A Response -- Who am I?

If you don't mind, I had a few questions. How old are you? What do you do for a living? You said you worked with teens, but in what capacity? You say "we" — are you married?

Crayon -- I don't mind you asking questions, but, my answers may not be too satisfactory.

Although I enjoy interacting with people online and have had friends in my life whom I've initially met in the strangest places (on a Subway platform in a large city, on a bus in a foreign country, etc.), I can be very reserved about the sharing of specific details.

So, I am old enough that I could have had my own 15 yr old and young enough that I still dream of possibly succeeding in my quest for bio-kids.

I am married and we said to each other numerous times this weekend that we didn't know how single parents could survive. There were two of us and we involved outside emergency personnel as well but we're still absolutely exhausted. I am thankful for my partner on a daily basis -- I'd just about given up on love when I finally found it right in front of me.

I work with teens in a variety of contexts. I've gathered significant work experience with kids aged grade 6 - 12 and limited experience with kids in grades 1 - 5 and undergraduates. Right now I work predominantly with (about 100) 11-17 year olds.

Thank You

I appreciate the sentiments. We do seem to be getting the same message from everyone we talk to. So, logically, I believe that I did everything I could. But, it's still emotionally very challenging. I get it...a 15 yr old who doesn't want to be somewhere can really do a lot of damage and cannot really be forced to stay.

I was surprised by how calm I managed to be within the midst of it all -- I would have expected myself to react more. But, somehow I just kept saying, "I will not be the next person to reject this hurt child." Sadly, in the end, not being rejected was something she couldn't handle.

Thank you for the additional support.

Working with teens is always hard, but, fostering them is apparently going to require a new level of expertise. Hopefully, our next placement will go better.

Did I Fail?

I have so much to say and so little I probably can say in this forum.

The crux is that A asked to leave after discovering that she couldn't convince us to kick her out with escalating behaviour.

So, on the one hand, I feel like I did well because I passed the tests and didn't reject her despite some pretty extreme attempts to force us to. On the other hand, I feel like I failed because she's gone and it appears that the behavioural escalation wasn't really a test, but, rather an illogical approach to getting what she wanted.

I also can't help but feel that it was a tip of the iceberg scream for help and I don't know if she's going to get that help now that she's gone back to a place where they invest less direct energy into caring specifically for her.

Oh God!

So many things to say and so lacking in a way to say them.

In short:
- I totally get why people like to start with infants and why it's hard to find foster homes for teens.
- I feel rather lied to about A's history and completely not supported by the system that told us we were getting into a shared parenting experience.
- We've said (many, many times) that we will NOT kick her out, but, she can choose to ask to leave. But, my goodness it's challenging to keep saying the same thing and just keep absorbing more and more problematic behaviours.
- So many bad decisions in such a short period of time and such extreme behaviour that I'm completely out of my depth.
- Exhausted because we decided that we couldn't allow ourselves to both be asleep at the same time.

Feeling Better Today

I think there are still issues and I don't really feel like we've solved anything. But, I'm feeling better and more confident today.

I hate confrontation and getting started with it all felt really hard. But, the reality is that we are expressing concern, telling her we care, etc.

She responded to things by doing more homework last night than I'd seen in a week. Let's hope my confidence lasts through the next issue/test.

Longer than a comment should have been...became a post

Thanks for the response.

Sadly, in our jurisdiction, truancy is now ENTIRELY the parents' problem. The schools are required to have a certain number of teaching hours, but, the students are not required to attend. However, if they don't attend, they don't pass and the parents have failed to fulfill their responsibility of getting them there. (I.e. I can't pass it back to the school and truancy officers.) I can email the social worker (whom I believe wouldn't appreciate a skip-day) and try to make her get involved. There are also supposed to be people she can refer us to...in fact we were told that the referral had been made, but, we haven't heard from anyone.

I do agree with you about the control issue, though. We've tried very hard to give her lots of control over things, but, she's having a hard time seeing it. I think if I were to do it all again (which I'm sure I will someday) I'd start with more rules so that it would be easier to relax them. Instead, I feel like we have to pull them in...after all, when we said that she could be in control of things we qualified that she had to make sure school happened.

I do like the idea of thinking of chores as something to earn though.

And, I think that the planned skip day (perhaps with my DW since my work would not appreciate it) would likely scare her into wanting to go to school. (She's not such a big fan of spending time with us -- she'd like to ignore our presence.)

She says she likes the cat, but, she's been ignoring him tonight too.

Info In

Two missed classes -- an entire afternoon skipped.

Me: Why weren't you in school?
A:
Me: Where were you?
A: Around.

I said more while she avoided looking at me and tried to ignore that I was talking.

Is anybody reading? What do I do? How do I make someone (who says that they like school) go to school?