PMAB, medication and attachment, oh my!

My life is non-stop adoption classes right now. I'm getting way more than 30 hours of training. Mondays and Thursdays for three hours (three and a half tonight!) for three weeks, plus an extra Monday, plus eight hours last Saturday, plus CPR training this Saturday (which, thank goodness, I am going to be able to do in my town). Why do they squash, yet spread it out like this? I can understand the let's-bust-it-out over three weekends approach, or the every week over a couple months approach, but I'm finding this a little exhausting. The big problem is that I'm spending a *lot* of time commuting, which I find very tiring. Whine, whine whine. Actually, I seem to be coming down with my third flu of the season, which goes far towards explaining my crummy attitude. I'm generally a much more enthusiastic and energetic individual.

PMAB (acronym for Preventative Management for Aggressive Behavior, for anyone who hasn't mastered every acronym yet) class was on Saturday. I was kind of dreading it, since I kind of got the impression it was just restraint training. I get the impression that people who work with teens don't use restraint--they try to put a barrier between the raging teen and themselves and call 911. All in all, I was anticipating a really useless eight hours. Imagine my pleasant surprise (yes, you heard right--I'm being pleasant!) when it was actually pretty interesting, and they really didn't emphasize restraint at all. This was the rare well-prepared class that I've been to--a clearly planned out presentation, overheads already created, etc. As an educator, I really find it fascinating to watch other people's mistakes and successes when they teach. The material was also a lot better than I had anticipated. It was all about trying to deescalate. I don't know that I'll remember all of these tips and techniques should I be in a crisis situation, but the instructor did a good job of trying to give examples and make things clear. Way to go Misty!

Tonight we did medications and attachment. The medications section was mostly about documenting and emphasizing the importance of doing exactly what the doctor said to do if you have foster kids. There was a lot of random complaining about how foods and sugar and dye contribute to ADHD problems (not that I'm not on board. . .). It wasn't like I learned a whole lot about medication itself, but I feel like I've got a pretty good idea of what's expected vis-a-vis medication. The attachment section, though. . .oh boy. . . Not like I'm any kind of expert, being no one's mom at all, but from everything I've read, attachment is one of the biggest problems in parenting kids out of foster care. It's a problem that affects all other problems. With that in mind, you would think that we would cover the topic in a great deal of depth, no? That the instructor might emphasize the importance of these issues? Well, sucker, you'd be wrong. We learned about the attachment cycle and did an exercise on babies getting attached. When someone asked the instructor what to do if (if!) a child came into their home with attachment issues, the instructor said to "act appropriately" and "at their level". Uh, yeah, that's helpful. And really conveys the importance of the issue.

I find the lack of emphasis on attachment issues to be particularly bothersome because many of the people in my class don't seem to be doing any research on their own. For instance, we saw this foster care video in which a foster child calls his foster mom a bitch. It was unpleasant, but it wasn't like the kid was kicking or hitting or destroying anything. A big deal, but not disasterous, and certainly the kind of behavior you might expect if you'd done any research on this at all. I was talking to one woman (who I have started to develop an antipathy towards, but that's another story) about the age group she was interested in. She said that before the video, she had wanted older kids, but now she was more interested in toddlers. I pointed out to her, in a casual way, that the younger kids who have been traumatized can have lots of issues, too. She said breezily that her daughter had had "issues" when she was a toddler, and that all toddlers do. Now, in a semi-ideal world, she would learn about attachment issues and how much they can affect even little kids. But I just don't think that's coming. If this woman is placed with a toddler (and I sincerely hope that she isn't), she just isn't going to have the tools to address the issues that come up.

I'm really embarrased to admit this, but in general, I thought people were kind of whiny when I read forums and they protested that they didn't understand this or that aspect of the process--didn't know that placement would take so long, did not know that they wouldn't easily be able to get a reasonably healthy child under the age of five, didn't know that the fifteen year old boy who just came out of RTC was not likely to be particularly emtionally stable. Thirty hours of classes!, I thought. How could they possibly not know this stuff? I know this stuff and I haven't even started! (lest I start to sound incredibly arrogant here, I know I still have a *LOT* to learn. Like how to actually parent, for instance. . .) Now I get it--these classes really are not the bee's knees. If you want this information, you really have to go look for it. I'm an obsessive researcher/reader/worrier, so that's second nature to me, but it isn't going to be to everyone. The thing is, I just don't get it. I'm working with a private agency, one that is supposed to be quite good. The instructor on Saturday emphasized that their caseworkers are really interested in making a good match between parent and child so that the child doesn't have to be moved so often, and they have far lower caseloads than CPS so they're in a better position to do that. But what good does matching do if people don't really know what to expect? And, hello!, we're trapped there for thirty hours! Wouldn't kill them!

In happy news, I found a book-on-tape for the car ride that I'm really enjoying. It's about a girl who was adopted at age eight, and her father is a professor! Professors, adoption--totally an appropriate mystery novel. Plus, each side of the tape is almost exactly the length of my commute to class. Yay!