There seem to be a lot of people in the Christian community (Hi! Christian Community!) who pitch holy fits (literally) when you suggest teaching kids to wear condoms if they have sex.
In the tradition of Forest Gump, I have something to say about that. You can sit here on the bench with me and listen for a bit or you can walk off. It won't hurt my ...
Hey! Get back here! I didn't actually MEAN that.
Okay, the main arguments that I've heard on both sides:
Pro-condom Expect Nothing Insulting Sourpusses or PENIS' say:
Kids are going to have sex. That's all there is to it. They can't expect to be taught to abstain, it's beyond them. Teach them to be responsible about protecting themselves when, as is inevitable, they have sex.
Teachers Only of Abstaining Sex Text Sourpusses or TOASTS say:
If you teach kids to protect themselves, you are teaching them that you expect them to have sex and reinforce the idea. Because, of course, kids are idiots who can't be expected to entertain a thought without accepting it.
My acronyms might have given away the fact that I don't really think much of either approach.
Hang on tight folks! We're heading to memory lane:
Many, many moons ago when I was but a child my mother took me to the drug store and humiliated me. Actually, she's done that many, many times, some of them not so many moons ago but never mind about the incident of the facial hair bleach that must not be mentioned. [shudder]
No, I'm talking about when my Mom took me to the contraception counter smorgasbord and not only showed me everything on it but talked in excruciating detail at a completely unacceptable volume about exactly what each device, cream and foam did. [double shudder]
This was part of my Mom's promise ring program (It's not a MMORPG, it's a MOMPRG!). You've heard of promise rings, right? Hmm. No Jonas brothers fans then.
Okay, a promise ring is a ring you wear to show you have already made a commitment to your future spouse. Talk about marriage being for a lifetime. Basically, you pledge to remain a virgin until married.
Now, my Mom didn't show up one day with a ring and say, "You don't wanna be a slut, right? Put this ring on and promise me, as God is your witness, that you won't do dirty things with dirty boys. PROMISE!!!"
That would have been disturbing.
What she did do is take me out to lunch every day for a week. (Can I just say for a kid that is AWESOME!?!) At lunch she talked about sex...a lot.
She talked about how wonderful it was and how much she enjoyed it (and honestly, I didn't need to hear that part). She talked about how hormones generally try to hijack your life as a teen. She talked about her views on sex. She talked about how sex was presented in the Bible (Psst! The Song of Solomon is just filthy!). She talked about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases...with visual aides (once again, could have done without those).
She stressed that it was a deeply personal decision. She told me about the time she came very close to having sex as a teen and how she was almost instantly glad it hadn't happened. When it came to opinion she usually only gave it when I asked her directly.
The second to last lunch was the infamous drug store disaster. I don't think I've ever blushed that much before or after that incident and I once had the neck strings to my swimsuit come untied at a pool party. I never retied strings so fast in my life but several guys still picked me up and paraded around the pool with me over their heads while everyone else in attendance (and I do mean EVERYONE) patted by butt like it was a dang lucky charm. That was humiliating and yet the drug store disaster is still number one on my list of humiliating escapades.
Back to the POINT, when we walked out of that store I knew exactly what did what to whom, where, why and how. I knew that spermicidal foam protected against pregnancy but not against disease and that a condom protected against both disease and pregnancy. I learned that neither was fool proof and that Mom would personally prefer it if I just used every darn thing on the shelf.
I was given a night to sit and simmer over what we'd talked about that week. The next day, which was the last weekday and the last of our five lunches, my Mom asked me if I thought pledging to remain a virgin till marriage was something of which I thought I was capable. She stressed it wasn't a good idea to make a pledge I didn't think I could or didn't expect I could keep. She also said that she would respect my honesty with both her and myself if I said no.
I said yes. My Mom gave me a gold ring (stands for purity) with a little gold heart (stands for the promise to my future spouse) with a little silver cross inside (stands for my promise to God). She told me that if I ever, like she very nearly had, broke that promise it wasn't the end of the world (note the lack of judgment in the presentation? LOVE my Mom). She did, however, ask that I remember to use every last blessed thing on that shelf and to please take off the ring at that point.
I wore the ring until I replaced it with my engagement ring. I'll also say that my beautiful Hubby (mwah!) presented me with a lovely gold chain along with that engagement ring so that I could continue to wear my promise ring around my neck. How sweet is that? I mean, c'mon! He's just fabulous!
I've only ever had sex with my hubby and I really LOVE sex. I'm not going to try to conclude that the reason I have an extremely health sexual appetite is because I've only had the one partner. I CAN say that only ever having one partner doesn't seem to have hurt me.
I do think that my Mom did an excellent job of balancing the value of abstinence with the necessity of educating me against very real dangers and the equally real peer pressure and hormones with which kids must contend...or not as the case may be.
In THIS case I happen to think my Mama is right. Life is like a box of condoms: If you have sex without one, you never know what you're going to get.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Me, The Monkey And Mommy Memories
Last night...Ooooh! Strokes song!
Last niiiight, she saiiiid
Oh baby I feel so downnn....
Ahem.
Sorry.
(Paul Harvey Voice) And now it's time for: the rest of the story.
Last night I was playing a bed game with my son, the Monkey (aka Jonathan). A bed game is a rough housing game that has to be played on Mommy and Daddy's queen size bed. (See! See?! I run the house! I am the queen! There is no king size bed, thus there is no king! There is only me, the queen of all I see! Mwahahahaha!!!)
And now back to regularly scheduled blogcasting.
The Monkey and I are playing the newly invented game, Kiss Your Nose. In Kiss Your Nose someone kisses the other person's nose while that other person tries very hard to prevent them from doing so. I try to keep things as even as possible in these games. For example, the Monkey can't restrain my arms, so I don't restrain his.
Oh yeah! When one of us manages to kiss the other we stand (me on my knees, him on his feet) and stage yell, "I'm the Champion! I'm the Champion!" Until the freshly kissed/defeated person gets up and tackles the triumphant.
I had just successfully kissed the Monkey on his nose and was about to start my victory cheer when I felt a spasm in my throat. I have asthma and usually I get a nice long warning that something is up. I'll smell a chemical or pollen or some other trigger. Most of the time, I'll feel a subtle tightness that gradually increases. Very rarely does an attack sideline me out of nowhere.
This one did. I made a funny noise then started this weird gagging type thing I do where I'm trying to get air out but some of the various tubes in my throat have suddenly swelled up. The thing is, most of them don't close but my body reacts like it has to get air out of ALL of them NOW. So, it tries to do this coughing, forcing thing. I usually have this overwhelming need to clear my throat and have to override it because I know that there is nothing in my throat and the act of trying to clear it exacerbates the problem.
The same thing goes for coughing; coughing does nothing but further irritate everything and makes the swelling everywhere worse. It is to be avoided and slow, deep breaths trying to sort of breathe around the swollen shut tubes are the way to go.
The Monkey reacted immediately. He looked at me and said, "Mommy, you coughing?" I nodded (even though I wasn't actually coughing at that time, coughing is what the Monkey calls an asthma attack). My three year old son jumped down from the bed, ran to the bedside table, opened the drawer and grabbed my inhaler. He brought it to me yelling, "Here your medicine, Mommy. Take your medicine."
By the time I took the medicine the shallow breaths had gone from wheezing to those weird barking noises that are the step right before unavoidable coughing. But the medicine did its job and stopped the attack. As I lay back sideways on the top of the bed trying to breath in the medicine, the Monkey sat next to me with this studious expression and a hand on my chest.
I felt guilty. It might be stupid to feel that way since I have little to no control over my asthma but I did feel guilty. We had been having a good time, playing a game and I ruined it. Another thing that both made me proud and bothered me was how ably the Monkey had handled it.
I was proud because he had stayed calm and known exactly what to do which is amazing in a toddler. I was bothered because he's a toddler, dang it! I don't think he should have to deal with his Mom having fits.
Now, Mom, if you're reading this don't take that the wrong way. My Mom is epileptic and had seizures when I was a kid. There was one time, she had been standing in the front doorway when she had a seizure and she hit her head on the door frame.
The blow opened up a deep gash over one of her eyes. When I responded to my older sister's screams and arrived in the living room my Mom had just stopped twitching and I watched her go still. Her eyes were open and blood had pooled in one socket. She was still, a bluish pale color, her face covered in blood, completely unresponsive and staring at the ceiling. I honestly thought she was dead.
My sister told me to stay with her while she ran to the neighbor's trailer because we didn't have a phone to call for help. After an eternity she came back alone. No one had answered the door. The next trailer was down the street at least a block away, if not more. (We lived in the countryside so there weren't any acutual blocks but I'm trying to create a referenceable unit of distance.) I ran all the way and when I got there was completely out of breath. I finally managed to get across that my Mom was hurt and our neighbor took me back to my house.
When we got there our otherer neighbor was already there. He'd heard my sister knocking and yelling but hadn't been dressed. When he'd grabbed some clothes, he came over.
That was a really awful day for me. The next day my Mom dropped me off at kindergarten and was talking to my teacher. Mom looked terrible with a big black eye and stitches etc. So, of course, she had to explain to my teacher what happened. My teacher turned to me and joked, "Did you do that to your Mama?"
I was young enough to not get the joke. I thought she seriously believed me capable of hurting my Mom in such a terrible way. I burst into tears and said, "No! I love my Mama. I don't want her to die!" It took a long time for them to calm me down.
I guess I'm remembering that and I don't want it to be that way for the Monkey. I don't want him to worry about me the way I worried about my Mom. I don't want him to watch me driven off in an ambulance the way I saw her go too many times. However, writing this has made me see something. I don't blame my Mom for being sick. Why am I blaming myself?
I guess it's not going to be the best thing in the world for the Monkey but it's not going to horribly scar him either. I lived through it. He will too.
So, I guess this was a bit of blog therapy. Who knew?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Talking To Myself
I was looking for a document and found a letter I wrote to my sister a couple years ago. The first paragraph made me laugh at myself, so I decided to post it and hopefully give everyone else a laugh as well.
Dated September 26, 2007:
As I sat and wrote this, I asked myself, “Why am I not just emailing her?”
Since I talk to myself quite a bit, myself answered, “Because then she would have to be in front of the computer in order to read it. Whereas, (myself talks very scholarly when myself talks to me) if you send her an actual letter, she can read it at her leisure wherever she may be.”
Then, because I’m a smartass, I answered “But she has a laptop now. She can read email at her leisure wherever she may be.”
So myself said, “Not the BEACH! She wouldn’t want to get sand in the laptop at the beach and she goes there ALL THE TIME!!! So SHUT UP!”
Then I said that myself was cranky and to get some freaking Midol and the conversation just went downhill from there.
Dated September 26, 2007:
As I sat and wrote this, I asked myself, “Why am I not just emailing her?”
Since I talk to myself quite a bit, myself answered, “Because then she would have to be in front of the computer in order to read it. Whereas, (myself talks very scholarly when myself talks to me) if you send her an actual letter, she can read it at her leisure wherever she may be.”
Then, because I’m a smartass, I answered “But she has a laptop now. She can read email at her leisure wherever she may be.”
So myself said, “Not the BEACH! She wouldn’t want to get sand in the laptop at the beach and she goes there ALL THE TIME!!! So SHUT UP!”
Then I said that myself was cranky and to get some freaking Midol and the conversation just went downhill from there.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Why I hope Adam Lambert isn’t gay
Okay, I know how that sounds. Hear me out.
Or, er, read me out. (Why does that sound dirty?)
Lemme try again.
Please withhold judgment.
Whew, correct verbiage and yet not lending itself to sexual innuendo. Finally, let’s move on.
If he is gay, then there are only two reasons of which I can think that he’d not have just said so by now.
1) The American Idol people have forbidden him to do so. In which case, I’d still have to wish he’d do it anyway and then just sue them if they try to punish him for doing so.
2) The saddest reason of all: He doesn’t want to turn away potential votes by confirming the rumor.
That would indeed be sad. I could definitely understand either of those reasons but it wouldn’t inspire me.
On the other hand, if he’s straight, he could unfortunately (due to the intolerance and hate mongering of many) ensure more votes by dispelling any ambiguity and flat out saying, “I’m not gay.”
Why wouldn’t he do that? Maybe because Adam Lambert is a really cool guy who doesn’t want to justify the boxes in which people place each other. Maybe Adam Lambert finds this need to go absolutely nuts over sexual preference as infuriating as I do and flat out refuses to play that game.
If he’s gay, fine. He’s a great singer and performer and I wish him the best.
If he’s not gay, my opinion is he’s a great person who is standing up to the insanity that is gripping our world and saying, “Nope, not gonna play. You can think what you wanna think.”
That’s something I can respect and, dare I say, idolize? =)
Or, er, read me out. (Why does that sound dirty?)
Lemme try again.
Please withhold judgment.
Whew, correct verbiage and yet not lending itself to sexual innuendo. Finally, let’s move on.
If he is gay, then there are only two reasons of which I can think that he’d not have just said so by now.
1) The American Idol people have forbidden him to do so. In which case, I’d still have to wish he’d do it anyway and then just sue them if they try to punish him for doing so.
2) The saddest reason of all: He doesn’t want to turn away potential votes by confirming the rumor.
That would indeed be sad. I could definitely understand either of those reasons but it wouldn’t inspire me.
On the other hand, if he’s straight, he could unfortunately (due to the intolerance and hate mongering of many) ensure more votes by dispelling any ambiguity and flat out saying, “I’m not gay.”
Why wouldn’t he do that? Maybe because Adam Lambert is a really cool guy who doesn’t want to justify the boxes in which people place each other. Maybe Adam Lambert finds this need to go absolutely nuts over sexual preference as infuriating as I do and flat out refuses to play that game.
If he’s gay, fine. He’s a great singer and performer and I wish him the best.
If he’s not gay, my opinion is he’s a great person who is standing up to the insanity that is gripping our world and saying, “Nope, not gonna play. You can think what you wanna think.”
That’s something I can respect and, dare I say, idolize? =)
Why I Will Never Watch American Idol Again
I know, I know.
What? You did what? Are you stupid?
You don’t have to tell me. Read the title! I’ve learned my lesson.
Before this season, I’d never watched American Idol. I’d tuned it out as a glorified karaoke contest, ignored it and gone along my merry way.
I did buy a Kelly Clarkson album and consider myself a fan of hers. I also like Daughtry. However, two palatable artists in seven seasons of artists is not a good record.
This year was different. This year had Kris Allen. I’m from Central Arkansas and work for the same company as Kris’ Mom. I absolutely could not escape Kris Allen. His picture was posted in our elevators every Tuesday on a flyer encouraging us to watch the show and, of course, vote for Kris.
Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I watched the results show last Wednesday. Then I was hooked. I DVR’d the show last night and flipped my way through it, sparing myself the last song which was absolutely atrocious. I think both contestants are so adorable, really are good singers and seem like two very nice people.
So, why am I never watching again? Two words: The Internet.
I like reading. So, I started reading articles about the competition and, boy howdy, did it harsh my mellow. People hating on Kris because he’s a “Christian Hick” people hating on Adam because he’s a “godless gay”. Ugh.
I read through several so-called articles in which the writers said little to nothing about the singer’s abilities and focused almost entirely on politics. One even went so far as to describe the race entirely in political terms.
If you read this blog, you know I live in Central Arkansas and you know that I’m a Christian. I adore Adam Lambert. I can’t help it, he’s adorable. I work in theater as an amateur but can recognize stage presence and theatricality. He’s an amazing showman.
Kris is very different. Kris is a musician. His focus always seems to be on bringing out the melody, not on theatrics. He comes across as very sincere and has the ability to connect with an audience in a more subtle and moving way more often than Adam.
At the same time, Adam’s exciting theatrics are off putting to some people who find him fake and Kris’ quiet sincerity come across to many people as just plain dull. They tend to appeal in very different ways to very different people.
However, this doesn’t matter to anyone. All they want to talk about is if Adam is gay and why, if he loses, it won’t be because Kris is a better performer but only because of homophobia.
That really gets me hot under the collar.
I want to think that, if Kris wins, it was because his quiet sincerity and musicality appealed to slightly more people than Adam’s exciting energy and theatrics. Or, if Adam wins, it was because people accepted that he was putting on a show and didn’t find him “fake” and were inclined to go get a sandwich or take a quick nap during Kris’ performances.
The comments of the authors of articles and the comments made regarding those articles lead me to believe that there are people out there not voting for Kris or Adam but against one or the other. There are people out there who voted for Kris because they’re spiteful hateful little minds who can’t stand the idea of Adam being gay. There are people out there who voted for Adam because they’re spiteful hateful little minds who can’t stand the idea of Kris being a Christian.
The fact that people are voting against a contestant, instead of for a contestant, has truly made this a political event and I’ve had enough of politics.
And that is why I’ll never, ever watch American Idol again.
What? You did what? Are you stupid?
You don’t have to tell me. Read the title! I’ve learned my lesson.
Before this season, I’d never watched American Idol. I’d tuned it out as a glorified karaoke contest, ignored it and gone along my merry way.
I did buy a Kelly Clarkson album and consider myself a fan of hers. I also like Daughtry. However, two palatable artists in seven seasons of artists is not a good record.
This year was different. This year had Kris Allen. I’m from Central Arkansas and work for the same company as Kris’ Mom. I absolutely could not escape Kris Allen. His picture was posted in our elevators every Tuesday on a flyer encouraging us to watch the show and, of course, vote for Kris.
Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I watched the results show last Wednesday. Then I was hooked. I DVR’d the show last night and flipped my way through it, sparing myself the last song which was absolutely atrocious. I think both contestants are so adorable, really are good singers and seem like two very nice people.
So, why am I never watching again? Two words: The Internet.
I like reading. So, I started reading articles about the competition and, boy howdy, did it harsh my mellow. People hating on Kris because he’s a “Christian Hick” people hating on Adam because he’s a “godless gay”. Ugh.
I read through several so-called articles in which the writers said little to nothing about the singer’s abilities and focused almost entirely on politics. One even went so far as to describe the race entirely in political terms.
If you read this blog, you know I live in Central Arkansas and you know that I’m a Christian. I adore Adam Lambert. I can’t help it, he’s adorable. I work in theater as an amateur but can recognize stage presence and theatricality. He’s an amazing showman.
Kris is very different. Kris is a musician. His focus always seems to be on bringing out the melody, not on theatrics. He comes across as very sincere and has the ability to connect with an audience in a more subtle and moving way more often than Adam.
At the same time, Adam’s exciting theatrics are off putting to some people who find him fake and Kris’ quiet sincerity come across to many people as just plain dull. They tend to appeal in very different ways to very different people.
However, this doesn’t matter to anyone. All they want to talk about is if Adam is gay and why, if he loses, it won’t be because Kris is a better performer but only because of homophobia.
That really gets me hot under the collar.
I want to think that, if Kris wins, it was because his quiet sincerity and musicality appealed to slightly more people than Adam’s exciting energy and theatrics. Or, if Adam wins, it was because people accepted that he was putting on a show and didn’t find him “fake” and were inclined to go get a sandwich or take a quick nap during Kris’ performances.
The comments of the authors of articles and the comments made regarding those articles lead me to believe that there are people out there not voting for Kris or Adam but against one or the other. There are people out there who voted for Kris because they’re spiteful hateful little minds who can’t stand the idea of Adam being gay. There are people out there who voted for Adam because they’re spiteful hateful little minds who can’t stand the idea of Kris being a Christian.
The fact that people are voting against a contestant, instead of for a contestant, has truly made this a political event and I’ve had enough of politics.
And that is why I’ll never, ever watch American Idol again.
Friday, May 15, 2009
I found some old poems today and am consequently feeling poetic. I'm also really frustrated and felt like screaming at the wind. Then it occurred to me that the wind gets lots of really hard to answer questions thrown at it. The combination of that thought and my poetic state of mind produced the following poem.
Be nice.
Unanswered
Shapeless
Unseen
They shared what had been
The South spoke of rain
It turned into storms
The North spoke of snow
It gathered and swept
The East spoke of sand
It turned into death
The West spoke of fires
It shepherded, kept
This was their custom
This was their way
To crash and roar
To have their say
Again, the four great movers met
Had they found the answers yet?
They asked,
Their own question
The only reply
To the questions we scream
And laugh
And cry
Out to the four winds
The powers who sigh
Bowing trees low
Turning waves into spray
Their sighs moved the heavens
As they went on their way
For again they had no answers
Be nice.
Unanswered
Shapeless
Unseen
They shared what had been
The South spoke of rain
It turned into storms
The North spoke of snow
It gathered and swept
The East spoke of sand
It turned into death
The West spoke of fires
It shepherded, kept
This was their custom
This was their way
To crash and roar
To have their say
Again, the four great movers met
Had they found the answers yet?
They asked,
Their own question
The only reply
To the questions we scream
And laugh
And cry
Out to the four winds
The powers who sigh
Bowing trees low
Turning waves into spray
Their sighs moved the heavens
As they went on their way
For again they had no answers
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Adoption Class
I started tweeting like mad earlier today and realized that I didn’t want to microblog about a certain subject. I wanted to blog about it.
Foster Care, Adoption & Me:
First of all, background check. (Little inside-the-system joke. Okay, it wasn't funny. Moving on.)
Hi! My name is Annie and my parents were foster/adoptive parents. However, I was not a foster/adopted child. That’s a relatively important distinction.
It means: I had the benefit of a stable, loving home but, at the same time, have been aware of the nasty ickiness in the world from a very early age. You’ll note (I hope) that I am still a nice, well-adjusted person and was not horribly scarred or mentally anguished by having been raised with foster/adopted siblings.
For the record: I love my siblings and think they are amazing: Even my sister who is struggling right now and whose daughter I am adopting.
What? You may ask that question. Go ahead.
I can’t tell people how bad Rita’s childhood was. Really. I know things my parents don’t know and I won’t tell them because they’re awful, terrible, disturbing things. The fact that my sister is alive and functioning in any capacity is a freaking miracle.
Rita is still messed up right now but she’s alive and, on some levels, functional. Yes, Rita didn’t straighten up and fly right in order to get her daughter back. That hurts: Especially after seeing all these testimonies of people who have done that very thing. But here is something GOOD about Rita.
Rita quit using drugs when she was pregnant, EVERY SINGLE TIME. You think that’s easy? You think most mothers automatically do that? No. They don’t. Rita is on a long road but there is definitely hope for her because of every member of my family and, most especially, because of my parents.
I’ve mentioned in the past that my parents are saints. Overall some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. They’re getting older and starting to do that thing where they take politics way too seriously…or maybe they’re finally taking it seriously enough. Who knows? I’m not there yet. But still, they are some of the most wonderful people you will EVER meet.
Back to point!
The point is, my parents were watching the news one night and saw a problem. Children in a state system being shuffled like the jokers in a deck of cards.
“Ooops! I got the Joker! How’d that happen? Someone take this back and give me a real card.”
Rather than cluck their tongues and say, “Aw, that’s a shame; those poor kids.” Like 99% of us would do, my parents actually got up and did something about it. Going through the process of becoming a foster/adoptive parent has made my admiration of them skyrocket.
I know now that they didn’t walk down to an office and say, “Hey, you know all those kids who desperately need homes? I’ve got one!”
And have the office say, “Oh! You saint! Thank you SO MUCH! We really, desperately NEED you! Here fill out some forms, we’ll send someone to check out your house right away and do a background check that will take, at most, a month. In two weeks, be back here for a weekend of training. Don’t worry about your kids. We’ll provide child care with professionals that will use age appropriate methods to explain the situation to them because, after all, your kids are a part of this process as well, right? Assuming no red flags go up, we’ll have you ready to go in six weeks tops.”
That is precisely, exactly what did NOT happen. It was pretty much the opposite. It’s like the information, even the first phone number, you need is top secret. It’s locked in a suitcase that, I swear, is hiding up the butt of one of these tight cheeked bureaucrats. (BTW, isn’t bureaucrat the most PERFECTLY spelled word? It’s needlessly complicated.)
There is a serious problem here! Good homes taking in kids, is the solution. So, of course, the system seems to be centered around discouraging as many of these people as possible. The dastardly method? Red freaking TAPE!
There are just so many flaming hoops through which your average person is willing to jump before they say, “You know what? I’m trying to help you out here! I’m leaving.”
Now, there is a Christian organization in Arkansas that tries to recruit foster/adoptive parents and cut through as much red tape as possible. My hubby and I are actually going through this process with them and it’s still discouraging.
Instead of 10 weeks of 3 hour classes, it’s two weekends. Two 9 hour days and two 6 hour days of sorting through depressing stories and statistics that make you want to grab the nearest politician by his overpriced lapels and scream, “WAKE UP!!!” in his face repeatedly…and I mean repeatedly.
You know when you’re watching Family Guy, and they have those quirky asides that last too long? THAT repeatedly.
(Incidentally, how awkward is it that I had to type the numbers two and nine, and also, two and six consecutively in a sentence and yet still give the impression that they were not the mistyped numbers 29 or 26? Come to think of it, that incidental sentence commenting on the awkward sentence was also awkward. Fittingly, awkward is a very awkwardly spelled word. Ye gad! Okay! I’m stopping now!)
Doot. Doot. Doot. Ah!
Sorry, I’d forgotten what I was writing about. Back on point! Bureaucracy!
Part of adoption class is looking at really depressing statistics and stories. The fact is that the number of kids being abused and neglected keeps going up every year. What I was told yesterday is that currently in the US, one in five children will be sexually abused before reaching age 18. The number is one in four girls and one in ten boys.
So, naturally, the good Christian folks in my class asked if Christianity being taken out of schools etc. was the reason for the increase in these issues.
My answer? Nope.
Hmm, this IS a blog. Maybe I should expand on that.
My expanded answer is; bureaucracy is the problem. Americans stopped taking care of each other at some point. They stopped caring for the widows and orphans. Instead, they told the government to do it for them.
“Here, I’ll give you tax money. You hire someone to do it and then I don’t have to feel bad OR do anything! Win-Win!”
The problem is the government isn’t well suited for this type of thing and it’s all gone to hell. Yes, Mom. (If you’re reading this.) I said, hell. Maybe I should capitalize it? Nah, I’ll write it in all caps.
H-E-L-L. My definition of Hell is a place without God. Since God is love and all love and goodness and love come from him, Hell is a place in which love and caring do not exist.
This situation is my definition of HELL on Earth for so many of these kids.
Adoption class points out the primary focus for the foster care system: Get the kids back with their parents.
Train a parent up in the way he should go and when he gets his kids back he won’t neglect/sexually abuse/physically abuse them. That’s their motto!
The idea is that these parents haven’t been taught through example how to be parents. They don’t have any kind of support system in the community. They don’t have anyone helping them or teaching them how to help and teach their kids. They have emotional problems or addiction problems that cause them to act toward their kids in a way they wouldn’t otherwise act.
If you can treat the emotional or addiction problems and give the parents the support they need, they can be the parents the kids need. The kids have attachments, which is GOOD!!!
So, treat the kids. Treat the parents. Make happy productive families.
The problem is you have people like my sister. I love my sister, but this training has shown me one thing definitively: my sister doesn’t really want her daughter back. She’s going through the motions.
I’ve watched these videos and listened to all of these birth mothers and fathers talk about how devastated they were when their kids were taken from them. How hard they worked to get them back.
I’ve listened to my sister make excuses for the live in boyfriend whose arrest cost her the decision of her custody hearing. Your kid comes first.
If someone took my son, I’d crawl up a net of barbed wire to get him back. I would do anything asked. I would visit my son absolutely every opportunity I got for as long as I could.
My sister makes excuses and throws around blame like it’s confetti. She’s not alone. There are definitely parents out there that feel they have to put up a fight, society demands they do, but when push comes to shove, they don’t actually do anything they’re required to do in order to get their kids back.
So, what do you do with those kids?
Find them families. That sounds simple but people have been trained by the media to see these kids as damaged goods. They’ve been neglected and abused and they’ll never be right again. There is no way to fix them. They’re the jokers in the deck. There’s no value assigned to them. At the very best, they’re wild cards and at the end of the day, no one wants them in their hand.
Bullshit!
(My Mom’s going to kill me…I guess I could say crap but that’s semantics really and I’m kind of going for the reaction here so…)
BULLSHIT!
There are great kids in the system that have problems that will take years and years and years for them to even be able to properly grasp. But these problems are not insurmountable if someone cares enough to reach out and help them; really help them.
Will they magically overcome their problems by age 18? Maybe. Probably not.
Will they stop needing you at age 18? Definitely not.
Will they think they don’t need you at age 18? Probably.
Will taking care of a child who has been abused be hard? Yes.
Will it be harder than raising a baby or biological child that was always loved and was raised in a predictable and loving environment? Yes.
But, in general, do the things worth doing in life tend to be easy?
Foster Care, Adoption & Me:
First of all, background check. (Little inside-the-system joke. Okay, it wasn't funny. Moving on.)
Hi! My name is Annie and my parents were foster/adoptive parents. However, I was not a foster/adopted child. That’s a relatively important distinction.
It means: I had the benefit of a stable, loving home but, at the same time, have been aware of the nasty ickiness in the world from a very early age. You’ll note (I hope) that I am still a nice, well-adjusted person and was not horribly scarred or mentally anguished by having been raised with foster/adopted siblings.
For the record: I love my siblings and think they are amazing: Even my sister who is struggling right now and whose daughter I am adopting.
What? You may ask that question. Go ahead.
I can’t tell people how bad Rita’s childhood was. Really. I know things my parents don’t know and I won’t tell them because they’re awful, terrible, disturbing things. The fact that my sister is alive and functioning in any capacity is a freaking miracle.
Rita is still messed up right now but she’s alive and, on some levels, functional. Yes, Rita didn’t straighten up and fly right in order to get her daughter back. That hurts: Especially after seeing all these testimonies of people who have done that very thing. But here is something GOOD about Rita.
Rita quit using drugs when she was pregnant, EVERY SINGLE TIME. You think that’s easy? You think most mothers automatically do that? No. They don’t. Rita is on a long road but there is definitely hope for her because of every member of my family and, most especially, because of my parents.
I’ve mentioned in the past that my parents are saints. Overall some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. They’re getting older and starting to do that thing where they take politics way too seriously…or maybe they’re finally taking it seriously enough. Who knows? I’m not there yet. But still, they are some of the most wonderful people you will EVER meet.
Back to point!
The point is, my parents were watching the news one night and saw a problem. Children in a state system being shuffled like the jokers in a deck of cards.
“Ooops! I got the Joker! How’d that happen? Someone take this back and give me a real card.”
Rather than cluck their tongues and say, “Aw, that’s a shame; those poor kids.” Like 99% of us would do, my parents actually got up and did something about it. Going through the process of becoming a foster/adoptive parent has made my admiration of them skyrocket.
I know now that they didn’t walk down to an office and say, “Hey, you know all those kids who desperately need homes? I’ve got one!”
And have the office say, “Oh! You saint! Thank you SO MUCH! We really, desperately NEED you! Here fill out some forms, we’ll send someone to check out your house right away and do a background check that will take, at most, a month. In two weeks, be back here for a weekend of training. Don’t worry about your kids. We’ll provide child care with professionals that will use age appropriate methods to explain the situation to them because, after all, your kids are a part of this process as well, right? Assuming no red flags go up, we’ll have you ready to go in six weeks tops.”
That is precisely, exactly what did NOT happen. It was pretty much the opposite. It’s like the information, even the first phone number, you need is top secret. It’s locked in a suitcase that, I swear, is hiding up the butt of one of these tight cheeked bureaucrats. (BTW, isn’t bureaucrat the most PERFECTLY spelled word? It’s needlessly complicated.)
There is a serious problem here! Good homes taking in kids, is the solution. So, of course, the system seems to be centered around discouraging as many of these people as possible. The dastardly method? Red freaking TAPE!
There are just so many flaming hoops through which your average person is willing to jump before they say, “You know what? I’m trying to help you out here! I’m leaving.”
Now, there is a Christian organization in Arkansas that tries to recruit foster/adoptive parents and cut through as much red tape as possible. My hubby and I are actually going through this process with them and it’s still discouraging.
Instead of 10 weeks of 3 hour classes, it’s two weekends. Two 9 hour days and two 6 hour days of sorting through depressing stories and statistics that make you want to grab the nearest politician by his overpriced lapels and scream, “WAKE UP!!!” in his face repeatedly…and I mean repeatedly.
You know when you’re watching Family Guy, and they have those quirky asides that last too long? THAT repeatedly.
(Incidentally, how awkward is it that I had to type the numbers two and nine, and also, two and six consecutively in a sentence and yet still give the impression that they were not the mistyped numbers 29 or 26? Come to think of it, that incidental sentence commenting on the awkward sentence was also awkward. Fittingly, awkward is a very awkwardly spelled word. Ye gad! Okay! I’m stopping now!)
Doot. Doot. Doot. Ah!
Sorry, I’d forgotten what I was writing about. Back on point! Bureaucracy!
Part of adoption class is looking at really depressing statistics and stories. The fact is that the number of kids being abused and neglected keeps going up every year. What I was told yesterday is that currently in the US, one in five children will be sexually abused before reaching age 18. The number is one in four girls and one in ten boys.
So, naturally, the good Christian folks in my class asked if Christianity being taken out of schools etc. was the reason for the increase in these issues.
My answer? Nope.
Hmm, this IS a blog. Maybe I should expand on that.
My expanded answer is; bureaucracy is the problem. Americans stopped taking care of each other at some point. They stopped caring for the widows and orphans. Instead, they told the government to do it for them.
“Here, I’ll give you tax money. You hire someone to do it and then I don’t have to feel bad OR do anything! Win-Win!”
The problem is the government isn’t well suited for this type of thing and it’s all gone to hell. Yes, Mom. (If you’re reading this.) I said, hell. Maybe I should capitalize it? Nah, I’ll write it in all caps.
H-E-L-L. My definition of Hell is a place without God. Since God is love and all love and goodness and love come from him, Hell is a place in which love and caring do not exist.
This situation is my definition of HELL on Earth for so many of these kids.
Adoption class points out the primary focus for the foster care system: Get the kids back with their parents.
Train a parent up in the way he should go and when he gets his kids back he won’t neglect/sexually abuse/physically abuse them. That’s their motto!
The idea is that these parents haven’t been taught through example how to be parents. They don’t have any kind of support system in the community. They don’t have anyone helping them or teaching them how to help and teach their kids. They have emotional problems or addiction problems that cause them to act toward their kids in a way they wouldn’t otherwise act.
If you can treat the emotional or addiction problems and give the parents the support they need, they can be the parents the kids need. The kids have attachments, which is GOOD!!!
So, treat the kids. Treat the parents. Make happy productive families.
The problem is you have people like my sister. I love my sister, but this training has shown me one thing definitively: my sister doesn’t really want her daughter back. She’s going through the motions.
I’ve watched these videos and listened to all of these birth mothers and fathers talk about how devastated they were when their kids were taken from them. How hard they worked to get them back.
I’ve listened to my sister make excuses for the live in boyfriend whose arrest cost her the decision of her custody hearing. Your kid comes first.
If someone took my son, I’d crawl up a net of barbed wire to get him back. I would do anything asked. I would visit my son absolutely every opportunity I got for as long as I could.
My sister makes excuses and throws around blame like it’s confetti. She’s not alone. There are definitely parents out there that feel they have to put up a fight, society demands they do, but when push comes to shove, they don’t actually do anything they’re required to do in order to get their kids back.
So, what do you do with those kids?
Find them families. That sounds simple but people have been trained by the media to see these kids as damaged goods. They’ve been neglected and abused and they’ll never be right again. There is no way to fix them. They’re the jokers in the deck. There’s no value assigned to them. At the very best, they’re wild cards and at the end of the day, no one wants them in their hand.
Bullshit!
(My Mom’s going to kill me…I guess I could say crap but that’s semantics really and I’m kind of going for the reaction here so…)
BULLSHIT!
There are great kids in the system that have problems that will take years and years and years for them to even be able to properly grasp. But these problems are not insurmountable if someone cares enough to reach out and help them; really help them.
Will they magically overcome their problems by age 18? Maybe. Probably not.
Will they stop needing you at age 18? Definitely not.
Will they think they don’t need you at age 18? Probably.
Will taking care of a child who has been abused be hard? Yes.
Will it be harder than raising a baby or biological child that was always loved and was raised in a predictable and loving environment? Yes.
But, in general, do the things worth doing in life tend to be easy?
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