forever?

This weekend we enjoyed some time together as a family and this involved going out to see some friends at their house.  They are a lovely couple; Ruths's friend through work and her husband, who we met for the first time on Sunday.  A really down to earth couple who are the kind of people we can see us being friends with socially in the future.  They were great with Raina and she really liked their company.

Raina is quite a physical girl and at other social events with us, she has literally thrown herself all over adults who she (and we) don't really know that well.  She knows Mummy and Mama are her primary carers but she doesn't distinguish between very close friends and family and acquaintances or even people we have just met.  Everyone gets the same level of affection and attention.  We are working on this and yesterday, we sat outside their house in the car and told her not to throw herself on people during the visit.  She was much better than she has been before and we were both really pleased with how this went.

Our friends are good at boundaries and were able to get involved in activities with Raina and say things like: "no Raina"; "you can't do that" and "stop there, that's far enough".

We had a picnic, went to the park and then relaxed in their garden enjoying the warm weather, chatting whilst Raina happily explored.  At about 4:30pm Raina asked Mummy to put her socks and shoes on and asked Mama where the car keys were.  Mama said; "ae you tired? do you want to go home?".  Raina was able to affirm this was the case!  This felt like a real breakthrough as normally we'd get an overtired child having a tantrum and breaking all the rules she normally sticks to.

When we came to leave, Raina became a bit anxious about who was leaving and who was staying.  Our friends told her that they were staying because they lived there.  I reiterated to Raina that she lived with her family, which comprised her, Mama and Mummy.

In this moment I think I understood her confusion.  Just a few short weeks ago we gatecrashed her life and her home and very quickly took on parenting roles of disciplining, setting and enfocting boundaries (just as our friends had been doing throughout the afternoon).  Soon after this her Foster Carer gave way to this and relinquished her involvement in these things and this signalled the end in terms of this relationship as she knew it to be.  I wondered whether maybe Raina was reminded of this and was confused as to what was going to happen next.  Were we bringing her back there again tomorrow?; or indeed; were we actually just going to leave her too?

We understand more and more about how we have to be patient in helping our daughter to really settle. She seems so well settled to everyone who meets her (including people who know her really well, like her own SW).  But real security and permanency runs so deep.  To allay her fears about further rejection and help her come to understand we can be relied upon we are buckled up for the long journey.  We know all we can do is just continue to show her over time that we are going to be here forever and that our family is forever, especially by verbalising her thoughts and feelings.