Dear Person Holding my Child's Life in Your Hands

Dear Person Holding my Child's Life in Your Hands,
Four weeks ago, someone came and took our foster son from his home, to take him to a new home, to live with the mother who gave birth to him. After 13 months, after living here and knowing us as his parents and his family his whole life. He doesn't understand anything about laws or judges or court, he only knows what he has experienced, and that is that we are his family, who have always been here and always cared for him.

When you took him away, and then told us we couldn't visit him, I don't know if you understood what you did to our family and I don't think you understand what you are doing to him. You see, you forced us to "abandon" him. All I can do all day is picture his face, and imagine that he is wondering where we are. All I can think about is how this abandonment is hurting him, and that he might struggle for the rest of his life to trust because of this trauma.
You want him to attach to his new mom, that's what you say. Except that logic doesn't match any research out there about attachment and children. I have looked for it and read document after document and everything says children attach better when they have a transition, and when they stay attached to their previous attachment. Like this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3422627/
or this one https://www.bcadoption.com/resources/articles/better-adoption-transitions
In our foster care training, our facilitator transplanted a plant, and asked us if we should clear away the old dirt from the roots, cut the roots, etc to be sure the plant did well in the new soil. NO! Everyone shouted. Of course anyone that knows anything about transplanting a plant knows the best chance at surviving in new soil is to keep as much of the old soil around it, to keep the roots as in tact as possible. This is one of the reasons why we keep our kids in contact with their birth families. This is why I reached out to this child's mother to ask her to please come to visits with her daughter last year when she stopped coming. This is why we still try to spend time with our other foster children if parents will let us. When children lose people out of their lives they start to believe they aren't good, they aren't worthy of someone caring about them. They stop trusting people to ever stay, they stop trying to even have relationships. When they are supported by the sturdy foundation of a positive attachment, they can confidently build new attachments.
Maybe you don't know all of this. Maybe you haven't had the attachment training that I have. Maybe you haven't lived with multiple children who have struggled with attachment issues. Maybe you haven't held them and seen the pain in their eyes as they fight an internal battle wanting to trust their mom but needing to protect themselves as history has shown. Maybe you don't know multiple families like I do whose adopted children can't function in society because of their extreme attachment issues. Maybe you really do need to hear from the attachment specialist you are supposed to be consulting.
But here's the thing, it's been FOUR WEEKS. You haven't managed to have that meeting in FOUR WEEKS. Maybe that doesn't seem like a long time, but that is 28 days that he has looked for us. 28 days he has felt abandoned. 28 days we have cried missing him and afraid for him. 28 days we can't sleep or eat. 28 days I feel like I am going to throw up most of the time. 28 days his sister has spent half the day crying or throwing tantrums because another person has disappeared from her life, just when she was starting to trust us again, she is now sure she shouldn't. 28 days my seven year old has cried and missed his brother and wondered why people he thought were good have made this decision he feels is so bad. 28 days when I haven't been able to answer my children's questions when they will get to see him.


Have you ever left your child for 28 days? I bet if you even left them for a few days somewhere it was in a familiar environment, with someone you trusted and someone they knew. And I bet you and they both knew you were coming back.
I am upset, and hurt, and so so worried about the damage that is being done to him in this very crucial age where his brain is developing the ability to form healthy attachment.
I contacted my daughters attachment therapist in Sioux Falls, she and everyone in her office specialize in child attachment, and she would never be supportive of him going this long without a visit with us. She is worried about Jadence and the setback this is for her as well.
No one seems to have time to set up a meeting, or to respond to phone calls. But I'm betting you didn't go into this line of work to hurt children. So I'm asking, one more time, to please let us visit him.
I don't know if you think a visit is just something we are being selfish about. I hope you realize that as much as we want to see him, visits are so hard for us, because they have to end, and at the end I have to walk away, and leave him once more. I have to talk my body through motions that are not natural as a mother, and my heart will break all over again. But I do it because I know he needs it, because it's better for him to know I didn't disappear completely. I do it because I know my kids need to know people don't just disappear.
If there is research that supports no contact, I'd love to see it. If you really truly believe it's best for him not to see us, and that belief is based on actual data, then please share it. We are his parents. We only want what's best for him. We only want him to be ok. Unfortunately, it seems a visit just isn't happening because everyone is too busy. Please don't be too busy today for my son. He is such a special little boy. He is so full of love and joy. He has a purpose. Another person like him will never again exist in this world. Would you please treat him like he is that precious? Like this matters? Because it really truly does.
I know we're all busy. But at the end of the day, you turn off your computer, close your office door and go home to your life. But this IS his life. This is our life. Your decisions, even the decision to ignore something, severely impacts all of our lives, changes them forever.  Will you consider that before you shut your office door tonight? Will you realize how you spend your time at work determines if my children will cry themselves to sleep again tonight? Before you pick up your phone to send that personal text message, will you realize doing so means you didn't take the time to message the therapist and my son will now go to sleep for the 29th day wondering what he did wrong to make us not come back for him?
When you make a decision, he needs you to do it with the same care that my husband used when he held him for the first time in the photo above. Because that is what you are doing: You are holding his life in your hands. Did you do it with care today as if his whole life depended on how gently you handled him? Its an enormous responsibility, making decisions about the life of a child. Please don't get so accustomed to it that you stop doing it with care.
And if you won't take the time to handle him with care today, maybe my readers will. Maybe my readers will share this post to get your attention, to get you to respond. Maybe my readers will share this post so that all people who work with children will be reminded of the importance of prioritizing our children. Because they are so incredibly precious. They aren't replaceable. And they need us to protect them. We can't keep treating our children like this and expect our world to get better. Will you help this little boy today?