Did you really think I would pick something else for a title of my first blog? So Im back....Ive taken 3 years off and now its time to start writing again.
I learned Friday in a training that if you move an elderly person from their home, you could actually kill them. The elderly are not able to adjust to such a traumatic experience and this is why you may know someone who had to move their aging grandparent or parent from their home into an assisted living facility only to have that person pass away a few days later. The discussion was really around the best course of action for an investigator of elder abuse and whether they should move the elderly person or leave them in the home. I wrote to a friend tonight and said as we get older, we lose the resiliency protective layer we carried as children. I certainly have never heard of a child dying from being removed from their home. Where does this resiliency go? I guess its hanging out with our innocence and naivety we have also lost.
So today I had a conversation with a woman who fortunately was forthcoming that she had recently disrupted a pre-adoptive placement with a child after 30 days of the child moving into her home. Im thankful I had the 'nsight to ask the right questions since I had spoken to this women previously. She told me the 16 year old child she had been matched with was a good kid, but she had these ingrained behaviors and no one would help her when the child was lying, being aggressive, and doing what our kids do ...making your life hell. Im making no excuses for the behaviors; however the woman who said she finally had to say "come get her" to the agency was questioning why she is being told she would not be considered for any other children. After all, this child had been moved 40 times and had 2 failed placements....."doesn't that count for something." And I wonder to myself....the person who moved her the 21st, 22nd, and 30th times said to them self "Its ok, she already has moved 20, 21, and 29 times." Life just spirals out of control for our children. In the end, this experience for this child proved to herself that if you push hard enough, people will run the other direction and she is undeserving of unconditional love. And I could certainly guess, that this also translate for that child, that societies rules and values do not apply to her.
I guess its really not a lot when you think ONLY 30,000 children in the US age out of foster care each year with no one. They would only take up half of Ben Hill Griffin stadium in G'ville, but then i will counter with if ONLY 30,000 more people walked into the stadium and would unconditionally commit to those children....well then I have 20,000 more seats to fill of people to support and carry these families through the tough times and cheer through the successes. Send in the football team, band, and cheerleaders, and I say we have a great day of football. And we can leave behind all the problems that society will then have to deal with from the generational cycle of abuse, trauma, and isolation that exists when our children have no one.
There is a 15 year old boy that Ive known for 3 years who is wandering the streets of St. Pete tonight, because he has given up and does not believe in this system who is parenting him......he has lost hope and he wants out of the group home.....
Can I blame him? No.
