More Harm Than Good?

Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m doing right by my foster children.  In the beginning, it was easy to see the progress.  We were meeting physical needs- get this child through withdrawals, stop the tremors, figure out how to deal with an infant who doesn’t sleep.  In time, the shaking would stop.  The therapies and appointments would be set in place.  They’d gain weight or reach a developmental milestone.  They’d smile.

You felt like you were really doing something important, but then the days would turn into weeks.  We’d get past the first month.  We’d take a million pictures of the first holiday, and we’d go all out with decorations and presents because I believed it would probably be the first and last we would have together.  But the decorations would come down and presents lose their novelty.  Dresser drawers would fill with winter clothes and eventually be emptied out to make room for summer.  We’d get through the first year, a date which seemed monumentous at the time… monumentous until year number two came and went without any pomp or circumstance.

At some point in the second year, I dropped my guard.  My heart didn’t ache as much from all the uncertainty.  Not much was happening in the case, and being a family was just normal… for everyone.  When enough time has passed, the threat of the rug being pulled out from under your feet dissipates some.  It doesn’t go away entirely, just enough to wake up each day and function in the way I imagine normal families operate, and you start to live your life.  I mean, what’s the alternative?  Living the past couple of years under a dark cloud?  Disrupting the placement before anyone gets too attached?

Yet, I worry about the kids leaving for another family this late in the game.  I even worry about the difficulties of them going home.  Don’t get me wrong.  This is foster care.  I know what my job is.  I know what the goal is.  But it’s been so long.  It’s just been so long.

My foster daughter is a spunky little spitfire.  She’s a constant whirlwind of mischevious activity, and I’m perpetually amazed by her antics and clever thinking.  She’s not much of a talker and her idea of affection is to come up to you and give you a shove while brandishing a sly little smirk.  Yesterday, I took her to a doctor’s appointment, and I saw something I had never seen from her before.  She was laying down on the table getting examined, and she was freaking out.  This fiercely independent little girl was terrified and screaming.  Screaming for me.  Her terror-striken cry and hands clutched tightly onto my coat just killed me because despite what I know (that she’s not my child and I’m not her mom), there’s this visceral bond enforced by years of being the only family she knows.  What do you do with that when they leave?  Do you speak some platitudes at it and hope her connection to us goes away without leaving a scar?  We can’t and would never want to walk away now, but if this is going to end, are we doing more harm than good?  How does she come out of this without serious trauma?

At first we were helping.  Are we still?