeks he had a full day, coming home late in the afternoon.

    This longer day is what I was told before they came would be their schedule, but it never has been until now. Having some time without him home in the afternoon has been a gift and I love it! It gives me one on one time with ds8.5 and dd8 and the house is so much calmer, I’m more relaxed and able to enjoy being a mother. Him coming home later is also what made it possible for me to leave for a couple of days at a time to be with my married daughter and grandchildren.

    However, almost immediately after attending for the longer days, his behavior became dramatically worse. Really, really worse. As in, the difficulty of last year when he was regressing seems like nothing compared to what I’m seeing now – I can hardly remember what felt hard then.

    All through Rosh Hashana, I thought and thought about the impossibility of the situation. Since he’s spent so much time with us, he’s had dramatic improvements that have made it possible for him to rise above what was expected of him. When he has extensive time at home, he’s overall a sweet and loving boy, albeit one who needs constant oversight.

    However, he can’t be home all the time, and I don’t want him home all the time. The lack of that extended time at home means he’s not able to regulate himself and he has become difficult to live with. So I find us in a catch 22 situation that I don’t see a resolution for.

    It’s scary to see how fast his behavior changed, and how bad it’s gotten in just three weeks. Obviously something isn’t working for him internally, and he’s acting it out.

    My biggest concern is his behavior towards ds8.5, sometimes being verbally and physically aggressive towards him. I have absolutely no tolerance for that. Every person in this family needs to be safe and feel safe. That’s foundational to how our home functions.

    I mentioned to someone on the first day of Rosh Hashana that he had been very disrespectful and physically aggressive. She told me, “You think my kids are perfect? They also hit each other and don’t speak nicely.” I’m really not talking about the same kind of thing.

    His reactions to someone saying ‘no’ or stopping him from doing what he wants are extreme – screaming with fury through clenched teeth while physically lashing out at whoever is near him.

    Then there’s the verbal aggression that comes right after he stops screaming, spewing the most angry words he can think of.

    I should be grateful that since we speak pretty nicely around here, the worst he can yell at me is: “Get away from me! Stop it. Stop it! Don’t touch me. Be quiet. Stop talking. Stop talking. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me. I can do what I want. You can’t tell me what to do. Stinky mommy. I’m in charge of myself. I’m going to do whatever I want. I can do whatever I want.”

    While he’s yelling, his body gets as stiff as a board and then he stops talking and starts having what looks like an autistic meltdown (but it’s not). I was sitting across the table from my husband one of the times this happened and as he held ds on his lap I saw the worry in my husband’s eyes at how extreme ds8’s behaviors were.

    Finally (we’re always holding him on our laps at this point) he stops, kind of sags and puts his head against our chests and gets quiet and calm. Then when he starts to talk again, for up to an hour afterward, he speaks in a babyish voice with babyish movements.

    This is much worse than the behavior he had even when he first arrived, and I felt so disheartened that after two and a half years of so much love and guidance for him, that we’re behind where we began. It’s also hard to feel warmth or compassion towards him when he acts like this, even when the cycle ends.

    I’ve been concerned about the affect it’s having on ds8.5, who was so scared seeing this behavior that he spent hours on Rosh Hashana secluded in his room, not joining us at all for one of the meals. I took steps right away to address this and fortunately ds8.5 seems to be regrouping really well.

    It’s been really hard dealing with ds8, but just as hard dealing with my thoughts – turning and turning the situation around, looking at it from all directions, wracking my brain as to how we can help him – and coming up with very little. But at a time I want G-d to have compassion for me and judge me favorably despite my flaws, how can I pronounce a harsh judgment on this child and say I’m done?

    I spoke to my social worker right after Rosh Hashana, detailed what’s happening and said, while I’m not saying we’re quitting right now, we need to talk about what the next step would be if we can’t continue. She told me that several months ago, the therapist I spoke to then called her and said she had told me to emotionally prepare for him needing to be transferred to a residential treatment center. The therapist also told her, she sees it as inevitable that due to his complexities at some point he will need to be transferred out of home care.

    There’s one diagnosis that scares me more than any other, and that’s RAD (reactive attachment disorder). When I first heard about ds8, I wondered if he had it and have wondered about it a number of times since. While a lot of behaviors match, I’m not convinced. Even though he was diagnosed with RAD (as well as PDD) by a psychiatrist several months ago, I’m still not convinced. When I think of him having RAD, I feel like I just can’t continue because there’s no hope; for me, it’s something so hard that I’m not able or willing to deal with it. (Here’s a great website to learn more by a parent of two adopted RAD children – Every Star Is Different.)

    So I decided to put the diagnosis out of my mind since that’s too worrisome, and just deal with the child in front of me, with what I see right now. When I do that, I can feel more warmth and compassion.

    My husband and I had an appointment with with the foster care therapist yesterday morning, and she told us that every single day we give him in our home is a benefit for him. She stressed that we need to take very good care of ourselves because parenting him (and dd8 is a lot, also, even though I’m not mentioning her here) is so demanding and draining. She cautioned us to have our finger on our emotional pulse, to recognize and respects our limits, and not to push ourselves beyond what we can do.

    While dd’s therapist commented in response to something I said about him, that it sounds like all foster/adopted youth behaviors, the social worker and this therapist who knows the specifics of his background understand that we’re dealing with hard things and are very supportive of us. They’ve both made it clear that they think all we’ve done for him has been heroic and they understand if we can’t continue.

    Avivah

  • This is what progress in therapy looks like

    I began taking my seven year old daughter to therapy a year and a half ago, and she’s making great progress. Her therapist is very happy with how well she’s doing. A child in foster care is often afraid to express his authentic self out of fear that he won’t be accepted, so he supresses his real emotions in order to be the child he thinks you want.

    She’s had everything locked inside of her, and is beginning to express anger about her early years in her sessions. That’s really good, because you want whatever emotions have been pushed down to come out.

    That anger can’t be relegated to the therapy room once a week, though. It comes out at home. A lot.

    This began to be pronounced a couple of months ago. Every morning started with her being upset about something – eyes flashing defiance, she refused to do whatever she was meant to do in that moment. It didn’t really matter what the specifics were; whatever she claimed the issue was, was really just the pretext for her to get upset.

    We have a calm and predictable morning routine and there’s nothing to oppose except getting dressed and eating breakfast. So she refused to put on her clothes – maybe refusing to get dressed at all, or wearing this shirt, or wearing certain shoes.

    One day it was insisting she was going to wear her Shabbos shoes to school. She refused to put on any other shoes and when I finally put her school shoes on her since it was time for go out for the school bus, she screamed and cried until her eyes were red and puffy. (Below I’ll explain why I didn’t let her wear something else.)

    Heaven help any of the boys who look in her direction when she’s feeling unhappy, because she’ll scream at them for looking at her. It’s not easy to live with and my teens try to find humor in her screeching (commenting out of her earshot, “it’s amazing how loud one little girl can scream” or smiling wryly at me as I’m dealing with her). Both boys have enormous patience and tolerance, though they occasionally reach their limits and have asked how they’re supposed to respond when she is obnoxious towards them.

    When the younger children were having breakfast one morning, I went out of the room for a few minutes and returned in time to see to see her walk over and kick my eight year old, unprovoked. My thirteen year old told me that she kicked him right before that.

    While the screaming happens at all times of day, it’s far from all negative. She experiences and expresses a lot of genuine joy. Often I’ll hear her making up songs and singing about how happy she is. But there’s a lot of pain and confusion inside, and learning to navigate all of that emotion will take a lot of time.

    There’s a impulse to react to a child’s anger with your own anger, but that will always exacerbate everything. The most important thing a parent can do when your child is dysregulated, is to stay calm. You are their external brain; their brains can’t modulate themselves in the moment without help from you. It’s only when you stay calm that they can calm down.

    Your voice will naturally go up when you’re emotionally escalating, and the more your tone goes up, so will your negative emotion. One way to help keep yourself calm is to lower your voice and keep your tone level. Your outer actions will impact your own feelings, not just those of the child. My controlled tone calms me and keeps me from escalating my own emotions.

    There’s also a tendency to want to avoid conflict when a child is so easily upset. That sometimes that means letting things go in the moment because of the heightened emotions. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do, but I’m very, very cautious about giving too much leeway because there’s risk that the child will begin to see himself as able to get his way by acting out, or to think he controls the dynamics of the family.

    To have a feeling of safety and security, a child needs to know his parents are reliably in charge. It’s important that dd7 knows that she and her anger do not run this family. I do. Especially in the midst of strong emotion when it seems like the last thing she wants is to for me to stand my ground, she needs it.

    In the midst of getting dressed one morning, she came out and defiantly announced she’s going to wear the white shirt she put on because she can’t find any of her uniform shirts. They’re allowed to wear a white shirt, so I didn’t have a problem with her wearing it.

    But the disrespectful way she was speaking to me was an issue, and it was also an issue that she was telling me something that I knew wasn’t true (that she couldn’t find her uniform shirts).

    I said, “Hmm, your shirts are in your closet.”

    “Well, I didn’t see them.”

    I could completely have let this go. It really didn’t matter to me what shirt she wore. But being truthful goes together with taking personal responsibility, and those are very important.

    She was in the middle of putting on her tights, and I said, “Come with me now and let’s look in your closet together.” Her, yelling and refusing: “No, I’m putting on my tights.”

    I didn’t say anything. I took her hand and we walked to her room together despite her reluctance. I opened the closet, and there were three uniform shirts hanging there. They were impossible not to see. “I see there are three shirts here.”

    Her: “But I didn’t see them.”

    Me: “You didn’t look for the shirts so you didn’t see them. It’s okay if you want to wear a white shirt. But it’s not okay to tell me you looked for them if you didn’t, because that’s telling me something that isn’t true. (That’s enough said about that issue. Now I’ll move on to addressing the next issue.) If you want to wear something different, you can ask me in a nice way. Now, do you want to ask me something?”

    Her: “Mommy, please can I wear this shirt today?” (said with a pleasant tone)

    Me: “Yes, you can wear this shirt. If you’re going to wear this shirt, you need to turn it around because it’s backward. Can you do that?”

    She went back to her room and made the adjustments. She came out and wanted breakfast. I reminded her that everyone has to be ready for school before they eat, and asked her to bring a brush so I could fix her hair first. (This is the guideline for every single day so this wasn’t something new to her.)

    She began screaming again. This time I didn’t say anything else. You have to recognize when you can talk and when a child can hear you. We already had the dialogue above, and more talking would have been too much.

    I got the brush, gave her a hug, and calmly began brushing her hair. When I finished, unsurprisingly there wasn’t enough time for her to eat. (I told her earlier that it was getting late and that she needed to get ready then so she would have enough time to eat, which she ignored.) Understandably, she screamed more.

    I picked her up and held her. At first she was rigid like a board, but then she softened and put her cheek against my cheek. I held her for a couple of minutes. It was time to go outside to wait for her school van, and she wanted me to carry her there (trying to dictate my actions again – she needs tremendous consistency in my responses), but I told her I would hold her when we got to where we wait for the bus. We walked outside hand in hand together; I picked her up when we got there and held her until it was time to go on the bus. She went to school calm and regulated.

    Let me know in the comments if detailing this example of how I maintaining my boundaries with dd7 who was very dysregulated, while remaining firm and kind was helpful. Also let me know if you have questions about what I did or why.

    Avivah

  • Trying to keep burnout at bay

    Sorry I haven’t written for a while – I’ve been swamped. Actually, the thought that usually comes to mind is, “I’m drowning” or “I’m choking”.

    I don’t like to drag others down and I don’t want to complain, and I’ve been so busy that staying quiet has been easy. But I am so, so maxxed out by the foster care system, so much that despite being a pretty high capacity person, a few times a week I think to myself, “I can’t do this anymore, it’s too much.”

    And every time, I remind myself to stay in the moment. Take the next step today and don’t think about what needs to be done tomorrow. Take a breath.

    And I breathe. But it’s hard. It’s hard not to feel resentful and trapped that when I agreed to have the twins join our family, I unknowingly took on a full-time job as an overworked, completely unappreciated employee of social/foster care services. I hate it. I really do.

    Not the kids. Taking care of them can be challenging but that’s in my skillset and that’s something that I value.

    Taking care of things for people who themselves don’t even care if they’re done, other than to put a check mark next to a list, so it looks like they’ve done their jobs when it comes to the yearly committee…it’s sucking my precious life energy away for nothing.

    Before the twins came, I asked detailed questions regarding what would it entail. I take my commitments seriously and I wanted to be sure it was something I could do and maintain the balance in our family life. I verified and reverified what would I need to do.

    There’s nothing about what I was told that was accurate – not one thing. Everything has been more and more and more. But you know, that’s how life is – things change and you need to adapt. Obviously everything can’t be predicted. When I told our social worker months ago that the demands have become too much, the response was, you don’t have to keep the kids if you can’t do it. Not, let’s talk about our demands on you and reassess if they’re necessary or realistic. So I don’t talk about it anymore. There doesn’t seem to be any point.

    I’m careful about what I put into my schedule because I like to have margin in my life, and we said yes to the twins after my husband and I agreed to clear some really big things from our lives to make room for them. That was good.

    But because what I need to do takes so much more time than expected, for months I’ve been removing things that are important to me (nothing unimportant is left) in an attempt to create some breathing room.

    Months ago I cancelled horseback riding lessons for all four kids. This was a loss for them all but especially a shame for ds12, who amazed the instructor at how quickly he picked it up.

    Then life was still too full so I took out the weekly private speech therapy for ds12 and ds8. I was quite invested in that, but once I had to do weekly visitations and the location was changed to an hour drive away, something had to give and of course it couldn’t be something the foster care system wanted. So speech therapy was cut.

    Then I took out the orthodontic appointments for ds12 for palate expansion, despite paying 16,000 shekels and not yet seeing results. I asked for a six month breather, and we’ll see if I can recommit to taking ds12 regularly at that point. I think I’m going to ask for a year long extension.

    Ds8 has been asking since last year’s lessons about swimming lessons for this year, but even though it means so much to him and I’d told him I’d try to sign him up, after calling about details he won’t be able to participate – it conflicts with the weekly visitation for the twins with their parents. On one hand it’s good because then I don’t have to take him, but on the other hand it’s very disappointing, because I can’t take him…

    Ds8 and ds12 both get home at 2 pm. I’ve always been happy with this since I want them to have time at home to decompress and be together with me and each other. But it’s too much having all four children at home every afternoon; ds12 is at a different stage than the other three kids so it’s boring for him at home and is constantly leaving the house to go other places (usually without my knowledge or agreement). It will be helpful if he can stay at school for the afternoon program and recently he’s even requested it himself (in the past he wouldn’t have been able to deal with the long day at school). It’s not my ideal but I need to do what I can to make life manageable.

    Ds7 and dd7 were supposed to be in special ed, which would have meant they came home much later in the day, there would have been an option for an afternoon program, pre-holiday camps, and summer camps. They are in regular schools so none of those are options. I know if you live in a city that it’s hard to imagine, but living where we live, there are no alternate options for them. Nothing.

    For those to whom it’s obvious that we need to get some outside help: I know that. I would love help. I’m not a martyr and I recognize when something is stretching me too much.

    There are no community resources for assistance. There are no volunteers, there are no chesed organizations. There’s a serious manpower shortage where I live. There aren’t even teens available to come to our home for pay while I’m home, so that the full responsibility isn’t on them. I’m dreaming of finding someone to stay with the four youngest kids since right now if I need to go somewhere when the kids are home, my husband takes off time from work to cover for me.

    For the last two years, there has been absolutely no respite, other than my husband. The problem is, he also needs a break. He’s also feeling the strain.

    There was a retreat for English speaking mothers of children with special needs that I’ve been looking forward to attending since I attended most of one two years ago. I wasn’t able to fully attend because the twins had just come a short time before. A couple of weeks ago I got a message that the next morning at ten registration was opening. Since I happened to wake up at 3 am and couldn’t back to sleep, I took a nap and went to register as soon as I woke up at 12:30.

    When I saw the message on the screen that it was sold out, I burst into tears. It was so painful for me, that no matter how much I need help, I can’t get any relief. Crying about something like this is far from my typical response. I generally have a philosophical attitude of, “If it was meant to be, it would be, and if it’s not, it’s not, so it’s all as it’s meant to be” but this time, I couldn’t even try to reassure myself with that. My response was so unusual that it clearly demonstrated me how little emotional margin I have left.

    One of my married children asked me if I’m busier than when I was homeschooling, and was surprised that I said I feel busier now than when I had nine kids homeschooling at once. Though it was a very busy stage of life and sometimes was hard, I was doing something that I valued and wanted to be doing. I had agency, I was the one who made my schedule and I could change what I wanted if something wasn’t working. Now it’s exactly the opposite situation, and it feels oppressive.

    So I’m in the place that I know I’m doing too much, I don’t want to do it, and I don’t know where I can cut back anymore.

    If it was a job, I’d have quit a long time ago. But it’s not a job, and there are two children who trust and love me whose lives are involved. I can’t just cut them loose.

    I had a meeting this week with the foster care advocate in preparation for the upcoming committee meeting, and at the end some of my feelings about this came up. She will be attending the meeting and wants to bring up how much is being asked of me without consideration of the price it’s demanding. I’ll be meeting with her again next week to discuss it further. I’m reluctant to have any hope in help from that quarter, because I’ve been repeatedly disappointed and frustrated. But who knows, maybe something helpful will come from it.

    Practically speaking, I’ve called someone about helping with housework a couple of hours a day – I think that’s easier to find than someone to help with the kids, and that would also take something off my plate. I’m waiting for her to get back to me to work out specifics of what she has time for. I’ve also called a company that places assistants for kids, and asked them to see if they have anyone in my area that has available hours. They’re checking it out and will get back to me. And tomorrow, I’ll be going to open a file for ds12 so he can stay for the full school day.

    In the meantime, I keep seeking small ways to give myself some breathing space. Mostly right now the main thing I can do is choose thoughts that feel positive. It helps me a lot to keep my house in order, but being gone for meetings and appointments so often means that I’m just not home enough to do more than bare maintenance. Today was the only day this week that I didn’t have to drive anywhere, and it was such a relief to be able to stay home. I love being home!

    I did some baking for Shavuos – I made chocolate chip cheesecake bars and lots of cheese babkas. It’s a mental relief to have them ready in the freezer, along with meat and chicken that I’ve also prepared for Shabbos and Shavuos. It’s also nice to have something concrete to show for the time I’ve invested.

    Sometimes I think of the story of the man who was in Siberia and tasked every day with turning a large handle that was attached to a brick wall. For years, he wondered what his work was accomplishing – maybe he was grinding wheat?

    When he was finally freed, he asked to see the other side of the wall to see what he had been working all for all those years. When he glimpsed the other side of the wall, there was nothing there – he was heartbroken to learn that all of his efforts had been turning a handle for no purpose at all.

    That’s kind of how I feel about all that I’m busy with – so much effort with so little to show for it. So when I preserve something or bake something for the freezer, it’s a positive action that I can feel good about.

    **Edited to add – I wrote this last night and my husband and I had an early morning appointment with dd7’s therapist. I talked about some of the things I’ve written here, and she asked permission to share them with our social worker. She said that we are the model foster parents with incredible abilities, and it’s deeply disturbing for her to see how worn down I am – the contrast is very obvious to her. She said that we shouldn’t have all of the things on us, that I’m dealing with an impossible load. It was validating to hear from her that it’s objectively impossible to do all that I’m doing, and it was also really nice to be able to be heard. So I’m feeling optimistic that perhaps some of the expectations that have been put on me will be shifted and there might be some help offered to offset. Even if they don’t offer help, I’m looking for avenues of help for myself and I’m sure someone or something is going to work out.**

    Avivah

  • I had a meeting with the therapist and it didn’t go how I expected

    I had a meeting with the therapist who until now I’ve used as a resource person to navigate the logistics of the foster care system. She’s very experienced and knowledgeable, and I respect her professionalism and compassionate understanding of children. Although she works independently, my visits to her are dictated by social services and paid for by the foster care agency, so I’ve never felt safe to share anything too personal, though it would be a relief to speak to someone who understands foster parenting. Foster parenting has similarities to regular parenting but is on a different scale of challenge as there is deep trauma and loss that manifest in various issues.

    I reached out to her because I decided it’s time to ask for help with more than logistics.

    I wanted to talk with her about the anger I feel sometimes towards ds7 and some of his behaviors, and get suggestions on how to move beyond that.

    I told her about what we experience with ds7 and concluded by suggesting that it seems I need to do some deeper inner work to effectively parent him so that I’m not triggered by some of his behaviors.

    I didn’t anticipate at all what direction she would go in.

    She told me that if she was asked to recommend a foster family, she would wholeheartedly recommend us without reservation. She stated that we have an unusual capacity that few people have to deal with trauma behaviors (I have less confidence in my capacity than she does), but at the same time, it’s important for me to recognize that I have limits, limits that are reasonable and to acknowledge that I have a red line.

    I appreciated that. As much as I want to be endlessly understanding and compassionate, I’m not and I can’t be, and it’s not even a realistic expectation even though I want to be like that.

    Then she asked for more details of the behaviors.

    After hearing the specifics, she said that the intensity of what he does leads her to consider that his needs might not be able to met in any home environment. She said the anger I sometimes feel is very understandable, that anyone would be upset at the things I described. She suggested we begin to consider a different kind of placement for ds, because with such challenging behaviors, a staff has advantages over one set of parents; they have a shift and know they only have to tolerate what he does until the end of their shift and they go home for a break. When you live with it, you never get a break and it is exhausting.

    She stressed that if he’s going to go into this kind of framework, the sooner the better because the more used to a loving home he is, the harder the transition will be to dormitory living.

    I don’t see what the benefits to him would be of being in a dorm, other than having more staff to supervise him. He wouldn’t be loved and cared about the way he is here, it’s unlikely he would experience any emotional healing or advance academically, and his future would be very limited.

    I told her if I felt we really couldn’t help him and I really couldn’t deal with his behaviors, I would consider that but at the very least he deserves a year of getting the necessary support in school to be successful before concluding that he’s too much for a family to handle. Even with his regression and other challenging behaviors, he’s made huge gains; he’s much happier and calmer, better able to focus, process information and think.

    I pointed out it would be very hard for all of us, particularly the younger children in our family if he were to leave, and she conceded that was true. She added, however, that him not being there might also be a relief for everyone, especially the younger children.

    I shared my concern that he would be at high risk for abuse in a framework like that, and she agreed, but added that being who he is, he’ll be at high risk wherever he is and it’s not something I can protect him from.

    I really respect this person so much, but this isn’t the direction I thought the conversation would go. I thought she would suggest perspectives on his actions or guidance on how to handle his outbursts. I never expected her to say that my anger was well justified and his behaviors point to him not being able to stay in a home environment.

    I went home and shared all of this with my husband and we had the same response – we don’t agree with this direction at this time. It helped us both recommit to find a way to keep him with us as long as we can.

    The question remains: how to find the compassion and energy to be patient and kind when I feel maxxed out? This is the question I wanted support with.

    So far what is helping me the most is to tell myself that he’s a four year old. Technically he’s a few months from his eighth birthday, but part of what leads to frustration is expectation. He is very much like a four year old in every way except his birthdate, and by thinking of him in a way that is accurate for the stage he’s at, it helps reduce my expectations. It’s easier for me to feel compassion or patience rather than frustration when he does things that I think he shouldn’t be doing.

    By the way, my meeting with the therapist took place before the meeting at the school last week. After the school meeting, she saw ds7 for the first time since her visit to our home when he first arrived. She looked at me in astonishment and looking emotional, asked, “What in the world is this?!”He’s really sweet!” She continued, “It doesn’t sound nice to say I’m surprised, but I am – based on his background and how he was when he came to you, and all the behaviors he has – I didn’t expect to see this.” I was glad she got to see a glimpse of this side of him, so she has a more balanced picture of the child he is.

    Avivah

  • Seeing so much regression for ds, how to help him?

    Ds7 is having a hard year, with a school placement where he doesn’t have the support he needs to be successful. I’ve been trying to get the necessary paperwork to apply for a different school for the coming year but I’ve been completely roadblocked by the foster care agency and social services.

    In the beginning of November I took the twins for psychological evaluations that included an educational component, but despite being the one to make the appointments, take each of them out of school for the day to go to the appointment, sit with them throughout the entire evaluation, meet with a psychologist for over an hour for each of them, meet with the evaluator with my husband and I, and spend hours answering detailed online questionaires of many (hundreds?) of questions – I wasn’t allowed to see the results because I’m not a professional that needs to see it.

    That was insulting and offensive to me. Everyone gets to see the results except the people who raise him?!?

    Anyway, back to the technical issue – without having the evaluation, I couldn’t submit an application for a new school.

    When the foster care agency finally received the assessment and sent it to ds’s school, the principal told them it doesn’t contain critical information necessary to know what kind of framework will meet his needs. Months of waiting for the results of this evaluation, and it doesn’t even contain the necessary information.

    I said I would take him for the necessary evaluation and pay for it myself, but the foster care agency refused to allow me to take him, claiming it would be too hard on him to have to do another evaluation. (I told the social worker that the evaluation isn’t any more demanding than a regular school day for him.)

    He’s having a hard time at school since he really needs one on one support in order to learn and appropriately socialize, and his frustration comes out when he gets home.

    He’s been experiencing emotional regression since the beginning of the year, which I’ve expressed concern about to our social worker repeatedly. The positive changes when he left challenging behaviors behind in the first year with us were very encouraging, but it’s been sad and alarming to see it go in the opposite direction.

    When he came, he acted like a very young toddler. He spoke in a babyish way, pointed at things instead of talking, and moved in an affected and unnatural way with mincing steps and small movements. My interpretation of these behaviors is that he associates being loved with being a baby, it’s become his position of emotional safety, so this is his emotional armor.

    We did so, so much work to move him beyond this, for him to deeply internalize the feeling that he’s safe to be big in our home. He stopped doing all of these things – we hadn’t seen any of these behaviors for eighteen months.

    Two months ago on Shabbos afternoon he hit the lowest point we’ve seen so far. One of our teens said something to him after ds7 hit ds8, and ds7 became very verbally aggressive and offensive towards that teen. My son brought him to me to help him get regulated, but nothing I did helped him. He became an infant, repeatedly trying to lay in dd’s wooden doll cradle as he said ‘ga ga’, wadded up fists, and an artificial high voice and tiny body movements. I kept him with me for over an hour, trying to help him relax and feel safe, but for the rest of the afternoon he continued acting like a small infant.

    (Two days beforehand, several seventh grade boys in his school bullied him. This was obviously frightening for him, and was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. )

    His descent into infantile behavior was deeply concerning for me. It’s upsetting not be able to get help to find him a more suitable school placement for next year, and not to be able to do anything to improve his current school situation. (Overall the school is fine, but his needs are much more intensive than what they are set up to handle.) As long as he remains in this school, all that’s left for me to do is try to manage his behaviors at home, which are challenging.

    I initiated an appointment with the foster care therapist/advocate a couple of months ago to see if there was anything we could do about his school situation. She said she would set up a meeting of everyone involved, which finally took place a few days ago – it was his principal, teacher, the therapist, our social worker and me.

    I wasn’t expecting much from this meeting, thinking it was ‘too little, too late’ as he needed help from the very beginning and here we are towards the end of the school year. I was pleasantly surprised, however.

    The therapist said she had done extensive research into all of the schools all over the north part of Israel and there wasn’t a single option that would meet the needs of ds7. That being the case, she felt that he should stay at his current school so that he has continuity, and get one on one support inside the classroom. I don’t know if that’s possible or what that would look like, but that’s the direction that that will now be explored.

    This doesn’t immediately help ds but I do feel there’s some official recognition of the difficult situation ds is in, and there’s now an attempt to get him the support he desperately needs and I appreciate that. I don’t know what will come of it, but knowing he can stay at his current school takes a lot of pressure off of me. I spent six months last year trying to get him a school placement and finally got him this spot where he is now just a month before school began. It was such a relief.

    Then the school year began, his behavior quickly deteriorated and the relief was very short-lived. For the last few months I’ve been going through the same school placement issue as last year and it’s been draining and infuriating. I’m constantly feeling like I’m banging my head against a wall with no progress to show for my efforts.

    In the last couple of months he’s made some gains from the extreme infantile behavior, but it’s still pronounced. I suppose all of this is teaching me patience – maybe? – because dealing with social services is all about waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to do something to help a child. I find this hard and wonder sometimes if to continue parenting him I have to become jaded and not think about the damage the system that is supposed to be helping does to the child.

    There’s the reality of so much bureaucracy surrounding every single decision that needs to be made that everything is painfully slow. I see that those who work in the system have an acceptance of this glacial pace that I don’t have. If I did, it would make it much easier for me emotionally, but I don’t want to become a person who can see a child suffering and then say, ‘oh, well, that’s how it goes; yep, that’s a shame’. I haven’t yet found my balance in trying to help ds7 while accepting the limitations of the system, but I think that understanding how limited the system is and not expecting anything is an important first step.

    Avivah

  • So much for my identity protection – meeting bio dad

    With our particular situation as foster parents, our identity is protected from the bio parents for our safety. This is not always the case for foster parents but that’s how it was set up for us. As such, there are procedures in place when I take the kids to the visitation with their parents at the visitation center each week to preserve our anonymity – the parent goes in, then the supervisor calls to tell me the parent is there and that it’s okay for me to bring the kids in. We leave in reverse order, with enough time given for us to leave the parking lot before they tell the parent it’s okay to go out.

    This has worked effectively for many months. Six weeks ago we switched to a new mediation center, and the social worker told me they would do something similar. That’s what they said, but that’s not what they’re doing.

    The first week she confirmed it was okay to go in, but the second week when I called to confirm it was okay for us to get out of the car – I arrived ten minutes early and it’s hard for the kids to wait inside the car after a drive of almost an hour – the social worker chastised me for calling and told me of course I’m not allowed to come inside during someone else’s turn.

    I reminded her that my identity is protected and I didn’t want to start the visit early, I just wanted to be able to get out of the car with the kids.

    The next week they switched to a different supervising social worker but didn’t give me his number, so I wasn’t able to call to ascertain the parent was inside and they didn’t remember to give him my number with instructions to call me, so I waited until the last minute I could without being late for visitation. It’s been six weeks now and they haven’t called me except that first week.

    At the last visit as I pulled up to the traffic circle next to the mediation center, I saw the twins’ father walking towards the building. I felt uneasy because dd7 was sitting in the front passenger seat and there were no other cars in the area so it would be a reasonable thing for him to look up. If he did, he would immediately know who I was. Fortunately he didn’t look up and the windows were closed so he didn’t hear the children calling his name.

    Since I had seen him, I didn’t have to call to ascertain his arrival. The kids were very hyped up because they had seen him and it was hard for them to wait but I waited about eight minutes to be sure he was inside – it takes a maximum of two minutes to go in. There were still a few minutes until our appointment but knowing the coast was clear, I took the kids to wait outside of the building entrance so they could get some of their energy out.

    There is a path leading to the building entrance and there are high walls on each side, so you can’t see the entrance unless you are directly opposite it. The parking lots are on the sides of the building so as you approach after getting out of your vehicle, there’s no way to see anyone until you turn into the path.

    I was holding dd’s hand and ds ran a little bit ahead of me. As he turned the corner into the path, I heard him exclaim, “Abba!” For some reason, his father had come back outside, which has never happened before.

    I thought, “Oh, no, what am I supposed to do now?” I couldn’t stay on the other side of the wall since I couldn’t leave ds7 unattended, but if I turned the corner to get him, his father would see me.

    Well, there was no choice but to turn the corner and get ds7. I accepted that this has to happen and there’s no reason for it to be a big deal.

    As I turned into the pathway, ds had just asked his father something and his father tensely responded, “I’m not allowed to be here.” He faced the building and kept his back towards me with his gaze averted. I saw the cigarette he had just thrown down and realized he had gone outside to smoke.

    Feeling conscious of his proximity just a few feet away, I told dd that we needed to go wait to the side of the building and give her father his turn to go in, and then it would be our turn. Ds7 was confused why we couldn’t wait there and didn’t want to go, so I had to take his hand to lead him away. Their father didn’t turn his head at all to look at me – I thought it was very disciplined of him. The angle he had his head turned slightly to the right was a little unusual, though; he wasn’t looking directly ahead of him, which is what would be expected.

    When I came to pick the children up, I stood in front of the frosted glass doors and held my head at the exact angle I had seen their father looking, and then it was obvious why he chose that angle. The glass doors provided a perfect mirror and at that angle he could watch me closely, with his sunglasses concealing his eyes so it wouldn’t be obvious if I were to look at him.

    How do I feel about this? Well, less bothered than I did the week that his girlfriend waiting in the car videoed me walking with the two kids into the mediation center. Part of me would rather have had some verbal contact acknowledging one another because it’s an awkward and artificial situation. I suppose it was inevitable at some point that he would see us and while I don’t feel endangered, I do feel uncomfortable.

    Avivah

  • Our first visitor after our renovations – the guardian ad litem

    Today was my son’s 19th birthday! I started this blog when he was just three and a half months old. Time flies….

    I got a call at 8:15 this morning from our social worker, letting me know that the guardian ad litem (GAL) wanted to know if the twins are home today, and if so, she’s coming this morning. Of course the week before Pesach when there’s nothing else to do is a perfect time for a visit with minimal notice!

    We had a lot of building materials still around the patio and yard that I wanted to clear away, so I asked that she come at noon.

    It was good to get the materials cleaned up early in the day, and afterwards the teens cleaned upstairs for Pesach.

    There’s been so much negativity and pressure associated with her visits, and the good thing about that is I’ve kind of run out of emotional energy to care much more about what she may complain about.

    What I focused on instead was to presume good intention on her part. The social worker’s supervisor also came, and I noticed that the GAL also spoke with her in a critical way that sounds attacking. That was helpful for me to see, to realize that a lot of what has been said to me isn’t necessarily personal. By not taking taking her comments personally and with my looking for the good, I was able to view her in a more appreciative way than I’ve been able to in the past.

    I don’t know what complaints may come out about this visit afterwards, but I felt it was a good visit. It felt fitting that she was the first visitor to see our new space, since it was when she came last time that it was clear to me how much I disliked people entering the house directly into the kitchen, no matter how neat it was. That was the final impetus I needed to make these changes.

    I showed you pictures of the new kitchen setup; now here’s a picture of the new living room/dining room. It’s spackled but not yet painted (the hooks with the aprons hanging on it will be moved). I’ve taken pictures from a couple of angles to give you an idea of how the room looks overall.

    This is where the main part of the kitchen with the sink was previously, before the wall behind it as well as the wall next to the stairs taken down. (Remember this was when we had started dissembling the kitchen and the overflowing counters weren’t reflective of how the kitchen usually looked.)

    After the renovation, before painting. (The hooks and aprons will be taken down.)

    Below is a picture taken from the kitchen – I included a corner of the fridge on the right so you can get an idea of the proximity of the two rooms to one another. The walls are somewhat staggered so the floor plan isn’t completely open, but it’s mostly open.

    You can also see the area under the stairs has been closed in and has an access door. It needs a little more drywall work before being painted, but it’s very functional. The kids LOVE this little nook with the mini door – they haven’t gotten tired of playing in it yet.

    We have exactly the same items in both the old and new kitchen and living room, but even though the floor space and furnishings are the same, both the kitchen and living room feel more spacious.

    The below picture shows one benefit from changing things around. We have a large hallway that housed just the bookcases and isn’t a good use of space – too small to make another bedroom, too big for just a bookcase. By moving the living room to where it is now, the hallway is no longer wasted space and has become an extension of the living room.

    I’m really, really pleased with the changes we’ve made. It feels like a new house to me! I am so happy with the increased feeling of space. When I was picturing what I wanted, I hoped it was going to be worth all of the effort, but I realized when I described what I wanted to do to the the plumber and electrician, and even my family members, none of them could visualize what we would gain by doing these renovations. I appreciate that my sons trusted my judgment and agreed to make the changes I asked them to make, even without being able to picture the improvement it would make to our home.

    I’m sorry I didn’t think of taking a picture of the living room/dining room area before we moved the furniture out of the area and had and table out of that area and put some of the kitchen wall unit pieces there – it would be nice to show the difference.

    But the supervisor (who was here for the last home visit less than four weeks ago) and the GAL were both visibly taken aback at how different everything looked from when they were last here. In a good way. 🙂

    Avivah

  • I feel so angry when he destroys my things and I hate feeling like this

    Sometimes I watch ds7 and think it would be fascinating to document what he does and the time he does each thing – he moves incessantly from one thing to another, never stopping. Often I can detach emotionally and find it interesting and even laugh about the endless damages, but sometimes I feel frustrated and even furious. Over a year ago I stopped counting when he reached 12,000 shekels of damage. I may have stopped counting but the damages continue.

    Within a day of the foster care agency representatives coming, the wall that was scrubbed was rescribbled on. A couple of days later, he colored on a different wall with a marker.

    He climbed up to the pergola and unscrewed and took down some of the cross boards. He picked up a permanent marker and began coloring on a wall painting – fortunately the marker was a bit dried and I stopped him before there was damage.

    He regularly throws his nighttime pullup in the toilet; sometimes I see it before anything else happens but a couple of mornings ago someone else did their business on top of it and by 6:30 am I was unblocking a nasty mess. He tugs and pulls and rips and dissassembles everything he touches, unremittingly.

    After three months of no visitation with the children’s bio parents, visitation resumed three weeks ago in a mediation center an hour away. Our time slot is 5:30, so we leave at 4:30 and get back at 7:30.

    On the way there dd7 began playing with a card game I keep in the car. When I heard ds7 in the seat behind me laughing over it together with her, I took a moment to ask myself if I was okay with that, since the likelihood it would be ripped into small pieces was about one hundred percent. I decided it was okay, that if he ripped a few of the cards it wouldn’t ruin the game.

    What I wasn’t prepared for was for him to find a decorative pin in a storage compartment of the car (that he isn’t allowed to go into and that he can’t access with a seat belt on) and use it to gouge deep scratches on the inside of the car window while we were driving. When I realized what he did (thanks to dd7 alerting me – “Mommy, ds is breaking the window and making lines on it!”) – I felt angry, really angry. I pulled over, looked at the window, and asked what he used to make the scratches – he claimed he didn’t do anything after quickly dropping the pin between the seats to conceal the evidence.

    As soon as I asked him what happened, his jaw went slack and his mouth hung open with his tongue partially hanging out while his eyes glazed over at half mast. I realize he’s emotionally shutting down because he feels scared – I’m sure there’s a trauma term for this – but it’s not endearing. He regularly responds as if I’m terrorizing him and while I know he has deep fears that are triggered by what seems like minimal stimulus to an outsider, his response doesn’t inspire compassion.

    I looked at him very steadily for what felt like a long minute. Then I told him when I see him break things on purpose it’s not a good feeling for me and that I felt angry. I asked him what do we do when we’re angry? Do we hit someone? No, he shook his head. Do we yell at someone? No, he shook his head.

    “Right, I’m not going to hit you and I’m not going to yell at you, but right now I feel really angry about what you did.” I took the pin he used, put it away and we continued driving.

    Often I’ll catch him doing something, and calmly help him get conscious about what he’s doing: “What are you doing? Do you think coloring on the wall is a good idea? Let’s think, where would be a good place to color?” And then I redirect him to a piece of paper. And that’s fine until ten minutes later when he’s doing something else like using a screwdriver or knife to gauge a hole in a wall or the couch. Or Shabbos morning using scissors to cut the window screen and then ripping it wide open. (We’ve already replaced the screen on the screen door twice due to his gouging.) Or Shabbos afternoon pouring cement powder down into the new sewage lines.

    As we drove I asked myself why I felt so upset in the moment about the scratches to the car window. I have patience most of the time, but sometimes the constant breakage and damage is so frustrating and I don’t feel a shred of tolerance left in that moment. I don’t expect a home with children to look perfect and mine certainly doesn’t! – but I’ve never experienced anything like this. The therapist said he’s like an infant in a big body, but I told her she’s wrong – an infant learns after a few reminders not to do it again. Even with all of the oversight and reminders, after almost two years he continues to do these things. It’s not as bad as it was in the early months but it’s still quite a lot.

    He regularly smuggles house tools and knives out of the house and if I come upon him in the process I can tell just from the look on his face that he’s trying to conceal something from me.

    At the meeting a couple of weeks ago one of the supervisors mentioned he has a disorganized attachment style. The moment she said that, it made perfect sense to me and it reminded me that I suspected it from the first time I heard his description, but I also had a feeling of, ‘Oh, no, not that!’ to have it be official. The disorganized attachment style is the most difficult to live with and is associated with the worst outcomes. The bigger surprise was that that despite knowing about the different unhealthy attachment styles, I never consciously identified the attachment styles of the twins.

    I’ve always assumed ds does these actions without thinking, having almost no impulse control, but I’m increasingly wondering if it’s an unconscious self-sabotaging strategy to keep people from getting too close to him or liking him. I’m going to be meeting with someone to discuss it, because I feel like there’s more to what is going on than what I’m seeing. I wonder if maybe I have to do some deep healing of my inner child or something like that to move beyond my current emotional capacity because I’m not used to feeling this kind of anger and it really bothers me.

    At the same time, I don’t want to shame myself for getting upset, because it’s challenging (I didn’t mention all of his other behaviors that are going on at the same time) and sometimes I wonder how anyone can be expected to stay calm all the time in the face of all that.

    Avivah

  • She can’t handle when I’m not there

    At the end of the week I attended my oldest granddaughter’s siddur party in Beit Shemesh. It was an impressive production. I had attended my daughter’s siddur party here in the north just two weeks earlier and I expected something similar, and it was interesting to notice the differences. I wonder if there’s more of a need to ‘wow’ people near the center of the country.

    I’ve traveled a couple of times in the last year to the center of the country for the day – each time I got the kids ready for school and put them on their school bus. To prepare them I told them in advance that I’d be going to Jerusalem/Beit Shemesh, that I’d be home at night, and that my husband would put them to bed. He almost always put the boys to bed, and sometimes dd7 requests he put her to bed instead of me, so that’s not uncommon. He works from home most days of the week so he’s actively involved in their day to day lives.

    The first time I made this trip, I got home around 8 pm and found my daughter crying that her ears hurt. My husband told me she had been crying and inconsolable for almost two hours. He had given her ear drops and a hot water bottle, but nothing was helping.

    I asked her if she wanted to lay on the bed while I sat next to her doing some computer work, and she agreed. She stopped crying, fell asleep almost instantly and stayed asleep the entire night. She had no ear pain when she woke up in the morning.

    After she went to school, I commented to my husband that she must have been worn out by the pain and crying to have stopped crying so quickly. He said he had a strong suspicion that her ear wasn’t hurting, that what was really happening is she was having a hard time coping emotionally with my absence.

    The next time I came back from my long day, I found out she had been complaining nonstop at bedtime about some other pain.

    Last week we had a meeting with her play therapist, and I mentioned that every single night since the twins came twenty two months ago, she wakes up and opens the door to our bedroom to check that we’re there, usually around 4 – 5 am. If it’s closer to 4, she looks in for a long moment, then closes the door and goes back to bed. If it’s about 5, she comes to me to get a hug and kiss and with some reluctance goes back to bed. (In the earlier months she came more than once a night and needed physical reassurance each time. The door had to be constantly open or she got hysterical, but for many months now she’s been able to close the door behind herself so there’s been tremendous progress.)

    Ds7 comes to check in the night as well, but not every single night and he never comes in, just looks to make sure we’re there.

    I shared with the therapist about what happened the last two times I wasn’t there for bedtime, and told her our speculation that she can’t handle me not physically being in the house when she goes to sleep, and was wondering about what to do when I traveled for the party. She agreed that was the likely cause and suggested that I call dd before bedtime. That’s what I did, and she went to sleep fine.

    Going back to the party – I turned off my phone before I went into the building, and didn’t look at it until I came out two and a half hours later. When I did, I saw two missed calls from my daughter’s teacher and another missed call from the school advisor. They never call me during the school day. I called the teacher back but by then it was after the school day was over, and the teacher didn’t answer. I wondered about why I had gotten all of those calls, and I found out the next morning.

    When dd was getting dressed, she talked about having spoken with me the night before on the phone. Then she told me she had asked her teacher to call me from school the day before, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t speak to the teacher so I don’t know what happened exactly, but I suspect dd didn’t just want to talk to me. I think it’s likely she was complaining something was intensely hurting her.

    All of this is a reminder to us that as much as the twins have had significant progress, dd’s emotional security is heavily dependent on my presence and she can’t yet cope if she thinks I won’t be here, even if I’ve prepared her in advance. It’s important for us to remember and respect that there are deep traumas and fears that don’t go away even after a long time in a safe environment.

    From when I first heard of the engagement of my daughter-in-law’s brother, I’ve been planning to attend the wedding in Jerusalem. The wedding was last night, but coming on the heels of being away for the siddur party, we realized my absence at the wedding last night would be too much for dd to handle. I thought about leaving after putting her to bed but wouldn’t get to the wedding until 9 pm and then would still have the long drive home. In the end, I didn’t go.

    Avivah