Originally Posted by iamkeri1
I hope you will not feel it an intrusion for me to post here. I am an adoptive Mom. Hubby and I adopted four kids who had been our foster kids, a sib group, the youngest four out of seven children we know of.
Their mother was a drug addict, and while not exactly a prostitute, let's just say she usually had some guy or another around to provide money. While in her custody, the kids saw her get beaten multiple times, shot at, and stabbed. She used drugs in front of them and when they were hungry she sent them to the corner store where she had credit established, but when the credit ran out, she knew they would steal to survive.
I'm just giving you this background to say that even though she was a pretty awful mother, I thought for a long time that it would have been easier on the kids to stay with her. It costs the state a great deal of money to "protect" kids who are in foster care. There is the cost of the court, the judge, the attornies, the court building, the therapists, the social workers, the paperwork, etc. etc. Then they pay the foster parents to take care of the kids. I assure you this is not much. For what you call a "generic" kids in MI, you get 50 cents per hour. Generic, now isn't that a great name for a kid?
If some of this money had been used to get help for the mother, maybe she would have been able to keep them. If she had been de-toxed and sent to a program. If she had a parenting coach to work with her in the home, showing her good disciplinary methods, and how to handle her own anger. If she had had a babysitter a few hours a week, or someone to call for help when she was jonesing at 3 o'clock in the morning. If someone had arrested the guys who were beating her up. I don't know if it would have worked, but I feel trying to help the birth parents is usually a better solution than taking the kids away. She is supposedly clean right now, so maybe she could have gotten clean then with help. She is still very low functioning. She lives in a residential hotel and provideds janitorial services in exchange for rent. She shares her room with a man who is supposed to be her husband. She gets a lot of her food from her oldest child, my kids's sister. But she is clean, and that is worth a lot. Unfortunately, to my daughter that is like another wound. "Why couldn't she get clean when she had us?, she asks.
Their adoption has always been open in a sense, because they were all old enough at the time to remember being adopted. The older sister has always been in contact with the mother, and a strong proponent of the kids recognizing that she is their mother. Except for my daughter, none of them have wanted to meet her, but nonetheless she has always been a part of our lives. We have always talked openly about their family. (All the kids have different dads and knowledge of them is limited mostly to their names.)
We have always been in contact with their older sister, whom they adore. (She did not want to join our family. She is racially mixed, identified with her African American ancestry, and didn't want to grow up in a white home, though my two youngest boys are 1/2 A A too.) I have always praised, honored, and thanked her, because she largely raised the kids (She is four years older than my oldest son.), at great cost to herself. She did not go to school much and is barely literate. Needless to say, caring for her mother and six other kids, she did not have much of a childhood. She now is married and has four kids of her own. She seems to be a good loving mother.
There are many tales to tell about the suffering my kids have gone through both with, and as a result of having been taken away from their mother. When hubby died six years ago, that was a blow that I am not yet sure we as a family have survived. I hope we will make it. But more than that, I hope THEY will make it. I hope they will learn to love themselves enough to be happy adults, or at least functional adults.
I will continue to read this thread, looking for continued help with understanding my kids needs, and explanations for myself as to the reasons for some of the gaps there appear to be in their ability to function in a familial relationship, or even have close friends. If you allow me, I will post every once in a while. If I can help anyone, please let me know.
Lastly I just want to add that there is a reason I finally decided it was a good thing that the kids were removed from their mothers home. Four years ago, when my oldest son was 17 and in a drug treatment program, he called me, crying, to tell me that he had just revealed at a therapy session that his mother had used him in sex acts with men to earn money for drugs. He had never been able to tell this to us before, he said, because it was so awful to him that he could not even say the words. Four years later this beautiful, hardworking young man is in prison. At 18 he stole a car so he could go buy drugs, drove through four counties fleeing the police, and only stopped when they rammed into the car and drove him off the road. He has attempted suicide twice while in prison, and every time the caller ID shows a number from the area he is locked up, I am afraid they are calling me to tell me he is dead.
I have certainly not been a perfect mother, I have made many mistakes. They certainly have not been perfect either. I hope someday we will all be all be able to forgive each other. Our goal when we adopted to them was to keep them together. That I have done. And I have stood by them, no matter what. I hope their future tales of me will not be as filled with pain as some of the stories you tell.
Blessings to you all. I wish I could wrap my arms around you and heal all your pain.
Smooches,
Keri
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