"Visits"

My 2 1/2 year old foster son has gone for "visits" with his birth-mom the last two days. He always comes home sugared up, trinkets in hand. Yesterday, f.s. came home with a balloon. Upon seeing such a treasure, my birth son, 18 days f.s.'s senior, said that next time, HE'LL be going on a visit. Hmm, smart kid.

Yesterday, he came home with a dirty diaper. Today, his diaper was so soaking wet, he wet through his shorts. He was changed just an hour earlier, right before he walked out the door to go to the visit. What are they giving him to drink? One has to wonder -- that's a lot of fluid. Are these DCFS workers sure that the birth mom is the only one who needs supervision here?

It stands to reason. I talked to the new case worker yesterday. This is the third case worker I've dealt with in the last six months. I told her that I wished the birth mom would relinquish her rights, so he can live in a friendly, warm, stable, 2 parent home with siblings and love and opportunity. The case worker admonished me: We cannot compare the situations!

Well, why not? I stomp my foot in disgust. I am so sick of the injustice of it all. He spent the first two years of life neglected in two different foster homes. He came to me at 23 months with practically no vocabulary, totally unresponsive, eating crayons, scared of swings and slides. What did those other people do, leave him in a crib all day with a bottle of milk? That's the way he acts. Case workers don't seem to care about such "little" trespasses against a totally innocent child. He's one of the *lucky* ones, they say. He'll turn out all right. He wasn't beaten; he's not having cigarettes put out on his arms. So we'll not worry.

No! No! No! It IS something to worry about. It's heartbreaking and sad and miserable and pathetic. I want to adopt him and then promptly divorce DCFS.

Funny, I wrote something similar on this topic yesterday, but it never did post. I lost the whole thing. Maybe that was God's way of telling me not to badmouth DCFS and Catholic Charities. Keep it under wraps. Keep it private. Shhh. Don't tell anyone the foster system is a damn disaster. Don't tell anyone that kids would be better off in orphanages. It's a secret.

Yeah, right.

In the meantime, I have to remember the veracity of that song: God is in control. All I can do while I wait for his mom to either get better or have her rights terminated is pray, pray, pray. Pray, yes, and do my best to prepare him for the day he leaves me, be that sooner or later. Oh dear God, let is be later -- much later.