Denver, Colorado, July 2010~

Dona Lee Weisgarver here.

Strangely enough, my two boys (and my husband) have had a profound effect on my little foster child:  he doesn't seem to be as wild or untamed as usual (though he still has his moments where he "goes off").  Wilhem (13) and Sean (18) (as well as my husband) are more than willing to give him love and the sense of what it is like to have family, and it's starting to make an impact on Billy Ray.

Ken (my husband) and myself are working with him too, taking him to his therapy appointments, to see what the root cause of his volatile nature might be.  I just pray he wasn't abused (though I am beginning to suspect that he might have been:  why else would he intentionally try to hurt children younger than he or small, defenseless animals or destroy everything in his path at will??).

In the short time Billy Ray has been with us, I am starting to fall in love with him.  He looks like Billy Ray Cyrus in miniature, when Billy Ray had his mullet hairdo.  He is absolutely adorable, but his behavior makes him look more like a little devil in disquise!

I just hope that the counseling will help our little guest, and I hope that he will be easier to manage by the time school starts the day after Labor Day!  And most of all, I hope that he will end up being our newest child ... permanently!

We are able to take Billy Ray out in public without him going berserk, but if he does have a meltdown, we reason with him and let him know that we will not tolerate outright disobedience from him.  He may be a child with special needs, but he's got to learn to mind us and learn good manners!  Just because he is atypical in comparison to most children doesn't give him any excuse to "act out" whenever he sees fit!

We don't "talk down" or yell at Billy Ray, but we do let him know that we are very unhappy with how he acts whenever he has a temper tantrum.  We also don't hit him:  that would only lead to potential disaster on all our parts.  We would probably end up losing all rights as foster parents, and Billy Ray might end up back in foster care ... or worse, an institution for mentally ill children.

So far, though, we see a different child emerging from this scared little boy:  he seems quiet and shy in nature, and he isn't nearly as brave as his brovado suggests.  I guess all the years of being in foster care (and possibly abused) has taken a good part of life away from him, but we are more than determined to put it back in him and help him become the child that he deserves to be:  a loving, happy-natured little boy free of any worries or fears.

*to be continued.*