Foster parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ARe you foster parenting a teen who is of a different race/ethnicity than you? If so, perhaps she does not feel seen by you

It has nothing to do with race, its not really her true home or room.

Don’t know if you are op or not but if you have ever opened your ears and eyes to adult adoptees and ffy, then you would retract your statement

[Anonymous]

OP, You all are doing a great job just by being there and by being yourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ARe you foster parenting a teen who is of a different race/ethnicity than you? If so, perhaps she does not feel seen by you

It has nothing to do with race, its not really her true home or room.

Don’t know if you are op or not but if you have ever opened your ears and eyes to adult adoptees and ffy, then you would retract your statement

Sure, ok... you don't get it. What would her race have to do with a bedroom. It's about permanency, fitting in and long term. In foster care, she can be moved at any time.

[Anonymous]

Op here.
She does not want to be adopted but she is with us permanently. She will not be moved until she decides to leave as all children do when they grow up.
She is the same race as us.
Her parents were abusive and she does not want to live with them. I’m not saying this makes us the perfect solution, but they are not a mile down the road with her bedroom intact. One is on the other side of the county and one is incarcerated for a very long time to come.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, You all are doing a great job just by being there and by being yourselves.

Thank you

[Anonymous]

Have you joined a FAPAC meeting? Good for commiseration, advice, etc.

https://www.dcfapac.org/

[Anonymous]

I am sorry this is happening to you. You sound like a very caring person. Your back and forth with your DD re her room’s paint color sounds exactly like conversations I have with my own bio DD who is 15 and has significant executive functioning issues (diagnosed). She would absolutely say the exact same things and has about other subjects.

She once told our pediatrician we don’t keep food in the house so she’s always hungry. So this raised a huge red flag and the doctor brought me in to ask if we were food insecure and other questions. Soon it became clear that my daughter really meant “my mother won’t buy me take out every day so there is no food in the house I will eat”. Doctor instructed my daughter to go to grocery store with me to pick out food she likes. I took her to a giant wegmans and said ok let’s get food. Pick out whatever you want. She refused to get anything, at all. After this standoff for 10 minutes I proceeded to just get regular groceries.

It’s never about the food or the paint color. It’s about control when they think they have none. It’s about feeling acknowledged and seen, even if you as the parent are doing all the right things. My daughter will willingly go against her own self interests so that she can refuse to cooperate, even for something she wants. I don’t know why. We have a family counselor, she has her own therapist and she’s had an executive functioning coach.

You are not alone OP. Hang in there. You could go to the paint store and buy a fan (the thing that has all the switches together that you can spread out like a hand fan) and maybe bring it home to see if she sees anything. Leave it on the table to see if she gets the idea to pick it up and look.

[Anonymous]

Yes! I feel so seen. We have this exact issue with food. She does not want to buy or prepare food in advance. She wants take out/grubhub all the time.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP who posted earlier about it being about more than the issue at hand. After reading your later post, though, I actually think it might be more about executive function than you are realizing. Sure, the other stuff is probably there, too, but consider this as an option:

Maybe she has the idea and genuinely wants to move it forward (i.e. paint her room) but is unable to initiate the action. She might actually feel that she has launched this into action by telling you about it and does not have the capacity to move it beyond that herself. So, she is perceiving this as stalled because you aren't moving it forward, and when you remind her that you want to, she feels some level of shame and anger toward herself that she didn't actually move it forward (maybe she doesn't even realize this is happening in the moment, even if she feels like this).

I could be totally wrong, but I'm thinking of my own DC (AuDHD), who would mention something offhand in a totally random time and then be upset with me that I didn't follow up on it. Like: I'm dropping him off at school and in a hurry to get to work. As he jumps out of the car, he randomly says, "Hey, I want to get a new desk chair at home. Oh, also, here's a crumb I found on the floor. See you later!" He doesn't seem particularly worked up about it, and since he hops out of the car and I go to work right after, I don't remember it and he doesn't mention it again, even while using the desk chair. Then, two months later, he's like, "Why didn't you get me a new desk chair?" In his mind, he raised the flag about it, even though he didn't really seem very invested in it, but that's his communication style, and I sometimes forget it is different from others.

The main difference there is that he is too young to really be involved in it, and he generally won't get angry if I bring it up again. Maybe your DD is also a little uncomfortable about asking for things from you, like it will make her feel indebted to you or something, if she has some attachment issues?