Chapter 6
Problem Solving
My job was that of supervision and coordination rather than as therapist at Children’s Garden. A major part of that job entailed collecting the data on each child which would finally lead to a recommendation for an appropriate long term placement, whether in foster care or adoption when the child left Children’s Garden. Often we recommended a stay in a specialized treatment home following our evaluation. Three months was not enough time for most children to make the depth of emotional change or the number of adjustments needed for them to live in a normal home successfully.
Consequently what followed was really the information gathered by house parents and teachers on a daily basis, upon professional evaluations by our pediatricians, psychiatrist and psychologist, as well as the gathering of their social history by myself and social workers who had been in the child’s life prior to coming to Children’s Garden. Each child left with a book, generally of over 100 pages, telling the story of their lives, our interventions and treatments, and the advice of several professionals who were genuinely interested in what was best for the child. The Courts almost always followed our placement recommendations, though at times we had to be present in Court to advocate for a child. This would be the case eventually with Nutmeg, but we are a long way from that point in time.
Nutmeg, after one month had already used up several pages of professional evaluation and behavior observations. Everyone who interacted with her found her fascinating, a challenge, interesting, and a child they wanted to know better. Everyone had tried or was trying now to get through her walls. She was adept at hooking our attention or sympathies, than erecting a wall which it was difficult to get through. We always had the feeling that when we thought we were getting through to real feelings with her, she would suddenly erect a barrier, sometimes with a look, or a silent withdrawal or a curt question or answer meant to distance us from her. She was very good at it.
At such times, though she’d let us hold her physically, we sensed she was not really there with us, but off in another world somewhere. This ability was a bit scary to all of us. We knew her mother had been diagnosed as “paranoid schizophrenic” and we were concerned that Nutmeg might have inherited whatever makes up the tendencies, chemical, emotional, and/or genetic, toward that mental illness. The old issues of nature-nurture were very much in evidence at our staff meetings as we went over her progress or lack of it in our case meetings.
“I am constantly amazed at her resiliency as evidenced in her therapeutic play,” our Art Therapist, Nancy, said wistfully during a staff meeting. “She can be making what I think are mud balls, but she says they are cannon balls. She throws them at various people, - her mother, an imaginary father, - then talks about being abandoned. Then she is suddenly making “chocolate mud pies” for her foster Mother in Carmel Valley. It’s as though each session she is living and working through her past -- but it suddenly stops in Carmel.”
What we knew about this foster placement was that it had been the last before the attempted, failed adoption. Since they were not in our local County area, we knew little about this couple or family other than what we gleaned through rare glimpses coming from Nutmeg. Her current Social Worker from San Francisco County wasn’t much help either.
Our psychiatrist had remarked in his report: “This child shows amazing resilience and an ability to recover from severe traumas placed in her path. If she can attach again emotionally, she could become a charming and exceptionally bright young adult.” He felt that she had attached or at least begun to attach to her last foster parents, but had been torn away from them at a crucial and inopportune time. Her psychological and educational evaluations indicated an extremely bright child with abilities in multiple areas. It became clear over a few weeks that we had a very bright, talented, sensitive child, still early enough in her life, who with good intervention would likely be a good candidate for a placement in a very special fost-adopt placement. Our Agency fost-adopt parents were full at the time, and we had no open placements
I finally decided a trip to Carmel Valley to get to know the foster parents she had loved and glean their understanding of Nutmeg was in order. I hoped, of course, that they would be eager to have her back and to adopt her. I also hoped that they’d become one of the agency’s fost-adopt parents, and accept the help and support we gave our adopting families. I knew it was crucial to dealing with the often puzzling and difficult behaviors of the children who were sent to us to “fix.”
The Journeys of Bumbly Bear Page 6
