How is it that a mother can actually be arrested FOR seeking treatment for her adopted child?

A certified letter was delivered to my front door this afternoon. This letter was terminating the intensive level of residential services my adopted son now receives. I, of course, will be sending an appeal package first thing next week. And so it continues, the several year long battle for proper care for my very first adopted child.

John arrived to our home at 3yrs old, our very first foster child. (Although we later adopted him, we had not then planned to adopt children, but only to foster.) He was as cute as can be, with gorgeous eyes, long eyelashes, and a pony tail down past his little toddler waist. We struggled with this child from the beginning. We had no idea what we were doing; we'd never had a child with such behaviors before. But, maybe it was all something that could be fixed. He'd had such a difficult early life, you know. We tried and tried and we finally asked for help. We wandered through various systems, being told his behavior was too severe for one program – yet, from another, being told that we just needed to love him more. We bought locks, alarms, video monitors. We hired extra home help and extra supervision for John. And we loved him more. But, he didn't get better.

When he was available for adoption, the social worker discouraged us from going through with the process. She said he had too many problems; we should not saddle ourselves with a lifetime of trying to help him. No, we thought. We felt too much guilt to let him go without another identified home, of which there was none. We realized that maybe John would not be able to function forever in a family setting – but determined that, as long as he could be in a family, he could be in ours. We made sure that future residential treatment was outlined in his subsidy agreement and naively thought that we’d covered all the bases. We finalized the adoption.

We had not even the smallest idea about how things would really go for all of us after that. I certainly hadn't thought I'd be arrested soon!

(continued)
Part 2
Part 3