LOO TIME

 Quick update on our newest foster child "Alicia".

She's transitioning, as per if you saw my posts around the time of her arrival.

I'm careful to respect her privacy and ensure she can't be identified.

But I think it's important to share stuff, after all that's the point of the Secret Foster Carer; to talk about the many joys and challenges of fostering.

Naturally our Blue Sky Social Worker is at our side with everything. Literally.

When Blue Sky paid for me to attend an all-day intensive course on gender, my Social Worker came too.

The main thing in Alicia's life is going well. The main thing; Alicia's physical and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately she doesn't have the universal support of every member of her real family. One member in particular refuses to refer to her by her new name and is very vocal and active with her disapproval, voicing the view that Alicia is disrespecting her own mother, who gave her a different name, and arguing that Alicia's mother must be mortified that Alicia now calls herself by a different name. 

This person is also very disapproving of Alicia's foster mum - me - because I accept Alicia and respect her choices. The family member in question leads a similarly chaotic lifestyle to Alicia's immediate family, which is something that Alicia seems to be trying to escape from.

When one fosters one needs to be resilient against the occasional family member of the child who might feel understandably diminished by having a child removed.

Enough on that, I want to share something positive.

Not long after Alicia arrived I went to use the upstairs loo. I turned the handle to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. A voice said softly:

"Sorry".

"That's alright." I said, and went away, feeling strangely mortified.

Why was I mortified? It was the sort of small thing that happens in a normal household all the time.

Yet I seemed upset that I'd maybe intruded on Alicia during a private moment. I think that perhaps I had come to believe that Alicia had bigger privacy needs than most foster children.

Whether she does or doesn't is another matter, but I sat at the kitchen table trying to work out what to do to make sure I righted any wrong, however small and innocent.

Should I say to Alicia "Sorry I interrupted you earlier just then"?

No, that might only make it worse.

I had a freind who, if she was in the loo and heard someone approaching, would cough quietly to signal it was occupied. I decided against that tip. Alicia isn't forceful enough for it.

I realised that ordinary homes loos don't have the little locks on them that indicate "Vacant" or "Engaged" like public loos do.

So I bought one! Good old Google/Amazon!

I won't bore you with the details of what a right cob it was to install. Drilling, gouging chunks of wood to  join up the mechanism on both sides, cussing when we discovered we'd got the measurments wrong and had drilled a hole in the wrong place…

We got there in the end.

We all use it, and it's dandy. Every home should have one.

But unless you're a wizard at DIY, get someone in who knows what they're doing because they're a mare to install.

Meantime; back to Alicia.  I hope and believe she's starting to recognise that her foster family will always go the extra mile to make her feel as comfortable as possible.

                                                *    *    *

PS Last week Alicia said something to me that will stay with me forever, it's this:

"It's not important to be better than somebody else. It's important to be better than the person you used to be."

Her point, I think, is that everyone should be transitioning, one way or another.

Isn't fostering the bees knees?