Results of a different approach

I told recently about how I was stumped on what to write to my sister in law and her husband while they await court dates in jail. We got a letter back from her over the weekend saying how she really appreciated the letter, and that she felt it was the first letter that didn't seem to her to be lecturing and judgemental.

As I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of things I could have written. Some things would have been just to make myself feel better. Some would be just a rant. Luckily I took the time to come up with what I thought would be the most useful.

Perhaps I've discovered an effective way to communicate with her by approaching the situation from a teacher-student relationship rather than the saint-sinner mode that is so easy to fall into by default. In most cases, education seems to work better than rebuke.

Everybody knows things that they should be doing, but that they don't quite get around to doing. With some people it's more serious and important things that don't get done. The trick is to translate "know" into "do." Like Yoda said, "Do, or do not. There is no try." Having an excuse for failure still means you failed and someone has to take up the slack.

So how do we get from knowing something to doing something? It works forward through the concept that I sent in that letter a week and a half ago, where what we do is based on what we think. I believe we need to have both a reason that we care about, and a plan to get us there.

I'll be concentrating on providing those reasons and plans as I work on writing the next letter.

Six Ways to Spin Bad News

It can be tough to tell children that one or both parents are in jail. It can generate a lot of hard feelings. We got asked a lot of "whys" last week. My wife had to explain to our nine year old nephew that the police are still the good guys, even though they arrested both his mom and dad and sent them to jail. Here are some ways to ease the hurt when you need to break the news.

1. It's the best place for them to take care of their legal problems. They won't miss any court appearances because they will have someone in charge of making sure they show up. They can't forget, they don't need to find transportation, and they will be getting constant encouragement to resolve things, even if they're spread across multiple jurisdictions.
2. It's a good place to get into rehab. Availability of rehab programs has been improving as the scope of the drug problem has become more public. If nothing else, it's an enforced detox. They've got a better shot at getting into rehab if it's part of the reason they're in jail. Some people when out on their own just don't quite seem to find the time, or don't like a particular program, or want to find something that's just right. In jail, they have much less flexibility, but much more schedule and direction.
3. We know where they are. It's possible to write letters and send pictures and know they'll get delivered.
4. Arrests can greatly speed up the resolution of cases. They'll be out on their own without being a fugitive when they're done. Justice is a good thing. When we do what we should, it protects us. When we don't do what we should, it protects others from us, and helps us to change. It's not just about punishment.
5. They won't be out breaking the law and creating more legal cases. The worst they can do in jail is manufacture contraband from the minimal supplies they have on hand. Sure, one could get into a lot of trouble while in jail, but it's a whole lot easier outside than inside.
6. Birthday and Christmas shopping are greatly simplified. This may sound flippant, but it actually came up with us. The kids pooled some allowance money, and their dad later told them what he had bought as their Christmas presents to him. All you need to do is put some money on their commisary account, and they can buy their own things from the allowed list. No need to wonder what it is they need the most, since that choice is taken away from you for the most part. One exception that is allowed locally is that a publisher can send books directly to an inmate. Once they're done reading it, the book goes into a library for other inmates to use.

Some of these items will be more comforting than others. Some might not apply in your case, but for us it helps to have a list when talking with the kids. It helps them feel informed. They deserve to know how things are going, and how they can be involved whether through calls, letters, or visits. Also remember that one size does not fit all. Each child will react differently. Our five year old niece for instance was overheard just over a year ago talking to one of her friends at church in a cheerful tone of complete innocence, "No, really! My daddy is in jail."

A Captive Audience

What do you tell someone when you absolutely know the message will arrive? Last week both parents of our kids-in-care were taken into custody on different charges after a court appearance. Now I know where they are, and can easily get a letter to each of them. But what do I write? I spent three days dwelling on that.

How about giving them advice? I couldn't think of a single thing I hadn't already said. They know all the advice, they've heard it, and quite often agree with it. Giving advice would be reduntant.

How about a good chewing out? I could write something that could peel the paint of even a jail's industrial cinderblock walls without even resorting to profanity. I could tell them all sorts of things about how I feel about their choices, lifestyle, friends, actions, and attitudes. Would it do them or me any good? Nope.

I was stumped. Then I read a report on a religious leadership conference that was held on February 10, 2007 in Salt Lake City. Two of the messages from that conference were about teaching. Finally, I had a theme that struck a chord with me. So what could I teach?

I'm not sure what the final step in the inspiration was, but I remembered the concept that thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to habits, habits lead to character, and character leads to destiny. Given that idea, what does everything hinge on? I decided to work backwards. If you know what you would like as a destiny, the rest can be determined from there until it all relies on thoughts.

With the letters I wrote, I already knew one of their biggest desires, to be a part of the lives of their children. From there, it all worked back to a matter of controlling their thoughts in order to get that result that they wanted. Controlling your thoughts is no easy task, but it's certainly easier than trying to address character, habits, and actions as well.

I have no idea how long they will each be in custody. It could range from days to months. It depends entirely on the court system, whatever plea deals they can work out, and availability of drug treatment programs. I've heard that being in jail can give you lots of time to sit and think. Hopefully I've given them each something to think about that will be more useful than dwelling on the effects of their enforced detox.

Who cares?

I mentioned previously how my wife's sister had run off to hide in a fit of anger or dispair, or whatever the excuse of the day was. Well, we found out this morning that she had come back, and was with her husband again at whatever friend's house they're visiting at the moment.

Her husband had called around looking for her last week, and to see if anyone had heard from her. At least he called to tell us he had no idea where she was and that she was missing. Neither of them ever tells us where they've run off to, so I don't know why he would expect us to know anything. We worried, but figured she would eventually show up again like she has previously. We also figured neither would bother to call us when she came back if past behavior held true.

Sure enough, we found out this morning that she's been back with her husband at least since yesterday. She called my wife to ask about visiting her children before going into a rehab program that they're trying to get into. That was our first indication that she was accounted for. My wife explained to her that when one of them runs off, please let everyone know when the runaway returns, so we can know to stop worrying.

Getting into an inpatient rehab may be able to keep court cases from turning back into warrants, which might explain their rush to try to get into a place tonight. Especially considering she slept in and missed her court date today. For those that don't know, excessive sleep is one of the signs of crashing after a meth high that can include several days straight with no sleep at all.

So the answer to the question in the title is that we care. The problem is that there's usually not much we can do except to track events and watch their lives progress like a slow-motion train wreck. Stephen R. Covey wrote in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we should align our sphere of influence with our sphere of concern. That means simply that you should worry about what you can change, and not worry about the things you can't change. I sure hope we can do something that helps them change. I'm not ready to stop caring yet, and neither are their kids.

Weak spots in the criminal justice system

Here I am, looking at a list of ten felony charges against the parents of the kids we are raising, spread over four different cases. And that's only counting the ones filed with the district attorney. There are other open cases with several local justice courts. How do things get crazy like this?

We place a lot of trust in our courts that they will be able to effectively dispense justice. Normally everything works well. For the most part, the guilty are punished according to the legal guidelines, and the innocent are protected. The right to a speedy trial is met.

The troublesome part is when the assumptions made by the legal system are not met. For instance, there's an assumption that people place a high value on having a valid driver's license. For some people, the thought of losing their license is incentive enough to stay away from situations where they may lose that license. Unfortunately, there are others who don't really care. They'll drive whether they have a license or not. Who cares if the car is insured? Certainly not the one who drives without a license.

How about having a stable physical address? Most people have an apartment or home. The probation and warrant systems become very ineffective if someone happens to be homeless, or bounces from hotel to hotel at night.

Phone numbers are the same way. I've had the same phone number for over ten years, and that includes moving once. In our case with the parents of the children we are raising, I've seen about a dozen phone numbers over just one year while trying to keep a path of communication open. The phones always seem to get broken, stolen, lost, turned off for lack of payment, or the number gets to be known by the wrong people and abandoned.

Then there are court-imposed fines and fees. To someone living on the fringe with no home, no job, an occasional phone, and the lifestyle that goes with those limitations, fines and fees just don't mean anything. Sure, they're waiting, building up, and may get sent to collections or turn back into warrants in the future, but it's hard to remember them, let alone care about them. The only real attention-getter is actual jail time, and non-violent offenders are regularly released due to overcrowding. That means the best wake-up call available can't be used most of the time for those who fit the profile I've described.

In most cases, the system is designed around the idea that people are generally under control and occasionally make mistakes. Most people are easy to get in touch with. Most people have jobs, places to live, and a telephone. When none of those apply, it's easy to see holes in the system that cause amazing delays, and court cases can stall for months at a time. If the wayward soul continues to rack up new cases while the old ones are delayed, it can turn into a nightmare just to track them all, let alone attend and resolve things.

Now, life can be pretty unpleasant for those who are hard to track. It's not the kind of lifestyle that most would choose. It's almost always the last remaining choice when nothing else works.

Most of the time, things seem to get back in sync fairly well when the person who has been flying under the radar is arrested. Some jurisdictions are able to pick up on that and get their court dates and prosecutions back on track. Unfortunately, not all of them are tied in to each other that well, and they may not even know the person they want is already in someone else's jail.

I'm sure things are leaps and bounds better than they used to be due to increased use of technology. Online databases of court dates, jail rosters, and all those things are a powerful resource. It's just discouraging that things could be so much more uniform and fair if it were not for budget constraints and variability in rules and procedures from one jurisdiction to another.

My biggest advice would be to work to get issues resolved while everyone involved is still stable enough to be employed, and can keep both the rent and phone bill paid. If things are already worse than that, the best you can do is to make sure the various jurisdictions know when an arrest happens so they can get cases all back on track. The right to a speedy trial should apply to more than just the accused. No matter the resolution of those cases, having them closed will be a benefit to everyone involved, particularly the innocent children.

What's left to live for?

Have you ever heard that statement from someone who's trashed their own life through bad choices? What's left to live for? Why bother? What difference does it make? Does anybody even care?

My sister-in-law has run off again in a fit of anger and depression. She's done that a few times now. She usually goes to a friend's place and blows her cash and her mind through drugs to numb the uncomfortable feelings of guilt, shame and regret that are trying to steer her toward recovery. This time is a little bit different. You see, she has two important court dates next week.

We've been compiling a list of her legal problems, and it's over two pages long now of unresolved cases, and resolved cases with outstanding fines. She's been collecting new charges regularly, and not resolving old ones very quickly. So, what indeed is there left to live for?

Shall we start with the simple things? She has four children who love her very much no matter what she does. Trust may be conditional, but a child's love usually isn't. She has a husband that at times would do anything at all for her (and has the jail record to prove it). How about a family that has bent over backwards for her more times than I can count, done what they think is best for her, and offered her a safe place to live if she can only keep a few rules? Note: What she wants and what is best are not always the same thing.

Let's move on to the next rank of things that are a bit less obvious. Some people (like me) have great faith in God. Are faith, repentance, redemption and salvation worth living for? I think so. What would you give up in exchange for eternal salvation? Would it be a lot of work? Yes, but it sounds like a pretty good trade to me.

Now for something obscure. How about trials? Are they worth living for? The answer is a lot more clear if you think about what life would be like without any trials or challenges. No growth. No experience. No sense of satisfaction for a difficult job well done. Some kids like to play video games with all the cheats turned on because it makes them feel tough to be invincible. Eventually most kids mature enough to realize that overcoming a real challenge with a chance of failure is much more rewarding, both in games and in real life. Life with too many challenges can be a disaster, but life with none would be an absolute and changeless hell.

Getting back to the problem at hand, is her massively screwed up life worth living? All she has to do to answer "yes" is to look at what she really has instead of dwelling on what she doesn't have. If she makes her court dates, she'll take some steps in the right direction. There are a lot of steps she can take in the right direction, not all of them terribly difficult once she overcomes one or two major challenges. If she misses her court dates, she'll freefall for a bit longer, have more warrants out, and possibly end up in jail or prison for a while before getting back to making progress.

Whichever way she goes, we'll be here living our normal day-to-day life, raising her children with ours, showing them the joys a good life can provide, challenges and all.

Your Honor is not just a judge’s name

What about honor? Mine and yours specifically. What’s it good for? Is honor just a quaint, old fashioned notion that grandparents talk about the current generation not having?

There are lots of quotes about it. First, the proverb, “There’s no honor among thieves.” Also, “Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.” And the grand-daddy of them all, “Honor thy father and mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

In each quote, it’s referred to as something that is given or received. Nobody can wake up one morning and decide to have honor all on their own. Some people seek honor with a lot of energy (which often makes it harder to obtain), but it's still up to others to give it.

There are also lots of references to being honor-bound. I don't usually like being bound. What's up with that? What good does it do to have honor given to you if it is so restrictive? For those without any, it probably looks a lot like something to be hung over the heads of others. "If you scoundrels were only as honorable as me...."

It turns out that knowing what honor is good for comes right along with having it. The honorable also become a lot of other things at the same time. They're trustable. They're stable. They're predictable in the way they make many kinds of choices. Every one of these things come from the way we each choose to live. Being honor bound is a privilege people accept, not an obligation that controls us. We can choose to do honorable things and to live our lives within honorable limits. As we do so, others will see our example, and some may follow it.

I've noticed in a lot more detail lately that I could improve my own choices and actions. I could talk about others only when I have something constructive to say, and a good way to say it. I could listen to others better. More importantly, I could show a lot more honor toward others, since there are a lot of people out there who deserve it.

What about those who don't seem to care? Assume they might start caring. On one hand, explain why you think certain actions are a mistake. On the other, be sure to recognize all good choices. Honor and respect are powerful teaching tools. Anyone trying to change for the better is going to have a better time if the are honored for their successes, reinforcing their abilities and desires. I prefer to be offered carrots to being threatened with sticks, and I bet most people are the same way.

So how is your honor doing today?

Getting Financial Help

At the time we were awarded custody (guardianship) of the other children in our home we felt that we would be able to provide for them with the financial means that we have. We also felt that if we went to the State for financial assistance (which is available in some states) that the State would go to the parents for child support. We felt that this would be much like bleeding a turnip. We just didn’t feel it was in the best interest of the parents to pursue it.

Two years later the parents hadn’t progressed, in fact, their situation looked bleaker than before. My husband felt that in considering the best interest of the parents he was overlooking another side of this—the children. We also realized, as we talked this over, that the parents still had an obligation to support their children. It was at this point that my husband sought help from the State of Utah.

He learned that there was a financial program for people just like us. It is called Specified Relative Assistance. We also learned that this program would indeed go after the parents for child support to recoup some of the expense of the assistance.

This program gave us a monthly payment for caring for these children plus free school lunch and additional (secondary) insurance for them. It is actually cheaper for the state to assist in this manner than for those same kids to be cared for in the foster care program.

As for the parents participation in the child support; they have yet to pay a dime. But the state continues to provide assistance. The obligation the parents have to provide for their children remains in effect as the child support bill continues to rise.

Each state has its own regulations. Some may have a similar program to that of the State of Utah. Others may not have anything at all. It doesn’t hurt to find out what is available. Contact your state.

Does drug rehab work?

Don't you just love loaded questions? Depending on who you ask, you'll get radically different answers about the success rates of rehabilitation. Even about particular rehab programs, you will get huge swings of opinion. Take twelve step programs for instance. My sister-in-law believes they don't work. The funny part is that as long as she believes that, it's true for her.

I've read through the entire workbook for a twelve step program produced by my church. They worked with Alcoholics Anonymous to develop an adapted faith-based program. I was impressed with the program. It's designed for addicts of all sorts. Emotional addicts, chemical dependency, and a whole raft of other problems can all be addressed through the program with minor adjustments. I decided that reading it wasn't enough for me to really understand it, so I've actually gone through the first third (so far) of the material meeting all the requirements and answering all the questions on my own as a self-help guide.

So far, I don't see what there is to the program that wouldn't work. The twelve steps are represented by honesty, hope, trust in God, truth, confession, change of heart, humility, seeking forgiveness, restitution and reconciliation, daily accountability, personal revelation, and service. There's nothing shocking or contrary to be found in the whole list.

I can see how several of those steps can be terrifying to someone into a problem way over their head. It can be intimidating for me, when my goal with the personal review of the program is to change some fairly minor aspects of my life.

I can also see that such a program, when applied properly, can transform a person. It can help them to purge the part of their life that is destroying them, and replace it with peace, joy and success. Successful rehabilitation programs can give back things that seem impossible to achieve when viewed from the depths of addiction.

The answer is "YES," these programs can work. They do work, but not for everyone, and not with great predictability. No program will succeed if the addict is unwilling to change absolutely everything that needs to change. No fair holding onto that one questionable friendship. Keeping a stash hidden away for emergencies is admitting defeat. Thinking you know better than the ones running the program is a major sign of pending failure. Deciding you can skip a step because it sounds too hard or pointless will likely doom the effort.

The net result is that success requires several things, many of which are really hard to give. These things include submission, humility, and a desire to do whatever it is required to succeed. Success is also a bit different than some might expect. It may not mean getting back to the way things were. For some, that restoration is just impossible. Everyone else's lives keep moving forward, and if an addict checks out for a few years, the world just isn't the same when they come back. The children we care for have grown over the past two and a half years. Their parents just can't get that time back. But the parents can change, move forward, and be a part of the lives of their children in the future with planning and hard work.

Sorry for not having an easy solution that will work for everyone in minimum time, but that's the way things work. Free will plays a huge part, and if will is opposed to recovery, then recovery fails. If free will is applied entirely to recovering no matter what is required, then success is simply waiting in the wings for the work to be done.

If you are the one wanting to recover, make the sacrifice to start now with your entire heart. If you're concerned about a loved one, support the good decisions they make, and let them know that you approve of their good efforts. It could be all that's needed to nudge them from failure to success.

Searching for Answers

From the day I took four youngsters into my home I have been on a quest for answers. Since we did not go through a state agency we have been left to find these answers ourselves. What do you say to them when they want to know why they can’t live with mommy and daddy? What do you do when the parents tell the kids that they are going to be back together by Christmas…and have made little or no progress toward improving their situation? How do you know if they are making progress? What criteria do you give the parents in order to make that a reality? How do you deal with emotional issues with the children? If there are criminal charges, how do you know what is going on with those? How do you track that? The questions are numerous and varied.

I have spent hours and hours doing research to educate myself with all of these issues and more. I have learned a lot about the parents’ drug of choice. I have learned more about the judicial system and the ins and outs of that than I ever cared to know. There have also been hours looking for information on guardianship and custody issues. I am still looking.

Knowledge is power. It gives you the ability to make the best decisions. It allows you to understand the issues and the problems. When drug addicted parents try to tell you lies you will be better prepared to discern the truth.

There will be times, however, when the truth is just not available. Take heart. Time will tell. Be patient and all things will work out in the end.