Mom's got her monthly meeting on Saturday. To be nice, to help make up for the miscommunication of last weekend, I agreed to babysit while she's at the meeting from 6pm to whenever. The kids are 13, 14, and 6. The last time I agreed to babysit, it was just the 14 year old. And I had a functional TV, and all I had to do was hand her the remote control. Easy peasy.
That won't work this time. I still expect the two older kids to be pretty self-sufficient. The little one is the problem. She's the younger sister of the 13-year old. She's got a lot of energy and seems to want a lot of attention (just like, you know, a kid). The older sister seems to alternate between trying to take care of her little sister and screaming at her, slamming doors in her face, etc. The dynamic is kind of scary, not 'OMG the older sister's a psycho in training' scary, but 'wow, this situation needs adult intervention and I don't know what to do' scary. I tend to sympathize with the older sister in terms of her desire to just be away from her little sister. (That is why I don't babysit. I don't feel I have the right temperament for dealing with children.)
I need coping mechanisms or strategies or something for the little one. Something that will help me be in charge of the situation while I'm there, so the older sister doesn't end up blowing her top (because the younger one keeps bothering her, doing annoying things, interrupting when she and the 14-year old are trying to do big kid things). (Would be awesome if I could just tire her out and send her to bed early. She was sleeping the first time I went to visit them--so peaceful, so quiet, so unlike how she is when awake.) It would also be good if I could come up with some strategies mom can use as well. I think her default response is to have the agency re-place them. Much as I think her having foster children wasn't the best idea, now that they're there, I really feel she should try to make the best of the situation. It just doesn't seem right to bounce them in and out. I don't know what she was expecting, but it seems like she wasn't really prepared for the reality of this situation. So I think she needs some solid plans for how to handle things.
But never mind that. Must google 'how to shift from ignoring kids to interacting with them, for an evening at least.'
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