CiW Letters to Chamieka: "mom" · Deconstructing with Aleeza

CiW Letters to Chamieka: "mom"

Everybody, let’s talk about it: 🧵

Hi Chamieka,

Last week I read your post about children whose hair goes uncared for by their caregivers. It felt like a gut punch, and I've been sitting with it since. But I also know it doesn’t fully apply to me. Our situation is a little different.

My foster children are fully Black and we've been fostering them for a few years. We also have three of our own. We're in the process of moving towards adoption but they still have visits with their bio “mom”. At this point the case can get either way which has me scared, but that’s another story. I think she's a great person but not a good parent. However, we’ve have tried to maintain a respectful relationship for the kids.

“Mom” shows up to visits regularly and the kids have a great relationship with her. They get excited on visit days and she really does attempt to make the best out of the three hours she has them.

The issue I'm having is that she often does the girls hair when she's visiting them. I have two issues with it- one is that I don’t feel it's not a good use of a very short amount of visitation time and two the girls complain about it being tight. It breaks my heart and I just end up taking it down. I've watched a lot of tutorials and bought all the right products, so I feel like I also know what their hair needs. It’s not rocket science.

Now we're in the back and forth with the case manager who says that mom does have the right to do their hair and use her visitation time the way she sees fit. She told her the more often they get it done, the more they'll get used to it. But that seems abusive. Secondly, she doesn't live with them full time and doesn't have to deal with the tears after visits. They don't like the braids or beads. I'd honestly rather she just play with them. I'm starting to consider bringing it up in court, as well as some other concerning things.

A perfect example of this issue is on Tuesday they had wacky hair day at school. My bio kids were able to fully participate but my foster kids weren’t. We couldn’t figure out how to make braids “wacky”. My only realistic option was to take it down. But because of the social worker and “mom” they were left out and very sad and upset about it.

I've put their hair in nice ponytails and buns through the years but it never seems good enough for "mom". Meanwhile the girls have never complained. We’ve also bonded during hair days. They pick their style and we get going. They get long breaks and snacks. And they don’t cry. I think the most important part is that it's looser and doesn't add unnecessary tension to their hair. Plus the braids are usually pretty frizzy if they don’t remember to wear a head scarf.

What am I supposed to do? I feel like I've been put in an impossible situation.

_________

There's a lot here... What do you notice?

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CiW Letters to Chamieka: "mom"