Jack Brennan Perspectives

I took a long time to decide to begin this blog because I was afraid that I would very quickly run out of things to say. For the past two weeks or so, since the last post, that’s an issue that has come back to trouble me. It’s not really that I have nothing more to say. It is that I’m not sure where the line is between what I want to say, and what is fair to say.  What, that is, is private information that does not belong on a public blog?  Even if a story’s characters are disguised, one quickly reaches a limit where the disguise so distorts the story that it is too often not worth telling.

One of my continuing disjointing experiences of this blog – for any blogger, I suppose – is to see what the site reports to me: that there are people reading the blog every day and yet I have no idea who those people might be.  The link from the Family Focus Adoption Services website is certainly sending people here – the site reports that to me.  But it doesn’t account for all the numbers that are being reported as coming to the site. So, everything I write must be written with the reasonable expectation that it will be read by some high school kids (some have sent comments) as well as adoption professionals (some have subscribed) as well as my colleagues at work (both comments and subscriptions) and, of course, my friends and family members.

And that goes to the heart of what I wanted to say this morning: it is my absolute belief that if something is true, then it must be true no matter what angle or direction that you approach it from.  Which means, in turn, that if it is good for me, then it must also be good for you. Or, if it is good for you, then it must also be good for me.  It also means that if it is bad for either of us, it is bad for both of us. No matter how it may look, sound, or feel otherwise. Therefore, the only way to be even reasonably certain that something is true is to see whether or not it works from all approaches.  One of the reasons that we are so confident about our transition process at Family Focus is because it works for everybody. The adoptee gets all the time they need to make their decision about being adopted; the family gets all the time that they need to do the same; and the child’s agency is charged the same fee no matter how long the process takes so they lose nothing by giving us the breathing room that we need. Actually, by not having to pay for alternative placements, they save real money the longer it takes.

That is a very simple example of what I am saying, but it shows my point. In my experience, I have never seen this to not be true.  I remember one time talking to the very enabling girlfriend of a very abusive guy.  The young woman told me how very deeply she loved this man and that’s why she had to put up with his abuse.  She wasn’t happy when I told her that there would come a time when he would end up murdering her and then it would have been her “love” that had allowed him to become – even supported him in becoming – a murderer. Tolerating his abuse was obviously not good for her – but it also was not good for him.

This belief – the title of the post is the exact words – has been enormously helpful for me in understanding lots of things that I didn’t before I was given it (by Msgr. Huntington, of course). No matter how the train engineer, for instance,  justifies his driving of the Jews on his train route which is now terminating at the concentration camps, it cannot possibly be good for him, nor for his family, for him to keep that job.  What he is doing is bad for the Jews, and therefore automatically bad for him.   That it’s his livelihood now – and pension later – pales before the evil he is bringing onto himself and his family.  The logistics of getting out of it become political, of course. But the decision to get out is very simple. Not simplistic, as I have been accused of in my life. Simply: simple.

Deciding what to post must be measured by what is private to another. Violating anyone’s confidence or privacy is out of bounds.  And it couldn’t be good for me – or you, the reader – if it weren’t good for the person whose story I tell.  Simple. But it does make it harder to know what can be fairly written.

Jack

Earlier in the week there was a thought provoking letter in the NY Times. Professor Dena Davis insists that in countries with less than full democracies, the mindset is that President Obama could not only have stopped the Koran burning in Florida, but could have arrested the minister who did it. The “could” really is seen as “should.” Since he did neither, he is viewed as sanctioning the behavior.

“Sanctioning the behavior” was certainly one of the most difficult parental balancing acts that I experienced.  While I imagine that that is probably so of all parents, it is all the more difficult when one adopts into one’s family a person – child though (s)he may be – who already has years of history outside the family with different values, different beliefs, and different behaviors; too often, many different values, many different beliefs, and many different behaviors, from their many different homes. Our family positions seem like only one more imposition in a long line of such.

It seems there is a continuum with “minding one’s own business” at one end – Obama and the burning e.g. – and “sanctioning the behavior” [“enabling” being the farthest extreme of that] on the other. I suppose toleration is along the continuum somewhere.

But we are taught over and over that every single decision or non-decision; speaking or not speaking; acting or not acting has meaning and communicates our beliefs to others. And I agree with that. But it brings parents back to their fear of sanctioning behavior that they do not agree with.

Simple: When I was a young adult, I was sometimes given a much appreciated carton of cigarettes as a gift. I never interpreted that to mean that the gift giver agreed with my smoking.  Yet today, I wouldn’t even consider picking up a pack of cigarettes for my kids on my way to their house – even though I might well be picking up a gallon of milk for them at the same store.

Difficult: For those against abortion, how does one drive one’s young adult daughter to the abortion clinic when she gets pregnant?  Yet how does a parent support a daughter’s right to make her own decisions by refusing to drive her?  If she has the abortion, can she continue to live with you? Or is that enabling her because your cheap room and board allowed her the money to go to the clinic?

Where is the line?  I have just recently finished MAPP training – the local standard of training for foster and adoptive parents – and this issue of the line was not once addressed.  It’s further interesting to me that in all my years of working in the field I never once saw a training to address this very real and very painful parental dilemma. I have had to fly by the seat of my pants every single time I came up against it and I know now that I too often blew it.

For adoptive parents of older children – especially if there are birth children in the house – the dilemma is seriously multiplied.  Allowing the children the freedom to do what they do because one is committed to unconditionally loving them does not cut it.  There must be standards of family behavior that must be followed, or one turns into a group home, no?

At the risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw, the “Sex and The City” columnist character, who today would probably be a blogger: If you are not with me, aren’t you against me?  And if you are not against me, aren’t you automatically with me?

Thank you, Professor Davis, for giving us your insightful and, for me, personally relevant perspective.

Jack

I was reminded last week of a belief I hold that held me in good stead when my kids were younger and taking all things to the extremes that they did.  There were times when some one or another of my kids, even as very young adults, would get mad at me, disappear, and cut me off.  Months, sometimes years, would go by without a word. It was impossible to know what to do. In a culture where being divorced is almost a rite of passage now, there were no permanent relationship models to look to for what to do in the face of silence. It was hard to figure out how to keep the relationship alive when it was so silent, and sometimes silent for so long. Or even if it could be kept alive.  Is there a relationship time limit for silence?  Beyond a certain time period of silence does a relationship automatically die?

I knew that I was not ending the relationship; I was certain of that. Yet, it sure as heck felt ended; and the evidence also made it sure as heck seem that way.  For those of the kids whose adoptions were finalized, there was that legal tie that was there forever and I was very grateful and happy for that much anyway, little though it meant in real day to day life.   But for those whose adoptions had not yet finalized, I was forced to question: is the relationship over?  Is this what a failed adoption looks like?  And feels like?  Some of the foster kids went back to foster care and therefore had to be placed somewhere else.

Were they then not my kids?  Obviously in the material world they were not. But inside me, they absolutely were. I kept trying to figure out a model for how I could be so certain that these kids were mine, even though they were nowhere to be seen.

And then I remembered something Fr. Huntington had taught me: “there is nothing [real] that is not mutual.”  I had to take that lofty philosophical – or perhaps theological – concept and bring it down to earth.  And I did.

I figured out (decided?) that all relationships, like my television or stereo, had two controls.  The first was for the volume; and the second was the on/off switch.  I realized that the first person who walks away from the relationship only controls the volume: the relationship goes silent.  But it is the second person who then controls the on/off switch. And as long as that second person refuses to turn the switch off, the relationship remains alive and real, no matter how silent.  It worked out very well for me over the decades, and protected my relationships with, and my feelings for, my kids.  I sure believe it is an accurate representation of reality.

At the very least, it is an empowering concept.  Anybody has the freedom to walk away from a relationship. But it is the second person who controls whether a relationship lives or dies.  A child can reject a parent, but as long as the parent refuses to reject the child, the relationship remains alive, no matter what the kid does.  Very powerful and very freeing.

[Does it work the other way also?  I don’t think so, due to the need for the parent, not the child, to make the unconditional commitment. But maybe the kids think it does – and maybe that sense is part of why Ted (see older posts) and so many other kids fight against or even refuse to accept their parents walking away.  Maybe, aside from the pain and the loss,  they believe that by refusing to turn off that switch, they have the power to keep the relationship alive.  I don’t know.]

Jack

Years ago, after a serious back operation, my son Gilbert got very very sick. It was touch and go for a while and it was very scary.  I remember calling my aunt from the hospital every day…. I was 33 and I needed her every one of those hospital days.

Years after that, my son Irving died, and for various reasons, I buried him in Puerto Rico. I came home to JFK airport to a furious February snowstorm and I drove in it in the middle of the night all the way out on Long Island to my aunt and uncles’ house…. I was 43 and I needed them desperately that night of the day I’d buried Irving.

In between, my son Rodney graduated from college. My aunt and uncle drove all the way to Albany to go to the ceremony. They were in their late 60s…..I was 38 and I was so thankful to have my “folks” there for my son.

———————————————————————————–

You get the point: people need and want their families, specifically their parents, despite being adults. Turning 18 or 21 doesn’t end that need. We just don’t realize it as a need, if we’ve always had them there, and have never felt the emptiness of their being gone.  It’s not the need of a kid: it’s the need of a person.

Yesterday, I was referred to, and today I watched, a great video, on YouTube,  about older teens and adoption. It was so good, and so accurate, that I was knocked out by it and want everyone to know about it.

[“We Interrupt” produced by Ampersand Families, a fairly new adoption agency out of Minnesota. It is broken into two parts, labeled Part One and Part Two]

Immediately afterwards, I went to the website of “Ampersand Families” and found this statement on permanency:

“Permanency is not a single placement, it is not a plan, it is not a program. It is not what some call ‘long-term foster care’ or ‘permanent foster care’ – there is no such thing, as foster care is designed to be temporary. It is not an Independent Living Skills class. Permanency is a knowing, deep within, that you belong somewhere with someone…..”

Yes.  Yes. Yes. And that belonging “somewhere with someone” is always a gift from the “someone.” Ampersand Families recognizes that it is never something you can earn – it must always be given to you.   It may not be appreciated till it’s gone, but it always gives us an answer to the question that I heard on the video and knew immediately would be the title of this post.

Who do I call?

Nobody should ever have to say: “I have never had any one to call.”

Nobody.

Jack

Obviously, readers are interested in knowing what has happened with the eleven year old – call him Ted – whom I’ve written about this week. The latest report I have is that he is very very angry and he is demanding to speak to his “mother” to ask her “why?”

That’s good. My great fear has been that he would experience himself as a victim, “an unfortunate person who suffers from some adverse circumstance” [WordNet/Princeton]. Instead, he is apparently experiencing himself – appropriately – as a target, “a person who is the aim of an attack by some hostile person” [id]. And the proper reaction to being targeted – especially by one’s so called “parents” – is to be angry, and the proper response is to express the anger and to demand answers.

Whew….

Everyone working in the system knows that our kids carry emotional baggage with them as they move from loss to loss to loss. It is so universal, and so the same experience from kid to kid, that it’s almost as though the baggage comes in only one material (though in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors) from some actual real company named “You Are To Blame, Inc.”

I’d go so far as to say that if there were only one experience that we could magically eliminate from our kids’ lives, I would choose to eliminate this conviction of self-blame. I would choose it above the rejection, above the neglect, above the abuse, and even above the abandonment. All those can be transcended, but blaming oneself for what was done to us? It eats away at our very ability to respond. And isn’t it our response-ability that frees us to be us?

Ted is processing, not burying. He is apparently recognizing that his pain is not self generated and he is looking directly to the source. He not only seems to NOT be blaming himself; he appears to be responding appropriately to this “attack by some hostile person.”

His behavior actually has me feeling optimistic for his future.

I’m proud of him.

Jack

Tomorrow afternoon, I have to be part of a team of people that tells an eleven year old that his parents are surrendering their rights to him (legally severing their parental connection).  This is not something that I have ever done before. At my adoption agency (commercial: familyfocusadoption.org), we either place children who are newborns or children who have been in foster care for years and have had their legal bond to their parents broken for a very long time – long before we ever meet them.

The object of the game will be somehow to show this boy that his parents’ decision is neither his fault nor his responsibility.  Yet, when the consequences for him are so severe, and the relationship with the people doing it to him, so personal – his parents, after all – what chance do we have of doing that?

It has made me do a lot of thinking this week. After all, all adoptive parents are never a child’s first parents. And the fact that there’s been an adoption always means that the first parents are no longer parenting their child.   In the case of some kids that is a good thing: e.g., abusive and neglectful parents lose their legal parental rights. And in some cases, very good people give up their children because they recognize that they cannot effectively parent them.  A fifteen year old pregnant high school girl who makes a wonderful adoptive plan for her child is a perfect example.

Yet, I have already described, in last Friday’s post, an example of parents who apparently decided that they could not effectively parent their gay son.  But my gut insists that that circumstance is the polar opposite of the fifteen year old girl above.  What is the difference?  Because knowing that difference may help us tomorrow with this boy.

I was long ago taught, by my brilliant and wonderful mentor, the late Msgr. Christopher Huntington, that “all motivation is mixed.”  There is no such thing as a person with pure motivation.  We all do what we do, and don’t do what we don’t do, for various mixed reasons, some good, some bad.  But our mission, he taught me, is to constantly strive to purify our motivation. Work to get rid of the bad, and reinforce the good.  And the measure of – and means for – our success is how much we are focused on the good of the other vs. the feelings within ourselves.

And there, I realized this morning, is the direction we have to go in with this boy tomorrow.  Are his folks working with the foster care team, to develop a future plan that is best for him? Or are they primarily reacting to their own feelings of pain, anger, and frustration, that they have experienced in their relationship with him?  When I look at that, when I try to measure which is the primary experience that the team has had with them, it becomes frighteningly clear what is going on.

In the infamous biblical story of King Solomon, the woman whom Solomon figured out was the “real” mother, was the one who was willing to sacrifice all that she wanted as a parent in order to save her child from being cut in half. In the contemporary world, the example of  those Jews from the Holocaust who turned their children over to Christian families in order to save them from the camps and/or death, transcended their feelings; and did so for the good of their children.

It is possible, very much so, to give up one’s children and still love them; even give them up because one loves them. But the love is measured by the good done for the children, and never by the feelings entertained or indulged within by the parent, no matter how strong or overwhelming those feelings may be.  Attachment, after all, is not love.

How on earth can we show that to this eleven year old?

Jack

Yes. Looking at that title on paper now, it’s the right title. The execution of this part of the surrender plan felt very much like an execution, period. As someone pointed out to me later, all that was missing was the black hoods. And as I predicted, it was all about blaming him; and portraying him as broken, faulty, defective – in much nicer words, and by implication only. And of course their decision was not a choice, but a “must.”

Many years ago, my then seventeen year old son brought to me a cartoon and said to me, “Pop, this is how I feel.”

It was a man in a spacesuit, standing on the moon, reading a note, left by his fellow astronauts, who were in the spaceship flying way above and leaving the planet. The note did not say what it should have. It didn’t say, “Henry, we are so terribly sorry to have left you here. We did wait as long as we possibly could. But the window of opportunity for us to get off the planet was upon us. Had we stayed any longer we all would have died. And we chose not to let that happen.”

Instead, it read: “Dear Henry, Where were you? We waited and waited, but finally decided that…”

Not only blaming Henry for their decision, but minimizing what they have just done. “We finally decided to go to the movie without you” does not have the same import as “we finally decided to abandon you on the moon.”

And what on earth does “where were you?” matter now? Blaming the victim was a concept that I first heard named in college when I read the book of the same name (thank you William Ryan) – but by no means was the experience it named new to me.

In their first words today, the parents not only told their “son” that they loved him, but that this decision was best for him. Really? Fact? Not opinion? Not a belief? Fact? Wow. So typical and predictable for people who blame others.

It could have only gone downhill from there. And it did. Nineteen times, “you, “ “your,” or “yourself” was used. Nineteen times. One paragraph.

Abusers are always
always
always
the same:
“you made me do it.”

Maybe, in the end then, they were right after all: them saying goodbye was best for him. Not because of who he is, but solely, and surely, because of who they are.

I need to take a shower.

I am on my way shortly to a meeting where a pre-teen child is to be told by his long term adoptive parents that they are giving up their parental rights to him. I am willing to bet – almost to guarantee (assuming the boy even chooses to come to the meeting) – that the parents will blame the child for their decision. I further (almost) guarantee that their blame will consist of portraying him as someone who is barely short of being a monster.

Those two themes – blame: specifically blaming someone else for your decisions; and portraying others as monstrous beings – I will come back to in this blog. Probably next entry, but also certainly repeatedly over the course of time.

Jack

Television writers get so much wrong about foster care, adoption, and “natural” parents (see “Dexter” on Showtime), that it is a joy to see when they get it right. Forest Whitaker’s character, Sam Cooper, got it very right in Tuesday’s episode of “Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior” entitled “Devotion.”  A father had abandoned his two children to foster care after his wife left him, and he went on to spend years in a new marriage with a new child,  because, as the father character later says to his son: you had “so many problems.” Cooper than blasted the father, with that moral stance that Whitaker does so well: “You abandoned your kids because you thought they were defective?  You have a responsibility as a parent: you encourage, you nurture. Even if you think things are going to go wrong. You just threw them away like they were garbage?  What gives you the right to hide behind your money, your fears?  You are a coward.”

Strong words – and necessary words for the purposes of the episode.

But they are strong and necessary words for our culture also.

A joy to watch and to hear (the episode can be seen on the CBS website.)

Jack

[I spent some serious time last week writing an entry for this blog, but forgot to give it a title – required – and off to the non-blogisphere it went never to be retrieved. I couldn’t bear to try to rewrite it. Thus the gap in time between entries.]

I have been in the adoption field for many many years now, and I am well aware that all adoption is subsequent to deep loss. The loss of one’s birth family, no matter the reasons, cuts very deep.  But all loss is not the same.  A young teen mother, creating an adoption plan for her newborn, whom she recognizes that she cannot take care of is not betraying her child. On the contrary, focused on the good of her baby, she is making a decision to love her child.

During the Holocaust, there were a significant number of Jewish families, who gave over their children to Christian families, lest the children be killed. Too few of those parents lived to come back to get their children.  Terribly sad and painful – sometimes even for those who did return – but in no way a betrayal of their children.  Rather, a decision to love them.

Even many of those parents who lose their children to the foster care system permanently because of drugs or alcohol,  or some other expression of abuse or neglect, can be viewed as not competent to care for their children, rather then as betrayers.  Admittedly, the line there can be rough to delineate, but the power of addiction can only be known fully by addicts.  And incompetency is understandable, even to its victims.  Perhaps a decision never made to love their children.  But even that would not be betrayal.

But what of parents who give up one child yet hold onto their others?  And worse: what of adoptive parents – who have been taught to know better – yet do the same?  Even if there are no sibs?  Is there any way to describe their behavior other than betrayal?  Can the child understand his experience without understanding the concept of betrayal?

One of biggest lessons I learned in going through sex abuse training over two decades ago, was that it is always the adult who is responsible for the abuse. Not half responsible, nor even mostly so. Totally. It was a revelation to me that even the most seductive fifteen year old, had absolutely no responsibility for being abused.  It was, I learned, the power imbalance in the relationship that determined the responsibility.   That power imbalance always also determines who betrays whom in child-parental relationships. Parenthood is – over and over and over – an adult permanently claiming a child. When the claim is real, it is irrevocable.  And, I think, for children who have had that experience (and then, say, the parents died), adoptive parents would become second parents, though no less real. Such was my own experience with my aunt.

But for parents who do claim a child, and then later renounce their claim, it is almost never based on the good of the child, but rather on how the parent feels. No child should remain with parents who renounce their parenthood, so it can be stretched into a decision “made for the good of the child.” But that would be a lie, no matter how technically true.

When parents choose protection of their feelings – even if the child’s behavior is outrageous, or perhaps criminal – over protecting the good of their child, there is only one word to use: betrayal.  When adoptive parents do it, they do it, by definition, with children who have already lost one set of parents.

That makes it a parental betrayal like no other.

There are no words for that.

Jack