the guilt trip.

Anytime you have to have a placement moved, (which no one ever really wants to have to do), the state requires a “team decision meeting” to discuss the move. The entire point of this meeting is to discuss what can be done to preserve the placement. Each placement move adds to the trauma for the child. No one wants that, especially me. I am also certain there is no one really in the meeting that is worried about my trauma, or what I live with each and every day. It is an entire team of people trying to make me change my mind. I call this meeting the guilt trip meeting.

I understand why they require this meeting and I’ve had this particular meeting for this particular child more than once. Each time, their pleas are successful and I cave, obviously. After all, it is easier to cave, than it is to feel what I am feeling right now. I care for her so much that I absolutely don’t really want to let her go, likely to my own detriment. This time, the meeting is scheduled for 9am. I have no control over when this is scheduled, and I of course have a client coming into the office at 10am. I’m sure I will present really well come 10am when the client arrives. I have asked to move it. That request has been refused.

So, my day will again start with the upheaval that is this situation. Then I get to stuff those feelings back down and make my way through the work day, with an audience. Can’t wait for that. The fun never ends over here. I’m already emotional. I’m already trying to negotiate with myself about how I can let her stay and what I can do to make it work. The guilt trip meetings work. I assume the success rate is fairly high with everyone, or they wouldn’t do it.

Sitting here writing this in the waiting room for a therapy appointment for a kiddo. Trying to hold it together, much like every other mom in this place it seems. I swear it is 90 degrees in here, and the waiting room is full of irritated people that have been waiting way too long. Compound the irritated and sweaty people, with a collection of children that clearly know every button to push to turn their parent into one of those people that lose their shit and end up on the news. I have a daily goal for myself not to be that parent on the news. So far, excelling at that goal, but as I sit here listening to this one kiddo, harass her younger sibling, while her mother tries to hold the yelling back, the voice in my head is begging this kid to zip it. I can’t imagine all the voices running around that mom’s head. I feel awful for her. At the same time, I think to myself how much different it is to parent an acting out 10-12 year old verses a 10-12 year old masked by the body of a near 18 year old. People are absolutely NOT as understanding when it’s my unruly kid in the waiting room, looking like an adult, but sitting at the kiddo table, coloring, with the little kiddos, while carrying on in wildly inappropriate ways. I get a ton of eye rolls, stares, and disapproving glances. Wonder what the voice in their head say about us?