Sweet Sixteen

Now at: http://peachstreetmissives.wordpress.com/

Last Sunday was Grace's birthday. We offered to host a party for her, and I made a cake. It was the first time she'd had a birthday party. Despite telling her all week to invite friends, the only people who came were her Mom and her sister, Jill. Grace did leave to got and meet a friend, but the friend never showed up to meet her.

All in all it was sweet and intimate, but for someone as social as Grace it was clear that it didn't fulfill her fantasy of a birthday party. After the pizza, cake and presents, Jill and I were talking, Mom was playing Candy Crush Saga, and Grace was watching Vampire Diaries. 

After they all left, Leonard and I were talking about the emotional train wreck that was unfolding in front of us. While I don't doubt that Mom loves her kids, she is pretty incapable of keeping her addiction and other issues under control. Generally parents of foster kids fall into two groups- involved and making an effort or too wrapped up in their problems to be able to make it work. Their mom is an unfortunate combination of the two- just involved enough and just loving enough to really mess with the kids' heads, but not involved enough to make hard changes in her life. 

The good news (sort of) is that Jill was very friendly and very chatty. We talked about paperwork and getting her board extension filed. While she's not technically our responsibility, it seems that the home she is in is giving her minimal support. That makes sense on one level... why put a ton of effort into a kid who's only with you for 2 months? But apparently her grandfather is pushing her to get the board extension and at least have the option when she turns 18. I think she's still holding out hope that by the end of January Mom will have it together and get a house. 

Court is this Friday. We have no idea how it's going to go. I've written an impassioned appeal to her service team (made up of DHS and agency workers and the attorney) to try to keep her out of a group home. We saw with Joan that sometimes the court just makes a decision and that's that. So we just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best outcome for everyone. On some level, we're still not sure what the best outcome would actually be...

Real Rap

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Real Rap, yo...

In the last three weeks, Grace has been AWOL twice to where we had to call and file a police report in the middle of the night, skipped school three times and come home high a few other times. We have few disciplinary tools at our disposal. We don’t have a long term sway over her as she has decided not to ask to stay with us. We aren’t going to lock her in her room (immoral and illegal) and we’re not going to beat her for leaving the house. She’s already stopped doing chores or anything around the house to earn allowance, so that’s not something we can hold over her.

What’s really interesting to me from a psychological perspective is what’s encouraging her to act this way. Why does she think it’s o.k. to do these things? Because she’s been told by everyone that she’s worthless, and now this place that was supposed to be a rock for her has also slipped out from under her. I get it.

I found this on a Georgia foster agency website. Either they are particularly useless at expressing themselves, or there really aren’t any benefits besides warm fuzzies to do what we’ve been doing since April:

Why foster a Teen or Sibling group?

5 reasons to foster a teenager

1. Teens help you stay up to date on the latest fashions, trends and technology.
2. Teens benefit by learning from your experiences
3. Teens are fun and interactive which keeps you young at heart!
4. Teens benefit from living in nurturing and stable family environments where they can focus on school, building meaningful relationships and all things teen!

5.     Teens can decipher instant messaging codes and teach you even more ways

A lot of the talk in foster parenting land is to hang on and believe in these kids no matter what. When I mentioned about some of the troubles that we were having at home because of the issues the girls were having, I was told by one person that their reactions were “totally understandable” and then lectured about all the myriad factors and societal influences that are making them behave like this. More than one person has said “Well, what did you expect?”

I felt totally patronized by that reaction. That reaction, and the implied reaction behind the disappointed looks I’ve gotten from people that I’ve told about our situation, is that we need to keep hanging on as if we can save these girls.

We can’t. There are limits to tolerance and limits to what we can deal with. My job is on the line because I’ve spent too many sleepless nights worrying about them and too little time trying to keep my sanity. Our relationship is strained. Home has become a source of stress for both of us. If I lose my job, we can’t take care of our own family and will be disqualified to be foster parents anyway.

It took 15 years of bad parenting to get her to this point. We’re not going to change her life in 7 months.

We have just had to file another report on her tonight. She’s a kid who is lost and upset and totally abandoned by the world. The problem is that foster parenting, because of its inherently transient nature, isn’t the place to help someone form a healthier perspective. The stated goal of foster parenting is to reunite families, or to adopt if a family is too unstable. The problem is that with older kids it just isn’t that cut and dry. When you get a kid who has been habitually mistreated, it’s going to be nearly impossible to find a perfect fit. We were maybe about as perfect as it can get. We certainly were going to give her our everything.

It’s just that our everything wasn’t enough.

Parentification

Now at: http://peachstreetmissives.wordpress.com/

I didn’t post last week because I had a mild concussion after hitting my head with a bike rack. It was fairly undignified.

It’s been an up and down week. Two weeks, actually. Grace has been going through medication changes as well as religion changes. She had a rough patch at school and we had to go in for a parent teacher meeting today. It seems that she has dramatic acting out behaviors in her English classes. It doesn't take a psychologist to know that if she’s acting out in her English/Language Arts classes, there might be some kind of issue with the subject matter.

In fact, she is incredibly self-conscious about her reading and writing abilities. She’s actually a fantastic poet with a lot of raw talent, but she thinks she’s stupid. So she acts out in the hope of getting kicked out of class. So far, it’s working.

The real Topic this week is Jill. We’re dealing with an incredible downward spiral with her. For a while, she was receiving in-home intensive therapy, but that stopped after 3 months. At first she was just stable, neither better nor worse. Now she’s rapidly spiraling out of control and mimicking some of the behavior we saw from Joan over the summer.

The big issue is her parentification issues. Parentification happens when roles are reversed, and the child becomes the parent. Many, many people go through this, and it is especially common when parents have some sort of mental illness or addiction problems. The parent puts responsibility on the child for support: emotional, physical or even financial. In Jill’s case, their mom would leave for days or weeks at a time, leaving teen-aged Jill in charge of all the younger siblings. She is also expected to validate or uphold her mother’s emotional needs, sometimes to the exclusion of the other children (especially Grace). This turns into their mother being like a “best friend” person to Jill, pulling her in as a peer rather than a child. This is a very, very confusing role for a teenager.

We recognized the signs straight off, and have made some clear boundaries around what we expect as far as babysitting, caring for Gloria, her role as a child in the house, etc. On the flip side, we expect her to communicate with us, to answer our phone calls when she’s out and to tell us where she’s going and when she’ll be home. These may seem like minimal things, but this is a 17 year old who is used to acting like another adult in the family.

We’ve been informed that her mom has taken every opportunity to tell her that the only reason we want her to stay in foster care is so we can continue to get a check for her. This is, of course, ridiculous. Foster parenting is not a profitable gig. But anyway, that’s what she’s telling Jill, while Grace is saying that she thinks the only reason her mom wants her back is for the same reason- the checks that come with under 18 year old kids. We're doing our best to make non-committal noises whenever this comes up and generally trying to not get sucked into the drama. 

The other half of that is the long standing family dynamic between Jill and Grace is that Grace is the “dumb one” and the “crazy one” and it’s safe to blame all mishaps or broken dishes on her. Grace has actually been left behind when the family have gone on trips. She is laughed at, ridiculed, teased and told that she is a “bad kid” by her family. They have all learned that she is the one to make fun of.

But here that’s all changed. They are both getting support and love.  This is a role change that Jill is having difficulty with.

Jill, on the other hand, has mostly locked herself in her room. She has developed actual hypochondria and won’t take any of the medication for a significant health problem she has developed. In the last month she went from being sulky to being downright hostile towards us.

She has been offered a Board Extension  which would ostensibly extend her time in foster care to age 21. She would be eligible for an Independent Living Program, and would get support for school and job placement. She can stay with us or get signed up for another living arrangement. But to get it, she needs to write a letter stating that she wants it and why.

She is stating that she wants to hurry up and finish High School and then go back to live with her mom. So far the most compelling reason I’ve heard for that is she’ll get her own room. She also claims that we favor Grace and “give her whatever she wants and whatever she asks for.” Jill is too depressed and too wrapped in her own drama to see that we do not, in fact, give Grace whatever she wants.

What are the costs of this kind of neglect and abuse? Apparently, rather steep. I try not to project too much on what’s going to happen, but if Jill decides to leave us when she’s 18, there are very few positive outcomes. She is already showing the symptoms of a parentification problem such as a sudden temper and an inability to connect with people in a meaningful way and a total inability to discuss or share her emotions. She’s hoping to go back to the role that she is comfortable in as the sole caretaker for her family, including all her siblings and her mother. There she can be made to feel valued and important, above all others. At the same time, she will be frustrated knowing that she has the potential to do so much more.

Ultimately the decision is hers. We are trying to balance compassion and understanding for her plight with doing what is necessary to keep our home emotionally safe. The art to foster parenting is finding the place where you can support, love, encourage but not get too burned out yourself. I think this is why so many people prefer to foster-to-adopt. It makes sense. It's definitely our next plan. 

We just hope that in a few years, someone will be writing an article like this NY Times article about Jill. 

The emotional made physical

Now at: http://peachstreetmissives.wordpress.com/

I'm totally exhausted and cramming lovely, gingery carbs in my mouth like my life depends on it. It very well might. My ridiculous son will wake me up in about 6 hours, because he doesn't understand about sleeping in. I rode the GIANT cargo bike all over town today.

This is a cargo bike:

Ok, so I wasn't moving furniture, but the baby FEELS like he's as heavy as furniture.

Essentially, it's a bike that can haul a lot of cargo around. This is mainly practical, because we don't have a car. At this point, we don't have a car because of finances more than anything. Try grocery shopping for 5 people on a bus. The bike is better.

I rode all over town (including to one of Philadelphia's finest gems, Smith Memorial Playground) because today was the day that Leonard and our friend Dustin built our deck. This is one of the goals of our fundraiser, which we are running in an effort to make our lives a little more manageable. 

One of the things we didn't really think about before the girls came to live with us was the practical layout and space of our home. We had the bikes living inside, as is common for people in our sub-section of the West Philadelphia community. We have a woodstove that provides most of our heat and a nice, comfy couch that has seen a few too many dogs on it to be totally comfortable. 

Now we suddenly have two extra people who have their own needs, their own space demands, and the kinds of houses that they are accustomed to. This is another reason to consider being a respite parent for a while. You need to suss out what the kids in the age range you're interested in need, and what your home can provide. If you're used to living with your own kids, or maybe you're empty nesters, you'll want to go through a few respite placements just to figure out where the toy box goes or where the couch can expand to to accommodate teenagers and their friends. We knew we were in trouble when we had to figure out where to put their bikes. 

So today was the second step in that process: the deck. 

Before! What the back looked like when we left

After! The amazing transformation when we came home

The big foster parenting thing this weekend was about the battle between the girls. 

In total, there are 9 siblings that share the same mother and father in Jill and Graces' sibling group. There are also 4 additional siblings that share one parent or the other. All of the kids are either in foster care or are now grown and creating children of their own. One of the younger siblings comes to stay with us from time to time for respite because she and her foster mom don't get along. She is trying to stay there because she wants to stay with the even younger twins. So we give everyone a break, and it's usually good. Tara is a generally polite kid, at least in small doses. We've seen things that lead us to believe she can hold her own in the Holy Terror category. 

Because all three of the girls were here, their mom wanted to see them. This is generally something that the girls set up and coordinate on their own, and we know little to nothing about it. This time, however, we got to hear all about it because Grace was furious last night because of some hurtful things her mom said. This is the second time in a row, and about the 20th time altogether that we've heard this from her. 

This leads me to the thing that's been weighing heavily on me. What is the split/balance between foster parent and therapist? While our agency is taking it's sweet time getting her a therapist, I'm walking around with her at night for 2 hours while she dumps on me all of her issues. On the one hand I want to say "I'm happy to do it. I'd love to help her out" while on the other hand, my heart is screaming "noooooo! i need more bleeping time to myself!"

Either way, I ended up walking her around and we got incredibly expensive popsicles. They were delicious. All day she's been really on the ball, really helpful and thoughtful. 

Then we had this conversation:

G: Kitty, I talked to my mom tonight. See, Jill had talked to her and asked her to tell me to call. 

K: Really? Ah. I see. 

G: So I talked to her. I didn't want to at first, and first when she started talking I didn't say nothin. 

K. Mmmmhmmm. 

G. So she said "why you tellin them that I been mean to you. i ain't been mean to you, and i been sad all day". But Kitty, I don't believe her. I don't think she tellin the truth. 

THere was more. She told me the whole conversation, but it goes around in circles. Basically, Grace was looking to me to show her a reaction. How to respond, behave in this situation. I think she handled it very well, actually, by not saying anything and giving the phone back to her sister. 

She was looking at me with her big, brown, innocent eyes. It's remarkable to me sometimes how childlike she can really be. So I told her the truth. 

The truth was that right then, I didn't know what I could or could not say. As a foster parent, I have to keep my own emotions, biases and feelings out of the game there. Clearly, I am upset when I see the girls upset. I obviously have biases that lead me to judge their mom. I try not to, and I try to offset my judging by finding the positive things the girls learned from her and repeating them, almost like a rosary. 

So I told Grace that. I said "I am not saying anything right now because I don't know what to say. I have to be careful, because I don't want what I say to be played into a war between you and your mom. I am going to trust you to do what your instincts tell you is the right thing to do. Last night you had a lot of examples of behaviors that made you feel one way about your mom, but maybe tomorrow you will have a different list. Ultimately the decision is up to you. I trust you to make a good one." 

She stared at her toes for a bit, but I think it made sense to her. And it's all true. I also stated to her that I trust her to make the right decision, and hopefully implied that I'm here to help her if needed. 

I wish I could pass along a similar message to Jill, but I'm afraid she's in a place where she can be the adult to her mom. I think it makes her feel good to provide worldliness to their mom. This almost automatically makes me the bad guy. But i'm honestly fine with that... She'll figure it out soon. 

I'm now so tired I can barely see to spell check. I will try to do a mid-week post this week! 

Fostering Facts #2

Fostering Facts #2

What to expect

Much like starting your own biological family, you are never really ready to be a foster parent. Each kid is different. Each situation is different. You can’t just say “oh, I have 3 rooms, I’ll take 3 kids”. They might not like each other. One of them might need more care and attention than you expected. Or they might all be amazing, and willing to step out of their comfort zone and fit in with your family seamlessly. They might love the food you eat or hate it. You might always have to re-negotiate chores, or not. Things that you never considered might come up. Do you like to have a glass of wine with dinner? Well, maybe one of your foster kids comes from an alcoholic home and seeing you sip that wine or smelling alcohol on your breath triggers them. We’ve had to do months of trust building around that with our two girls, modeling for them what a healthy relationship to alcohol looks like.

The biggest job you can do to prepare for being a foster parent is to set up your support network. If you’re taking in younger kids, who do you have that is willing to get clearances so they can babysit? If you’re taking in older kids, who do you know that can point you in the direction of good after school or summer programs to enrich their lives? If you’re taking in kids from a different race/religious background, who do you know who can talk you through what is expected or needed? You will need people to help you in ways you can’t even imagine, even if it’s just being willing to sit with you and let you vent. Sit down and take inventory. Do these people live close by? Do you know anyone with experience with the system? Start asking. You may be surprised to find that you know someone who was in foster care, or adopted, or had a cousin who was. These people will be worth their weight in gold.

Make sure your support network is diverse. You can’t put all your hopes in your Christian church community only to find that the child you’re bringing into your home is, say, a Hindu. That will feel alienating and disarming to the child. Even if you don’t have any Hindu friends, ensuring that your child is meeting people from a variety of backgrounds will help them to feel less alienated, less obviously an "other." Actively seeking help from their home community is also important. If you don’t know ahead of time what their background is, be willing to put in the time in the first week or two to finding out. You will be thanked.

When we got our girls, we abruptly realized we had no hair care stuff AT ALL in the house. I have a hair brush, which essentially the end of my hair care routine. While I was familiar with the hair needs of African American girls, we weren’t prepared for weave care right out of the box. Fortunately my partner’s sister is mixed race and has a daughter. She quickly threw all of their extra creams, gels, sprays, flat irons, blow dryers and combs into a bag and brought it over. With everything else we were trying to coordinate on top of getting to know these two new people, that was a lifesaver (not to mention a money saver).

Day 1

The training process and clearance process is different from state to state. You’ll have to find that out based on where you are. Essentially, you have to be trained (anywhere from 23 to 40 hours), you have to be legally cleared, and you have to be certified. The agency will delve into every aspect of your life. We had to give letters of reference from family, friends and neighbors to back our claim, and we had to give over our financial statements and tax records. Ostensibly this is to cut down on the number of people who are in it just for the money, but I’m not convinced it works.

When you get a chil through regular foster care, you won’t know ahead of time who’s coming. It’s hard to prepare. You have to just be ready to roll with the punches.

When the child is “placed”, that means they have been put into the care of the state. This can be for a variety of reasons, which I will attempt to tackle in a future post.

In Philadelphia, the agencies are on a rotation. On any given day, different agencies are “on rotation”. The agency at the top of the list has an hour to place a child once the state calls them. They frantically start calling down their list of available parents and you have to answer *right then and there*.

If you have specific criteria, stick to your guns. If you’re doing respite, hold out for respite. If you want girls, don’t be convinced to take a boy. If you want younger kids and they offer you someone a few years above your upper limit, say no. The person calling you will try to talk you into it, and they’ll say all kinds of things to appeal to your better nature. Remember, the agency is only paid by the state depending on the number of kids they have. You, however, are the one who has to live with the kid. 

From there you’re just waiting. It could take them a half an hour or four hours, or even eight or ten hours to move the child. There is usually someone from the state who will bring them to your door. They need to make a visual inspection of the home and confirm that the children are being dropped into a safe environment. If you have a dog, be ready to put them out back and introduce them slowly once the initial chaos is over.

Don’t be surprised if the child wants to spend their first day holed up in their room. They are probably some kind of terrified. Offer them food, invite them to come down and watch TV, but don’t pressure them. Don’t try to make them do anything for at least the first 24 hours.

You may never know about their situation before they came to your house. A lot of that is not disclosed to foster parents for obvious reasons unless it looks like the home will become more permanent.

In our training they recommended not giving them house rules all at once. Saying one or two things like “we always take our shoes off at the door” and “don’t feed the dog from the table” are a good starting point. You can slowly fold out your house rules as you get used to each other. Try to get them to share what they want to eat, and do a few things right off to make them feel comfortable. Do they want to add anything to a grocery list? What kind of movies do they like? Do they play a sport?

Be supportive, but be clear about what you want and don’t want. If your house is one that has a lot of home made meals and lots of healthy fruit and vegetables, get them used to the idea that they won’t be eating processed food everyday. But you have to give in as well- negotiate what kinds of foods you’re willing to let them have on hand, and see if there’s anything that they want to eat that they can make themselves. We have figured out how to make corn dogs, water ice and fried chicken at home. It’s not the ideal of health that I would prefer, but it helps the girls feel more comfortable.

Next installment will talk about the longer term expectations.

Fostering love

This week has been a major blow to our family. Joan, the child we had living with us through a kinship arrangement, was sent to a group home at her court date on Wednesday.

We had an inkling this was coming. She has run away three times and thinks that we're to blame for all of her problems. She has lashed out against us in totally understandable yet dangerous (to her) ways. Mostly, the courts found that with her constant absences and running away, the court can't be sure that she's safe. As that is our A#1 job as foster parents, and we weren't able to do that one piece of it, they decided she needed to be in an environment where they can guarantee her physical safety.

The hard part is the conflicting emotions. On the one hand, we're heartbroken that it's come to this for her. She isn't the kind of kid who will thrive in that environment. On the other hand, it's a relief to not have to stress about her constantly, worrying if she's o.k. or not. We're praying that she gets the help she needs and the kind of therapy that can help her with her emotional issues.

It's hard to know how to continue. Jill and Grace are, it seems, fine with having the stress out of their lives. They have enough on their plates, looking forward to their own very stressful court date in a couple of weeks.

Here's where being a foster parent gets emotionally difficult. It's hard to live with someone, especially a young person who is vulnerable and needs extra love, without getting emotionally invested. We keep repeating to ourselves something like "we're not going to save them all, the choice is theirs to make". But that's hard to do when you see how difficult it is for them to process what's going on. Of course they love their birth family. But they like us too, and enjoy what we can offer. And on some level that feels like a betrayal to them, which can quickly become the "fault" of the foster family.

When you're dealing with older teens, you're looking at the looming 18 year deadline. In most, if not all states foster kids "age-out" at 18. That means that the support that they're getting and the stipend from the state stops. There are mechanisms in place to allow youth who haven't finished high school to stay in the system as long as they are doing well, but those mechanisms usually have a lot of strings attached and sometimes aren't offered to kids who have discipline problems or attendance issues.

So for the majority of foster teens who are still in the system when they turn 18, they have to spend the day after their 18th birthday down at the assistance office applying for Section 8, food stamps, cash assistance, medicaid and any other kinds of subsidies they might be eligible for. They may be spared this if there is a friend or extended family member willing to allow them to stay with them but they are usually expected to find a job or somehow help out financially with the running of the household. Given how difficult it is for any young person to find a job these days, and add to that the general issues with consistency, depression, anxiety, etc that foster youth have, and the outlook starts to be pretty bleak.

In PA there is an option for older youth called "PLC" for Permanent Legal Custody. This is halfway between adoption and foster care. The fostering parents become legal guardians, and the stipend continues to follow the child. The biological family retain parental rights. It's considered a great way for families to continue working towards goals of self-sufficiency without the input from the state or the foster agencies.

In order for this to happen, the youth have to ask for it. It needs to be in place before their 18th birthday.

We have extended the offer to Jill and Grace. Since finding out, their mom has been bending over backwards to show them that she's going to be a good and stable home for them. They are more conflicted and confused than ever, and we totally understand that. The next two weeks promise to be stressful, at least for them. We're trying to internalize the attitude of "we can offer the permanency, and then it's up to them". If we can keep that in our minds and in our hearts, and not take anything they yell at us too personally, we should be able to get through the court date relatively emotionally intact. I'm trying to look at it this way: If this motivates their mom to get her act together, that's ideal. Kids always do better with their birth families, as long as they are stable. If they decide to stay with us, that's great for them too as we will definitely be able to be a stable place for them.

Either way, the outlook should be good for them. We hope.

Of course, there is the risk that they'll go back to their mom's and things won't work out the way they hope they will. But we are absolutely not the people to make the decision for them. They are both old enough to work this out on their own.

We have talked about the different outcomes, Leonard and I. While we intend to always be a resource for the kids we foster, mentor or work with closely, we probably won't try to be "regular" foster parents moving forward. We'll either do respite, where we get the kid for a short period of time and can focus on having fun with them for a week or a weekend, or we'll do adoption only. We'll still focus on older kids, though older kids who come with younger siblings would be ideal.

All in all, this situation promises to be one of those "that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" situations. I'm going to need to do a lot of deep breathing exercises over the next two weeks.

Today is the first day of the rest of our family

Tonight I finally got some time in the "Quiet Room". The baby is asleep, the girls are doing their own thing, Leonard's out with friends. I kept remembering things I needed like my glass of water, the computer cord, etc. I finally got in the room.

I put my water on the table, plugged the fan in, sat down on the recliner. No sooner had my back touched the chair than I heard Jill calling my name
 "Kitttyyyyyyyy"
"Yes honey"
 "Kitty, look. I found more of my books."
"That's great. Are these library books or books you're planning to read?"
"Ima read these when I'm done with the other two. But look, see?" She fanned them out for me to see. Yup, they're books. Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird and Speak. An average High School reading list.
 "That's great, hon. I'm glad you found them. Now I'm going to have a little time in here, ok?"
"Ok Kitty. But you know that if the curtain is open even a little bit it's o.k. to come in and talk to you, right?"

 I didn't know that. Good to know.

 It's been over a week since I've had time alone in our crowded little house. It's a typical three bedroom row home, but downscaled to be around 1,000 square feet. When we decided to become foster parents, we envisioned some younger teens sharing the space in the back room, probably on a respite basis at first and then maybe working towards permanent placement. We imagined that we'd do respite for a while, and then take on the full time gig, and then work our way up to adoption.

That didn't happen. There is some background at this page: youcaring.com/fosterfamilyinneed.  It feels very strange trying to do a fundraising campaign for our family. We generally don't ask for help, sometimes to a fault. But now that we have the girls to take care of, it's clear that we need more help than we thought we would.

It really is different being a foster parent vs. being a biological parent, especially when you bring a kid into your family who's essentially already a fully grown human. Jill is 17 and Grace is 15. They've lived in more homes than they can list, and each been to over 10 schools.

 Schooling is what's on my mind these days. The superintendent just announced that unless $50 million shows up by the end of the day tomorrow, they won't be able to open Philadelphia schools on time. That's crazy making. See, with our son we have the luxury to take some time in the decision making process. We can work on him with early literacy, make sure we're reading to him, make sure he's being talked to using big words all the time. We can take him to enriching museums and events, get him science kits if he's interested in them or toy kitchens or whatever. We can encourage his brain to think and analyze. We can plan whether he'll go to a charter school or a homeschool, or even a private school. We have that luxury.

 With Jill and Grace we absolutely do not have that luxury. Every time a kid moves schools, they loose approximately 6 months of education. They are both functioning way below their age, and one of them is dragging around a woefully outdated IEP to boot. Neither one of them can handle adversity very well. The slightest bit of bad news can spark a days long thunderstorm of moodiness and anger. But now that the schools are slated to open late and understaffed, we have to make some decisions. Leonard will be taking two classes, and otherwise will be home with the baby. But he's got his own schoolwork to manage, not to mention caring for the baby. Does he have time and tools to tutor and work with two kids who need extreme academic support? Probably not. I teach all day, and really would rather not come home to a second shift. Wouldn't it be nice to have a place where they could go and be taught by people who are trained to do this, in rooms full of other kids who are also learning the same things? Oh, right.

 I just saw this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579014773649474290.html

So our broke as a joke city is going to divert the funding into the schools so they can open with a skeleton staff "on time". I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would flee the city to the 'burbs. But the Philadelphia schools have been under State control since 2001, since before these girls were going to school. And if I know PSD hasn't been able to educate them thus far, how am I to trust that they can fix the mess they've made in the next few years? Nope. We gotta get to a better school district. One more thing to worry about.

The good news is that the grey hair is all coming in in one spot. If I'm lucky, I'll get a nice Bride of Frankenstein look going on...