Our Road to Building a Family - A Lesson Learned

To make a long story short, the foster-to-adopt placement with the three children I've written about previously in this blog series did not work out the way we'd hoped it would.

The children came to our home for a weekend visit August 9 and were taken back to their previous foster home the morning of August 11. This was part of the plan as we wanted to get a sense of what having them around our house would be like prior to them moving in for what we assumed at that time would be a permanent arrangement. The visit went well, as we had a cookout that weekend and spent a majority of it trying to acclimate to one another while also working towards establishing rules, boundaries, expectations, and something of a routine. They came back to us on August 13 and got fully moved in over the course of the next few days. My wife took that time off from work to spend with them, to get them better acquainted with their new surroundings, and to handle a variety of errands.

If I've never told you how strong of a woman my wife is allow me to do so right now. During those three days, she took the children for eye exams and hair cuts. She did every bit of the leg work involved with getting them enrolled in school. She made Lord only knows how many phone calls in an attempt to get them seen by a local pediatrician as we wound up in something of an emergency situation seeing as how by the time they got to us they were each in need of refills on their ADHD medication. (This was one of the first bits of evidence we would uncover that their previous foster home was inconceivably inept at providing adequate care.) She wound up having to take them to a facility at which they'd been seen previously (in a town 90 minutes away from where we live, mind you) to make sure they wouldn't run out. All this on top of making sure we were fed a hot meal at supper time every day - yes, I include myself in that category because while I do cook she's always been the primary preparer of sustenance around our house, and a damn good one at that.

We began to face challenges with the children almost immediately in terms of their behavior. This wasn't unexpected obviously as they're children after all; as a parent, they're going to test you to see how far they can get with whatever it is they're up to in the moment. Our friends and family who are parents kept reminding us of this and I can't say they steered us wrong as these three were certainly excited and lively. In hindsight (I'm going to use that phrase repeatedly in this entry), I think those were labels my wife & I used as blinders early on to make it seem as though things were going to get better.

The first few days we had the children in our home were full of revelations. We didn't have a lot to offer them in the way of toys as we were expecting them to have had some items of that sort. We were surprised as we unpacked their belongings to find out they were sent to us with not much more than a few stuffed animals. Some friends of our family had been kind enough to give us a basketball goal and we had gotten a few outside toys as we thought they'd enjoy being able to play together. That idea went out the window when they realized this new house they were in was stocked with things like an Xbox, tablets, cable TV, and the Internet.

My wife & I had gone through the paces of trying to shore up our multimedia devices to do the best we could at making sure the kids wouldn't have access to questionable content. (I've had my share of fits with Time Warner but I will say that their parental controls are quite good.) We let them use our tablets as it seemed like they were pacified when they were each individually engaged in a singular activity. They would watch programs on TV or Netflix, and I believe they managed to download more games than I knew existed from the Android marketplace. We allowed them to use YouTube (which, in hindsight, wasn't a good idea) but this became an issue as we noticed they weren't watching what either of us would consider kid-appropriate content. (YouTube's content ratings are looser than a Zeta Tau Alpha pledge during rush.) They wanted to watch videos by Rhianna, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, and other artists whose material isn't exactly PG.

This would turn out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of our learning what kinds of material to which they'd been exposed in their previous foster home. We found out through casual conversation one evening at dinner that they'd seen Django Unchained. It came up as a result of our talking about the buildings that are near our home and how they're used by a cotton ginning operation; the topic of cotton brought up a question about slavery and that lead to them saying they'd seen a movie about a slave. I thought they might have seen something historically relevant like Roots or Glory - nope, Django Unchained. Quinton Tarantino. Blood, guts, violence, nudity, harsh language, and more. They also had some knowledge of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween films as they knew who Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers are.

Keep in mind these kids are 10, 8, and 7 years old. And yet the people who were caring for them before they got to us couldn't figure out why they were afraid of the dark and had nightmares?

Seeing as how the weekend of August 16 presented the kids' last real opportunity at having a good time while still out of school, we decided it would be nice to take them to Chuck E. Cheese's for an afternoon of fun and games. For about $100, the three of them got 3 and a half hours of all the games they could play - Jill & I got a chance to sit around, eat horrible pizza (in hindsight, the salad bar would've been a much better option), and drink soda. I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese's before so the whole experience was new to me. It's about the same as the midway games at any given state or county fair in terms of its gimmick; huge prizes get dangled out in front of the kids as they walk in the door and they spend every ounce of energy they have trying to get the giant panda (that being a metaphor in this instance for a Nerf gun that the 10 year old had his sights on) only to be disappointed when they find out they have earned enough tickets to get a plastic slinky and some glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. Toys that will last about as long as the drive home, in other words. But hey, they enjoyed themselves and got to interact with other children, and that made it worthwhile in our minds.

Bed time wasn't the most difficult thing with these three as it seemed like they enjoyed sleeping, particularly the 8 year old. We put them to bed around 8:30 PM the Sunday evening before their first day of school and story time followed. My wife would read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the boys meanwhile I read a Junie B. Jones book to the girl.

The boys would usually stay up for 30 minutes to an hour after their story, just talking to one another about gosh knows what. The girl was a real talker as well - always asking questions and chiming in with her two cents, never with any sense of a filter or consideration for how what she was saying might affect others. Of course it's not unusual for a child (especially a little girl) to be chatty, so I don't want that comment to come off as me complaining. It's just that the kind of things she would say often caught me off guard. It dawned on me in the days to come that what we had been told about the boys being in a sibling rivalry was exacerbated by their sister as she would say things to them that would send them into a fit of rage. I don't know that she understood what she was doing but the fact of the matter was that she was most certainly a trigger to their minor behavioral issues becoming a much more profound problem. The anger they exhibited during those moments was startling to me, and there were many of them over the course of time that we had them in our home. This is why I began to feel as though I wasn't being a parent to them so much as I was a referee in a mixed martial arts fight, only in this particular arena the fighters sometimes hit the ref simply because they feel like it.

Monday morning rolled around and my wife & I were forced to come to grips with the fact that our schedule would consist of getting up at 6 AM for the foreseeable future. That said, the school day routine never became an issue for us because I feel as though we knew what we had to do to get everyone ready for the day. Make sure everyone is up by 6:45 AM, teeth brushed and dressed by 7:15, and ready to go out the door by 7:40 as my wife would be dropping them off on her way to work (it was a perfect fit as she kicks off her work day at 8 AM). The first day was slightly different in that we had them there earlier than normal seeing as how we wanted to walk them to their classrooms and hopefully meet their teachers (we hadn't had a chance to do that yet seeing as how open house wasn't scheduled until some time in September). Once we had them at school we were sure that the pacing of the day would lead to breakthroughs for the group. They'd make friends, get into the swing of things, adapt to this new culture and surroundings, and we'd be off and running as a family, onwards and upwards.

In hindsight, that was wishful thinking.

My Mom was a blessing to us as she was willing to pick up the children from school, bring them back home, and then begin doing whatever was needed with them in the afternoons (homework or what have you) so that our work schedules wouldn't get disrupted. I knew this was going to be a tough assignment for my Mom but I also knew she could handle it - she taught children their age for 30+ years, for crying out loud. If anyone we knew was up to the task, it was her!

It seemed as though frustration set in for the kids the very first day of school. The oldest boy in particular had a tough time because I don't think he was quite ready - academically, socially, etc. - for the experience or the fact that he'd have homework. The after-school period became a trial each day as none of them wanted to do their homework, rather they just wanted to play with the tablets or video games. My Mom did what she could to keep some sense of structure for them, to no avail.

Before I go further, I want to make sure that I don't make our home life or the way we were trying to parent these children come off as though we were running a military operation. We were not expecting them to be perfect children. We were very keen to the idea of "picking our battles" in that we knew we didn't need to call them out for everything. We were trying our best to instill in them things like respect and consideration as these were qualities they'd been introduced to at church and we wanted to further re-enforce them at home. Simple concepts, but clearly ones that they had never been asked to take on before now.

The challenge we faced with these three in terms of trying to correct their behavior was that there wasn't much we could do realistically. We tried to establish a points system whereby they could earn points for positive behavior. These points could then be cashed in for things like bonus electronics time (we set them all at a limit of 1 hour per day), a movie night, or even money. The points could also be taken away for bad behavior. I hate to say this but none of them had a chance to cash in their points because they couldn't maintain any long enough to have earned anything of "value" in our system. When the taking away of points didn't work, it became a matter of having to take away privileges like toys, electronics or TV time. All this did was to make them more defiant.

They repeatedly called my wife "mean Mama" and said that they wanted to go back to where they'd been previously. We tried to press on in spite of this because we still wanted this to work. In my mind, they were like wild horses; I felt like it might take them being "broken" before they would realize that there's a right way and a wrong way to conduct yourself (because clearly wherever it was they had been before never tried to put over such things to them). The difference being wild horses don't scream, yell, kick walls, slam doors, and tell you how much they hate you.

I feel like the moment when my wife began to have doubts about our relationship with these three working out came one evening during supper. My wife has a recipe for shepherd's pie that is from her mother and it's a favorite of ours because it's a hearty meal that's easy to put together. If you don't know what shepherd's pie is, it's a dish that consists of layers of mashed potatoes, seasoned ground beef, and cheese that's baked to a warm and bubbly consistency. We thought it was something the kids would enjoy seeing as how it is what it is - potatoes, meat, and cheese. My wife served us all up a helping and I began to dig in. The kids took one bite and they all began to make noises and faces as if they were going to vomit on the table. (This is an example of how none of them had a sense of gratitude about anything we tried to do for them.) You would have to know my wife to know why that action in particular was so troubling but I think that was when the dam began to crack, for lack of a better phrase.

So long as they were on an individual task the boys weren't that difficult to deal with. The moment you inserted them into a situation where they were in any form of competition was when their attitudes shifted. (This dynamic of how they were fine on their own but problematic when put together verified what we had been told in regard to reasons why their previous adoptive placements didn't work out as those families tried to adopt one or two of the group but not all three.) It didn't matter if it was us throwing around a football in the back yard or playing video games, if they could have a disagreement over what was going on they were going to wind up in an argument. And since I know you're probably wondering, the games we had for them were intended for children. No Call of Duty, Gears of War, or anything of the sort - just titles like the Lego games, a few old Super Mario selections, and Just Dance. They did have a WWE game but it quickly "went missing" after they repeatedly got into shouting matches, usually over the fact that one wouldn't let the other win, no less. The Lego games are fun and actually quite challenging, even for an old gamer like me. To them, they became frustrating. One would blame the other for their not being able to complete a task and it was all down hill from there. The shouting would ensue, then one would draw back as if he was going to hit the other in an apparent act of intimidation (the girl would argue with her brothers and she, too, would draw back her arm as if she was going to strike them).

The girl's behavior became progressively worse throughout the week. She would not listen to us, refused to take direction, and acted in a way that was so blatantly defiant that it boggled my mind. (A learned behavior, in her case; all kids act out but what she was doing had to have gotten in her mind from another source, likely from watching people she had been around previously.) When we would attempt to correct her she would turn it around on us as if she were in charge. Concepts like restriction or being grounded prompted an "I don't care" sort of response, as if to say I'm going to do whatever I want in spite of you. At one point when we were trying to play outside she became upset and tried to lock us out of the house. On another evening she walked out of the house saying that she was running away (she got about as far as the stop sign at the corner of our property before coming back). Again, this wasn't a response to any kind of difficult request from us, rather it seemed to be because she felt as though she wasn't getting her way 100% of the time. All the while we were trying to plan a birthday party for her as she turned 7 while she was in our care. We threatened to cancel the birthday party if her behavior didn't improve and in hindsight we probably should have gone ahead and canceled it because she was a true terror to deal with.

I mentioned how our hands were mostly tied when it came to discipline. It goes without saying that spanking wasn't an option, so we did what we could in trying to show them that if their behavior was unacceptable they would lose privileges. First off the list was access to things like tablets, TV, video games, etc. The boys seemed to get the idea as they would become apologetic and try to get back on our good sides, whereas the girl just plain went into a massive fit. She continued to be disrespectful so we began taking away her toys. The same attitude persisted and we were to a point where there was nothing left in her room but her bed. She wailed as if she were crying but she wasn't genuinely upset as my wife saw her smirk at her at one point, as if to say "I know if I do this long enough you're going to cave." We never did and she kept at it until she finally went to sleep. To their credit, her brothers tried to calm her down, telling her that all she had to do was "act right" and she'd get her things back.

We had her birthday party on Saturday, August 23. We invited a number of our friends and family over for the occasion, all with children roughly the same age as the three for whom we were caring. The goal was for each of them to see that they were surrounded by loving, kind folks who are concerned about their well being and who want to be involved in their lives. The events of the day wound up being the final straw in our decision to officially disassociate ourselves from the children.

The party went off well, for the most part. Jill's Mom was staying with us and she had organized a painting activity for the children to do. The youngest boy had slept most of the day and his demeanor reflected this as he was grumpy, especially when the other boys at the party went outside and began playing with some of the balls and sports equipment. I tried to encourage him to share and be friendly, he acted like they'd disrespected his territory. The oldest boy was the opposite, seemingly overjoyed at the fact he suddenly had a whole bunch of new playmates. He could be the most docile, innocent kid - he really was the most agreeable of the three as he would often try to take the role of parent in trying to get the other two to settle down when they would fight. The girl was a whirlwind of activity and emotions, excited one minute, disappointed another, outgoing then suddenly shy. Through it all the underlying attitude she exhibited was one of ungratefulness. Nothing seemed to be good enough for her, which was in stark contrast to the theme of the event as she was dressed in a Cinderella costume.

A couple who are close friends with my wife's family had graciously given us money to use to purchase a new bicycle for each of the children. They enjoyed riding their bikes and we, of course, tried to keep an eye on them at all times while they were riding them. They went out for a ride that evening after the party was over and all our guests were gone. My mother-in-law was outside watching them play and my wife had gone into Orangeburg to pick up a pizza for supper as we were going to eat then watch Frozen together. I didn't see the incident but something happened that lead to an argument between the girl and the youngest boy. My mother-in-law tried to get them to settle down and come inside; before she could, they began tossing around each others bikes. This lead the youngest boy to say to his sister "I wish you were 16 so you could die in a car accident."

At that moment, this family we had tried so hard to keep together fell apart. We called one of the adoption workers we'd been assigned and made arrangements for them to be picked up the next morning. I had it in mind before then that there were two reasons why I would pull the plug on this effort: 1) If they hurt our dog Roddy (he was "on vacation" during this as he was in recovery from being neutered), and 2) if they did damage to property. I didn't think that the third option would wind up being us just plain having had enough. My wife and I decided we couldn't do this any longer as we had had 10 days of almost non-stop fighting and unruly behavior with no sign of things changing.

I know some people will say we didn't do enough or that we didn't give it enough time. The fact of the matter is that until you've lived with children like this you have no idea how difficult our lives became. I was to a point where I did not want to come home from work because I knew that they were there waiting for me. My nerves were shot because I felt powerless to try and remedy the situation. (Truth be told, I left most of the attitude adjusting to my wife, opting instead to keep up with the logistics of keeping the house in order. Why? Because I'm good at that sort of thing and I'm also the type who would just as soon drop a proverbial nuclear warhead on a situation and walk away as opposed to trying to handle the matter constructively.) Our bedroom became the only sanctuary we had as we'd retreat to it each night in the hope that things would get better the next day. I'm sad to say that they never did. We could not allow them to ruin our home, our relationships, and certainly not our marriage.

They were picked up the morning after the birthday party. Not wanting to out and out make it known they wouldn't be coming back, we told them that we had some things we needed to work on before going forward and that they'd be going away for a few days.

I know that I've levied some harsh criticism at these children in this blog entry but the truth of the matter is that I do not blame them for being who they are. These children have been in the foster system for better than 4 years now. They are a product of that system's failure to cultivate a network of supportive, nurturing homes throughout the state of South Carolina. They are the unfortunate victims of predatory adults who see foster children as a means of earning a paycheck instead of an opportunity to help raise a well-adjusted, productive member of society.

To all the people who donated time, effort, clothing, prayers, or whatever else to the children, you have my most sincere gratitude and thanks. You are each examples of the fact that agape love exists and that goodness will always outshine the darkness of the world. Anything that was given to the children while they were with us will be staying with them. Hopefully they will someday be able to appreciate those gifts and the people who cared enough to give.

So where are we now? We're hurt, deeply, and we all need time to heal from this. But we will use this as a lesson learned and try again someday because our goal is still the same - to build a family of our own.

Our Road to Building a Family - Supervised Visits, New Furniture, and Zone Defense

I think I've said this previously when I've written about our experiences in navigating our way through the adoption process, but my wife Jill has done an extraordinary job of keeping a running narrative going of all that we've been through over in her blog, The Truesdale Times. People have made me quite bashful over the years by pointing out how well I write but I will be the first to tell you that my wife's writing style captures a range of emotions that I know I've only rarely, if ever, been able to convey with any substance. That said, if you would like more frequent updates about our journey, please stay tuned to her blog. She adds entries quite frequently, which is another ability she has that I don't when it comes to writing; it might take me a week to write a blog; she wrote one while we were driving home from dinner a few days ago.

To catch you up on things from where we were since I last added a submission to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, I'll begin by saying that a lot has changed for us! In my previous entry, I relayed how we were at a point of frustration with the process as it seemed that we weren't getting anywhere. Despite my wife's best efforts at being an advocate for us, it didn't feel as though we were being kept in the loop about the goings on of what may or may not have been happening on behind the scenes with the various organizations with which we'd been working. Then came the afternoon of June 19, 2014.

My wife and I were on our annual vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we were making our first visit to WonderWorks. (As an aside to this, I will say I'm not a fan of WonderWorks - it could be fun, but it was way too busy when we were there. The crowd made for a scene that was chaotic, and it was made worse by the fact that there's not enough guidance or direction to how the whole thing is laid out.) I was in line for one of the attractions when my wife & I received phone calls, one after the other, from the same number but one that neither of us recognized. As it would turn out, the call was from an adoption specialist contacting us about the fact that we'd been selected as a potential match for a sibling group of three children.

Yes, you read that right - three children, ages 6, 8, and 10. Two boys and one girl.

The rest of our vacation was a blur, and to be honest the time since that phone call has been a constant whirlwind of activity. We have gone through the paces of learning more about the children, their individual histories, their background, and essentially everything a prospective parent could hope to know - on paper, anyway. I point that out because one of my recent frustrations has been the fact that my first knowledge of these children came in the form of a 3-ring binder as thick as a soda can is tall filled with documentation. I understand that the paperwork is there for a reason as it unveils every facet of their lives, and it is most certainly an effort towards the organization we're working with covering their butts as they'll be able to say "Well, we told you so..." But as I have told my wife and many others, I truly wish the process was reversed so that you could meet these little people first, then be handed their details.

As you might gather from how I worded that last paragraph, yes, after pouring over literally hundreds of pages worth of records we did decide to go forward in trying to make a connection with this group. And yes, we realize that to go from no children to three children is a lot in a short period of time. Trust me when I say that I've grown tired and a bit annoyed by the fact that more than a few folks have seemingly gone to great lengths to remind us of the fact that life's about to change if this works out the way we're hoping it does.

Really? Life's about to change? You don't say! Like when life changed when I moved away from home, got married, bought a house, and started a new job? It feels like the last decade of my life has been nothing but change.

Ever since we've been together, Jill and I have always said we wanted 2 or 3 kids. In my eyes, this is no different than when people become parents via more traditional methods. What if Jill and I had been able to have kids naturally and we'd wound up pregnant with triplets? Or if we'd staggered the births of our children over the course of a couple years yet still wound up with three? Would we still be getting told "Life's about to change!" in a way that makes it seem like the person voicing that comment is telling us we're about to make a mistake? Some folks need to work on thinking before they speak and learning that when you apply inflection to a statement the connotation of those words changes significantly.

My frustrations aside, I have to say the process has gone quite well for us, and quickly at that. We were able to meet the children for the first time during a supervised visit that involved having lunch at Mellow Mushroom Pizza then going to EdVenture, a children's museum and activity center. It goes without saying that I learned a lot that day, both about myself and these kids. First and foremost, kids don't care that a pizza is artisanal - there is no point in paying $20 for a pie that, to them, is no different than a $5 from somewhere like Little Caesars. (That's not a knock on Little Caesars, their pizza is quite good to be as cheap as it is.) Second, when visiting an attraction like EdVenture with three kids who are full of pepperoni and soda, you'd best be wearing good shoes and be ready to play the finest zone defense of your life.

What I mean by that is this: I understand now that supervising children as a parent isn't so much about keeping your kids from doing things as it is keeping track of where they are when they're doing things. Sure, you don't want "doing things" to involve stuff like jumping off a balcony or drinking water out of an unsanitary basin, but so long as they're not destroying property or hurting others whatever they're doing is probably alright.

EdVenture is an expansive facility filled with activity stations that are spread out across several floors. Keeping track of these three quickly became a test of our skills of being able to read & recognize their movements, tendencies, and preferences. I truly am convinced that being a parent is about being able to understand the concept of zone defense. When the play begins, everyone on defense (read, myself and Jill; in this instance, we had a third member of our squad, that being the kid's adoption worker) has a zone of the playing field to cover. It's an effective strategy, so long as everyone does their job. I'd say we did pretty well that first outing - at the end of the day, everyone was still alive and still equipped with all their fingers & toes.

That's how I'm measuring success now as a prospective father: Limit property damage to a minimum while keeping everyone alive and as intact as possible.

We have had a second "play date" with these kids since that first outing and it involved lunch at Zaxby's as well as bowling. Things learned from that get together include the fact that not all grilled cheese sandwiches are created equal and that bowling isn't as appealing as the bright, blinking lights of arcade games. I can't say as I disagree much with the second part of that statement because only God knows how many quarters I plunked into arcade games when I was their age. Despite my former fascination with them, nowadays my opinion of arcade games is that they are essentially wooden boxes filled with strobe lights and MP3 players loaded with bad music that require a person to connect the business end of a shop-vac directly to their wallet in order for them to work. And by "work" I mean kick off a game that's configured in such a way that you'd have to be the 1972 Miami Dolphins of video gaming in order to get past level 1, stage 1. Seriously, I don't remember games being this difficult when I was a kid. I watched these three play and it was like they were getting beaten about the head by a technological behemoth.

The kids came to our house for the first time this past Friday, August 1. We were able to have lunch together - everyone made their own personal pizza, pizza being a recurring theme with this group as if you couldn't tell - and spend a few hours roaming around the house, allowing them to learn the ins & outs of what up until now had been the personal, exclusive space of my wife and I. I think that may be the biggest hurdle I have to get over, the fact that suddenly there will be three small people living with us. Not just living with us but depending on us for everything.

At this particular juncture, we have decided to change our outlook on adoption when it comes to these children. Up until now we had been working under the pretense that we were hoping to adopt children instead of being involved in a foster-to-adopt scenario or serving as a foster home . In order to speed up the process of them being placed in our home, we have opted to get on a foster-to-adopt path specifically with these children. What that will mean for us is that they will be moved from their current foster home and placed with us. (We will not be a traditional foster home in that we could be contacted to provide shelter for kids in need at a moments notice.) At that point we will be functioning as foster parents with the ultimate goal still being adoption. This changes a few parts of the process but it will be beneficial to all involved seeing as how the kids will be with us, we'll get to build our relationships, and they'll be in a stable environment where they'll be able to move forward with their education and development.

I have long believed that if the opportunity presents itself for you to shop local, you definitely should. People get attracted by big national ads for chains and they forget about the fact that there's probably a Mom & Pop establishment not far from where they live that would be able to get the same or comparable wares and for less money. That's exactly what we did when it came time to refit two rooms in our house so that they could become proper bedrooms for kids. Grubb's Furniture in Saint Matthews, SC is a fantastic purveyor of furniture as we were able to get exactly what we needed at a real bargain price and delivered quickly.

From here, the timetable is tentative in terms of what happens next. The plan is for them to have a weekend visit with us in the near future and then they will be able to move in on a date soon thereafter. At that point, we'll officially be their foster parents. I don't know how long it will take but their becoming our children will come sometime thereafter, depending on the swiftness of how things go once they're placed with us.

Jill and I have the great fortune of having a tremendous support structure around us. We couldn't do this if not for our parents and our families. It means the world to us that everyone has opened up their arms to these kids because they are great kids. They are not broken. They are not damaged goods. They are normal, vivacious, energetic kids. I can't wait to see them flourish once they can be in a stable environment that I believe we'll be able to provide.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Moment Things Got Real

I will fully admit that I haven't written much about the experiences my wife & I have been through in trying to adopt children. I don't want it to seem like I feel it's not important enough to chronicle here - gosh knows all my thoughts on professional wrestling, movies, and the like deserve their space - but Jill has taken the reigns when it comes to keeping all those stories together in her blog, The Truesdale Times. (That blog was originally supposed to have been a shared space for the both of us. Over time it's metamorphosed into her personal chunk of blogging territory just as Redbeard's Rambling is mine.) She's done a fantastic job of documenting our every move and what it amounts to is that I simply don't think I could do a better job, so if you're curious to read more about what we've encountered thus far please take the time to check out her entries. They're quite insightful, especially for anyone who may be thinking of or otherwise already involved in dealings similar to ours.

That said, I wanted to share an update with you, dear reader, about a realization I had recently.

Truth be told, Jill & I have been having some frustrations with this process here lately. We've done all the paperwork, we've gone through all the inspections, and we've gotten our approvals. It is my understanding that where we are at this point is more or less a waiting game. When it comes to adoptions through the Department of Social Services here in South Carolina, there are boards in place the members of which work to try and pair up children with prospective parents. We're to the stage where it seems like the best we can do is hope we get noticed - to make a sports analogy, it's like we've declared for the NFL Draft and our Wonderlic scores came back high but we don't know which team (if any) will give us a chance to prove ourselves.

Jill has gone out of her way to be our own best advocate. That she has done this was no surprise to me. Jill is her mother's child; when I say that, I mean to point out that - much like her mother - she is not content to merely sit idly by when it appears that there's work to be done on something she's passionate about. (I added that last bit regarding her passions because while my wife will not hesitate to assume the role of master and commander when it comes to a situation in which she's emotionally invested, I have yet to have her sprint to action over matters of state like laundry, cleaning the house, or dish washing.) She has done all she can to investigate details on children, those in South Carolina as well as in other states, who are available for adoption by contacting the agencies providing them care. On top of that, she has sent countless emails and made Lord only knows how many phone calls to our own social worker.

I understand that everyone is busy these days and that it seems like every government office is having to learn to do not more with less but more with nothing. (Having worked in the public sector for more than 6 years, I can tell you that statement is true on a variety of levels.) Be that as it may, it's been difficult to get over how uncommunicative certain entities have been with us now that we are where we are. You're in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Did you forget your voicemail passcode? We rarely get a callback, and when we do it's typically not in a timely manner. How hard is it to reply to an email? We're not expecting a message that's 10 paragraphs in length, just a simple acknowledgement that you are still there and that we're not wasting our time by contacting you is more than enough.

I feel like patience is one of my better virtues, and as it relates to the adoption process I have done my best to be patient in navigating the various twists and turns. When we got into this I knew it wasn't going to be something that came to fruition within a couple weeks. For that matter, I knew it was going to take a number of months if not more than a year for our efforts to pan out. (People I know and work with ask me often how long it's been since we've been at this; I try to keep it in perspective by remembering that were we genuinely pregnant we'd only be about 7 months into the delivery. In reality, were things to have worked out differently, we'd still have at least a little ways to go.) As much as I would like for it to be different, this isn't a situation where you can force someone's hand with sweet talking, threats, bribes, or even litigation (which would probably draw it out even further, more than likely). Jill, on the other hand, has never been a particularly patient person. Try as I might to remind her of the teachings of Master Yoda ("Patience you must have, young padawan..." is a favorite quote of mine to use on her), I've learned over the course of our relationship that there's not a whole lot I can do to divert her away from whatever path she's on. I'm not saying that her desire and passion is a bad thing, especially in these circumstances, rather I merely wish she would understand the subtle difference between persistence and insistence (she knows I feel this way, so don't go thinking I'm taking to my blog to air dirty laundry).

Be that as it may, within the past week we made contact with an out-of-state agency about a child in their care and they responded to us almost immediately (as in within 24 hours; that's a precedent no other group has lived up to). The agency said that they were fielding a number of inquiries about the child and that they were in the process of trying to narrow down prospective families but they felt we would be great candidates, part of their reasoning being Jill's experience as a social worker. They granted us an opportunity to learn more about the child's history at which point we were required to sign confidentiality waivers which is why I have to be somewhat guarded in saying what I'm going to talk about next.

There is no reason a child should have to endure what this one has. The report we received spelled things out very clearly and concisely, detailing the data they've collected over the span of time the child has been in their custody (roughly three years). As painful as it was to read, it was more painful to come to the quiet realization that it didn't seem like there was an opportunity for us to help. The list of issues they are dealing with felt insurmountable in my mind, and the fact that the child has begun to develop defense mechanisms in order to deal with them made their plight that much more awful.

It wasn't until I read the report that it dawned on me, this is the kind of abuse that gets found out and these are the kids that we'll be adding to our family. It hasn't dissuaded me from the prospect - not in the least. However, it has made me come to terms with the fact that we're all broken in some way, shape, or form. No one gets through life without chips, dings, and cracks. Sometimes the damage is so bad it seems like it can't be fixed, and even when it can be sometimes you have to admit, no matter how bad you want for things to be otherwise, you aren't the one to handle the repairs.

I mentioned earlier about how the agency representing this child made a point to bring up my wife's career as a social worker. A close friend of ours made a fantastic comment about this and it is one that I'm sure we'll need to be reminded of again as this process continues. The comment was that my wife isn't going to be our child's (or children's) social worker, she's going to be their mother. While her experiences in social work give her a unique perspective, she shouldn't have to be saddled with that role because it would undoubtedly get in the way of the bigger task, that of being a parent.

We decided this particular child has needs we are not prepared to tackle. We have had a tough time of admitting this because we don't know how many opportunities like this we may get. Sure, there are thousands of children out there, but there are potentially as many prospective families. As odd as it may seem, this is something of a competition. What's more, we've both felt in a way that we're letting the child down. Even though we'll never meet the child and the child will never have any idea that we made an inquiry, it's been as though we had to tell the child "no" face to face.

That is what's broken my heart. Two letters, one word, and yet so much hurt it can cause.