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Thursday I picked up a child to come to my home for respite for the weekend. I wasn’t given full information about this child or she never would have entered my home. She disrupted our entire home until 2:00 AM and enough so that my husband returned her to her parents at 3:30 AM.
I am used to defiant children. That’s not a big deal to me. She also set to trying to get me angry. As she threatened to break a bottle of wine on my floor and I didn’t flinch, then threatened to break my window with the bottle of wine, I still didn’t flinch. I have been through far worse.
I arrived home with this child around 2:45 PM. At 4:00 PM she announced that she had called 911. Not a big deal to me, and I really didn’t believe her anyway. A minute or so later, the phone rang, she picked it up and screamed in the phone. A few seconds later the phone rang back, but I had grabbed our cordless phone and was able to stay on the line with the dispatcher after she screamed and hung up again. I explained what was going on, but the dispatcher, who happens to be a friend of my husband’s and knows the issues we have had with Sammy, sent the police out anyway.
This is more than the child bargained for and it got quite funny when the officers arrived at my house and knew what was going on since they had been to our home a few times for Sammy.
Where it got bad was with Hannah. I am used to the police showing up, but they have not been here since Hannah joined our family. I was concerned about dealing with this child and the police, and didn’t have time to give much thought to how this might affect Hannah. She knew that the police had been to our home for Sammy, and I think she felt a little comforted that her Daddy and I both knew the officers.
I started to see Hannah taking on the respite child’s behaviors at dinner time. I fed the girls sandwiches and fixed myself a vegetarian dinner. I was in the kitchen with them and had my eyes on them the entire time. Hannah is a very slow eater to begin with, and the child was resisting eating the sandwich I had provided, so Hannah started to do the same thing.
The rest of the evening was fairly calm. I got Hannah ready for bed and got her into bed. Next it came time to get the child ready for bed. Things were fine up until I walked her up to her room. I alarm doors in my house, especially when I have a respite child. This girl refused to even enter the room, and began getting dramatically hysterical. She refused to be in the room with the door closed and the alarm on, and I refused to allow her free reign of my house without knowing she was up. All of this was happening outside the bedroom door, which is right across from Hannah’s room. All of this was keeping Hannah awake.
The child finally went in her room and things were fairly quite from 9:00 PM until about 10:45 PM. She then began to scream again when my husband and I went into our room, which butts up against both her and Hannah’s room. She then opened the door, setting off the 90 decibel alarm, waking up Hannah. The drama started again, and the child escalated things, becoming violent, and calling 911 again.
After the officer left, she calmed down for a short time, but we brought Hannah into our bedroom because she was shaken up by the police visits, the noise and the violence. The calm didn’t last long, and at 2:00 AM the police were back out. The decision was made that she would return to her parents. They were not happy with my decision, but my daughter’s safety and mental health were being affected. She was curled up in my lap while I was talking to the officers.
Fortunately for us, we were able to end the chaos by removing this child from our home, but in many homes, they have to live with the chaos day in and day out. It can take a huge toll on the emotionally healthy child. The child can either take on the other child’s poor behaviors, or become traumatized by the complete chaos that the family is in. Many times it comes down to the parents having to choose one child over the other. It is a lose/lose situation any way you slice it.
Having worked in group care I’m all too familiar with finding out the social workers haven’t given all the information about a child. I’ve also seen many occasions where other youth take on the characteristics of the one who’s acting out.
While it never feels good to do sometimes terminating a placement or in this case ending respite early is the absolute best thing a person can do for the good of the other children in the home.
im not yet a foster paretn but i am just now doing my application… i read your blog and i just had a quick question. i saw at the begining you mentioned a mine bottle… is it alright to keep wine in the house with foster children.. my husband is from germany and his grandprents send us some of their local wines from time to time….
thanks
Brooke
Yes, it is perfectly fine. If I were taking in an older child, I would take that into consideration, but it’s never been an issue in our home, and the bottles are within plain sight in our kitchen. We have a baker’s rack with a wine rack on the bottom. We have been through 4 home studies with them there, and not one worker has had an issue with them.
With younger children you might want to keep other bottles of alcohol out of their reach, but wine bottles are not easy to open.