Important Information to Know if You Are Thinking of Adding a Young Boy to Your Family

I have discovered, since becoming the (sometimes) proud foster dad of a (now)10-year-old boy that my education is severely lacking in several areas.  Apparently my high school and university science classes were severely limited and I was not informed of the existence of many life forms that are incredibly important to young boys.  To help others, I have listed the most important of these along with a short description, below.

This is a Bakugan.  If you think it is a cheap plastic ball, you are wrong.  It is a cheap plastic ball that can unfold into a cheap plastic monster.  It also has many friends, also call Bakugan, who are in different colors and some may form cubes rather than balls.  The ball form also makes an excellent toy for cats to bat under furniture.  I believe this species survives by having a Saturday morning cartoon and several video games.

This is a Redakai.  I have seen it only as pictures on 3 d game cards.  I believe there is also a Saturday morning cartoon.  There may be video games I am not sure as I have been guilty of confusing it with:

Ben Ten, which is several cartoons and several video games.

This is a Pokeman called Pickachu.  There are many Pokeman with many names.   They are everywhere, cartoons, video games, books, happy meals, trading cards, small plastic toys.  Don't try to remember them all, you will hurt yourself.

Yu-Gi-Oh.  It's a card game and cartoon.  There are also books and video games.  Don't heard quite as much about it as the others from my boy, but it does come up occasionally.

These are Bey Blades, there are several in my house.  There are many, many different kinds and none of them are inexpensive.  They have their own cartoon and seem to now be spreading to video games, still at least the kids need to get together to play the actual game, which involves pitting their top against the other players tops.  Also lots of fun for the family, because you get to look for the lost ones after the kid leaves them in the floor and the cat swats them under the furniture.  Not a lot of fun to step on barefoot in the dark though.

This is the big one for my boy.  It doesn't seem to have cards or toys, at least none I've seen, but there are videos, books, many video games and cartoons.  So far there are Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Z Kai, and Dragon Ball GT.  I can't tell them apart, but he can.  At first glance, you might mistake it for Nazi Propaganda based on all the blonde-haired Aryan super powered fighters, or a hair gel commercial, but it's a kid's show.

Busy Day

Yesterday was a busy day. I took the boy to the dentist first thing. I had made arrangements with his caseworker for her to meet me there and wait for him and take him back to school, since I had morning appointments at work. She was called into a meeting but arranged for someone else to do it. That someone wasn't there. After some phone calls it turned out the woman was running late. I called work and waited. She showed up, I introduced them and showed her the mighty back pack. Later, I pick the boy up from school and he is in a strange shirt a couple sized too big. I inquire and get some wild tale about hamburgers, forgotten back packs, torn shirts, slides, and strange trips to Sparta. I have to investigate further. Anyway, we get his hair cut and get him to karate. Then we go to Walmart where he is so hyped up he's bouncing off things. There, when I call him down and tell him to behave, I get informed I'm a bad foster dad and mean to him. I should have shaved his head at home instead of paying for the fancy haircut. Anyway, this morning it's 35 degrees outside and he comes out in a shorts and a tshirt. I send him back in to change, after much arguing. He informed me the lady who took him to school told him it was supposed to be 86 today. I told him my phone said otherwise and he needed long pants and a jacket. He changes to jeans no jacket. I don't say a word. We wait for the bus, "I'm cold." "From now on you'll listen to my phone instead of some strange lady you meet won't you?"

Not having a fun weekend. Friday the boy came home with better grades on study sheets and homework than normal so I attempted to reward him with a dvd with episodes of his favorite tv show on it. This seemed to work and he spent friday evening absorbed in it. I sent him to bed at 9 and he still had some unwatched episodes. I've had issues with him and getting up at night and doing things, especially tv and games so there are strict rules as to when electronic devices can come on in the house and basically it's after I am up and have given permission. Around 5AM I heard a door sweaking. Then I heard him in his bathroom, then another door. Since he insists on sleeping with his bedroom door open, a lamp on in his bedroom, the bathroom light on, my bedroom door open and my bathroom light on, the only door that should be moving is the bathroom. I got up to investigate. He's propped up in bed reading a comic book. "Oh you're up." he says. "No I'm not. Go back to sleep." "What time is it?" asks the boy I have to wake up every school day at 6AM. "It's 5 o'clock in the morning. Go back to sleep." He looks surprised, but rolls over after I take the book away. I tried to go back to sleep, but he kept making noise often enough I knew he wasn't sleeping. So at 6:30 I gave up and got up. He pops up about 30 seconds after and asks when we are going to town. I told him definitely not now. He stammers around and then asks if he can turn on his "game system." The ps2 is also his dvd player. I told him no. He asked why. I told him there was no reason for him to be up before 5 am on a Saturday, and if he couldn't be considerate enough to let us old folks sleep, he couldn't watch his shows. He then asked if he could play a game, I asked how since he couldn't turn on the systems. He then asked what he could do. I suggested he finish the book he was "reading" at 5 am. He stomped off. After I calmed down I started breakfast. He came out of his room to inform me he was in condition yellow, "hungry". This is his second most common condition, with condition red, "bored" being the first. Although condition black, "grounded" is fast approaching to challenge. I told him I was working on breakfast. He asked what it was. I told him scrambled eggs and ham. He declared that "nasty" and demanded cereal. When I told him that he knew the rules and he ate what was put in front of him. He screamed he didn't like that, he wanted cereal. He, from what I can determine, has never eaten an egg. He stormed into his room and climbed into bed. After I had breakfast on the table, I told him to come and eat. He screamed he didn't want that he wanted cereal. I walked into his room and told him in the voice I usually reserve for telling me clients that the nice person in the uniform standing behind them is there to fit them for some special bracelets that he was to get out there and eat breakfast. He screamed I don't want to into my face. I told him the game systems were going for the weekend. He said he didn't care so I unhooked the xbox and playstation and took them to my room. Then I yelled into the room that his food was in the microwave, but he wasn't getting anything else until lunch. Next time I walked past his door he was asleep.




After we finished our errands in town, I told the boy we were going to rearrange furniture. We put the futon out in the storage building and then I stuck a tv stand in the living room. Then I went to his room and hauled the tv out onto the stand. I expected to hear a squawk. Nothing. He went and started hauling out cables. I got the xbox and ps2 out of my room and hooked everything up. I looked around and he was hauling the rest of his belongings out and dropping them on the couch. I asked what he was doing and he said he was bringing the rest of his stuff out here. "The REST of your stuff?" He said yes since that wasn't his room anymore, pointing at his room. "Why isn't that your room?" "You moved my stuff in here," he said pointing to the games. Don't start saying "aww.... poor little guy." When I first got the ps2, I told him it was mine, and it belonged to the house, he could use it, but it stayed here when he left. I tried to be nice about it and explained that the next little boy that came along would need it. At which point he informed me that it was too bad for that little boy, but he didn't care, that was his and he was taking it all when he left. Which was how he was actually grounded from the ps2 2 hours after I brought it home. I again informed him those weren't his and I was putting them where I could keep a closer eye on them. I made him move his other stuff back into the bedroom. He then came out and expressed curiosity as to whether or not I was allowed to play on the game systems. I told him that I most definitely could play on them. He then went to sulk for awhile. Later that day he came out into the living room. Looked at the tv, then me and the boy who cannot sleep unless he can see from one end of the house to the other from his bed asked me, extremely casually if I ever slept with my bedroom door shut. That's when I told him if he ever broke a rule involving games or tv again, the whole mess was getting locked in the gun cabinet and he was never seeing any of it again. I don't think he believes me.






Sunday:




I woke him for church. After church we ate then I started housecleaning. We have a lot of caseworkers wandering in and out this week, would rather the place look neat.


Beautiful spring-like day, the windows are up, the fans going, and I'm cleaning the carpet. The boy squeals, "There's a wasp in the house." "Leave it alone, I'm sure it eats less than you, we'll call it Fred."





Five hours later:





The boy walks into the house and across my freshly shampooed living room carpet, looks at me and says, "What do you want me to do with my shoes, they're muddy?" Yes he is still alive, but not happy.

More from the Mind of a 9-year-old

Just had an argument I don't understand. The boy has backpack issues. He came to me with a fancy backpack with a frame and wheels and a collapsing handle. He hated it. He saw the backpack in the trunk of the car where I keep my equipment and kept asking to trade. I didn't want to do that, but as I started picking him up at school I did notice his backpack sort of stuck out, so I finally brought mine in and emptied it. I emptied his pack and stuck my stuff in it. It fit so I traded. He was happy for about 30 seconds. For him that isn't bad. I enrolled him in karate and tonight is his first class. I haven't bought a gi for him, let him get a couple of weeks in and make sure he won't drop out first. So he needed to take a pair of sweat pants and a tshirt with him to change into for class. He did not want to put those in his backpack. It wasn't like I was asking him to carry anything potentially embarrassing like a jock strap and cup or something. He threw a fit. He wanted to stick them in a grocery bag and carry them separate. That might be reasonable except that this boy would forget his feet on the bus if they weren't attached. The backpack is the only thing he don't forget. He would not tell me why he didn't want to put the clothes in the backpack and I go through the backpack pretty much every night and he don't pack until the last minute so I know what's in the backpack when it arrives and leaves here. I finally said, "No clothes in the backpack, no karate." He pouted his way into his room. 30 seconds later he peaked around the corner to see if my grinch-like heart and grown 10 sizes or something, then sulked back. At 6:30 I told him to get a move on it was time for the bus. He sloooowly packed the clothes into a plastic bag and sloooowly put that in the backpack. Then we sulked to the road where he suddenly seemed to forget everything. WTH????




I have a magical hotwheel. It can teleport itself. It apparently teleported from his room to school where it was either lost or traded at recess. It teleported because he would never have taken it to school when he was told not to do that. Then it teleported teleported itself into the teacher's desk drawer. It had to have happened that way because he would never play with it during class and have it confiscated it. And lastly it teleported itself into my dryer where apparently all lost, teleporting hotwheels go to be found.




The boy did another weird thing. This is most definitely a learning experience. They moved him to a different class after the IAP meeting so new teacher. The first teacher and I had already gone through the whole milk break and snacks thing, but the new teacher didn't know it. When I went to the parent teacher thing one thing that come up was that the boy was helping himself to her basket of snacks for the kids that forgot or lost a snack during milk break. Elementary school teachers seem to be kind of awesome like that. Not like icky probation officers who are always grouchy. Anyway, she thought I might not know that I could send a snack with him. "I've been sending 2 every morning, usually either 2 fruit roll ups or a fruit roll up and some other fruit thing." Anyway the munchkin was apparently, I have nothing other than his word for this after intense interrogation and translation, eating one treat on the bus and either giving the other away or trading it for something else. Then scarfing a snack from the teacher. Yesterday when we had the altercation over work out clothes, I forgot the break milk ticket, which he insists is a "fake milk ticket," ran out. So I intended to send $6 with him for a new milk ticket. It worked once. I forgot, so I detoured by the store, made change and drove to the school with the money and 2 fruit rollups. One went into the back seat for pre-karate electrolytes or something, the other and the money I dropped off at the front desk. The very nice woman at the desk located him and passed the money and instruction along to him. In the telephone call afterwords, she said he got an odd look on his face so she asked the janitor to watch him. Bless the man, because he did, even though monitoring insane 9 year-olds probably isn't anywhere in his job description. The boy bought something, later investigation indicates a notepad, at the book store then gave the rest of the money to a friend. Once reported, the Principal managed to straighten it out and get him a milk ticket. I find myself constantly thanking and apologizing to the awesome people at the school.




Started a load of laundry and fished out the bag containing his school clothes he had worn prior to changing into his clothes for karate. The items included a pair of underwear. "You changed underwear to go to karate?" I asked. "Yeah." he answered looking at me like I was nuts.

Start of my Day

The boy came home from school yesterday with a cardboard carton of orange juice crammed into the stretchy nylon mesh pocket of his backpack. After an intense interrogation, I was able to determine that apparently the orange juice had manifest itself into the backpack pocket sometime between boarding the bus yesterday morning and my discovering it at 7 PM that night, but he insisted he planned on drinking it. Not sure how long he had it and knowing it probably had not been refrigerated in several hours, I felt it safer to not drink it and deposited it in the garbage. He was still sleeping when I got into the shower, but was sitting innocently on the couch almost ready for school, he forgot to use deodorant or brush his teeth, when I went to wake him. When I went to start coffee, the juice carton was sitting on the kitchen counter in a pool of yellow liquid, even more battered than the previous night. A second small pool of yellow liquid was in the middle of the kitchen floor. The cardboard container had apparently defeated him. That is how the day started for me.

The Mind of a 9-year-old Boy and other Horrible Things

It's been 2 weeks now as a single foster-father of a nine-year-old boy.  It's been culture shock.  I have learned much.  First, the reason God sealed our heads shut, was because if he didn't 9 year-old boys would leave their brains on the school bus.  Why not, they don't seem to use them!  Last week, my foster son left a perfectly good red and blue light weight jacket on the school bus.  Yesterday, the bus dropped him off at my parents.  When I showed up to get him, I was jumped by an angry mother, because I let him go to school on such a cold day with no jacket.  I turned around around and asked him, "Where's your jacket?" "I didn't wear...didn't wear one today, remember?" he answered.  "You didn't wear one?" I asked innocently.  "Yeah," he said sounding more confident.  "I didn't wear one."  "Then what do you call the blue and white thing you put on when I told you to put on a jacket right before we left the house this morning?"  This caused my Dad to snicker.  "Oh, yeah, I left that in the gym."  An interrogation followed that left me with the certain knowledge that maybe the jacket had been left in the gym, he may or may not have told his teacher, who may or may not have taken him to check the lost and found."  I went into the school this morning, but no one was in the office.  I called the school today, he has a light windbreaker and a winter coat, but his two middle weight jackets are MIA.  The windbreaker may be when I get home tonight, as he wore it today.  I saw him pull it off the minute he hit the gym and sat down to wait for breakfast to be served.

He doesn't like school.  Getting homework information is like interrogating a war criminal without a waterboard.  The teacher does send stuff home, including a list of the next weeks homework assignments on Friday.  Monday he was to do 2 pages of math, I am unsure whether it was for homework or inclass.  He didn't have a handout to do and turn in, but he brought this language and science books, neither of which he had homework in.  He also brought a sheet they completed in school. It was seven questions involving science terms.  He was to have filled in the missing words.  The needed words were listed at top.  There were seven of those also.  Not too tricky.  The ugly red note said he was given 30 minutes to complete it and turned it in blank.  When he was given a second chance to do it, he completed it in 5 minutes, but all seven were wrong.  I sat him down at the kitchen table.  Turned off every electronic gadget in the house and he corrected the sheet while I made dinner.  Then he was forced to eat horrid vegetables.  He went to the bathroom twice.  I am fairly sure he was spitting out carrots and flushing them.  (The veggies weren't punishment, I ate them, they were good.  He just wants to live on junk food.)  Then homework, then valentines for the party, then putting away clean laundry and picking up dirty laundry, then he had an hour left to play video games.

Last night he brought home an empty backpack.  First time he ever carried it home empty.  Very suspicious behavior, I thought.  He claimed no homework.  I had his spelling words, so he wrote those 10 times each as I cooked dinner.  He tried to cheat and only do them 7, 8, or 9 times, so he had to finish them and write them again 5 times each.  He again tried to be sneaky.   He "finished" his vegetables and left the table, left cheek bulging.  "Where are you going?" I inquired.  "Bathroom" he answered.  "Wait a minute, please." When he turned around and looked at me I said, "Swallow first."  He did then sat back down.  I made up 20 math problems based on his last 2 homework sheets.  He did those.  Then he fixed the ones he did wrong.  Then I made up sentences with his spelling words and he wrote those out 3 times each to practice his cursive.   Then he picked up his room.  He had an hour of free time before bed.  Which meant I had 2 hours of free time before bed.  I really miss my nightly news.

He has some bad habits.  For instance, when he enters a room, he is king.  He thinks nothing of changing the TV channel regardless of who is watching it.  If he finds a show he likes he will also turn off the light to enhance his viewing pleasure, even if I am reading or writing something.  That has stopped.  He also has some eating issues.  I am told 9 year-old boys are basically walking converters of food to poop.  But this is excessive.  I no longer poke food down him when he starts this.  I allow him some snacks, but not what he is  used to.  He is being forced to eat what is put on the table.  He can have a decent serving of meat, but has to eat all the vegetables on his plate or no snacks.  I am also working with limiting his liquids between bed and supper.  He has some sleeping issues.  Last weekend I think he got up at night and spent a few hours between 11 PM and 2 AM playing games Friday night.  I had taken some cold medicine that made me sleep deeper than normal but woke a bit after 2 and caught him trying to enter the DVD code.  I know he sat up most of Saturday night watching Dragon Ball Z DVD's I got him.  I didnt' let him nap Sunday, but we had a rough Sunday night because a call from his mother gave him night terrors that didn't leave until midnight.  He slept okay Monday and Tuesday nights, at least nothing woke me and there was no evidence the next morning, I gave up on night time cold meds after Saturday night.  He lost his DVD's Sunday.  I also told him if I caught him watching TV, movies or playing games after bedtime again, all electronic stuff was poof and probably not coming back.  Previous placements have said he wandered the house at night.  I don't think he is.  I am resigned to the fact that I will be warden.  Hopefully we will bond more, he is a cute guy and can be very fun and funny when he lets himself be a kid, but that isn't often.  Hopefully, I can eventually soften the structure a bit, but it really seems to be what he needs.  He seems happy when he isn't testing the boundaries.  He had an initial habit of wanting to throw fits in public places and acting out.  He would also run off.  We established on the third day with me that I wasn't chasing him.  I told him in the middle of Walmart, "You'll either come back or you won't, and if you don't I'll come up with a good story for DSC."  He hasn't run off since.  I initially tried to reason with him him on the fits, but Saturday I just started ignoring them.  I decided it was attention seeking and rewarding it was just feeding the behavior.  Haven't had him out in public again since then so not sure if it's working or not.