Nomad:
I used to write here more few years back when things were bad with Ache, haven't visited in couple of years.
Joy has always been a joy. One of those golden boys who seem to be blessed with all the great things from birth. Everything has always came easy for him.
Ache is super talented in few things but has always struggled socially, isn't quite neurotypical, was severely bullied from kindergarten on and something really awful happend to him in his mid teens. Since he struggled with gambling addiction and PTSD (severely depressed, self harm, suicide attemts, severe dissociation etc.) Intensive trauma therapy, medications and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) helped with medntal health, his sport psychologist (he used to be a small scale pro athlete before the toll of all the mental health issues came too much for him and he gave up of that) helped him amazing ways with his social skills and nowadays he is rather stable, little quirky but socially adept individual.
Girlie is not related. In our child protection system they try to prevent having to take custody of the at the risk kids by offering early help to families that struggle. One way to offer help is to arrange respite homes for those kids. Respite home takes the kids usually one or two weekends a month. We decided to do respite parenting, because we had some time, resources and we were aware that CPS was severly lacking respite homes for all the kids needing them.
Girlie is the eldest child in the family with four other siblings. Middle child is severly special needs and father of Girlie and two of her younger siblings has no contact, father of the second youngest has relationship with his child, same with father of the youngest. Girlie's mother was rather overwhelmed with the kids and CPS arranged respite for her three oldest (Girlie and next one, Boyo, boy with mildish asperger, became our respite kids and severely special needs child has respite care in the institutional setting.) Idea was both for the mother to get a breather and on the other hand provide Girlie and Boyo more adult attention, positive male role model and possibilty for Girlie to be just a little kid (as said, she has been very parentified and took way too much responsibility and worry from very early on.) We respite parented Girlie and Boyo several years and also foster parented them one summer couple of years back, when their mother was in abusive relationship and CPS decided that kids were not safe at home before she would ditch the jerk. After the mother did that, she got Girlie and Boyo back, but sometime later Girlie hit the puberty and started acting out which in the end leaded her placement to us.
We have little different CPS system from USA, biological parents can never lose parental rights and they also will have some parts of custody till kids in the system turn 18, but for example currently Girlie's custody is shared between her mother, social services and for day to day matters us, me and my husband as her foster parents. We all are, more or less, happy with the situation.
