Broken

by Rosie Lewis

  I cuddled her close, thinking, no, little one, none of this is fair. Mrs Cullum-Coggan and Clare exchanged surprised glances at the door. They looked slightly choked themselves.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As soon as I got back from dropping the children off on Monday 2 February, I switched my computer on and searched for some adoption forums on the Internet. I had attended all sorts of courses in the last decade covering a diverse range of issues, but had always found the advice from adopters and foster carers on the forums of far more practical help.

  I rested my head on the desk as I waited for the page to load, my eyes stinging. Mungo yawned, stretched his front legs out and then made a pillow of my feet. I tickled his ear, enjoying the unspoken camaraderie between us. Bobbi had remained on full throttle all through the weekend and was still calling out to me at 4 a.m. this morning. As on other nights she settled quickly after I’d stroked her hair, but barely an hour passed before she was crying out again. It was only nine thirty but I felt thoroughly drained.

  As the screen flickered above my head my mind rewound over the last few days, juddering to a stop here and there as if trying to bring something to my attention. My old computer tower whirred noisily at my side as my thoughts returned to our visit to my mother’s house yesterday afternoon.

  Archie had greeted Mum politely and offered her a string of effusive compliments about her house and the quality of her orange squash, but there was a lethargy about him. As soon as they’d exhausted the pleasantries he slunk off to one of her armchairs and sat holding a book up in front of his face. There had been no more outbursts from him since the evening he’d met Des, but in a funny way I regretted the calm. His fury had offered me a rare glimpse into his inner world, one that I felt sure was close to shattering.

  Every attempt I’d made since then to get him talking had been deflected away with light-hearted chatter about Harry Potter or other distractions, but I wasn’t fooled. My sense of foreboding was growing with each day that passed.

  Bobbi had thrown herself into my mum’s arms as soon as she saw her. ‘Well, what a greeting,’ Mum chuckled breathlessly, patting her gently on the back. ‘More than I get from some, I might add,’ she said with a pointed look towards her grandson.

  Jamie, stretched out on the armchair opposite Archie with a jar of her peanuts open on his lap, threw her a grin. ‘Oh yeah, sorry, Nan,’ he said thickly. ‘Hiya.’

  Soon after I began fostering, my mother applied to become one of my back-up carers. After being interviewed by one of the agency social workers, she attended a weekend Skills to Foster course, submitted to various background checks and childproofed her home. Having covered for me countless times in the last decade, she had plenty of experience of the different behaviours that could arise in children from difficult backgrounds. As Bobbi wrapped her short arms around Mum’s middle she gave me a knowing look over the top of her spectacles.

  ‘That’s my nanny,’ Megan grumbled possessively, her bottom lip pouting as she stood nearby.

  ‘Oh, come here, little yellow belly,’ Mum laughed, holding out her other arm. Megan ran forward and Mum drew her into a hug. ‘How’s my special granddaughter today?’

  ‘Okay,’ Megan smirked, enjoying the fuss. ‘This is my friend, Nanny,’ she said, patting Bobbi’s chest. ‘Her name’s Bobbi, like a boy.’

  Bobbi scowled and began throwing herself around. Mum instinctively shrank away, protecting Megan from Bobbi’s stray blows. ‘Crikey, be careful, lovey, you’ll do yourself a mischief if you carry on like that. We’ve already met, haven’t we, Bobbi?’ she added quickly, artfully distracting her from escalating into a full-blown meltdown. ‘Do you remember? I came and sat with you while Rosie popped to the shops.’

  Bobbi stopped screeching and looked at her. ‘We played with the farm,’ she said, patting Mum softly on the cheek. It was an affectionate gesture, a reminder of the special bond that often develops between the older generation and the young.

  ‘We had fun, didn’t we?’ Mum said to Bobbi, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She turned to Megan. ‘Bobbi can be a boy or a girl’s name.’ She stood up with a soft groan and glanced at me over the top of her glasses. ‘Mind you, I suppose any name can be, these days. I heard someone called their daughter Tofu the other day. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my born days.’ The girls, still either side of her, made a competitive grab for her legs. ‘Careful, you’ll have me over in a minute. Now, get out from under my feet so I can get the kettle on. Dinner won’t be ready for a while so we’ve got time for a cup of tea.’

  Megan skipped off and got the colouring pens out. ‘Come and do drawing, Bobs,’ she said cheerfully, laying on her front on the rug near the hearth.

  Bobbi released Mum and began dancing manically around the room. It was a bright, open space, with tall bookshelves fitted snugly into the alcove on one side of the fireplace and an old-fashioned dresser in the other, but there were lots of trinkets around. It wasn’t the ideal place for one of Bobbi’s raves. ‘Bobbi, let’s find a game to play,’ I said invitingly, holding out my hand to try and catch her mid-lap. She stopped near the dresser and picked up one of Mum’s ornaments. Megan dropped her pen and sat up. ‘Ooh, no!’ she piped up, eyes boggling in astonishment. ‘You mustn’t touch Nanny’s things!’

  The warning drew my mum back from the kitchen. ‘That’s right,’ she said, brandishing a teaspoon in the air with mock sternness. ‘You leave my ornaments alone, young lady, or I’ll chop your fingers off.’

  I cringed. The Skills to Foster training course Mum had attended all those years ago hadn’t done anything to soften her tongue. I held my breath, expecting Bobbi to react badly. To my surprise, she restored the china horse she was holding to its place on the shelf with exceptional caution, her eyes fixed wide on my mum’s face.

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ Mum said with a firm nod and a quick, not unsatisfied, glance in my direction. She waggled the teaspoon at Megan. ‘And you make sure you keep those pens away from my new rug, madam,’ she said, tapping her slippered feet on a thickly piled cream-coloured rug at the foot of the sofa. ‘I don’t want to come in and find it all colours of the rainbow, d’you hear?’

  Megan grinned. ‘Okay, Nanny.’

  ‘Well done, Bobbi, good listening!’ I said, taking her hand and leading her towards the rug.

  ‘Well done, Bobs!’ Megan repeated, patting her on the top of the head.

  ‘She’s not a puppy, Megs,’ Jamie said with a momentary glance away from the screen of his iPhone.

  ‘She sounds like one sometimes though, don’t you, Bobbi?’ Megan returned, leaning close to Bobbi’s face and smiling broadly. Bobbi yapped and bobbed on her heels. We all laughed.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said, passing Bobbi some paper. ‘Let’s play Follow the Leader. You take a pen and follow mine as closely as you can, okay?’ It was a game I usually played with children who were fearful of intimacy, since it offered a non-threatening way of making a connection. Bobbi was already a dispenser of frequent cuddles, but I thought the game might help to get her used to following instructions.

  ‘Huh?’ Bobbi pressed her glasses further onto her nose with a flattened hand and stared at me with her mouth open.

  ‘I’ll show her, Mummy!’ Megan chose a felt-tip and began drawing some wiggly lines across the page. I followed her pen closely behind with my own. Bobbi, itching to join in, bobbed up and down on her knees as she watched us. We each took turns in following one another across the page, the girls giggling whenever my pen bumped into theirs.

  With my mum taking care of dinner I was able to spend the next couple of hours with the girls, focussing on all the games I’d been meaning to play since Archie and Bobbi arrived. Archie declined my offer of joining in, but when I stuck eight sheets of A4 paper together with Sellotape and drew the shape of a large person in the space, he lowered his book and showed some interest. ‘Who’s that?’ Bobbi asked, watching me with intrigue.

  ‘It
’s a people,’ Megan said. She had seen me play this game with several other children and had always been an enthusiastic participant.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, inviting the girls to draw circles all over the body. ‘Now what we have to do is think of all the different parts each of us has inside, the bits that make us who we are.’

  ‘Huh?’ Bobbi said, frowning.

  ‘Well, inside all of us are lots of different thoughts and feelings. At the moment you’re confused, so I’ll write that in one of these lovely circles you’ve drawn. Can you think of any other parts you have inside you?’

  ‘Bobbi has screechy parts,’ Megan offered earnestly.

  ‘Erm, we-ell, she does make a funny noise sometimes, don’t you, Bobbi? Can you think of how you might be feeling when you make that noise?’

  Bobbi bit her lip. ‘Erm,’ she said, looking around the room. By offering Bobbi a visual representation, I was hoping to help her to recognise and then begin to regulate her emotions. I was about to offer up some ideas when she looked back at me. ‘Sad,’ she said levelly, taking me completely by surprise. Clearly she was more in touch with her own feelings than I’d realised.

  ‘You feel sad sometimes. Right, so we’ll put that down in one of our circles.’

  ‘My tummy was always sad at home,’ Bobbi said, her tongue poking through her lips as she drew some features on the face. ‘It hurts when it’s sad,’ she added matter-of-factly. ‘It growls and grumbles and keeps me awake. But it’s happy now I’m at your house.’

  ‘Ah, interesting,’ I said mildly, aware that Archie was now glaring at his sister. I joined in with the colouring, making a mental note to record her comment in my diary when I got home. Children often begin to open up and talk about their difficult experiences once they feel safe. Foster carers are encouraged to record all disclosures as accurately as possible but are warned against asking probing questions which might prejudice any future inquiry. ‘Charlie used to love playing this game,’ I said eventually, when it was clear that Bobbi wasn’t going to enlarge on what she’d said.

  The girls, absorbed in decorating the head with a mass of bright orange curls, didn’t say anything. Archie slid from the armchair onto the floor. ‘Who’s Charlie?’

  When children are taken into care they’re often convinced that they’re the only ones who have ever been removed from their families. The news that other children have gone through similar experiences comes as a revelation to them and they seem to draw comfort from knowing they’re not unique in that way. It’s one of the reasons that our fostering agency encourages regular social events for carers and their families.

  ‘Is it someone you looked after?’ Megan said, her pen now chasing Bobbi’s over the circles they’d drawn. I nodded and was about to open my mouth to speak when she jumped to her feet and put the lid on her pen. Bobbi dropped her own pen and began rolling across the floor. ‘Can I tell him, Mummy?’ Megan asked.

  I grinned. ‘Of course you can, sweetie.’

  ‘Arty, Mummy helps children. And I help too.’

  ‘That’s right. Charlie was a little lad who came to stay with us before you were born though, Meggie, and he used to love drawing pictures with us.’

  ‘Why did he stay with you?’ Archie asked, his eyes shining with interest.

  ‘His mum wasn’t able to keep him safe,’ I said, aware that he was watching me intently.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well,’ I said slowly. I wasn’t about to share the confidential details of a real child’s past, so I hastily invented a plausible scenario to share. ‘Charlie’s mum was addicted to some bad medicine. Not the sort of medicine you get from a doctor, the kind that makes you well. This medicine makes you ill and so she couldn’t take care of Charlie, and he became ill too.’

  Archie’s eyes were burning with intensity now. ‘How ill? What happened to him?’

  ‘He was cold and hungry and lonely. No one played with him or took care of him when he was unwell.’

  ‘Mum,’ Jamie said, a note of urgency in his voice. For a second I thought perhaps he felt that I was sharing too much. I turned to look at him, but he was gaping across the room, his eyes bulging with horror.

  I followed his gaze, a band tightening around my breastbone. The smell hit me before I managed to process the sight; the acrid, overwhelming and unmistakable stench of faeces. And there, squatting right over the middle of Mum’s new fluffy rug, was Bobbi, her face red as she strained. Drawn by the chorus of gasps in the room, my mum appeared at the doorway a few seconds later. ‘Well, that’s the limit, it really is,’ she had said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  On screen, one of the adoption forums had loaded. I logged on under the username Mrs Doubtfire and scrolled down the different subjects being discussed. The option ‘DAILY STRUGGLES (a space to vent your fears and frustrations and search for answers)’ seemed most relevant.

  I browsed the list of most recent threads but there was nothing related to education or difficulties at school. I was a regular reader of the forums but rarely posted, usually finding the answer to whatever issue I was having after a short trawl through the older threads.

  Today, though, I decided that some specific advice might be more helpful. I clicked on ‘Start a new thread’ and went for it, explaining that I had an AD (adopted daughter) and a FC (foster child) of a similar age, then detailing Bobbi’s behaviour and her difficulties at school – the constant interrupting of the teacher, the crawling under desks, her refusal to follow basic instructions, as well as the SENCO’s proposal of reducing her hours and their general reluctance to provide additional support. For the benefit of the easily revolted I left out yesterday’s fluffy rug episode. Known as ‘code brown’ in fostering circles, faecal smearing is potentially a sign of previous sexual or physical abuse, but might just as easily be dismissed as a one-off ‘accident’. Bobbi was still only young and, Mum’s initial horror notwithstanding, it wasn’t something I felt worthy of too much alarm.

  After making myself a coffee I refreshed the page and was touched to find that several members had already taken the time to answer my post:

  6 replies

  Submitted by SLUMMYMUMMY – You have my sympathies, Mrs Doubtfire! We’ve been trying to get Cherub’s school to agree to additional support for the last 3 yrs. Now they’re threatening him with expulsion. Have you read The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene, PhD? That book changed our lives – if only I could get Cherub’s teachers to read it.

  Submitted by TIREDMUM – Ditto Mrs Doubtfire and Slummy Mummy. No luck on accessing the pupil premium here either. AD now at the stage of school refusal. I’ve had to give up my job and home tutor her. Every day I’m screamed at, smacked, punched and abused. I wake each morning with a ball of panic in my chest. Sometimes I fear we won’t make it. I’ve heard good things about The Explosive Child and also Inside I’m Hurting by Louise Bomber. Now all I need to do is find the time to read them. Sending you warm wishes and wishing you luck x

  Submitted by MYSTERYFC – I am a teacher, foster carer and adopter. You have the right to insist that your FC is provided with a full-time education, Mrs Doubtfire. Schools are not allowed to reduce hours willy-nilly. Get some legal advice!

  Submitted by WHISKERSONKITTENS – Tired Mum, I feel for you, I’ve been there too. We almost didn’t make it but these forums gave me strength through the darkest times and somehow I managed to keep going. Keep posting. You WILL find the support you need on here. My AD is now 23, she is my best friend and I love her more than I can say. There is always a way forward. Please know that your AD’s attacks are not personal. She’s hurting and you are her safe base. Hold her while she rages at the world, watch her while she sleeps.

  Submitted by SCOOBYDOO – Discipline, discipline, discipline! Mrs Doubtfire, if FC doesn’t behave at school send her to her room when she gets home and make her stay there! Tired Mum, my motto has always been ‘If you hit, you sit!’ I can’t believe that you allow a child to hit you! Send h
er to her room until she learns to control herself. Whiskers on Kittens, get a life! While AD sleeps, watch the soaps, not her!

  Submitted by ISITWINEOCLOCKYET? – Scooby Doo, just one question – how the f*ck did you ever manage to get through the approval process?

  I sat motionless for a moment, moved by the depth of love and devotion these parents had for their children. It was so inspiring. Drawn towards the post about The Explosive Child for obvious reasons, I downloaded the eBook and spent the next two hours glued to my Kindle. It was as if the book had been written specifically for Bobbi.

  In it the author, Ross Greene, explains that there are a minority of children, often those who have suffered trauma and loss or in-utero injuries from alcohol or drug exposure, who are simply unable to respond to adult imposed sanctions. Their difficulties render popular parenting techniques such as reward and punishment, sticker charts and the removal of privileges futile and redundant.

  Greene, a child psychologist, suggests that there are three options available to carers dealing with difficult behaviour. The first is to plough ahead with adult-imposed sanctions that are unlikely to ever work, the second is to ignore all but the most troubling behaviour and the third is to compile a list of triggers for the child, those incidents most likely to result in confrontation – perhaps cleaning their teeth, keeping their room tidy, or dealing with transitions such as leaving a park or turning the television off – and then prioritise those behaviours that are most important to deal with first.

  ‘Striking when the iron is cold’, the author advises the carer to wait until the child is calm and then say something like, I understand that you find it difficult to turn the TV off when your programme is over – what can we do to make it easier for you?

  The carer and child then work together, solving the problem collaboratively, rather than combatively. Besides making the child feel involved and consulted, they also feel under pressure to make any solution they suggest work, because their own idea is at stake. I had to admit, the logic was difficult to argue against.