GOOD MOOD, BUT TIRED OF THE CRAP

I’ve been in a much better mood this weekend. It was a beautiful day today and I really enjoyed the sunshine, although I really wished we had the pool ready.

I am feeling burned out of certain things. I want a break from foster care but using the respite home that we are being forced to use is going to make things so much worse. Ugh. One of the foster kids had a HUGE fall during the soccer game that resulted in the game being stopped, both coaches and several parents, and every available child running out to see the half dead child. I knew the child was fine. The child is always fine, just in need of some extra attention. My gut churns and wants to say, “Get up and go sit on the side line” but with such an audience, I am forced to give the child what she craves. After soothing her and putting ice on her leg and encouraging her to give it another try I went off to talk to another mother who has adopted some of her children. I asked her if her kids had these attention seeking behaviors. She laughed and told me some stories that rivaled mine. She spoke about how one of her daughters will use her sexuality to get attention. She’s 5. She told me how infuriating it is when people find it funny. I asked her who on earth would think it was funny, and she pointed to the row of soccer mothers who were still brooding over my inattention to the injured child. A light bulb went off in my head. To them, it was cute and funny because they had no idea that it wasn’t funny, that it was a serious problem with a very real root. Just as they had no idea that my injured child was on the third such (non)injury of the day. This mother also told me that they are no longer going to the ER, rather telling the children to “suck it up” instead, which is what the foster kid’s guardian suggested that I do. What they don’t understand is that my kids lack the ability to “suck it up” and would keep me up crying all night long. Once she has been proven healthy (as in a doctor saying there is absolutely nothing wrong), she can admit that she just needed attention, but until then, no dice.

The other issue that has me frustrated is the injured child’s teacher. She has been very rude to me all year and I just now, a week before school is over figured out why. I knew that this child likes to tell people how mean we are to her, and when we find out she admits that she wants people to say, “Oh, poor you!” I just never expected that her teacher would buy into it. Stupid me, it never even occurred to me. Most teachers are pretty clued in to such things, but this teacher is new, and young (and stupid ß that part was supposed to stay in my head. Oops!) What clued me in was the teacher taking me aside to tell me that my daughter is following her to her classroom and she has been using her words to ask her to stop but she will not and the child is very upset about it. I wanted to say right then and there that my daughter needs to pass her classroom to get to hers, but I just said, “thank you for letting me know.” We spoke to both kids about it and both admitted that the real issue was actually this child following my daughter all the way to her classroom but then on other days not wanting her to walk near her to her classroom. You can see what a stupid thing this is and I am embarrassed that I just blogged an entire paragraph about it, but it made my point. Child tells people how awful we are when we are not around, idiots believe her and treat us badly in return. And after typing out that last sentence I now know what went wrong at the respite house. Ugh.

Then tonight, hours after the children were to be asleep we find out that the younger girls are up fighting. The fighting started because H accused my daughter of using her soap. Actually, the accusation happened this morning and I was witness to it. Katherine got out of the shower and came downstairs. H said, “You stole my soap!” Katherine said she did not, and H replied that she smelled just like it so of course she had. I pointed out that Katherine had showered upstairs, while H’s soap was still sitting in the downstairs bathroom. I thought that was the end of it, but apparently after they were put to bed she brought it up again and then got out of bed to take back some things from Katherine retaliation for stealing her soap. I so wanted to take the soap and see how far I could throw it, and to be honest, I might have if I didn’t need to be so darn careful not to give H anything true to tattle about. She is still talking about the backpack that I took from her and threw away and how Katherine said her father was stupid. What she fails to mention are that the backpack is in the basement where we put in when she refused to use it and demanded a new, non-baby backpack, and that she had told Katherine that her father was stupid first. Both stories get her a lot of “poor you” and get me a lot of grief. God only knows what stories I don’t get to hear. I am so tired of foster care.