Other People's Kids

Convalescing

I've been down for about 2 weeks now with what has seemed like a morphing, changing cold-flu-malaria-whatever. Yesterday I finally went to the doctor (and missed work) and got some antibiotics. BAM. I felt a little better already last night, and I think I'll be ready to go to work again tomorrow.

In fact, I feel good enough now to reveal and speculate on the only interesting things that have happened lately, and they all obviously have to do with our only current foster child, "Jenny".

The first has to do with her grandma. "Jenny's" grandma is the manager at a local hotel, and it happens that that hotel has a swimming pool. That pool has been the source of regular time-off from fostering for us, as "Jenny" likes to go over there and visit her grandma and swim. Yay. I always liked pools, but I like them in a whole new way now, since "Jenny" doesn't seem to really have any good friends and tends to make life...INTERESTING after awhile when she's the only kid in the house and there aren't others to occupy her.

So last weekend she came back with $20, telling us that she earned it by "organizing boxes". She has been a fairly honest girl, so we simply teased her about it at first. But then, come to talk to grandma, she was missing a 20 that was sitting on a shelf (or somesuch). Oops. Busted.

The Wife is thinking that "Jenny" actually believes in her own mind that she didn't take it. To me, that's not really germaine to the situation. If she took it, and she did, then we should have frogmarched her right to her grandmas and made her give it back and apologize to her grandma to her face. Circumstances made that problematic to do, but I feel that's how it should have been handled. I'm worried she didn't get a lesson out of it that we could have provided, and now we may not get the chance to deliver it.

Because that's the second item that's interesting. "Jenny" apparently will be going home next week, leaving us as incredibly young empty-nesters. Her sister has been evaluated and will be going to some sort of residential facility for awhile, and "Jenny" will be going home in her place. This is actually how I think it should have worked out in the first place, but better late than never I guess. Her sister is a terror and if she was a few years older I might actually be a little afraid of her. I'm NEVER afraid of children, but I just get the feeling there's something wrong with that one. I have very little to base it on...just a strong hunch that she's bad news. I definitely would not allow her to babysit a child, for instance. Now I guess we'll get a chance to see what the experts think.

The third (related) item is that we drew the short straw and get to tell "Jenny" about how her life will be changing. Problems aside, she really has done pretty well here and we love her like our own...or at least I do. Maybe The Wife will be less sorry to see the back side of her, since she was much more difficult when I wasn't around. But she's going to have another difficult transition time ahead of her, and I'm a little concerned about her. Not too much though, because I think her sister was probably the spark plug that fired the Engine Of Doom that is that family. Without her around all the time to instigate, I think "Jenny" and her mom will probably work toward a pretty nice equilibrium.

I should also mention here that as I've gotten to know "Jenny's" mom, I've gotten to like her quite a lot. She seems like a pretty decent mom overall, and maybe she's just had too much dumped on her. She's made some really positive changes and The Wife has especially developed a strong rapport with her. I suspect she may develop into a long-running family friend, however things work out.

I still haven't met the dad, who spends most of his time working on the road. That's kind of a big unknown in my analysis of this family...but as I've said before you've gotta give every member of the family the benefit of the doubt when you can.

posted by Dan @ 8:35 AM