Placement number 3

Our 3rd placement was a challenge. It was a 12 yr old boy "A". He came from a boys home where he had been living for about 6 months. He had alot of anger issues and didn't want to be part of our family. Even though he had been abused horribly by both his parents he really wanted to go home to his dad. He would do things to push our buttons constantly. If I took him to the store he would say really loud will you buy me a lighter so that I can smoke some weed. And of course everyone would turn around and look at me like I was an unfit mother. So I started saying "You need to ask your social worker and if she says you can smoke weed I will buy you the lighter. Well of course he quit doing this sort of thing in public because it embarrassed himself. We also had quite a few violent episodes with him also. He had a social worker that would call and ask to talk to him and would tell him lies about was happening with his case and of course this would just get him to act out. He was in reunification and had counseling and weekly visits with his dad. His court cases were in nevada city about an hour from us and his social worker requested that he be at everyone. He was with us for 5 months and he had a court case every month. Every month they would postpone it and tell his dad he had more things to do to beable to get his son back. A also had a sister but the sister wanted nothing to do with the father. At the last court date my husband took A and when he came back he walked in the door and I said where is A. He said they sent him home. I thought he was joking. I said what? They really did send him home from the court room, no time to say good bye or anything, we were instructed to give all his things to the social worker to give to him. As difficult as he was I thought when he went home I would want to celebrate but I didn't it was kinda sad.We actly missed him a great deal, even though most of the time he was pushing our buttons he really was a sweet kid and I guess we attached to him more then we realized. I have prayed for him many times since he left our house. I heard that he went back into fostercare almost a year later. So sad, I just hope he realized after we left that we did care.........