Well, I still don’t have it all figured out. But I do find myself continuing to peruse message boards and blogs that relate to attachment disorder, foster care and adoption. Less so boards that relate to childhood mental health problems in the absence of trauma. I think of my son nearly every day. I wish I could picture him living happily and successfully, just as though nothing bad ever happened to him at all. I think every mother would wish that for her child, just to be able to fix all the problems. I couldn’t fix them so now I just like to dream that the problems just magically disappeared for him once I stepped out of the picture. But in my heart I know that is an illusion. Last night I almost signed up on a message board for people who have experienced disrupted adoptions. But I stopped because I figure most of those people had infants who they wanted and never got rather than mothers like me who voluntarily (and necessarily) gave up a child and returned him to the custody of the state. It nearly killed me. But the damage done to him, to me, and particularly to my other children would have been much more substantial if I had continued down an impossible path. I was way out of my league. Sadly, I don’t think there is a league that is prepared to deal with the serious disturbances that can result when a human being is tortured for the first few years of life. If there was, I surely would have found it. The struggle now is to figure out how the law can benefit these children, or better yet, how it can be applied to protect them in the first place. I think the basis for this needs to be found in the constitution. I will be working with a professor over the summer on establishing a network within the school for training to be a court appointed special advocate (CASA) and guardian ad litem (GAL) for children in state placement. That is good. But it is not the solution to the underlying problem, which is my focus and ultimate goal. The children in this country must have certain rights, and when those rights are violated, they must have access to justice and appropriate restitution, including appropriate physical, mental, and emotional health care. And I need to either locate or perform research that will establish that these children DO NOT recover from their substantial injury. I suspect that is the case more often than not, despite the happy face people want to put on the situation. It is not enough to promote foster care and adoption. That does not put these children into a position where they are made whole. I am not anti-foster care. I am Pro-child. Every child, including the invisible ones. So…at the end of my first year of law school, I remain committed to the children, even if I have needed to devote my energy to legal subjects that seem to have nothing to do with child welfare at all.
Posts Tagged ‘RAD’
RAD and the law
Posted by newlawmom on April 9, 2009
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Posted in 1L, child welfare, Child Welfare Issues, ethics, foster care, law school, Parenthood, Purpose, trauma | Tagged: adoption, child advocacy, children's rights, constitutional rights, foster care, law school, RAD, trauma | Leave a Comment »