Stuff keeps happening

It's been busy around here. Lots of drama. I should have posted earlier, but damn, I've been kinda overwhelmed.

Let's start with Sproing, because his drama just culminated today. I'll start from the end; today he went before the family court judge (where Dept. of Juvenile Justice cases are heard) for a probation violation hearing and was sentenced to further probation until he is 18 years old (January of 2016) and remanded to kiddie jail. He will be at the evaluation center/holding tank until a bed opens in an alternate placement. There are many of them around the state. Some are wilderness camp-type places, some with more of a military philosophy, and I'm not sure what all else. He will be at the eventual placement until he meets that facility's requirements for completion. As I understand it, each program has a certain level of accomplishment, like a number of points or something, that he has to reach to be considered acceptable for release. You know, until he has rehabilitated himself. Or something.

The kid has been incorrigible for months. He is failing all of his classes, refuses to cooperate or do any classwork in his English class and I guess is just lazy in his other classes. He actively despises his English teacher. She expects him to participate in class and do his work, heaven forbid. He has been suspended 14 days in the first nine weeks, so even in the couple of classes he was (barely) passing he has now fallen so far behind that it's overwhelming trying to catch up.

Sproing argues with us almost constantly. "What you fail to understand..." is his opening statement. We don't understand anything, evidently. He has responsibilities and obligations that he isn't meeting, but it's never his fault.

About three weeks ago Superman was out of the country on a business trip. The Tuesday he was gone Sproing and Diva got into an argument that turned violent. He hit her a few times, she threw half of our living room at him, piece at a time. Threw a side table at him, breaking the table and traumatizing the poor dog. She grabbed full drawers out of a plastic case thingie that had some of my craft supplies in it, and hurled the drawers at him, still full of stuff. There was craft detritus strewn all across the living room. I tried as much as possible to stay out of their way, as I had no desire to get hit. I told them to go to their rooms and calm down, which advice was of course ignored. I was in my room and Diva came in, hysterical. She locked the door behind her and Sproing banged on it, demanding to be let in. He's in a rage. You think we want him in here? Hell no! But he kicked the door in. So now not only are their bedroom doors broken and nearly ruined, mine is damaged too. The little fuckers.

There is a little bit more I want to say about Sproing's anger and argumentative spirit, but I'll go into Diva's drama first because his relates to hers.

Diva successfully contacted her birth mother. Through Facebork. A couple of months ago she found her mother's Facebork page and sent a friend request. Her mother, Janice, evidently doesn't check Facebork very often and only saw the friend request a couple of weeks ago, at which point she accepted Diva's request and was thrilled to be back in touch. The feeling was mutual. Janice has seven children, Diva being her second. Janice also has a double fist full of siblings, correspondingly large numbers of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Everyone was super excited about finding Diva. The first day they connected, one of Janice's sisters drove down here (an hour+ drive) that evening. The next day Janice came down with all of her younger children to see Diva. Was it that weekend or the next, I don't remember exactly, that Diva went to spend the weekend with her birth family? She's spent every weekend since with them. Last weekend she met her birth father for the first time. I overheard her talking to her father on the phone last night. She called him "Daddy" and she calls Janice "Mom." Interesting, in that she calls me and Superman "Mom" and "Dad" respectively. Sounds confusing.

Anyway, lots of big drama. Janice's family is kinda ... high maintenance from a drama drama drama standpoint. And it turns out that one of the assistant principals at Diva's high school is distantly related to her. She (the principal) was married to Diva's uncle once upon a time. I've had a couple of good discussions with said principal, and she tells me to be careful when engaging with that family. Drama, drama, drama. So far, and it's been maybe three weeks, things seem to be OK.

I am genuinely happy for Diva that she has connected with her birth family. This is something she's wanted for a very long time. I'm happy for Janice, too, because she eventually regretted placing Diva for adoption. It was the only choice she could see at the time, and did it in part (as I understand it) to prevent children's services from taking custody of her two children. So she gave Diva a good home (theoretically) and was able to parent her older son. Then she had five more children (two more girls and three boys) to make up for? replace? the one she'd released for adoption. I don't know. The whole thing is much more complicated than that, but I suspect that's one element.

As I said, things are going well so far. It's the honeymoon period, and Diva does honeymoons very well. I think Janice hasn't told her "no" about anything significant yet, or hasn't made any demands of her that Diva doesn't agree with. When that happens, oh boy, watch out. It'll get dramatic, I suspect. The first weekend Diva was with them, they bought her quite a few clothes and pairs of shoes. So Diva thinks they're heaven sent. Last weekend her birth-daddy gave her a cell phone. (We gave her a phone a couple of years ago and she immediately started sexting with much older guys, ranging in age from late teens to early 30s. Nekkid pictures were traded, meetings were set up. We took her phone away. After a few months we tried again, and the same thing happened. Repeat. So she doesn't have a phone from us anymore.) Right now they are spoiling her. This is the set-up. Soon they will expect things from her, things she isn't willing to do or provide. That's how I see this mess working out.

If you've read this blog for any time at all, you are aware of Diva's explosive disposition. She comes by her demeanor and personality honestly. The nut doesn't fall far from the tree, as the saying goes. So as, um, dramatic as she is, I expect similar behavior from the rest of her family. This has the potential to blow up. I hope it doesn't, but I'm expecting fireworks.

I don't really know how I feel about the whole reunion with the birth family. As I said, I'm happy for the girl and the family, but for myself? I'm not sure. In a way it's threatening, but at the same time something of a relief. We have had Diva for close to 16 years, through ups and downs. More recently things have been very difficult. If she wants to hang with her birth family and show them how bloody difficult she is, more power to her. Then I expect they'll blame us for her waywardness, but whatever. I'm almost past caring. The thing is, I really do care about her. I love her. I don't like her very much most days, but I always love her. I want what's best for her, and often I am not sure just what is best for her. Or for Sproing, either. He's in jail now. I hope he does well, learns important lessons from the experience, grows into the responsible young man I know he can be.

Diva reconnecting with her birth family has raised some issues with Sproing. All of a sudden he was asking about his birth family. Unfortunately we don't have much information for him. His was a closed adoption, so we don't even know his birth mom's name. We have records, court documents, etc. but her name is blanked out. I showed him what we have and he got very angry. He accused us of hiding things from him, for lying to him for 16 years. WTF? He hasn't even been curious about his birth family, hardly. Every so often he'll ask a general question, but he's never had the burning desire for contact that Diva has. I don't lie to the kids. OK, sometimes I may fudge the truth a little, or leave out a few details, but never do I tell big lies.

I understand that Sproing is angry. I think he feels neglected, left out, ignored. Or maybe he thinks we're taking advantage of him or something. I don't know, and he won't talk to me. He won't open up to me and let me know how he feels about anything. I try to start conversations with him, totally open and nonthreatening, but he immediately goes on the defensive. And he gets angry so very quickly. As I said, it's arguments every day for hours, if I keep engaging him. I tell him that we don't agree so there's nothing more to discuss, but he won't drop it then, he wants to keep yelling at me. Wears me out.

Diva will turn 17 one month from today (the 4th) (Happy election day). At that age she no longer is compelled to stay at home. If she runs away before she's 17, law enforcement can haul her back home. Once she turns 17 she's allowed by law to leave home. One month. By a show of hands, how many think she'll move in with her birth family in a month? She has been threatening/promising for months (a year or more, maybe even) to move away, in with friends once she turns 17. Now that the birth family is so eager and willing to have her as part of their lives, it's a real possibility she'll move there. Will that be a good thing? I don't know. Will she choose to do so? I don't know. To her benefit, Janice encourages Diva to finish school. Janice never did. She dropped out very early, getting pregnant at age 13 or 14. Janice wants Diva to get her high school diploma. I'm grateful for the encouragement. Janice also tells Diva to respect us as her adoptive parents. I like this. Will Diva listen? I don't know. Diva has a pretty strong opinion of us, and it isn't positive.

Diva will have to come to terms with her birth family on her own, learn about them, how to deal with them, how to not be overwhelmed by them. I don't know how long that might take, if she ever succeeds. I wish her luck.

Atrocious sacrifices

Cooper has a lovely new post today about paying tribute to his sons' birth mother. That post and some of its comments inspired me to say this.

I am the mother of two adopted children, and worked as a foster parent for a few years before adopting my two kidlets. In my experience as a foster parent I saw a variety of situations with birth families. Many times the father (sperm donor) didn't give a sh!t about his children and ignored the fact that he had any. This was the case for the two males who fathered my adopted children. Many of the mothers were very young and had no clue and/or no resources for raising kids. Some were selfish, not willing to make the sacrifices required to raise children.

In the case of my son Sproing, I'm not real sure about his mother. She released him for adoption as soon as he was born, and we got him straight from the hospital when he was 4 days old. She was somewhat older, 36 when he was born. A nurse, she already had a 7 year old child she was raising, and was unmarried/un-partnered. Her beloved mother died after a long degenerative illness the day before she had the cesarean section giving birth to Sproing. I think she wasn’t emotionally capable to parent him, and I admire her willingness to see that and take steps to find him a family who wanted him. The sperm donor was a man in his late 50s or 60s who had no interest in her beyond sex and certainly no interest in his child. I never actually met either one of them. I got this information from the attorneys and the court records we saw at the time of the adoption.

My daughter Diva’s birth mother was only 16 when her baby girl was born. She also had an older child, a boy age 2 or 3. She pretended to parent my daughter for a year. We got the baby at 14 months old. Mama and the baby’s father were living together until he beat the crap out of her (the mother, not my baby). Papa ended up in jail for the abuse. Mama and the two babies were in a homeless shelter. I met the birth mother. She was ape-shit crazy, and totally unfit to parent. She was wise (?) enough to place the baby for adoption before protective services took the baby from her. That way mama had at least a little bit of say in what happened to the child. I also met my daughter’s maternal grandmother. Ape-shit crazy runs in the family.

Unfortunately the insanity is at least partially inherited. We’ve been having some trouble with Diva and took her for psychiatric evaluation. I mentioned this in a previous post maybe 2 weeks ago. The test results are interesting in a frightening way. The scariest thing in the report, to me anyway, is the doctor’s suspicion that she may be pre-schizoid. The child has an active fantasy life and has trouble differentiating between truth and fantasy. Her ability to read social cues is hampered. She is willing to do almost anything to gain favor with someone she wants to befriend. Her judgment about what makes a good friend is distorted. Did your mother ever say “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” Diva would probably follow a friend over the edge of a cliff. I’m afraid she might do exactly that some day in a metaphorical sense.