I mentioned in this post about how the RAD magnet had managed to find yet another mom who had been through the mill with tough kids and not had any resources. I was at my first homeschool get-together last week and I met a mom who had adopted a couple of girls twenty years ago. Go figure … I still can’t believe how unlikely it was that I started a conversation with this particular mom.


Her story was way too familiar. Her now early-twenties girls were preschoolers when they were adopted from the state foster care system. The younger one is now pregnant, the older one has three kids already. The younger one just kicked out the father of her baby, but not before telling her mom that “everything was going to be fine, he makes LOTS of money … $800 a month!”


My new friend told me how she had tried to convince social services that the girls had RAD. This would have been even before I started trying to raise awareness of RAD in Kansas in the mid-90’s. Needless to say, this mom was not successful in getting any support in parenting these girls.


As this mom and I were leaving the school building last Friday, we heard a police siren in the background. My new friend looked around and then laughed. She said she always assumes the cops are heading to her house after her numerous encounters with the police chasing after her daughters. That reminded me of one of my experiences …


When my family was dealing with Cindy, the 14-year-old Philippino girl we attempted to add to our family in 1994, running away was one of her preferred approaches to conflict resolution. I clearly remember her running away on Easter Sunday and trying to convince the neighbors she was in dire straits at our home. One day after that I was out walking. As I neared home, it began to lightly rain. As I approached my house, I saw a police car parked on the driveway and my husband and Kyle (who was Beth’s age at that time) talking to the cop. My blood pressure tripled. I immediately assumed Cindy had run away again.


The cop left as I walked up the driveway, smiling and waving at me as he passed. I tersely asked my husband what the problem was now … and he grinned and said the cop simply saw my husband and Kyle playing basketball in the rain and stopped to visit!


There was a time in my life when it would never have occurred to me that a cop would be at my home for any negative reason at all. That period of naivety had long since passed by the time the policeman chatted with my rain-soaked husband and son. Perspective is everything, isn’t it?


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