Nine Years Ago Today

Nine years ago today I was at work when the phone rang. The call was from the lovely social worker who had done our home study when we applied to become foster parents. My husband and I had just finished her MAPP Training classes the night before. We were now official foster parents.

“Judy, we have two little sisters who we are desperate to keep together,” she said. “They are 5 months old and 17 months old. Would you take them into your home?” I immediately called my husband and phoned her back. “Yes! We would love to open our home to two little sisters.”

“We’ll drop them off at your house in an hour,” she said. “They’ve already been to the doctor and are ready for placement.” “Can I have two hours?” I asked. “I don’t have car seats, high chairs, a crib or any diapers. I need to go pick up my daughter from school. We’ll go shopping on our way home.”

I picked up my 12 year old daughter and told her she was going to be a big sister in a few hours. We drove over to Toys R Us and walked toward the Diaper Wall. Luckily there was a woman standing there who looked like she knew what she was doing. I hadn’t been the parent of an infant for 12 years. I turned to her and asked, “Five months old and seventeen months old?” She smiled and told my daughter to go get another shopping cart. Then she guided us through the store, loading us up with all of the infant/toddler products we needed to welcome the girls to our home. Luckily I owned a specialty toy store so the Play Room in our house was ready and waiting.

We arrived home and removed all of our bags from the car just in time. We looked up and saw the social workers enter the driveway. My husband’s car drove in a few seconds later. We walked up to the social worker. She asked my daughter to open the door for a gorgeous little seventeen month old who looked

up with a bright smile and big brown eyes. “Mom, I think I just fell in love,” I heard as I opened the door on my side of the car and looked into the face of a beautiful little five month old baby girl.

That moment in time is frozen in my memory, just like the births of my 27 and 21 year olds. Memorable and life changing, joyous and profound. On that day nine years ago, I began a new life’s journey with two beautiful little sisters as my teachers and guides. Along the way, my life has been tremendously enriched.

As I watched the girls horse back riding last week, looking so strong and confident in their saddles, I remembered all of the times we said goodnight to the horses when they were little. I remembered the day we went to Drumlin Farm and they fed the skunk a worm they dug up in the potato patch. I remembered the way they leapt into my arms as I stood in the swimming pool, making chocolate chip cookies, and all of the baths they took in the kitchen sink.

As we celebrate this nine year anniversary I am filled with gratitude for the girls, their family, and all that they have taught me. They have inspired me to bring innovation and change into the world of child welfare. They have encouraged me to think outside of the foster care box. They have cheered me on as I raise money to create new national models, collaborate with others to launch innovative programs, and encourage the world to find their lives worthy of investment.

Tonight when I see the first star in the sky, I will send up a wish for all of our children who experience foster care – a wish that they will each have caring adults in their lives who are paying attention to the lessons they have to teach us.Then I will send up a prayer of thanksgiving.

Trot Trot to Boston

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting on the floor with five little toddlers on my outstretched legs. Their beautiful faces were full of anticipation – eyes wide open, big grins on their faces, waiting for me to begin. I started:

Trot, trot to Boston.
Trot, trot to Lynn.
Trot, trot to Salem.
Don’t fall in……

I opened my legs and they tumbled into a big heap on the floor, a giggling mass of arms and legs. Then they popped up sweetly shouting, “More! More!”

I think we must have done Trot Trot to Boston at least two dozen times before stopping for a snack. We were having such a good time. The kids were all between the ages of 18 months and 3 years. They were living together in the same foster home just outside of Boston. I was a new foster parent and we were visiting before heading over to the Children’s Museum for the afternoon.

As we sat down at the snack table in the kitchen, I was making friends with the reality that these delicious little children who I was playing with were invisible to most people. I was just beginning to realize that the majority of Americans believe that the lives of children who experience foster care are unworthy of our investment. I was thinking about the outcomes of community disengagement and began to imagine a different future for children who we remove from their homes and place in the public foster care system.

I glanced around the table. So much beauty, so much potential, so much unadulterated joy….. The future. That was the moment I knew I had to sell my businesses and become a full time child advocate. That was the moment I knew that I had to take my love of children and my love of collaborating with innovative thinkers to re-design the way we care for our most vulnerable children in America. That was the day when I dedicated myself to blessing the lives of children who experience foster care.

I have no idea where those five little toddlers who played Trot Trot to Boston with me are today. I know how much they inspired me that day and every other time we visited their foster home. I know the role that they have played in the development of the Treehouse Foundation, our first intergenerational Treehouse Community, Sibling Connections, Camp To Belong MA, Sibling Sundays, We Are Family, The Big Red Barn, Outreach Farm, and all of the other programs that are in development. I know how grateful I am to them for teaching me the importance of their lives. I wish them the very best life has to offer and hope that their families are blessing their lives each and every day.

Grace and Flexibility

Walking the dog through our beautiful little neighborhood cemetery is one of my favorite daily rituals. Following the paths as they meander up and down gentle rolling hills fills me with peace. I am always comforted by the cemetery’s thoughtful design and the multitude of trees that line its walkways.

Today as I strolled past a big maple tree sprouting spring buds, I recalled a day this past winter when an ice storm had bent the tree’s branches all the way to the slippery path below. I was in awe of this tall tree’s ability to be so flexible. Not one branch was broken. As my dog and I entered the quiet sanctuary formed by its branches, I was wowed by this awesome display of grace and flexibility and remembered the first time I encountered it in a human relationship. For that I thank Dr. Ross Greene, author The Explosive Child.

Drs. Ross Greene and Stuart Ablon run The Center for Collaborative Problem Solving. The Center provides clinical services, training and consultation to assist parents, educators, mental health and medical professionals in understanding the collaborative problem solving approach. The Center has developed a more humane way of looking at children who experience rigid thinking and chronic frustration. The Center teaches us that the challenges the children face are best understood as by-products of lagging cognitive skills and demonstrates that they are best addressed by teaching children the skills they lack. This is radical thinking.

The collaborative problem solving approach asks adults that might be living and working with children who experience rigid thinking, to embrace grace and flexibility in a whole new way. CPS allows adults to transition to a place of partnership with a child in order to move beyond rigid adult thinking that can often set kids up for frustration and failure. Teaching the kinds of cognitive skills that children who experience chronic frustration require involves three basic steps:

1. Empathy/Reassurance: to identify and understand the child’s concern about a given issue and to reassure her or him that imposition of adult will is not how the problem will be resolved.
2. Define the Problem: to identify the adults’ concerns about the same issue.
3. The Invitation: to invite the child to brainstorm solutions together with the adult, with the ultimate goal of agreeing on a plan of action that is both realistic and mutually satisfactory – creating a win/win situation.

These three steps are not that complicated. Last night I observed a parent and child engage in collaborative problem solving at my daughter’s school. A parent was picking up his child who appeared agitated. He jumped up on his dad and hollered, “ I’m starving! Can we go for pizza? I’m starving! I want to go to Bertucci’s right now!” The parent wanted to go home and change his clothes. He said quietly, “ You want pizza now. You are starving.” The boy nodded his head. The dad said, “You want pizza now. I would like to go home and change my clothes and then go have pizza. What do you think we should do?”

This simple statement and follow up question demonstrated to the boy that his dad was not interested in controlling the situation. It showed that he was listening and willing to be flexible. In fact, he was modeling flexible thinking skills. He had an idea in his head but wanted to hear his son’s thoughts on the subject. He was like the tree in the cemetery – full of grace and flexibility.

The boy who had been ready for a struggle, looked his dad in the eye and said, “Dad, I haven’t had anything to eat except a bag of pretzels and juice since lunch. How about if we eat pizza first this time and next time you can go home and change first next time?” The dad responded with, “You are really hungry. I have a bag of popcorn in the car. Can you eat that now so you are not so terribly hungry? Then I can quickly drive home and change.” The boy said, “Mom doesn’t like me to eat filler foods. I think I need dinner.” The dad ruffled the kid’s hair, laughed, and said, “OK. That’s a good point. Let’s go eat first. I can do that!” Instead of disintegrating into a polarizing public spectacle, this situation spiraled up. The boy and his dad went out the door laughing. It was a win-win.

Just think: in addition to developing skills that are crucial to learning how to be flexible and tolerate frustration, imagine the trust that this dad was building with his son. CPS is such a powerful tool. I honor what Drs. Greene and Ablon are offering us. It’s a humane and enlightened approach – one that has the potential to help children and adults do well in all areas of their life.