I mentioned in the first installment of this series how I had seen a few families who did want to “dump and run.” There was the woman I spoke to who had a gypsy daughter from Romania. I offered to have her come to my house and stay for a few days while we evaluated her daughter’s issues together. She showed up on my doorstep with her entire family in tow… husband and two birth kids, and one very squirrelly child. They didn’t pay a nickel for food or toiletries. Mom wigged out completely when the child ran off and I called
the cops… so I was babysitting mom as much or more than the child. After three very long days, they went home… But they called the ADN line and my cell phone over a dozen times a day for another 4 days! Abruptly, the calls stopped… and it was soon after that I learned they had put the child on a plane for parts unknown, to some unknown family, found on the Internet. So much for my efforts to help them develop a plan to parent this child. Apparently when the girl “ate a pillow” she quickly wore out her welcome in her new placement, and returned home to her “family”. Not sure what happened after that. Truly, that was one mom I could have done without…


One of my first respite kids was also from Romania. Somehow the dad found out about me, and he called me first. I clearly remember spending an hour one evening talking to this quiet, beaten-down man. He was scoping me out before putting his wife through one more conversation where she was blamed. Apparently he found my answers appropriate, because he concluded our conversation by asking if his wife could call me the next day? I said “Of course!”


Sure enough, she phoned around noon the next day. She didn’t have a dozen words out of her mouth before she was in tears. Very quickly, plans were made for her to bring the boy that weekend for respite. When she arrived Saturday morning, she had a few of his clothes in a paper bag, and his considerable supply of meds. She and her husband returned Sunday afternoon to pick him up. Since he was my first respite child, I didn’t know to prepare them for the inevitable backlash of respite. The boy pushed so many buttons before they even made the hour’s drive home that the mom called me, begging to bring him back immediately. I agreed, and when she left him the second time, she left only his meds… she was so distraught she couldn’t think at all. He stayed 4 days and then left from our home to enter a period of residential placement.


After a therapeutic intensive followed by a period of therapeutic respite care, he returned home. Sadly, he eventually disrupted. Although mom tried unbelievably hard to insure that whoever adopted this child had the facts beforehand, she was effectively undermined by her agency and their attorney. They “marketed” this child as being fine—the family was the problem. I know this for a fact, because I was one of the folks they called, hoping I would help them network to find a placement for this child. Since I knew the situation, I knew the family was not the problem. Last I heard, the child was placed elsewhere in the same state, no doubt to a family who had no clue what they were getting in this “cute” 7-8 year old boy… That was in the mid to late 90's.

To be continued…