Category Archives: parenting

Could you be a foster family? Here’s the criteria in Israel

parenting

A few days ago I chatted with a couple of the visiting social workers who had come to do our home inspection for the foster care process, after we finished doing a walkthrough of our home.

One told me that a country-wide search had been done to find a home for the children who are being recommended for our family. I asked how it could be that there wasn’t one other family in the country willing to bring them into their homes. They told me that first of all, it’s always hardest for kids with special needs to be placed. And the older they get, the harder it is.

Here in Israel, they’ll try to find placements for children over eight, but at this time, she said it’s basically impossible. Because Israel is a country that has so many institutions with dormitories, children over eight will go to some kind of institution.

She shared something quite concerning to me. In the last year or two, something has shifted in the general culture and they’re having a shortage of foster families that they’ve never seen before. (This challenge is heightened by the increase in children needing foster families during the covid period.)

An instructive example she shared was about a typical baby born to typical parents who immediately after birth became available for fostering in the Jerusalem area. (I didn’t ask why he was placed.) They found a family in a kibbutz up north, who drove down to Jerusalem to get him; it worked out well. A baby like this is unusual, and is considered the most desirable – and is what the majority of foster families are hoping for. This situation illustrates the shortage, since they couldn’t find an available foster family anywhere in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem to take him, when in the past there would have been plenty of parents clambering for the opportunity.

If that’s the situation for a child that most people would be comfortable fostering, imagine the difficulty for the child who has special needs of some sort in finding a foster home. Many of them aren’t finding families.

I asked them why they think there’s been such a change in the willingness of families to do foster care?

She said, they’ve seen this in the Arab sector for quite a while, that they are so occupied dealing with their own lives that they don’t have the energy or desire to take in someone else’s child. (Obviously there are Arab foster families – I met one at the foster care round table I was invited to participate in several years ago, as the special needs foster parent representative.)

Now this has shifted to the general Israeli population. In the last year or two, as people have become more stressed and economically limited, fewer families are have the emotional headspace to consider fostering.

This supervisor had earlier told me they aren’t trying to market these children to us, and I now somewhat jokingly told her it seems to me they need to market to potential foster families. She told me, in all seriousness, that every single day they are thinking about what to do to bring more families in, that the situation placing children has become very difficult and they need many more families.

What are they looking for in foster families?

First of all, they prefer to see the youngest child in your family being about five, so that you’re emotionally available for the needs of the foster child. When I commented that would tilt to older parents, they agreed, saying that they want parents who are more mature. However, I know of people who didn’t fit this criteria who foster, so this would be waived if the more critical aspects were met.

When you apply to foster, they’ll do a police check on everyone over 18 in your family. You’ll need to have a medical exam and have your doctor fill out a form about your health; they want you to be healthy enough to raise the child to adulthood. I believe that the age guidelines for foster parents are from 25 – 55. They prefer those who already have parenting experience.

They’ll ask about your income and the size of your home; they want to know you aren’t in financial hardship and have space for the child. Your home should basically be neat and organized – it doesn’t have to be sparkling at all times but it’s hard for me to imagine someone with a very disorderly home being approved.

The most important thing isn’t the size of your home, your income or anything above. What they said they look for most are stable families with parents who are flexible and understanding with regards to children. They want people who can accept and be loving towards children who are coming from hard places (which generally include some challenging behaviors).

They also said it’s important for the parents to be able to deal with the bureaucracy, with people coming to your home and all the other technical stuff that comes with raising a child who belongs to someone else, with the government as your partner. This was a huge hesitation for me when I first considered fostering, though it hasn’t been as challenging as I expected.

When we lived in Beit Shemesh, we were affiliated with The Summit Institute; they deal with families in the central Jerusalem area and the south; there’s also Orr Shalom. Now we are working with Matav, who operates in the north.

If you have questions about the fostering process, please ask in the comments. If you know this is something you want to do, reach out to any of the organizations that I listed. If you leave a message but don’t get called back, call them again. They are overextended and understaffed, so don’t take it personally if you don’t get a response initially.

Avivah

Our home visit with the attending social workers – foster care

parenting

There’s a lot that’s been going on behind the scenes and I’ve debated mentioning it or not, because it’s possible nothing will come of it. I’ve decided to share our process of being approved for foster placements, and wherever it leads us, it leads us. If I wait until everything is settled to share about this, I’m likely to forget lots of the details and to be too busy with whatever stage we move into to write retroactively about our experience.

Brief background recap: A couple of months we were approached about fostering a young boy, who has a sister for whom a placement was found in Yavneel. The hope was to find two families in the same area to take each of the siblings so they could maintain a relationship. We initially said no, then went back for more information. After much discussion, we offered to take both five and a half year old twins, which so much took them aback that they thought we had misunderstood their request was to take just one.

Once we agreed, I expected that things would move much faster than they have, but there have been an unusual amount of delays in moving this situation forward. After seeing all of this unfolding, I have so much sympathy for social workers who have to work within this incredibly inefficient system. I can see how frustrating and difficult it must be for them.

Weeks ago, our first home visit was cancelled a day or two before it was supposed to take place. The necessary pieces weren’t coming together, despite lots of effort and advocacy and even heavily leaning on legal authority (by social workers, not me – I mostly sat back and let things unfold as Hashem wanted). At this point, the school and transportation have been arranged, which was necessary to have in place before they would come to our home to check us out.

And so, today we finally had our home visit, a critical step to be approved for fostering specific children.

Since my husband flew to the US yesterday, the meeting was between me and four social workers: our social worker, the head social worker of the foster care agency, the social worker representing the parents, and the social worker representing chok noar from the parents’ area in the north (I don’t know what the equivalent in the US would be – literal translation is ‘Youth law’).

They were here for two and a quarter hours. My expectation was that they would be very interested in seeing our home. They were, but that was the secondary goal. Most of the focus was on getting a sense of who I am, to know who will be raising the children. As they told me, these children have experienced a lot of trauma and they want their placement to be successful.

The conversation jumped pretty quickly into what some would consider challenging conversation. Basically, I was told there were very difficult behaviors involved and asked what made me think I could handle them. (My social worker later expressed concern on how this had been for me, but I recognized the concern that was behind the questioning and it didn’t bother me at all.)

I was interested in how the temporary foster home is dealing with it, so I redirected that first somewhat edgy line of questioning and asked. I was told that they’re not dealing with certain behaviors at all. I learned more about the current foster family, which was something important for me to know since I want to understand as much as possible where the children are coming from and what they’re used to.

I told her honestly that I have concerns about the challenges, that I’m sure that there is much more trauma than what we’ve been told about and that the behaviors will be worse than we were led to believe (the social worker concurred that this is likely), and that I hope we have the ability to support them. I also later told two of the social workers that I’ll make no long term commitments and if I feel that the safety of any of my children is being compromised by these children, the needs of the children I already have will take priority.

We went on to discuss our family, our approach to parenting and lots of other stuff. It was an interesting and positive conversation.

I was told that they had already checked our family out with various people, and gotten glowing feedback. I had no idea when I was interacting with various people in the local education department over the last three years that they’d one day be telling social workers their opinion of me. That was a pleasant thing to hear.

We ended with a quick tour of our home. Two of the social workers had to cut it short since they had another appointment, so they only looked at the first floor of our home. One told me the most important thing is that they see the room where the children would stay. The other two stayed to see the entire home, which I think is good because it gives a fuller and more accurate picture of our accommodations.

The next step will be to go back to court and petition for the children to be placed with us. I then learned that a country-wide search to find other foster families that were willing and able to support these children has already been done but no other family is available. This search needed to be done because of the opposition of the legal advocate/court representative, who wanted a family who isn’t living in Yavneel (I was told there’s a negative association with this area), isn’t charedi (because the bio parents aren’t religious), and is living in close proximity to a suitable school (so they don’t have to travel to school).

I was told it can take between a week to a month for this to come to court. However, it seems likely it will be closer to a week. If there is court approval for a placement in our family, then we’ll begin the transition stage in which we and the children begin getting to know one another over the course of several meetings.

While the further we go with this process, the more likely it is that the placement will be made, no one will make any assurances or predictions of what will happen. We’re making no assumptions, and wait and see continues to be our position.

Avivah

Help children prepare for travel and transition

parenting

This morning I took my husband and ds10 to an early morning train headed for the airport. They’ll be going to the US and will be away for a week. Ds10 has been so excited about this trip that he could hardly bear waking up each morning and hearing that it still wasn’t the day to leave.

To help him prepare for the trip and help him be aware of time, we made a calendar chart taped to the fridge. Every morning as soon as he woke up, before doing anything else he marked that day off with an X. Except today – he didn’t even think of marking today off since he was ready to go!

My husband made a separate chart for ds6, who naturally wanted one just like his big brother! We’re planning to have special time together and I’m looking forward to having this time with him. We talked about what he’d like to do, and he requested to go to the store together, and to a zoo that we visited recently. So we’re going to do that! I’m also thinking of taking him to a therapeutic donkey sanctuary that I was once invited to by the owner, if we can make the timing work. When it comes to children, less is more – I’ll wait until the day we have something planned to tell him about other plans.

Our six year old is very connected to ds10 and my husband, and we don’t anticipate it will be easy for him to be without them both at the same time. In order to help him have a sense of how much time is left until they come back, my husband took an idea from my daughter-in-law, and prepared five balloons (one for each day they won’t be here, not including the day they leave and come back). In each blown up balloon is a candy. They are taped to the fridge, and each day we’ll pop a balloon together.

Consistency is very important to children, and when there’s a change for them, helping create predictability and stability with something like a simple chart and balloon strategy helps them to feel secure and more easily emotionally navigate the changes they are experiencing.

You can create charts and routines for regular days; you don’t have to wait for a special event. Kids feel more secure knowing what is going to happen when, what follows what, what time meals will be, and what will be served for dinner. When our children were younger, our daily schedule, chore chart and weekly meal plan were always displayed on the front of our fridge.

As our children have gotten older and there are less people to keep on the same schedule, this has been less necessary and those charts have faded away. However, with the potential changes coming up for our family, posting a daily schedule and weekly meal plan will likely be making a comeback very soon.

Avivah

The disappointments in raising animals

homeschooling, parenting

When you raise animals, you learn a lot about disappointment.

There’s so much time, money and energy that go into raising animals, but the end result isn’t completely in your hands.

My fifteen year old son learned a lot from his experiencing raising chicks last year, and applied all those lessons to this season’s hatching. He renovated the incubator he built, set up good systems to protect the newborn chicks from injury, worked out the heating lamp system to keep the baby chicks warm as they grew, and the first two batches of chicks did really well.

Until he switched their food for Pesach. Six of his bigger chicks died in two days. We don’t know how many more would have died on Pesach, because…

Right after the first day of Pesach was over, all of his chicks were stolen from our gated backyard in the middle of the night. Every single one, from the new batch and the older batch. The afternoon before forty chicks were running all over the backyard, and the next morning none were left. When my son told me, I couldn’t believe it. I kept trying to think of a different reason to account for their disappearance.

It’s quite disconcerting to experience a theft like this.

I have a very, very good guess about who stole them. It’s very likely it was the same lovely children who stole his male goose on Shabbos morning last year. The children who two years ago stole all the tools a professional worksman left next to my gate, then claimed they didn’t have anything when I went to their home to reclaim them – and continued to claim they didn’t have anything as one by one, the tools were revealed in their yard. (Their mother standing right there said nothing but a very weak, “We don’t take other peoples’ things,” clearly not caring at all and not making any apology for the blatant theft of expensive professional tools.)

When something like this happens, you see how much we rely on parents to keep our world safe – when parents turn a blind eye or tacitly encourage these activities, it’s very hard to find recourse.

My boys are pretty certain about who it was, too, but won’t say a word about the evidence they have to support that conviction – they’ve accepted on themselves not to talk about those people. Interestingly, the morning after the chicks were stolen, the boy I suspect came to ask if we had spare pieces for a bike. He’s not a friend, and has never come to our home before. There’s no reason for him to ask us for this – and it made me very much wonder if he had entered our backyard (that can’t be seen into by passerby) and seen the bikes waiting to be repaired there. Who knows? I’m impressed with my son’s equanimity and his choice not to dwell on it, despite the significant financial loss and energy investment.

My son began incubating another very large batch of eggs. Two weeks into the three week incubation period, the power went out for fifteen hours. He was concerned the chicks were going to die, and most did – but thirty out of two hundred hatched. Not a great success rate but better than nothing.

In the meantime, one of his hens began sitting on her own eggs. When the first chick hatched, she took a walk with him. While she was off her nest, another hen sat down and co-opted the nest, then hatched the second chick, then walked around proudly with him.

My son wasn’t happy with that – he felt it was unfair for the first mother chick who did all the work for three weeks to have someone steal her nest. Somehow they worked it out between the hens, because a day or two later, the first mother had reclaimed her nest and the second chick. Barnyard drama. 🙂

As soon as the latest chicks were hatched, my son put them underneath the mother sitting on her nest. Chicks do best when raised by mothers and it’s much less intensive than using a heat lamp. By the time he had given her twenty chicks, she was very busy gathering them all under her to keep them warm.

So my son put another hen in with her to help her out, then put the rest of the newly hatched chicks in. So far they’ve lost three who weren’t kept warm enough, but all the rest are doing great.

It’s not just our experience, having especially bad luck raising chicks or animals that things like this happen. It’s the nature of it. There’s often something unexpected that goes wrong. Neighboring children bought ten chicks from my son’s first hatching, and did a fantastic job keeping them alive. Then a couple of days ago they woke up to three dead chicks in their coop, and the other seven were missing. (Their rooster they got from us was stolen the same night that my son’s chicks were stolen.)

They didn’t know what could have happened until they watched the replay on their security cameras. A fox repeatedly throughout the night came in and out of their yard, each time taking a chick with him. I know they planned a trap for the fox the next night, anticipating he would return for the three chicks he killed, but I didn’t yet hear an update.

I felt so badly for the children; I know what’s involved in raising week old chicks. It’s very disheartening to spend so much effort for months, and then have nothing to show for it.

Thinking about foxes and chickens, my son reflected to me a couple of days ago, “You know, Roald Dahl books make the good guys look bad, and make the bad guys looks good. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, the farmer trying to protect his chickens is the bad guy, and the fox is the good one. And in Danny, Champion of the World, the poacher and his son were stealing but they looked like the heroes.” He’s completely right.

I now have a padlock on the goat pen. And my son is sleeping outside to guard his chickens from the fox, in case he decides to make a visit. He likes sleeping outside once the weather gets warm, so he’s just moving out a bit sooner than he otherwise would. 🙂

Avivah

How to teach children to take responsibility

parenting

I recently went to someone’s home for a quick errand, and the mother invited me in. As I came in and removed my coat, the bead on the end of the drawstring of my top came loose and fell to the floor

The four year old girl grabbed it and refused to give it back. Her mother said nothing. I bent down and showed her how it matched the one on the other side and how it could slide right back on. She refused to give it back. Her mother said nothing.

I said to her, “You can hold it for a few minutes and then give it to me before I leave.” As her mother and I spoke, she began stomping on it. I waited to see what the mother would do. Still no response.

The little girl went over to whisper to her older sibling, and they began laughing. Her brother told us they were laughing because she broke it in half by stepping on it. The mother said nothing.

I really don’t like disciplining other people’s children and generally stand to the side and stay quiet. But clearly this mother wasn’t going to say or do anything.

So I told the little girl with a sad face, “You know, this top I’m wearing is new and I’m sad that now I don’t have the bead for it because it’s broken.” Her laughing face turned a little uncertain. She looked at her mother, and her mother said to her soberly, “She’s right.”

The end. No apology from the mother, obviously no apology from the girl.

This is a kind, caring mother. However, her lack of response demonstrated that she’s a parent who doesn’t know when and how to set a boundary for her child.

Parents who don’t respond to their child’s provocation, don’t show them a way to make restitution, and at the very most will tell the child they shouldn’t have done that (usually when the incident is past and the person is gone) aren’t going to raise children who take responsibility for their mistakes.

I’m going to give examples of different points in this interaction that a parent could have and should have intervened.

The child grabs the bead and doesn’t want to give it back. I don’t want to force her to give it back because that’s not teaching her anything. But I’m also not going to let her keep something that isn’t hers, which would teach her a lesson I don’t want her to learn.

I say, “Isn’t that a pretty bead? It looks so nice, doesn’t it? I’m sure Mrs. Ploni likes it. It will look so nice back on her top!” Child smiles and gives it back. Mrs. Ploni thanks her.

What if the child still doesn’t want to give it back? Some children have a hard time with transitions and need more time and guidance. I say, “You know it’s Mrs. Ploni’s bead and want to give it back, but you really want to hold it a little bit longer. Hmm. Let’s ask Mrs. Ploni if you can hold it carefully for one minute. (Ask and get approval.) Okay, let’s look at my watch – in one minute you’re going to give it back.” (Don’t get involved in an adult conversation and lose track of this. Stay focused on your teaching moment.)

Depending on the child, I will remind them halfway through and maybe ten seconds before the time is up that “In ten seconds, you’re going to give it back.”

“Time’s up! That was so nice of Mrs. Ploni to let you hold her bead. Let’s give it back to her now.” Child gives it back.

What if the child still balks? “Child, I know you really like this bead. When we go home, we can look and see if we have beads you can play with. But this is Mrs. Ploni’s bead and now you need to give it back. Would you like to give it to her yourself, or do you want me to help you give it to her?”

If by this point the child isn’t giving the bead back, I would gently take it from them and say, “I see it’s hard for you to give it back. I’m going to give the bead to Mrs. Ploni because this is hers, and we don’t keep things that aren’t ours.” Child screams and cries. “I know it’s hard for you.”

You may be thinking this is way too much work over a bead. “What’s the big deal? Just let her keep it.” That’s obviously what the mother in the original situation did. The big deal is she is learning to disrespect things that belong to other people. The bigger deal is that small scenarios like this will be repeated with bigger and bigger issues, and a child who isn’t taught to respect parental guidance is going to become more difficult to parent, and unpleasant to be around.

Back to our scenario. I’ve ignored my child keeping the bead, and now she’s stomping on it. I stop my conversation with the other adult immediately and all my focus is on teaching my child in this moment. I’m not smiling now: I’m not angry or hostile but I’m firm and clear in my voice and body language that I mean what I say. “Child, stop right now. That’s Mrs. Ploni’s bead. That’s not how we treat things. Give it back to her right now.” If the child doesn’t give it back, I take it and give it to Mrs. Ploni.

I’m in the middle of an adult conversation and haven’t been fully aware of what she was doing. I’ve ignored my child keeping the bead, stepping on it, breaking it, and now she’s laughing with her brother. Now my son told me that it’s broken and they’re both laughing at how funny that is. I’m finally aware of the situation, but there’s nothing to do about the bead anymore.

The bead may be a lost cause, but my child’s educational process isn’t. I don’t want to raise children who think it’s funny to harm other people and their things. I want to help the child learn to empathize with others and recognize their actions have consequences. “Children! Mrs. Ploni’s bead is broken?! Oh, no…now Mrs. Ploni’s top doesn’t have a bead. If you had a special toy and someone broke a piece off, how would you feel? What if they did that and were laughing about it? That would feel very bad, wouldn’t it?

Would you be sad? Would you be angry? How do you think Mrs. Ploni feels right now? (Wait for response.) What can we do now to show Mrs. Ploni that you’re sorry? (If the child doesn’t have a suggestion, make a suggestion of your own.) You want to tell Mrs. Ploni you’re sorry you broke her bead?”

The situation must end with a sincere apology from me and/or my child. It’s not fair for someone to be left to bear the consequences of your actions with no recognition that they have been negatively impacted.

There is an additional step I favor taking when appropriate. I tell Mrs. Ploni I’m sorry this happened and want to make restitution for my child’s actions. I ask her to give me the other bead so that I can buy a matching set of two similar beads. I then take my child with me to the store to buy the replacements, talking about what we were doing and why. (If the child were older, they would use their own money to pay for this.)

“Oh, come on, Avivah, I don’t believe you would do this!” Yes, I would, and yes, I have. I feel very strongly about teaching children to take responsibility for their actions. If they aren’t taught, how will they learn?

This scenario may seem time consuming, but it actually takes just a few minutes. As your child learns that you mean what you say, and is clear about what expectations are, it gets easier and less time consuming.

Avivah

More about fostering and being generous

parenting, personal development

In my last post, I shared an update about the foster care placement we were approached about. I mentioned it here when I did because after a month of being involved in this situation, the placement seemed highly likely and I wanted to share about the process we were going through. It was a question of ‘when’ more than ‘if’.

Today the social worker called to update me that they’re in a situation they’ve never been in before: they’re unable so late in the school year to find any school within an hour’s travel time from our home able to accept him, even with legal pressure brought to bear on the schools. (After telling me he can’t travel, they went back to looking at schools further away.) While it seems obvious that the easiest and best thing would be to leave him in school where he is, which is less than an hour away, there’s a funding issue that precludes that possibility.

Since they can’t find a school until the coming school year, they’ve cancelled the home visit that was supposed to take place a couple of days from now. Instead, they are going back to court to overturn the injunction that the child needed to be removed from this foster home, and request he be allowed to stay there. If that fails, they are talking about beginning a country-wide search to find a different foster home (close enough to a suitable school, presumably), since their search in the northern part of the country only found us.

To my mind, this is all upside down and doesn’t put the child and what is good for him at the center at all. It doesn’t seem efficient, logical, economical or prudent. But my opinions have no bearing on anything.

What this means is that now, the placement with our family is being placed very far on the back burner and as far as I’m concerned, it’s off the table. While I continue to be in touch with our social worker discussing potential solutions, there’s too much that can change between now and September for me to assume it will happen.

My take on this is, if something is supposed to happen, Hashem will make it happen. And if it’s not meant to happen, it doesn’t matter how much it looks like it should happen – it’s not going to happen.

I learned this lesson very clearly when we were involved with Baby M, when it seemed obvious to everyone involved we were the perfect family for her. Then that didn’t happen. When we got the call about ds6, it seemed highly unlikely it could work out; time and time again, rules were bent and changes to official procedure that had never been made were made to faciliate his joining our family.

—————————–

There were some very nice comments to my last post about me being a very generous person, and I want to respond with a bit of perspective.

A few months ago, I commented to my kids that I’m not a generous person. My children didn’t agree with me, and thought I was being overly critical of myself. What I meant, and explained to them, is that there are areas that I’m more easily able to give, and there are ways that are difficult for me. I’m very generous in some ways. And in others I’m not.

Some people can have people in and out of their houses all the time. I can’t. Some people have no expectations of guests, and willingly host regardless of if they like the person. I won’t. Some people don’t care if people show appreciation for what they do. I do. Some people generously share all of their possessions and time with others. I don’t. I could go on an on with examples.

I have a soft spot for children whose homes aren’t nurturing places. Part of the motivation for my work as a parenting educator comes from that. It hasn’t found expression in mentoring troubled teens or starting a halfway house, but mostly by trying to make my home a positive place where I hope our children feel loved, and helping others to do the same.

When I was asked about this foster placement, I was quick to say no.
My two youngest sons are moving out of the very intensive stage of supervision that I’ve been at for a very long time. After almost thirty years of being there for my children around the clock, I’m now able to enjoy some quiet, kid-free time in the mornings, time I can use as I want. That’s very precious to me.

The idea of adding another child who needs constant supervision really didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t have readiness to give up that long awaited quiet and space in my life. I certainly had no interest in becoming more involved with social services.

Having made it clear I wasn’t interested, I began to think about it without any outside expectation or pressure. I thought very much about what would be necessary to parent this child, what it would require of me physically and emotionally.

Here’s a very important detail that I haven’t shared. I mentioned he has a sibling for whom a possible placement was found in Yavneel and that’s how we were originally contacted, as a potential home in the same area. The sibling is actually a twin. It deeply, deeply pained me to think of two siblings who had so much taken away from them, now being separated from one another.

Though the social worker didn’t ask us to consider taking them both – they don’t expect to find any family willing to do that – the question I asked myself was if we could bring them both into our home. Though you might think that would have been so overwhelming that it would make it even less likely a possibility, somehow the sense of mission it created in me was significant enough for me to be willing to give up my long awaited quiet.

When I looked at what would be involved, I could see that our lives had prepared my husband and I for this. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be very challenging. We were both very realistic about this. But we felt it was something that we were being called to do. So the placement that we have actually been discussing has been for both of the children, though I’ve referred in my writing here to only the child we were initially asked about.

There are lots of other things we could have been asked to do that wouldn’t have felt like a fit for our strengths, and we wouldn’t have been willing to extend ourselves to do it. As I said, there are ways I’m able to give and ways I’m not.

That’s the back story about what motivates me and activated my generosity in this situation.

Avivah

Foster care update

parenting

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were approached regarding a foster care placement for a four year old boy with special needs.

After expressing our interest in learning more, we had a two hour meeting with our social worker, the child’s social worker, and the supervisory social worker.

We got a detailed description of the challenges this child is facing, which are significant. (And he’s actually five and a half.) We also learned about the legal process involved.

Since this isn’t an emergency placement but transferring from a temporary foster home to a long term home, there is a getting-to-know-you process. This entails four visits by us to the temporary foster home an hour away, initially with me and my husband, later to be joined by our children. There would then be one visit to our home. All of this ideally takes place within ten days. Then the placement would take place.

We followed this meeting with much discussion between my husband and me, and then included our teen boys in the conversation. We all agreed this is something we can do and would be willing to do. I told her we’d be willing to have him come the first week of March, but that it couldn’t be right before Pesach.

Several weeks have gone by since then, and because there’s a bureaucratic process involved, slow is the name of the game.

I’ve been in touch with our social worker for updates and after hearing one particularly exasperating update, I told her I don’t know how she can stand working in a system that doesn’t put the best interest of the child ahead of everything. She admitted that sometimes she wants to pull her hair out but it is what it is.

Where I live, there are very few educational options for children of all ages; not regular ed and certainly not special ed. (His special needs result from growing up in an emotionally impoverished home, not a genetic birth diagnosis.) That’s why ds10 and ds6 travel an hour by school van to the school they attend, as do all the other children living in this area. It’s just a reality of living here.

Someone in some position of authority decided that it won’t be good for this child to travel for school. While I agree that it’s not ideal to travel (and I wish my boys didn’t have to do it, either), there’s no school locally that meets his needs.

I asked our social worker, did they take into account that he’s in an foster home that wants him out weeks ago (and that will be closed for fostering after this placement ends, due to their unsuitability), that there’s no one else willing to take him, and that setting this parameter means he will be forced to stay where he is because there’s no school for him? Talk about losing sight of the forest for the trees.

I was taken aback to learn they’re putting all efforts to find him a school on hold until we have a home inspection done. This surprised me since we’re already licensed foster parents and did an initial home inspection; we have a social worker visit monthly so it’s not like we’re new to the system. (I had understood that the issue that was taking time was finding a school, and it was a couple weeks after we agreed to take him that they told me this.)

Don’t think that scheduling this home visit that everything supposedly hinges on has been a top priority. They’ve finally scheduled the visit for next week with three social workers in attendance – ours, the child’s, and one from social services in the area where the parents live.

I’ve learned that due to unfortunate negative stereotypes about charedim, there is resistance to placing this child with us since he is coming from a non-religious home. My social worker (who isn’t religious) told me as soon as they meet me they’ll realize whatever they’re worried about isn’t an issue but for right now they don’t know me, and the lack of speed in moving forward seems to be partially a reflection of social services being hesitant about us.

My family members have been asking me, will this child be coming to us? I really don’t know. When it comes to foster care, you don’t make any assumptions until that child is pretty close to being in your home. At this point it seems to me that we won’t be able to begin the visitation process until after Pesach, so if it does happen, it will probably not be for another five or six weeks.

Avivah

You can’t make everyone happy, but you can create boundaries for yourself

parenting, personal development

The hosting of the Shabbos sheva brachos has ended and it went so beautifully. There was a lot of uncertainty for an extended period about where we would have the meals. I made a point to trust it would all work out rather than get anxious, and thankfully it did – it wasn’t until Tuesday evening that we found the venue that we would be using for Friday/Saturday. It was exactly what I wanted. Since it was recently renovated and wasn’t suitable for our needs prior to the renovation, no one had thought of it as an option when I was asking around.

We hosted our mothers, all of our married children and our newest son-in-law’s parents, siblings and their families. Being two large families with a lot of young families, it was a lot of people to host for sleeping and meals, but we were so happy to have everyone. It was a beautiful Shabbos with two families who were able to genuinely enjoy getting to know one another.

I self-catered three meals for approximately 45 people at each meal (my oldest daughter prepared all the desserts). As much as I very much wanted to, I wasn’t able to find people to hire to do the setting up and serving, so our children stepped in for that. They were great. But it was a lot of work that I would have preferred we didn’t have to do.

I felt good about having all the sleeping arrangements taken care of, having plenty of food well organized, and being calm and present for all the different relationships in the midst of such a busy time of doing. There were changes and disappointments and things that didn’t go as planned, and I stayed relaxed and rolled with the punches. I was extending myself for a lot of people and glad to be able to do it, and didn’t feel pressured or stressed.

It was on Saturday night that I got some feedback that was unfair and judgmental. It was certainly unwelcome and inappropriate at that moment in time, after an extended period of so much giving.

When I finally was able to get to bed, I was deeply exhausted. After a few hours of sleep, I woke up to do some journaling, which I haven’t done for some time. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Pages. About all the things I did, and how well I did them and how good I felt about it.

I wrote about the critical comments and how unkind and unjustified it felt. Usually I try to think about things from the other person’s perspective and understand them, but in my journal I allowed myself to have my own feelings of hurt and anger about it.

What came out for me of all this writing, was the very clear realization that it’s just not possible to make everyone happy all the time, no matter how hard I try and no matter how well everything goes. Everyone isn’t going to appreciate my efforts, appreciate me, and think I’m a good enough person. Everyone isn’t going to feel that I give them what they need.

The larger our family grows, the more the expectations of me grow. There are more and more people who come into the family, through marriage or birth, with their own ideas of who and how I should be. I’m no longer ‘just’ a wife, mother and daughter, but a mother-in-law and grandmother. Those who married in to our family grew up in a different family environment with different ideas of what my role in their lives should look like. Even with our biological children, there are different levels of satisfaction with how I parent. Everyone has expectations of how I should be, what I should do, what I should give (in terms of energy, time and physical resources). And I can’t adequately meet some of those expectations.

Obviously, making everyone happy or wanting to be appreciated by everyone for your efforts can’t be the goal, because it’s unobtainable.

I mentioned to a mother with several adult married children a few weeks ago that a married child/spouse was disgruntled with something I hadn’t done in the way they wanted, and she looked at me without saying anything for a long moment. I told her, “Don’t tell me you’ve never experienced this!” She responded, “That’s how it always is; I take it as the norm.”

There’s so much written about the challenges of growing children and busy households, but much less shared about the challenges and realities of this stage of life. After decades of parenting and homemaking, rather than slowing down and taking it easy, a mother is expected to up the bar and do more and more and more, for more and more people. She is expected to be calm, organized, giving, nurturing and patient, and magically know how to meet each person’s needs in the way they prefer.

I went directly from this demanding wedding period into Purim and organizing all of the necessary activities, and will soon begin Pesach preparations. We’ll be having my mom and three married children staying with us; my daughter will host another of our married children for sleeping. All five families will be with us for the seder and four families for the ensuing meals for as long as each chooses to stay.

I love having everyone together, seeing the grandchildren playing together and all the adults spending time together gives me much nachas. I have non-ending gratitude for all of the wonderful people who have joined our family and each adds so much.

Does that sound warm and fuzzy and oh, so beautiful? All the amazing family togetherness, with everyone getting along?

It’s very special and I never take it for granted.

And it’s a huge amount of work.

I’m now taking some quiet time for myself to regroup. I’m assessing how much I can give and how much I want to give, regardless of what others want of me. There are things I’ve willingly stretched myself to do, and after the minimal or nonexistent recognition of those efforts, am choosing to stop stretching rather than become resentful. These adjustments aren’t likely to be welcomed by those who are used to being on the receiving end but they need to be made.

It’s a good thing to be concerned about the comfort and happiness of others. But it’s not a good thing to do so much that you compromise yourself and your own happiness. There’s no one at fault if you’re overextended and unappreciated. You’re the one who needs to create boundaries that protect yourself, you’re the one who has to take care of yourself, and by doing that, you teach others how to treat you.

Avivah

Changing plans and making adjustments

homemaking, parenting, personal development

I find it helpful to do things as soon as I can, rather than push them off. My thinking is that more things are always coming up, and it’s unlikely there will be a better time than right now to do what needs to be done. I very consciously planned to leave this week’s schedule as empty as possible, since it’s the week prior to the wedding and as I just said, things always come up.

On Sunday, I drove my daughter to Jerusalem with all of her stuff to move into her new home. We picked up an additional load of her things from the place she lives in Jerusalem. Her host mother came out to talk to me and asked me how wedding plans were going. ‘Fine, good,’ I told her.

‘What about Shabbos?’ This is a question that comes from a mother who has married off all her children and understands the work involved for the mother of the bride regarding hosting Shabbos sheva brachos for a large group. People who haven’t been in that situation wouldn’t know how intense it can be!

Personally I feel making sheva brachos is just as much work as the wedding, but in a different way. Some people go away to a hotel-like setting where the sleeping and meal arrangements are taken care of, which is expensive but obviously eliminates a lot of the work. In our case I’m self-catering, so that doesn’t eliminate a lot of the work. 🙂

I told the host mother that it had been a huge issue and I spent hours working it all out, but thankfully we knew where the meals would be held and where all the guests would stay, and since that was the hardest part, it was going well.

Well, sometimes you just have to laugh because two minutes after I finished that conversation, I got a call from a person who had offered to let us use their home for that Shabbos. Since they have a very large dining room, this is where we were going to have all the meals in addition to using three bedrooms to host guests. She asked us, if it wouldn’t be too much pressure, to please find somewhere else since their plans had changed.

In the end this will be better for everyone and it’s good that we’re making the changes. However, it meant a week before the wedding completely redoing every single aspect of my plans for sheva brachos, including the timing and structure of the meals. So much for trying to think ahead and plan ahead so I’m not dealing with things at the last minute! I still don’t have the location for meals set up – there are aspects that make the arrangements complicated – but I trust everything will work out.

My mother-in-law arrived from the US today, and went straight to Jerusalem to stay with my married daughter. This will be my daughter’s last Shabbos before the wedding. She’ll join them for Shabbos lunch (and have one meal with friends, and a third meal will be her Shabbos kallah). All of our single sons over the age of 13 (ie 20, 16, 15, 13) will be spending Shabbos together with them. The boys will pack up everything they need for the wedding, and go from there to the wedding on Sunday.

*************

I’ve been having increasing pain when standing and walking, and had gotten to the point that I had to sit or lay down after fifteen or thirty minutes of standing. It was making it very challenging to get things done efficiently. (And it didn’t help that our youngest two boys were home sick this week.) I was feeling concerned about how I would manage to stand for wedding pictures, let alone dance at the wedding.

My husband made an appointment for me yesterday with the osteopath that he and our sons have gone to, and he was excellent. It was a very important wedding prep! I was really impressed. He explained that my pelvis had slipped out of alignment, which caused my leg joints to be affected (hence the pain standing), and also caused the lower back and neck pain that I was having. It’s the domino effect – one very small shift happens and it keeps triggering more and more symptoms until you address the core issue.

Though it takes up to a week for the body to release the tension it had been holding, I felt immediate improvement as he was working on me. As soon as I got home, I was able to work in the kitchen for several hours straight, standing the entire time. My lower back was very painful for the first afternoon and all through the last two nights, but that has started releasing as well. It still hurts a lot and it’s hard to sleep with so much back pain, but I’m definitely doing better and I’m super grateful.

It’s hard to believe that there’s hardly any time left until the wedding….our children grow up so fast.

Avivah

Looking beyond the behavior at the person

parenting, personal development

One day after dropping off my sixteen year old son at the bus stop, I decided to stop in at a supermarket on the way home.

I quickly gathered my items and went to check out, but when I saw the sour face of the cashier, I looked to see what other cashiers were available and considered moving to a different line. She grumbled aloud when I and another woman came to her lane, ‘Why does everyone have to come to my lane?’ (There was only one other lane open, other than the express lane, so it’s not like there were a lot of options!)

She looked in my cart while checking out someone ahead of me, and irritatedly told me to move to the lane for people with up to ten items (I had more than double that).

She huffed and sighed and complained, and I thought to myself, ‘There’s no one who needs a smile as much as someone who has none left to give’, and decided to stay in her lane.

While I was waiting my turn, someone with just a few items asked to go ahead of me and I told her it was fine. The cashier told her – grumpily, of course – to go to another lane that would be shorter (it wouldn’t have been). The woman said to me in an undertone, “Why is she upset what lane I go to, what difference does it make to her?” I told her not to take it personally.

The cashier roughly scanned her few items, and the woman got upset and exclaimed, “Why are you throwing my items around? Please don’t do that!” She was already insulted at how she had been spoken to, and now this was too much for her. I thought to myself how once someone is in a certain mood, they keep acting in a way to attract negative experiences to themselves.

My turn was next, and the cashier didn’t even glance my way. As she began scanning my items, I said with a smile, “Good morning, how are you?”, and she startled. “Are you talking to me?” “Yes, I am! How are you doing today?”

“Not good, everyone is coming to my lane. Why do they have to do that?” (This was obviously a question that she wasn’t expecting an answer to.)

I told her, “Maybe it’s because you look like a nice person so they want to be in your lane.”

“Yes, that’s my problem, I’m too nice. You see how that woman just spoke to me and accused me of throwing her things around?”

It was so interesting to me to hear how differently she perceived herself and her actions, from how others were perceiving her.

Another coworker came over and she grumbled something to the new arrival. Inserting myself into their conversation, I understood that her shoulder had been bothering her for a while. I asked about it, and she said it’s been hurting for months, she’s in pain all day at work scanning items, and that she can’t get an appointment for three months at the health clinic for an orthopedist.

She continued venting how none of the other workers at the store will do anything, they’re all sitting around doing nothing while she’s working away all by herself.

Her coworker told her to take a pain pill or shot, and she said she didn’t want to, that it didn’t help. I agreed that it’s good to take care of the root of the problem rather than cover it up, and suggested an osteopath that I have used for a few of my family members who is reasonably priced and not far from there.

She told me she doesn’t believe in all this stuff, and asked me what he does. We spoke a few minutes more as I shared my experiences, and encouraged her to call to explain her situation and see if he could help her. Making a call doesn’t cost anything.

We ended our conversation with me giving her the number and warmly wishing her a complete recovery. I had so much compassion as I walked away with my groceries, and was glad that I was able to ignore my first thought to stay away from her lane and stuck around long enough to see the person underneath.

Avivah