As of July 2015, there were more than 54,000 children in
foster care in California, nearly 3,000 of those in San Diego County. Those numbers have gone down substantially
over the last 10 years. Of those
children, just more than 35% were placed with relatives in October 2015, the
largest placement type. The goal is that
100% of children who cannot stay with their parents are placed with relatives
because it causes less stress than placements with strangers, children move
less and stay longer with relatives, and reunification with parents is more
likely when children are placed with relatives. The 35% of relative caregivers represents
sustained effort on the part of child welfare to place children in the least
restrict and least traumatic environments.
Since more children are being placed with relatives including
grandparents, case managers have had to learn how to work with relative
caregivers. Since more children are
being placed with grandparents, more children are being adopted by their
relatives or grandparents if they cannot be reunited with their parents. We can say that grandparents have been
raising their grandkids formally and informally since forever, with or without
the child welfare system. You may be the largest number of caregivers. But that does not keep you from feeling
isolated or separated from the rest of society, even from other foster parents
who may be younger or adopting for different reasons. That’s why developing and maintaining your
connections to each other and this community is so important for you and the
children you are parenting. The central issues we face on this journey include
grief and loss, stage of life, parenting traumatized children, and developing a
positive view of the future.
Grief and Loss
Grief and
loss comes in many forms and from many places in raising our relatives. It is a
subject that is difficult to discuss for many but one that we must
address. No one is immune from grief and
loss in this process; not you as a grandparent or relative caregiver taking in
a child or children not born to you, not your children or the biological parents
from whom the child was removed because of abuse, and certainly not your child
who has lost both parents and homes but, like you, faces the adjustment to a
different life with different parents.
Starting with you, there’s the shock and sometimes denial of having the
children you raised sidelined by mental illness, substance abuse, or domestic
violence to the point that their children are injured and need to be removed
for their protection. There’s the anger
and guilt of having investigators and case managers asking questions about your
family, challenging your parenting, and sometimes placing your grandchildren
with strange foster parents in a system that is scary and confusing. There’s the sadness and even depression of
parenting children who have had so much disruption and are not ready to
appreciate you.
Then, there’s
the denial and bargaining that biological parents experience in the removal of
their children, the intervention of the court, and the guilt and shame of
having to ask or allow or accept their parents caring for their children. That includes the anger and the grief of the
conflict between you and your children.
It’s a painful transition when you go from being parent and grandparent
to a relative caregiver approved and supervised by the county and ultimately an
adoptive parent to whom the court gives parental rights removed from your own
child. That’s not a happy
celebration. That’s an unhappy unplanned
outcome. And we ignore this big sad fact
at our own peril. Of all the issues that
hit adoptive families, and especially grandparents adopting their
grandchildren, grief and loss is the one that goes most unaddressed and results
in the most conflict and pain. So, how
do we face grief and loss head on?
First, by acknowledging it, naming it, and talking about it. We need to address it just like a death in
the family, because it is, the death of dreams.
It’s so uncomfortable to admit, so we don’t. We need to mourn the loss of desired futures,
of expected family roles, of changed relationships. It’s like a divorce and remarriage. We need a funeral, time to mark the
transition, rituals to remember what we lost, and anniversaries of the same. There are any number of resources available
to guide us through this process, books about grief and loss associated with
adoption, ideas about celebrations and rituals to memorialize the events, and,
of course, professional help and groups like this one.
Lifestage
Speaking of
grief and loss, how about the loss of life plans? At the very time when you see the light at
the end of the tunnel, when your dreams of sailing into the sunset of life are
almost in site, when you are looking forward to more ME or WE time full of
adventure and fun, you are yanked by the heartstrings, sometimes kicking and
screaming, back to a previous stage of family life from which you had thought
you graduated: raising children. Just
when you thought you would have your home, your car, your TIME to yourself, you
have to share them with these new people, the ones you used to visit on weekends
or holidays then send back home. They’re
staying and they won’t leave. And they
bring stuff and people with them, clothes and shoes, teachers and social
workers, laptops and I-phones, strange friends, awful music, pornography and
video games. You did not sign up for
this. But then you did, or felt you had
to, out of a sense of commitment, guilt, love, responsibility, family. This brings its own shock or reality check. Your
golden years may be filled with tennis shoes instead of cruises. Retirement may come with diapers, report
cards, and skateboards. Or there may be
no retirement at all as you continue to work to put food on the table or pay
sports team fees. These off-time changes
are financially and physically draining.
Your body may be begging for rest, but the laundry and the carpool
call. It can be exhausting and lonely
and the last thing you may want to do is go out for wine with your
girlfriends. First, because your bed is
calling and second, because they like to talk about their gardening and
needlepoint while you need someone to listen to your tails of ADHD and
medication madness. You’ve done this
already, raised children. But then
again, the guilt, “if I did such a good job, why can’t my child raise his or
her own kids.” And, “if they think I
messed them up so bad that my kids turned to drugs and crime, what makes them
think I can do any better with their children?”
It also takes a toll on marriages and other relationships. You may not be on the same page with your
spouse; about finances, about parenting, even about this new chapter in your
life. This strange new life stage brings
more complicated worries. “What if I get
sick? What if I need care? What if I die before my children are
grown? Who will raise them? I was already the last option before
strangers.” Speaking of the bargaining
phase of grief and loss, we may hope or want this to be a temporary
situation. Our children will get their
act together, come get their kids, and let me move on with my life. The kid hopes the same thing. It’s a dangerous dream. It keeps us from adjusting to reality. The role of grandparent is a real reward and
losing that role while re-taking the role of parent is a real loss. What wisdom can you bring to this
endeavor? At this age, you have
developed some definite ideas about what’s right and wrong, what works and what
doesn’t, what you like and what you don’t.
I’ll talk in a minute about why that’s a slippery slope to conflict and
unhappiness. But what you do have is
life experience; dealing with difficult circumstances, diligently gathering
necessary information, solving prickly problems, and most important, letting
go. Letting go of perfection, letting go
of total responsibility, letting go of people who are not supportive. A young strong body is not a prerequisite for
good parenting. Patience,
self-awareness, and a good sense of humor will take you much farther.
The Child
Parenting a hurt child can be challenging and sad. Abuse and neglect and moving from home to
home does real damage. In addition to
this trauma, our children may have other problems; learning disabilities,
medical conditions, social issues. We
may know our grandchildren very well. We
were there when they were born. We took
care of them or even parented them from time to time. Or, we don’t know them at all. Sometimes we weren’t even aware they were
born, let alone taken into custody until we get the call from child welfare
services asking us to take care of them.
We think we know them. They share
our genetics. They look like our
kids. They remind us of our
children. They may share personality
characteristics that are familiar to us.
Being with them is like a flashback to earlier times, either good or
bad. If those earlier experiences were
positive, it is a shock to find out the child is very angry with us, does not
trust us, and is very willing to let us know.
If those earlier times were negative, the child’s demanding, defiant,
rejecting behaviors trigger us resulting in some very unpleasant
interactions. We have the idea that
since these children are our kin, they should love us, respect us, and trust
us. But their experiences with their
parents and other adults have shown them that adults are not safe and trusting
them is a bad idea. That leaves
grandparents trying to justify their existence to their grandchild, defending
their role, proving their love, and responding to the extreme anger the child
cannot possibly express directly to the people who hurt them the most. In response to guilt and sadness,
grandparents may spend a lot of time trying to make up for lost time, going
above and beyond to please the child, extra clothes, toys, trips, doing the
grandparent thing when the child needs a parent the most. Parents have to be strong and structured, the
one who says no, while most grandparents look forward to saying yes and letting
the parents deal with the consequences.
The child’s very pain makes us angry, a reminder of what went wrong,
what was lost. And then in the teenage
years, adolescence, when conflict is the order of the day this gap of not one
but two generations really stands out.
Younger parents may have the stamina to face the daily challenges to
authority. The temptation for older
parents may be to dig in, or give in, or give up. Is there hope? The first task is acknowledging that this is
not the child we thought we knew, then carefully going back to the beginning to
get to know the real child, to focus on the relationship from the very
start. It really does require starting
all over again.
Family Story
Grandparents raising grandchildren stand out, raise eyebrows,
raise questions that both grandparents and their children need to answer for
themselves first. “What happened to us?” The interesting part of grandparents
raising grandchildren is that elders are at that stage of life when making
sense out of life and telling stories is the main focus and just what their
children need. Raising grandchildren adds
extra interesting chapters to this life narrative that only grandparents have
the perspective to tell. Grandparents
carry the culture and history of the family for generations, important parts of
the child’s identity often lost in the foster care system. Grandparents are at
the stage when the meaning of life comes into sharper focus and raising
grandchildren redefines that meaning in a profound way. While writing the final chapters of their
lives, grandparents are also creating lasting memories and passing those
lessons onto the next generation. On the
balance sheet of life, grandparents are an asset.