Sometimes this is really hard...

Sometimes this parent stuff is hard and sometimes this fosterparenting stuff is really difficult. It's so much harder than parenting your own children...at least with your own you get to start them off with love, affection, discipline, you get to start your own foundation and grow from there...you're not picking up years later and trying to establish right and wrong and other things with a child that has already had a different way of life than what you think is best and whatnot.

Parenting Little J is very hard sometimes. She's oppositionally defiant...everything is a temper tantrum and not just any run of the mill temper tantrum, no...she tears her clothes up, bites herself, pulls her hair out, and plays the "I guess nobody cares about me" card. I've started anticipating her behaviors when I have to ask her to do something as it's not pretty, but yet I can't just give in to her either. And she learns stuff so slowly that we're really starting to think that something is not right with her cognitive development. I just don't know anymore, but she just doesn't comprehend things that she should.

Anyway, yesterday the boys fought their naps all day long and once I got the girls from school, I put them down for a nap. They finally fell asleep and so I told the girls that while they were watching tv and the boys were napping that I was going to go upstairs and take a quick 10 minute shower. I was almost done in the shower when I hear one of the girls banging on the door and Little J yelling "Deidra slapped me." I throw a couple towels around me and go answer the door and find Deidra crying hysterically that Little J attacked her. I ask her where Little J is and she said she was hiding under her bed. I pulled Deidra in the bedroom and put her up on the bed to get her to calm down and explain to me what happened. Apparently they were watching tv, Little J started saying obnoxious things and kept telling Deidra "duh" and Deidra asked her to stop being so mean. Little J proceeded to get in her face and her personal space and Deidra asked her again to go away and to stop it. She didn't quit and Deidra got really aggravated and slapped her forearm. That in turn caused Little J to scrape her arm with her fingernails and she went and pulled a metal sticker off of the Home Depot stool that Deidra had did in the children's workshop and proceeded to scrape Deidra on the left side of her chest and shoulder area with it over and over. Thankfully no skin was broken, but she was quite red. Anyway, I finally got her calmed down enough to go talk to Little J. Surprisingly I was really calm, but I let her know very firmly that she could have hurt Deidra very badly and that wasn't acceptable at all. Immediately, she started crying "you just don't care about me." I told her that wasn't true at all and she knows that, but I can't have her attacking the children in the home like that either. She told me she just wanted to go back home to where she got tooken away. I told her that I understand that she is angry about that, but that she wasn't going to take that anger out on the other children here. She said "well, Deidra slapped me." I let her know that I wasn't happy with Deidra for doing that either, but there were no marks on Little J at all and she really could have hurt Deidra seriously. A metal square sticker that doesn't bed when you touch it could do serious damage. As a matter of fact, I think I may write to Home Depot and tell them to come up with something else for the children's project stickers to put on their wooden items so something like this doesn't happen to anyone else.

Anyway, she cried at me for a long while about how we just didn't care about her and I kept telling her that I did care about her or we wouldn't have opened our home to her. I let her know that from now on for awhile she's not leaving my line of sight. She's not going to get to play outside with the neighbors or outside in the front yard. And if I have to go upstairs she's coming with me and if I have to go to the bathroom, she's going to sit right outside the door and talk to me while I'm in there as I can't trust her behavior. I also asked our caseworker to come over and talk to her. She thought the same thing that I did...she doesn't see that she did anything wrong and she shows no remorse for it. But, we both agree that she needs to be supervised more closely and things are going to be hard for her for awhile. And I think if anything even remotely happens that could hurt anyone again, I won't hesitate to have her moved. I feel bad doing that to her as she's already on her 2nd foster home here since the end of August, but I just can't jeaopardize Deidra or any of the other children here. My caseworker did let me know too that because of the potential serious incident and the fact that Deidra could have been seriously hurt, she had to make a report to the CPS hotline as well. That had Andy and I worried for awhile, but she told me not to worry about it. I'm feeling a lot better about things now. Strangely after that all happened, the girls were getting along really well and they were getting along well this morning before school.