Another honest, real life, older child adoption guest blog from John. He is a retired commercial airline pilot who has adopted five boys, over three decades, from domestic foster care as a single parent. John and his family live in southern California.

Tyler, age 12, had been home seven months. It was great, and we finalized our adoption. This was the honeymoon though, and Tyler has Reactive Attachment Disorder. He was beginning to attach, and for a kid with RAD, there is nothing more scary. All parents quit, it is just a matter of when. (According to RAD) Kids like him get sent back, always. He knew that first hand, after 16 placements in 5 years of foster care.

Kill the placement before it hurts even more, do it quick, and do anything it takes, but force the move. Problem, I don’t like to quit, in fact, I hate quitting. First, it was the beginning of summer break, and Tyler began hanging out with only older kids, two years older, and not the good ones. He also kept going over to a girl’s house, she is 14 and a HS sophomore, what on earth would she have in common with a 7th grade 12 year old?

Curfew was rarely met, groundations were ignored. Various times, he came home smelling like a distillery, yes, he was drunk. Then there were drugs, bizarre behavior, and that takes some doing to be noticeable in a boy with Mood Disorder, RAD, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He had one drinking experience that ended with an experience involving a different 14-year-old girl that he certainly shouldn’t have had. He would let kids sneak in through his bedroom window at night. He recently reminded me he treated me like crap in that period, yes, he did.

The bad stuff was the physical part. He was physically violent with me. Size wise, he could easily pass for 14, he is strong, and he sweats (try to hang on to someone dripping with sweat). His favorite trick was to attack me before I got up, a full on attack with kicking, hitting, and biting, if I was dumb enough to let him that close. These were designed to hurt. He certainly didn’t stop there, anytime he heard ‘no’, he would loose it. By now, I was talking with the AAP worker, about possible outside placements. She was alarmed, and warned me to call the PD every time he got physical, otherwise, without a record of his attacks, if I had to defend myself, and left a mark, it would be child abuse. The PD was getting very tired of those calls, and losing patience with him. They were going to act if I didn’t.

There were a number of incidents that involved Tyler getting a knife and waving it around. I call it show and tell. “Gee, look at my nice shiny sharp knife, aren’t you scared?” My kids were not models of deportment, and I have been through that a number of times. One incident was very different; he had me cornered in a hallway with a knife. Suddenly, his eyes and his expression changed, and his stance changed. He was going to use the knife. Thank God for military training. I was able to disarm him but it was not easy. Through out the process, I knew that if he was able to keep the knife, I was going to get hurt. At that point, I knew that he had to be placed in an appropriate facility, this wasn’t safe.

The AAP worker had farmed out my behavior journal, and my description of his very unusual medical problem (Urological) to every RTC in Northern California. Every facility agreed that his behaviors qualified him to be in their facility, and every one turned him down because of the Urological problem. I was getting desperate.

I had been searching the internet and making a lot of calls. I connected with a director of a facility in a nearby state that was willing to work with me on caring for Tyler’s medical problem, and his program sounded just like what my son needed, not the standard behavioral modification model. The more we talked, the more comfortable I got. I realized Tyler was going to that school, it was now a question of when and how to get him there. What a relief finally to have a plan.

To be continued...

Photo Credit:by MikeWise