As my agency has a contract to provide services to county families, I often get "orders" from child protection workers, GALs, judges, foster parents, and everyone else under the social work sun. Most of these orders are things like this mom needs to quit feeding her kids junk food, this mom needs to put her kids to nap at the same time each day, this mom needs to stop smoking, this mom needs to give more positive attention to her kids, etc. And who needs to make this mom do all this? Lucky me, who apparently has magic powers to make it happen (pshheeff.)


Honestly, while each one of these requests by concerned "parties" are valid, they are not realistic. They are actually delusional, if you ask me.

So let me get this right....this mom, who before was so severely depressed and did not eat thus did not feed her children any food at all, now needs to work on providing healthy food choices? I don't know about you but Wendy's fries and chicken nuggets sound better to me than no food at all. And this mom, who told me that she was not responsible for putting her kids to sleep because she believed that if kids get tired, they'll fall asleep on their own wherever they are, needs to develop a schedule of nap times and stick to it? Um.... the fact that she is acknowledging that naps and rest times are important and should be happening kinda over rides the notion of schedules and consistency, no? Ugh...I could go on and on.

Bottom line, there are plenty of times I want to shout out: Stop nick-picking!!!! Can we not just focus on the this mom IS doing and how far she has come? Can we just take a moment to celebrate with this mom without immediately moving on to the next thing she needs to work on? Without acknowledging what she has done, there will be no space for things she could do next. Strengths lenses people!!!

And so I'm not ashamed to admit that I have been known to let requests in one ear and out the other. At least for now...at least until I've patted her on the back :)

Until our next visit,
New BSW