Day by Day

There have been quite a few things that have occurred since my last entry. I was able to get my son in a Pre-K program through the Lexington/Richland 5 School District. There was only one school that offered this one class and it was full. I kept calling and bugging everyone I could find on the internet related to special education for the district to try to get him in. I was having no luck after numerous dead ends and days of calling. I was frustrated because I felt like I was failing him. I could not get him in this program which offers access to everything he needs (speech therapy, access to counseling and special educational attention to bring him up to age level) and it frustrated me. I knew I had found out about this program for reason and I would not drop the issue. I said a quick prayer that God would tell me who to try next since I had already gone almost all the way up the "ladder". I decided to call the elementary school office that he will be slotted for when he goes into kindergarten. I got the school receptionist. I explained my situation to her. She said she did not know who I would need to speak to, but she grabbed the school system directory and gave me the name of a lady in the district office. She said this lady is the only one listed for special education. I called the number not expecting this lady to be able to do anything. I got her voicemail and found out that she was the Director of Special Education for the whole district. I left a message and did not expect a call back because of her title. She called back within 15 minutes. She apologized for it taking her so long, but she had called the school with the Pre-K program to find out if they had space for my son. They did have a space just come open because a child had moved out of the district that Friday. She told the school to hold that position for my son. She got him in school within days. She also arranged for my 3 year old little girl to get speech therapy through our slotted elementary school. When I brought her in for the speech therapy assessment, this Director arranged her schedule to be at that school to meet me. I was amazed how a random phone number given to me by a school receptionist lead me to the top of the ladder. I could not believe that the week before a space had opened up when I had been calling for two weeks and they said there would be no openings this year. Ask and you shall receive.

On another note, speech and behavior have improved greatly with both children. Our 3 year old came into our home 7 weeks ago only able to put together two word phrases that were hardly discernible. She would grunt and point. She was like a "ferrell child" for lack of better explaination. Now, she can say simple sentences. She says yes ma'am and no sir. She can say please and thank you.  She can identify hundreds of objects. We have learned her speech patterns and have been able to model corrections to speech errors. I have been using flash cards with pictures, letters and numbers. She loves learning and she is at age level on cognitive assessment tests. The School Psychologist was impressed due to her past malnutrition and neglect which we were afraid could her development.

Our son is writing letters, the clarity of his speech has improved 10 fold and he has developed great social skills with other kids and plays well. There are some issues with learning boundaries. These children raised themselves, literally. So with him, we need to undo 4 years of learned behavior and it does not happen overnight. Neither of the children were potty trained coming in the house, so I had to potty train them both and have been quite successful over the past 7 weeks. They both suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Our little girl wakes up screaming bloody murder almost everynight, sometimes several times a night. She has night terrors that are difficult to wake her up from. I will sleep on the floor in her room some nights when the nightmares are severe. There is no telling what horrible things she has seen in her three years of existence.

Knowing all this, I have to continue to let the birth mother have court ordered visitations with the kids. For instance, two weeks ago the mother made a big stink that she had a right to see her children to give our little girl a birthday present and take them out for a birthday lunch. She was awarded this visitation. I had to drive the kids two counties over to meet the DSS worker. We transferred the kids to her car because DSS does not want the mother to know what we look like or car we drive because of the risk of her following us home and kidnapping the kids or worse. (Yeah, she's that crazy.) So the social worker takes them to the Burger King for the birthday lunch. The DSS worker had two other DSS workers come with her to make sure there was not any trouble. The mother showed up without any money to buy the kids lunch. The DSS worker could only entice the kids away from me with the promise of Burger King kid's meals. So for them not to be able to get them would affect the trust they had for the DSS worker. So she bought them all lunch (including the deadbeat mother). On top of that, she did not bring a birthday present for our little girl. That was her whole argument for visitation. She had a right to see her child and give her a present. She said she wanted to schedule another vistiation for the next week to bring the present since she "forgot" it. Needless to say, this was recorded by DSS and the next week she did not get a court ordered visitation.

She was supposed to go to court for termination of parental rights this past Wednesday, Novemeber 16th. It took DSS two days to return my multiple messages to find out the result. The DSS worker said that the lawyer got the case continued on a technicality and it would probably be February before they could get it on the docket again. Even though this leaves the kids in limbo for three added months at least that is three more months that guarantees they stay in our care.

She can try her best with these little games, but these children are not alone now. Mark and I will fight for them and we will not give up. Your continued prayers are appreciated. Thank you for reading my blog.