Tag: Mental Health

First Year Anniversary… DOH!

HomerStranglesBart1This month is the first anniversary for my blog and while I feel like I should be writing about something exciting… I’m not. If you’ve read my blog, you would know that I am a foster parent, but for children that are forced to take medicine that most of them don’t need because they have been “diagnosed” with ADHD, ODD, conduct disorder, attachment disorder, and the list goes on… In a nutshell, some type of behavior and or mental health issues.

I’ll try to make this short. I’m currently preparing for my foster daughter, we’ll call her Tammy, to be replaced or removed from my home. I’ve cared for her for over a year and a half and had been contemplating for months about whether I should provide Permanent Legal Custody (PLC)  for her, if needed. PLC is almost like adoption, but parental rights aren’t always terminated with PLC.

Over the past year and a half, Tammy has been suspended from school 18 times, still not sure how that was allowed without further action. (Philadelphia School District)  Tammy has destroyed classrooms, fought teachers and other school staff, spit on officers, and carried to our local police district. Tammy never directly disrespected me. I appreciated that, especially given a very opposite history with previous foster parents.  I told Tammy, as long as she was willing to work with me, I was prepared to work with her. She is 15, and needs to know the unfiltered truth. I couldn’t help with HER issues, alone.

During the past summer, I noticed that Tammy’s behaviors began to escalate and filter into our home, which was new. She began smoking weed, staying out overnight without notice, which all seemed like semi-normal teenage rebellion?  But the disrespect became more blatant and more frequent. Everyone has limitations.

8:30 am on October 3rd, Tammy’s boyfriends’ cousin rang the door bell 2 seconds before I left for work. After a conversation with her, contemplating about PLC with Tammy jumped out the window. To say the least, I found out that Tammy makes me appear to be a pretty bad person, she was sneaking her boyfriend through my second floor bathroom window, yes he was scaling the back of my house at night, and yup! She’s pregnant! did I ever mention I don’t do mommy/baby placements? I put in my notice with the agency that same day.

For an agency that provided little to no support for Tammy or myself, I thought now that the shit hit the fan, they would try to make a right move.  Nope, Nothing, thought wrong. In 3 days, my 30 day notice will expire, they still haven’t found another placement for her.  I had to send an email stating that on the 31st day I will be taking her belongings to the agency because I’m not allowing her to stay past 30 days.

I know some may say, how can you be so cruel?? My response is, you give it a try. I did, and I gave everything I could! You can’t help everybody. While this placement didn’t work out, I still have high expectations for my girls, and continue to wish Tammy all the best with or without me.  I don’t think she will receive what I have to say to her at this point, so I wrote her a poem. I plan to slip it in her luggage before she leaves…

America…Son of a Gun

american-gun-gerard-yates

In Lieu of the recent tragic shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, I thought Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine (2002)” to be an appropriate documentary to share for those who missed it.

Synopsis

A look at America’s love affair with firearms and the pathology of violence in the United States, which as a country, has the highest gun-murder rate in the world. The question of why Canada–with 7 million guns for its total of 10 million households–doesn’t suffer from the same horrific gun violence, that its large neighbor to the south experiences, is examined.

I think Chris Rock said it best. “ If a bullet cost $5,000 there wouldn’t be anymore innocent bystanders”-Chris Rock

What I’ve learned as an adult: The media is good for four things, promoting fear, panic, anxiety and encouraging delusions of grandeur. Seriously who doesn’t want to be prepared to battle Magneto or be the last one standing after the zombie apocalypse?!

Moore points out that Canada, with an estimated ten million homes in 2002, seven million of which had fire arms, but still the homicide rate per year was less than 10% of America’s. The second amendment to the U.S. constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes. I for one, am in favor of one being able to do so, but what about the 27 innocent lives that were taken at Sandy Hook, the 12 lives in the Colorado theater shooting, or the 13 lives lost in the Columbine shooting and countless others? The shooters are said to have mental health issues. What constitutes mental health?…Or lack there of…

I would have to agree with James Taylor when he stated in his book “Secret O’ Life (1977)” “Even though many of us don’t suffer from a diagnosable  mental disorder, it is clear that some of us are mentally healthier than others. Taylor mentioned 1) “The secret of life is enjoying the passing of time. The ability to enjoy life is essential to good mental health.” 2) “Resilience; having the ability to bounce back from an adverse situation.” He also mentioned  “some people often set themselves up for added stress by the rigid expectations that they hold. Working on making our expectations more flexible can improve our mental health.” There is no destination for mental health, it’s a journey that requires constant reflection and self actualization. There are many variables that define mental health, these are just a few at the top of my list that Taylor used to do so.

We have to invest in our future generation. It is predicted by The World Health Organization (WHO) that by 2030 more people will suffer with depression than any other health problem.  We have some children that are genetically predisposed to mental illness, in which we know to watch for, but we also have children in our lives that are suffering in silence for various reasons, scared into conforming to “societal norms” and continuing to fold under significant peer pressures. Even when we agree to disagree, its important that we teach our children that its ok to be/feel and have experienced differently whether we are accepting or just tolerating…I was once told that silence is what makes trauma so traumatizing. Get in tune with our children, with ourselves. Don’t let trauma drown you from the inside out, it should never literally mean the end of the world for anyone.

Here’s an intersting article I read this morning from the Huffington Post: “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother”

R.I.P to all the innocent lives taken in these tragic incidences.