Goodness Gracious...

I am a project manager.  I hold all the little pieces together, make sure we're following all the rules (building code), delegate tasks to others, try to keep to the project schedule, and try to make the client happy with the design for multiple projects at a time.  I understand stress and I get mind mush moments.  I've sent emails that were not all together clear or referring to the wrong project all together.  I've been there.  I think we all have at one time or another.

When it comes to dealing with professionals who handle the lives of children though, we as parents can become a little ungracious and indignant.  Whether they be an overloaded CPS case worker (in our particular situation) or your child's kindergarten teacher, we expect the best for our kids.  We forget that they are doing the same juggling act that we are.  The case worker probably has 60 plus cases in her case load, all equally important, life altering and urgent.  The kindergarten teacher has a room full of kids at various stages of intellectual and behavioral development that she has to try to cater to within a limited amount of time and space.  We hold them to a higher standard, sometimes with unrealistic expectations in our less than ideal real world environment.  We forget that they are underpaid, over worked, and need to have a life outside of their occupation just as much as we do.

This week someone made a mistake.  It was not malicious or intentional.  It was a mistake.

On Monday morning our agency called us to give us the exciting news that we were the final selection for an adoptive placement (100% sure thing no risk involved) for a sibling group of two that we had submitted our home study on.  Of course we were ecstatic!  We started telling all of our friends and family.  We started thinking about our holiday plans.  The planner in me was anxious to know what the transition schedule was going to be and how much time we had to get their rooms ready.

Then on Tuesday we got another call from our agency to give us some less exciting news.  It turns out that there was a miss communication between CPS and our agency.  The email CPS had previously sent was worded in such a way that it was easily deduced that we were the final selection for these kidos, but the reality was that we were just selected for the short list, and that they would be making the final selection from this short list by the end of the month.  If we had gotten this news first it would have been wonderful news, but in light of what we had been told on Monday, our moral plummeted for a bit.

Its Thursday now and we've recovered from our plummet.  We are back in good spirits.  We're on the short list for two sibling groups now and should hopefully know something on both of them by the end of the month.  More waiting, yes, but they're worth it.  We can't use this broken disjointed system as an excuse to pull out and do nothing.  And we can't become calloused and bitter toward the CPS case workers that cross our paths.  They're human and in need of grace and much as the rest of us.