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Text of the page (random words):
fact that they ve probably been through a lot of placements and that can make things more difficult that kind of has me worried not that i am altered in my teenage girl resolve but i hope that she won t be resistant to placing a teenager with me if that s what i want i may change my mind but i doubt it at this point i ve thought about this a lot and i m almost certain that s the age group i want to go with the adoption coordinator also emphasized that the kids on the photolistings are often there for a reason they re hard to place with more difficult behavioral records she said that the kids who were listed with moderate problems were often closer to severe as i ve read more on special needs adoption i ve gotten better at photolisting interpretation i e needs a strong father figure probably means that the kid will pretty much reject the mother and i ve begun to realize how many kids have problems i m just not up to dealing with still i wanted to raise my hand and sort of beg on behalf of those chldren of course i don t know their histories but so many seem to have potential i totally get why the adoption coordinator would want to do that and i think that her position is not uncommon people fall in love with a picture and a description take on more than they can handle disrupt the adoption and the kid ends up in another broken home if i were the adoption coordinator i would probably say the same thing all the same it seems sad i guess depressing is just something i m going to have to get used to in this biz okay so things i actually learned tonight apparently subsidies are pretty automatic for those who qualify it is more a matter of negotiating how much this makes me happy since texas offers free college tuition to all kids who get subsidies i know that my fantasy of seeing a child off to college may be unrealistic but it s nice to know that it will be paid for if it proves a realistic dream i was also really interested to hear the sorts of things that one could negotiate for as part of the subsidy in particular i was really thrilled to learn that you could try to get additional funds for private school if you thought the kid could particularly benefit from it i m a big fan of montessori education and i think that it s an approach that would work really well for a lot of children coming out of the foster care system i ve been all in a tizzy trying to figure out how on earth i would afford it if i thought a kid really could use it if i could get a subsidy increase though that would really help 23 kids are currently sleeping on cots in cps offices in my region because there is no room for them in foster care homes or shelters not particularly relevant information so we ll just file it under depressing also maybe call to action texas recently changed foster laws so that you can t have more than six kids in the house total if you foster and then only if both parents are home this also doesn t affect me but it sort of sucked for the seemingly cool family who was enthused about taking in big sibling groups but had three bios at home i knew a lot of things that they were talking about just from doing so much reading actually i m not sure i would have totally followed the presentation if i hadn t done a lot of reasearch ahead of time i wonder what the next class will be like and who will be there posted by mungos_mom at 10 38 pm 3 comments saturday april 7 2007 things i accomplished today i made the big move of actually signing up for pride classes this week they start in about nine days i m pretty excited but they will be taking up two or three of my saturdays as well as monday and thursday evenings with that in mind i ve been planning to go to town on getting projects done over the next two weekends today was not quite the productivity bonanza i was hoping for but i did do the following installed lock on bathroom door installed three smoke detectors kitchen and both rooms that might be potential kid rooms installed fire extinguisher please note i purchased this fire extinguisher 3 years ago when i moved in it has been sitting on the dining room floor ever since nothing like a little motivation ordered kid friendly bedding from land s end on massive discount when i actually get an adoption placement i ll probably let the kid pick out something they like but i think i would like to do respite while i wait and i think these will definitely work for that bought a copy of sorry at the thrift store for 50 cents looked around the thrift stores for kid furniture found a bunk bed by stanley furniture for 250 it has drawers underneath so i think it s pretty cool i didn t buy it but i am seriously thinking about it here s to hoping it is still there on monday looked at the reuse store for a door to my bedroom it turns out that normal doors are 36 wide while my doorway is only 35 wide i m not exactly sure what i m going to do about that still to do this weekend finish stupid paper start filling out mountains of adoption foster paperwork a couple of days ago i ordered a bunch of books parenting the hurt child adopting the hurt child adoptive parenting and attaching in adoption i m trying to get the most recommended titles out there one of the books i read said that i should keep track of when i was feeling positive or negative about adopting and try to keep track of what brought on those feelings i ve realized that i get a lot more stressed out and anxious about this decision when i start thinking about taking on a boy or kids under about 13 14 that cool boy sibling group i was interested in still sounds interesting but i m probably not up for a seven year old boy i ve got to keep repeating that to myself even when the young uns and the boys look awfully intriguing posted by mungos_mom at 5 58 pm 3 comments thursday april 5 2007 how i dealt with it the case of the three cheaters when i went to the expo info meeting the other day the recruiter really emphasized that even non parents may have parenting experience time you spend supervising others builds parenting skills as well as teaching it was an a ha moment for me hell i work with teenagers all the time actually most of my students are in their early twenties but still seem to act like teenagers i was involved in an incident today that seemed like it involved parenting type skills i thought maybe i would start a little intermittent series so that i could keep track of such situations and how i did and how i could improve the situation my ta came to me with three homeworks two were exactly the same i mean exactly the same same words same format everything and one was mostly the same part of it had the same words and format part was different but similar this as far as i am concerned constitutes cheating not really an ambivalent case either even if they worked together and actually they really shouldn t have been working together on an assignment like this but we ll leave that be for a minute their responses to the questions should not be exactly the same by the time you get to college you should know that i wrote a note on each of their papers explaining the similarities and the consequences a zero on the homework and a report to the committee on student rights and responsibilities actually a pretty mild punishment i also explained that i would have to meet with each of them to discuss the report and describe the appeals process this is all pretty much standard procedure when i handed back the assignments only one of the students was there unsurprisingly he came up to me after class and told me he hadn t cheated he was not a cheat he s never cheated in his life etc according to him the only reason that their papers were so similar was that they had worked together i explained to him that three papers that were exactly the same left me with no choice but to report to the committee and if he thought he had a sufficiently good explanation there was an appeals process in place he followed me down to my office continuing his protests i said that i would make an appointment with him to talk about the report and the appeals process we made the appointment for friday he asked if anything would change then and i told him that this meeting was just about explaining the report and the appeals process to him he was gone within about five minutes i thought that was it for the night but apparently he called his friend the friend showed up at my office door a few minutes later demanding to know whether i had actually read his homework paper i assured him that i had and that i would also need to set up an appointment with him at a later time he started yelling about how he had been in school for five years and never cheated why would he start cheating now blah blah i explained that it was the end of my day and time for me to go home 9 45 at night so not unreasonable and that we could discuss it over e mail or make an appointment for a later time he kept on yelling so i shut the office door in his face he continued periodic shouts for a couple of minutes i waited another ten minutes and took off i was a little freaked in retrospect i probably should have called campus security for an escort there is no one around at that hour and this kid was pissed it probably didn t warrant it but better safe than sorry and all that at any rate when i left the second really pissed kid was gone and the first one was still there he tried to flag me down in the hallway and i told him i d had a long day and i was going home by this time about 10pm translatable parenting skills i think i practiced in this incident not really engaging escalating i didn t engage in an argument with the first student about whether working together on the assignment constituted cheating i just reiterated my point that having exactly the same answers does constitute significant evidence of cheating and reiterated the process we would need to go through boundaries i asserted that it was my right to go home at a certain reasonable hour when one student did not respect that i put a physical boundary between us when the other did not respect that i reiterated my right to go home and he left it at that if any real parents are reading this in terms of translating this to kid parent conlict how did i do i actually feel pretty comfortable with how i handled it as a professor but of course the situations are different i don t sleep with these kids in my house for instance and i m not hugely invested in their futures any tips anyone has would be good to hear can i just say too how sad cheating usually makes me i m always angry and righteous about it in the abstract but in person i just find it depressing most of the time two of these students have been really good about coming to class and doing their work although their grades have been pretty low the one student who i haven t talked to yet actually stopped by to drop off his homework with his four year old daughter today the reason he wasn t in class i teach a lot of non traditional students and i always want them to do well i really want these kids to do well even though they haven t been i was actually going to make a point of suggesting to one of them that he come talk to me about the work and how he could improve but i sense that our relationship will be pretty strained now actually that would probably be a good way to practice parenting skills too making a point of talking to this student about his performance in the rest of class in an encouraging way maintaining the relationship after conflict and all that happy news for today i mentioned in passing and sort of jokingly to my chair that i thought it would be fun to go to the charity ball that our new president is throwing to raise money for scholarships he looked pretty unconvinced but his wife also a colleague started bugging him about how the department should do more stuff like this in order to be higher profile in the university etc i never expected anything to come of it but he sent around an e mail to ascertain if people would go if he bought a table i ran around all day trying to convince people i m not sure if i have enough on board but i might i might be going to a ball a ball like cinderella goes to balls the downside is that i would really want to make my own dress and the ball is next friday i had planned to spend a bunch of this weekend working on home improvement stuff but a ball and you know a ball gown in further adoption related news i mentioned to my mother last week that i was thinking more seriously about adoption i had been thinking about it in a more passive way a while ago which she knew about she expressed some concerns about my on going happiness she s provided respite for two boys adopted by her friends who have some pretty severe attachment problems but said she thought i would make a wonderful mother i wrote back and told her more about the process and the age group i was looking at teenagers and she wrote the following i think a teenager is a great idea and if anyone can do it you can i m glad that you are aware of the attachment disorder and that you are provided meetings i want to say more but i m out of time kids are coming aww i mean it isn t exactly like my mom is the most objective source of evaluation but she doesn t usually hold back when she thinks something is a bad idea it s so hard to get this whole adoption decision out of my head as i was lecturing on standard deviation today inside was thinking how would i feel about having a kid at home right now would i be happy to be going home to someone in the house or would it just be an extra stressor after a long day would i be happier sadder completely ambivalent i guess i have to think about it a lot so that s good but i also have other things i have to get done posted by mungos_mom at 12 01 am 2 comments monday april 2 2007 a bit of a demoralizing day but no thank you so much yondalla for sending some people my way i ve found reading your blog and others so interesting and informative now i kind of feel like i m part of the blogging community instead of a lone renegade blogger thanks so much to the rest of you for your advice it looks like i ll have to start emotionally bidding adieu to those coveted dining room chairs i have been feeling a bit demoralized about the whole potential process today yesterday i was feeling quite confident and sure that this was what i wanted to do today it feels so much more uncertain my friends have expressed differing levels of support for this whole adoption thing but pretty much in a pattern that s consistent with the way that they react to all of my ideas one has been wildly supportive we talk about it and discuss the possibilities and how i might deal with different scenarios a lot she is just awesome supportive and also interested so it gives me a chance to talk through things one has been cautiously on the fence not really saying much except hmm and interesting she is generally like that very diplomatic one has ...