Sarah's Story

The grandparents upbeat attitude has helped them to embrace the new challenges they are facing and “they are doing an excellent job,” says their Lena Pope Home therapist. The skills they are developing in counseling have helped alleviate much of the anguish these older caregivers were consumed with. The regular sessions focused their energies on building a supportive network for the children to continue to care for their needs when the grandparents are no longer able. They needed to identify someone to call in case of an emergency or for a brief respite to recharge their batteries.  Community resources can often be difficult to navigate, which are especially important as the children would be needing long term occupational, speech and physical therapy. 

The educational  system is another area that the counselor addressed as the grandparents had to be advocates for these young children. Equipping the guardians with the knowledge about the programs available for their grandchildren and the communication skills to advocate for those programs was a crucial piece of help. This grandmother often writes morning emails to help prepare the  teacher of the oldest, a 6 year old, for behavior that may follow once she gets to school. Her humor on this particular morning beautifully captures the daily dramas that come with the guardianship of these young children. 

Awake at 6:00, she refused to get dressed for school, but instead, brought her blanket into the dining room, wrapped herself in it and decided to go back to sleep on the floor.  Several attempts to wake her only resulted in her getting angry and loud.  I told her that at 6:50 (the bus comes at 7:03) she'd need to be dressed, or I'd put her clothes into her back pack and she could get on in her pajamas and change at school.  At 6:50 I put them in the back pack and opened the garage door for her to wait for the bus.  She had a meltdown, yelling, and finally climbing into the dog cage in an attempt to aggravate me.  I pretended to lock the cage and offered to give her a ride to the bus stop until she realized that I might be serious. She rushed to get dressed in the dining room, yelling the entire time about the clothes she'd picked out last night. At 7:00, she decided that she'd get dressed (choosing a pair of shorts that doesn't go with any top).  At 7:02 she made it out the door, and sat on the driveway throwing a screaming and yelling fit.  She'd awoken her Granddaddy, who came out wearing only his boxer shorts, to wait for the bus with her.  She was totally embarrassed, and yelled at him to get back into the house so her bus driver wouldn't see him.  He endured, though, and the bus came.  I helped her down the driveway up the steps into the bus, and smiled at her driver, Miss Cindy, who spoke softly to her to get onto the bus and sit down.  I walked back to sit with Granddaddy in his boxers, and we watched as our neighbors drove off to work. Retirement is bliss!