Queerin' and Fosterin'

Longtime followers may remember Zuma and her brother, who stayed with us in 2022 and then went back to their shitty foster parent. Well, they’re still in care and the foster parent is still shitty. Zuma and Brother are moving here in about a month for a multitude of reasons, and shitty foster parent is mad about it.

Today the caseworker, the kids’ bio parents, Sam, and I met for lunch to talk a little. The parents are safe, pretty chill, a bit like the Conductor’s mom.

We all sat down and immediately the mom says she wants to be fully honest about some things she’s heard from the foster parent: that 1) I “wasn’t [my name] when I was born” (aka trans) and 2) Sam’s “preferred intimate partners” are not me. The case worker freaked out and tried to steer us back to talking about the kids while the parents were all “we don’t have a problem with your lifestyle, just don’t shove it in our faces.”

It’s not the bio parents I’m even worried about in this case. It’s the fact that this fucking insane foster parent hates us so much that she 1) discloses that I’m trans to them (which everyone knows anyway?) and 2) makes up some weird assumption about Sam sleeping around with women because of, I guess, the way they look?????

I literally have had like 10 interactions with this woman in 2 years, during which none of them we talked about queerness. And the last time we talked, last weekend, she said, “I really want us to have a better relationship for the sake of the kids.”

Conductor didn’t get a lot sleep last night. He had a rough OT session where he hit his therapist (one of his favorite people). We came home and he went to his room, mad that he couldn’t play the Switch. Instead he turned on his mythology podcast. Cool.

A few hours later I went in and asked if he wanted pizza for dinner. He stood up, looked outside, and said, “You changed the day! You tricked me!” and ran off. I guess he had been asleep and thought it should still be daylight out. He kept on that - angry that I had purposely made it dark outside - for an hour, eventually telling Sam that he’s leaving and finding his mom and we’re bad parents. Lots of throwing and hitting and yelling.

Eventually he found his frontal lobe, asked for ramen, and we chatted about how much that hurts our feelings while he ate. He said he was sorry, and he was just confused.

Newbie boy is Mouse. He is 5. He’s not yet diagnosed with autism, but it’s clear. One of his quirks is echolalia. He’s like an interpreter, whispering a second or two behind the speaker. What’s really something is him echoing the Conductor’s verbal stimming.

Conductor does a combo hum-screech all the time, usually accompanied by hitting his chin against something and/or crashing into the couch/his bed/the wall. He stims a lot, more when he’s tired or it’s loud around him.

So we have C stimming and Mouse copying him sound for sound. It’s cute, interesting, and very loud.