Emma’s fostering blog
Testing time
It’s been a strange year as Adam is having therapy and his behaviour has been so difficult.
As I collected Adam from School the teacher came out she stated that Adam appeared to be in a bad mood, he was asked four times to do something but ignored the teacher and at lunch time Mrs Jay was sat at the same table and heard Adam call her a bitch he was saying that school would be a better place without her.
Whilst this same teacher was eating her lunch he stared at her all through lunch which felt very uncomfortable for her.
I have noticed recently that the stare is back, it is an awful stare; when he was in primary school he didn’t have friends because it scared them and sadly children used to say it was evil. He was told off a few times at the beach for putting his hands in his shorts in public and it now felt as if his behaviour was getting worse each day.
One morning I saw a poem on the floor in his room, as if he left it there for me to see. It was very crude, rude and offensive, I wondered if he had left this here on purpose, but also thought that it is not unusual for teenagers to look for, discuss and laugh about such sexual material. I knew I had to be careful in how I address this with Adam and would avoid the thoughts about it being derogatory towards women.
I felt that keeping such issues small and not inflating them was important as the bigger the drama we make the more the shame and guilt Adam would feel and the less he will be able to make sense of and process whatever message I want to give. I let Adam know that I found the poem and that I felt it was offensive and not funny and that in future I don’t want to see anything else like this lying about in his room.
In the pool on a weekend break he kept trying to cuddle younger children picking them up and throwing them, he was told about this but he just continued. One of us had to continually monitor these sessions to ensure safety.
The Site owners at the main camp asked Adam to be quieter as he was so very loud all the time, perhaps 300 people at the pool, but all you could hear was Adam. People were getting annoyed with him as he was rushing around the pool and it seemed the more people looked the more he seemed to enjoy the attention.
My thoughts are by making small allowances, in view of what you know, you can make a big difference to a child’s life. By them expressing thoughts, feelings, and understanding about their experiences this leads to behaviour changes, especially during therapy.