The Story of an Adoptive Parent
The Story of Foster Parent
The Story of a 27-Year-Old Mother in Minneapolis

I am an adoptive parent of three special needs kids from Hennepin County. All three were placed in foster care at birth and all three were in only one foster home. Two of the foster homes were marginal at best. Our second and third children are natural siblings. They are the third and fourth children born into a family involved with child protection for three generations.

Mitch was placed with us at six months and is now five. Mitch has been diagnosed with ADHD and fetal alcohol effects. He had pronounced speech and language delays and is currently receiving therapy. He has made wonderful progress. He has trouble processing information but is a happy, gentle, loving child. He is also very impulsive, hyperactive and distractable. We anticipate future learning problems and the need for medication. If you met him briefly you would think he was a normal child.

Tami is 9. Tami was placed in our home at 29 months. We were told by her foster family that she was a very difficult child to raise and that she was hyperactive. Tami experienced neglect, deprivation and some abuse in this foster home. There was a special charm about Tami and we assumed that when she had her needs met she would be fine. Today Tami is a bright, energetic, loving child. She has also been diagnosed with ADHD and Fetal Alcohol Effects with organic mental disorder. She is on medication 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I don’t think we could have kept her in our home without the help of medication. If you met Tami you would think she had tremendous energy and that she was a silly, happy girl. The truth is she has organic brain damage. Without her medication simple things like getting dressed and combing her hair hurt her. For years she wore shoes too big for her because her feet were so sensitive. She is so hyperactive she literally used to climb the walls. Many, many nights she hardly sleeps. Her brain works in a random manner. Sometimes she says to me "I can’t think" and I know it’s true. Sometimes she can learn and sometimes she can’t. Her teachers have said that she must be pretty bright because she is mentally there only about half the time. She has a very high level of distraction. The world is too loud, too bright, too overwhelming for her central nervous system. I don’t know what the future holds for her. Kids with Fetal Alcohol Effect for the most part look normal. Because it is invisible it is very had to remember that they have brain damage.

Parenting kids with FAE is frustrating, exhausting and discouraging. How do you parent a child whose brain doesn’t work consistently? Because they are so impulsive you literally don’t know from one minute to the next what to expect. I have a very dim outlook on the future of the child protection system as we know it. Most kids in the system have been exposed to alcohol and drugs. Most of these kids have invisible organic brain damage. I know first hand just how difficult it is to cope with raising my kids and yet the system expects parents who are facing issued of employment, poverty and their own drug and alcohol abuse to be able to raise their damaged children. I am convinced that my kids would not be alive today if they were raised by their birth parents.

Erica was 4 and a half years old when she came to us as a foster child; it was her 12^th foster placement. Her delayed language and development was attributed to frequent foster placements and inadequate parenting. (FAS had been ruled out at birth because her weight was normal.) She returned to her birth mother after nine months. Five months later she was replaced in our home after her mother was arrested for driving while intoxicated with Erica in the car. By the time we were able to adopt her, Erica was six years old. Despite a culturally and academically rich environment, Erica had difficulty learning throughout her elementary-school years. For a brief time these difficulties were diagnosed as ADHD despite the fact that she only marginally met the criteria for that disorder. Ritalin therapy was of little or no benefit. By her middle school years, Erica was displaying alarming behavioral symptoms that caused us to reconsider the possibility of FAS. A definitive diagnosis of FAS was finally made in 1996; she was 16 years old. Special education services, tutoring, a supportive family and religious community, and long-term therapy have enabled Erica to have a relatively normal adolescence. She has been able to hold down part-time food service jobs and can successfully navigate the metro are by bus. As she enters 11^th grade she continues to struggle academically and emotionally.

I started drinking when I was 10. I hung out in the arcade downtown, between a bar and a liquor store. I always had a way to get to alcohol. When I was pregnant with my first daughter in 1989, I would literally go to the hospital and beg for help. But at that time, there was no help for desperate women like me, so they sent me home.

My daughter is now seven and tests confirm that she was exposed to alcohol prenatally. She is hyperactive, repeats sentences, and has a hard time remembering things. She suffers a lot from my drinking.

In 1992, I was pregnant again. But when you’re an alcoholic, getting pregnant doesn’t stop your addiction. Alcoholism is such a selfish thing; it is just downright nasty. I didn’t want to get sober. But I also didn’t want to hurt my baby. My 5-year-old daughter is being tested for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome because she also shows some effects of my alcohol use.

My parental rights have been terminated with both of my daughters. I pretty much lost it when I lost them. In 1996 I was pregnant again, and I knew that if I lost another child, I’d kill myself. I was sent to a treatment center and got support from community programs. I had help getting to doctor appointments, help with transportation, help with the bare necessities that a poor woman needs when she is trying to get off the streets and get her addiction under control. By the grace of God, those resources were available to me, but they are not as available as they need to be. I have been clean for 17 months and had a clean baby in 1996.

I am lucky because I am still very much a part of my daughters’ lives. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But it is very painful to watch my 7-year-old go through what she goes through knowing that there is nothing I can do to get inside her to change what I’ve done and the permanent effect my addiction has had.

I finally made a commitment to change my life. I don’t believe that saying you are trying is making a commitment. I talk openly and honestly about my experience to anyone who will listen. I am not ashamed of it, it is not an embarrassment. It is what has happened in my life, and I hope it will prevent someone else from having to go through what I went through and what I continue to go through.