Nancy Spoolstra blogged about this article already, but I, as usual, have a few more thoughts.

This is what jumped out at me, considering I’ve adopted 31 out of my 39 children from the foster care system.

Nationwide, there are more than 500,000 children in foster care at any one time, and more than half have mental illness or serious behavioral problems, according to the Child Welfare League of America.

No kidding folks? Welcome to my world. We fall slap in that category of serious behavioral problems. I’ve seen mental illness close up, the underbelly, and I greatly despair in that realm. What’s a mother to do?

I have many dejected mamas emailing me, with their very similar descriptions of life in their families, matching the situations here in my own.

With one teenager going into a therapeutic setting, that I am very fortunate to have found, with a team of top notch therapists working with her, plus years of seeing another psychologist, involvement (charged) with the Department of Juvenile Justice and subsequent probation, she is still virtually unable to stop herself from stealing.

We found the most recently purloined items last night, I need to report it to DJJ, but the most difficult behavioral aspect of this has been the feces involvement. Stop reading if you are squeamish.

I’ve lived with feces smearers, I’ve seen that behavior (for lack of a better word) slowly abate in other children, I’ve lived with encompreses (pooping everywhere, but in the toilet) and enuresis (peeing everywhere, but in the toilet), this is part of the adoption world from foster care. This is not a deliberate misbehavior, but a grossly visual reaction to the level of abuse that they have suffered under in their early years.

I cannot even remember how many washing machines we’ve gone through, exhausted them through overuse. I have a front loader now that I’m fond of, and I prefer to dry the sheets, towels and jeans outside where the sun can “sterilize” them, bake the poop out, refresh if you will.

Last night, I was cleaning out the wall cupboards of this particular teenager, nice, deep cabinets that were stuffed with towels, paperback books, a mattress protector and clothes…every single item had large chunky turds connected, wiped, and spread everywhere like thick, disgusting, rank smelling spider webs.

Purely indicative of a loud, terrifyied scream for help, I don’t even get angry anymore, this hideousness is to be expected from someone who suffered from horrendous sexual abuse as a toddler. Medication won’t help her, why mask this? Let’s work with it, fix it, and somehow help her to understand “normal” living. This is terribly sad, disheartening and heart-breaking.

This is not her fault.

Someone did this to her, the registered sexual offender her bio mom lived with is the chief suspect. That was more than a decade ago, I have no idea what happened to him, but I seriously doubt he’s lost any sleep over destroying her childhood, her psyche and her self-esteem.

I’m living with the aftermath. It falls on me to help her survive her nightmares, to find help and resources for her.

I’m not positive that she will ever be able to emotionally accept help. She’s been devastatingly damaged, maybe irreparably.

I just cannot give up. I’ll forge on, searching and trying, I’m fighting this battle alone, as she’s clearly not interested in participating in therapy, she “needs” to hold on to her controls, RAD 101, to resist every therapeutic moment.

This is a difficult undertaking, one in which I may not see progress for a very, very long time…but I’m not quitting.