Chapter One (Brief Excerpts from Small Feats: The Unsung Accomplishments and Everyday Heroics of Foster and Adoptive Parents.)

Everyday Heroes in Small Towns and in Big Cities

They say that heroes are made, not born. Everyday in small towns and big cities across the country, we see the making of heroes: foster and adoptive parents who meet daily parenting challenges that demand courage. In this chapter we look at the unsung accomplishments and everyday heroism of "parents in the trenches." Picture Sylvester Stallone with a diaper bag. Charlie's Angels with a Medicaid card.

Foster and adoptive parents grapple with feelings of isolation and aloneness, sometimes living at great distances from support systems. They cope with children who not only drain them emotionally but also endanger the health and safety of their families. They love children who seem bent on making themselves unlovable. Foster and adoptive parents must find ways to protect children who engage in high-risk behaviors and to contend with children who isolate themselves from others. Foster and adoptive parents provide comfort to children who are fearful, emotionally traumatized, physically scarred and for whom learning and functioning are in an uphill battle. They help children who do not know how to identify what they need or ask for what they want. Not only do these parents place themselves at risk, but they ask others in the home to live with a certain level of danger. Foster and adoptive parents courageously take on the "throw away" children whom others have given up on, who are deemed un-adoptable, or who are described as "institutionalized." They have to endure some professionals and agencies who devalue their input. Some of these parents are viewed by their foster and adoptive children as prison wardens, or kidnappers, while abusive past parent figures are idealized. Foster and adoptive parents have the moxie to parent in public under public scrutiny. There is a special courage demonstrated by foster and adoptive mothers who must contend with children who target them with a mixture of love and hate, insatiable neediness and undeserved anger. These everyday heroes are the ones "in the trenches." Let me tell you about them.

Poop in the Hair

Woody Allen, a comedian and adoptive father, once related his solution to being held up or mugged in New York City's Central Park. "Throw up on your money... Who wants your money now?" Money be-fouled in this way is very unattractive money!

Many disturbed foster and adoptive children find ways of figuratively vomiting on themselves. They foul themselves in ways that make them unattractive to others. Their behavior has a deterrent quality to it. The child who wets his bed, for example, may do so to keep others out of his "stinky" bedroom.

An adoptive mother complained once to me that her school-aged daughter came to the breakfast table each morning with her hair perfectly coiffed, each hair standing in place. "What are you complaining about?" I asked. She explained that her daughter's hair was styled with fecal matter! What would this tell us about the child's past? What does this communicate?

The adoptive mother's comment later in the interview spoke volumes about the problem behavior's objective: "You don't want to be downwind from this child!" Her daughter's obnoxious behavior carried a deterrent effect. Who would kiss her on the forehead at the breakfast table? Who would approach her at a time like that?

Dealing with children who make themselves repulsive requires a stubborn courage to hang in there until the repulsiveness goes away. Some children wake up each day with a stiff arm directed straight to the jaw of the foster or adoptive parents. Staying the course with such children, those who make themselves unlovable, takes an act of courage and faith.

Needles and Pins

An adoptive family approached me with a terrible and terrifying question. "Will our adopted son, Trent, kill our unborn baby?" It was one of the most unusual and frightening questions I'd ever been asked. Why would they ask such an ominous question? What could have raised this question in the minds of two adoptive parents?

The Smiths had adopted their seven-year-old son from a third-world orphanage. Prior to placement in that institution, Trent had lived on the streets for a year-homeless, hungry, victimized. Once in the facility, his physical condition improved, but he was further sexually exploited by older children. By the time he was rescued by the Smiths, Trent had suffered chronically at the hands of an unfeeling world.

The Smiths said that for the most part Trent was fairly easy to incorporate into the family, in spite of language barriers, culture-shock, etc. But about three months after his arrival, the family pet, a beautiful, loving dog named Sport, began limping, snarling and snapping at people. A trip to the veterinarian resulted in a horrific discovery: Sport's paws had been jabbed with needles and pins. Who would have done such a cruel, sadistic thing to such a loving creature? And, why?

As you may have guessed, Trent was the perpetrator of this outrage against the family pet. Evidently, Trent had grown insanely jealous of Sport and the pet's special place in the family. While Trent had struggled to exist on the streets and in the orphanage, Sport had been undoubtedly enjoying a cushy, loving existence. Indeed, it was Trent who had experienced a "dog's life" so to speak. For this boy, the contrast between the pet's lucky-from-day-one-life and Trent's only-lucky-lately-life was obvious and another source of embitterment.

Also related to the targeting of this dog was Trent's strict adherence to a non-confrontational relationship toward the adult world. His anger was never manifest to larger individuals. He never quarreled with his parents. No word of complaint was ever uttered. Instead anger was apparently stuffed, withheld, and secreted away, only emerging toward safe targets, such as smaller children and, of course, the undeserving, innocent Sport.

Courage, bravery, and heroics are not only the domain of foster and adoptive parents. Other children-and pets-in the home are often called upon to live bravely with a certain degree of fear, threat, and sometimes injury. Foster and adoptive parents are often called upon to elicit secret negative feelings from children who fear them. The hope is that children will discontinue hiding those feelings and realize they can safely vocalize them to their foster and adoptive parents. This demands the courage to permit and invite the vocalization of the previously silent, secret feelings of victimized childrenäTo be continuedä

(Next month look for brief excerpts from Chapter Two about the secret language of problem behaviors.)