CP/QF Crazy: Follow-up On Family of 9 Living in a Garage

How freaking crazy can you be?  No, seriously. 

Lots of people dream of living a completely debt-free life.  In the absence of being independently wealthy, most people decide to manage debt responsibly by restricting debt to secured debt like loans to purchase a new or used car or a house, debt that raises the income of the person like educational debt and limiting the amount of unsecured debt like credit cards.  On a more personal level, people committed to living debt free chose to delay child-bearing until one or both people are in secure careers and often choose to limit their family size.  Homes are quite expensive and large families cost more money. 

On the other hand, a lot of CP/QF large families live in poverty while idolizing families who live in even more extreme circumstances.   A common lament of huge CP/QF families where the mother is reaching the end of her reproductive years is that domestic foster care and adoption has ridiculous requirements like that prospective adoptive families who will be adopting unrelated children can show income over the federal poverty level for their new family size.   For new readers, the federal poverty income guidelines in the US are agreed to be absurdly low by people who work in poverty prevention.  A good rule of thumb is that most families need at least 200% of the poverty guidelines to live a frugal middle class life - so the US poverty guideline of  $20,730 for a family of three should be closer to $42,000.    To size this up to QF families, Kimberly at Raising Olives used to complain that their family of 12 kids and two adults couldn't adopt domestically because the family lived on less than $72,620 per year. 

Back in 2005, Amy at Raising Arrows wrote a blog post about a family she idolized who had nine kids living in a garage for one year so they could build the home of their dreams.   In 2018, I wrote my response to the major reasons I could think of why living in a garage is probably illegal; my more obvious concerns were a lack of exits, too little area of windows,  too little square footage per person, infestation prevention issues and the fact that the taxable value of the land is affected by having a second dwelling onsite.  It turns out that Amy managed to get a hold of that family and write a follow-up in 2017; I'll refrain from guessing as to why it took 12 years to catch up with them. 

Turns out some of my unspoken assumptions were just plain wrong.  Silly me - I assumed that living in the garage would start when the family had all of the money set aside to build the house so that the time living in the outbuilding would be limited to a single building season.  Oh, boy, was I naive!  FIVE YEARS!  The family lived in a garage for 5 freaking years! 

I'm still shocked and horrified - so I guess I'll start with the size of the garage.  The family says that the garage was 24' by 30' and at least partially built to purpose for living in.  The square footage is 720 square feet.   Now, the 1986 guidelines for safe living spaces stated that the minimum square footage could be calculated by 150 + 100(n-1) so a family of nine would need 150 + 100(8) or 950 square feet minimum.

Now, if I was living in a garage, I would be on like 5 forms of birth control - including "we're not having sex until we get a real house or apartment" followed by 4 other forms.  Apparently, I'm crazy because the family happily admits that two children were conceived and born while living in the garage.  That pushes the minimum square footage to 1150 feet - but I'm more horrified at the idea of adding two newborns sequentially to a garage home.   The family mentions that the time they lived in the garage was extended because of unexpected building costs and high medical bills.  I wonder how much of those medical bills were due to two labor and deliveries; childbirth is expensive even when everything goes perfectly.

In terms of exits, the garage did have two external doors that were not garage doors.  Assuming the drawing provided by the family was reasonably accurate, the garage was not compliant in terms of emergency window egresses from the bedrooms.  Personally, I'd be very worried about exiting from the kids' bedroom in case of a fire.  There was one small window, an internal exit towards the main area of the garage and an external exit across the room where the washer, dryer and hot water heater were located.  If anything happened involving the washer, dryer or hot water heater, the kids' fastest exit would be compromised. 

Speaking of the garage doors, the "front" of the garage included a large standard garage door.  This threw me a bit at first; why would a family waste that much wall space on a garage door when they were making plans like building 10 foot ceilings on the garage to make it a workable future temporary home?  Then I remembered - the local tax authority would notice in real time if a family wanted to build a second home on a plot.  Silly me and my beliefs about obeying civil codes and taxation.

Really, the author of post sums it up better than I can.  The 5+ years of living in the garage are great in hindsight.   Looking back at my life, I have a lot of memories that are far more fun in hindsight than they were at the time.  After all, memories allow me to enjoy the fun, exciting or satisfying bits without reliving the pain, frustration or tedium.  For example, I chaperoned a group of teens on a mission trip to Beaver Island when I was around 26.  I had lots of fun on the trip - but I also broke my tailbone early in the trip, one of the other chaperones was having what I can only describe as an untreated manic episode, and I was going on slightly less than 5 hours of sleep a night for over a week.   My memories are of teaching my small group to pain sets and watching sunsets over the lake - not the pain of hiking miles each day with a light pack with a broken tailbone. 

Be cautious of taking advice from people who enjoyed an experience only in hindsight.

Didn't Expect Derick Dillard to be the First Duggar to Crack

Being a son-in-law of the Duggar clan brings an entirely new level of crazy into a young man's life.  Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have been used to micromanaging their 19 kids lives for decades and have received accolades for their reproductive prowess in the form of a television show, ghost-written books, publicity tours and public speaking gigs. 

Yeah, Jim Bob and Michelle's aura of wholesome Americana got dinged when their insanely negligent handling of Josh's repeated molestations became public knowledge - but I doubt that those revelations changed the family dynamics.  After all, the revelations were not new news to the people who lived through those years.

The tricky bit for sons-in-law is supporting their ever-growing families financially while still receiving some level of financial support from Jim Bob and Michelle. 

• Ben Seewald works for Jim Bob and in a variety of manual labor style jobs.  Austin Forsyth works for his parents at a campground.  With the minimal education both of these young men have, they are pretty well trapped into family businesses especially since their wives are having children.  
• Jeremy Vuelo has always worked outside of the Duggar penumbra - and Jinger and Jeremy seem to be doing fine financially in Texas so far.   
• Derick is in the most frustrating position of them all.  He has enough education on paper to support his family as an accountant - but decided to become a untrained, minimally supported missionary in El Salvador.  When their mission folded, Derick and his family moved back to Arkansas to pursue a year-long course in "ministry".   This has placed Derick and Jill back in the middle of the Duggar clan - and in the middle of the family stresses.

Earlier this year, Derick posted some insulting tweets towards Jazz - a transgender teenager featured on another TLC show.  Personally, I suspect the reason Derick and Jill were not prominently involved in the upcoming season of "Counting On" had more to do with that than anything else.  TLC will swallow a lot of crazy, insulting things from their TV stars  - but Derick was a two-bit minor character on a show that struggles to get advertising revenue.   Either way,  Derick attempted to walk back his generalized hatred of transgender people by claiming that he was denouncing the way that TLC and Jazz's parents earned money off of a teenager.

Needless to say, the internet pointed out that Jim Bob, Michelle, Jill and Derick did the exact same thing.  Pot, meet kettle....

In the middle of the tweetstorm, Derick blurts out that Sam was in the NICU for two weeks - and that his reading comprehension isn't the best in the middle of the night.

No, Derick.  PM was telling you that earning money by filming Israel and Samuel was using your kids to earn money like Jazz's parents and Jill's parents did.

The vast majority of people are unaware that NICUs - and pediatric hospitals in general - have donated funds to cover the costs of meals for parents without a lot of income.  My husband and I received a standard $5.00 voucher in our "Welcome to the NICU" material.  We told our social worker, however, that paying for our own meals was not a financial hardship and that we would prefer the money be saved for families who had farther to drive or less income available.

Personally, I think Derick and Jill should have gotten the lunch tickets in part because they must have a large bill coming for Samuel's stay.   We had no bills for our son's stay - but that was because Michigan has a Medicare program that is called "Thirty Day Medicare" that automatically covers children who are hospitalized for 30 consecutive days or more regardless of parental income.  Since Jack was in the hospital for 108 days, we qualified easily.   The Dillards, on the other hand, had the costs associated with Jill's C-section and 14 days of NICU care.   That's easily $250,000 in hospital and doctor bills if they are uninsured.

As the spat continues, Derick explains that he asked TLC to cover some of the costs of Israel's failed trial of labor and C-section.

Obviously, TLC wasn't interested in paying for medical claims that were expressly excluded in the contract that either Jim Bob signed on behalf of all the members of his production company (a.k.a. his biological children, their spouses and their children) or that Derick signed...but missed the details.

Either way, Derick's pissed about the relative lack of cash that's come his way from the show.

I know the likelihood of Derick or Jill ever reading this is low - but if you do - think about making a break from both the Duggar clan and natural childbirthing.  Derick, be an accountant.  I'm sure you can find a way to help people while earning a decent income for your family.  If you've decided that you want to work in ministry, get a real theology degree from a reputable college and enter a seminary.  Stop doing bait-and-switches like inviting LGBTQ people to an outing for the purpose of trying to get them to realize how sinful they are or offering English tutoring to Middle Eastern university students (read: Muslim) to also expose them to fundamentalist Christianity.   That's not how Jesus worked and is beneath his followers. Jill, get a GED and apply for a nursing program.  You can go to school and take any remedial classes you need while the boys are small.  There's a need for certified nurse midwives - highly educated women and men who handle uncomplicated pregnancies under the supervision of an OB/GYN.  It would take you a while to work up to that level but that would be a real accomplishment that you could be proud of.

Adoption Issues: Communication between Home and School

Well, the baby is feeling a bit better today - but I caught his cold.  I'm running far enough behind that reading in a chapter of either of the book reviews will have to wait until the weekend - but I have a blog post review waiting in my back pocket.

I wrote a previous blog post about the Corkum family: two parents, two biological kids, one adopted son adopted in accordance with best practices followed by the adoption of three unrelated teenagers who were substantially older than the other three kids.  The last three adoptions have been a complete mess and by 2016 all three of the kids were living in other placements.

Prior to the oldest adopted kids leaving, the most disruptive kid was placed in public schools.  Melissa Corkum had previously home schooled all of the kids using the classical method so this was a hard transition for her.   She wrote a post about things that the kid's teacher has said that are emotionally devastating to her.   The post made me laugh because I've said all of these things to parents (or something pretty close) before and I can promise that the teacher did not mean what Mrs. Corkum heard.

Statement One:

“She has been super cooperative for me.”

Adoption Issues: What Not to Do for ANY Children

I was bumbling around on various home schooling blogs and stumbled upon Melissa Corkum's blog at The Cork Board while learning a bit about the classical method of home schooling.

Despite researching home schooling issues for several years, I'm still surprised at the number of home schooling parents who branch out into questionable choices in international adoption.   

The Corkum family has six kids.  They had two biological children, then adopted "Tee" when he was about 2 years old in 2009.  (Her blog uses names for the kids which I assume are pseudonyms - but since I am unsure - I'm just going to use initials.)  Tee's adoption is a good example of how international adoption can be beneficial.  Melissa was adopted as an infant from Korea - which is where Tee is adopted from - so she has experience of being Asian-American in the USA as well as being adopted.  Tee was the youngest child when adopted in.  It took Tee several years to fully feel comfortable in his new home and he eventually received an additional diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders (FASD).  Tee seems to have academic struggles - but Melissa is actively involved in creating a classical curriculum that combines weekly planned co-op lessons with reinforcement at home.  IOW, Tee's adoption seems to have worked out well.

By 2011, the family was in a good groove.  At that point, the Corkums decided to adopt again but from Ethiopia instead.  They were open to matching up to three adoptees with no restrictions on gender, relation, or age of the kids.  They were matched with two unrelated kids: a 14-year old boy named "Jay" and a 13-year old girl named "Kay".  On top of being unrelated to each other, Jay and Kay are substantially older than the Corkum's biological children and Tee.  While finalizing Jay's adoption in Ethiopia, the Corkums find out that Jay was being raised with another orphan: 11-year old "Gee". The Corkums decide to adopt Gee to keep Jay and Gee together.   In a post, Melissa mentions obliquely that at that point the adoption agency informed Melissa and her husband that adopting three unrelated teenagers is not recommended - but the adoption of Gee proceeds.

Long story short: Jay and Kay have troubles settling into a home-schooling family that doesn't speak the same language in a foreign country.  Gee struggles even more and eventually needs in-patient treatment.  By 2016, the kids are 18, 17, and 15 and none of them are living with the Corkums.

In 2014, Melissa wrote a post titled "What Not To Do In Older Child Adoption" that lists four mistakes the Corkums made that I feel safe broadening to "Don't Do For ANY Children" based on my years of teaching scads of unaccompanied minors, teenage refugees and kids in foster care kids as well as garden-variety teenagers.

Do not dis your child’s country of origin…ever. Or at least not until they develop a sense of humor. We adore Ethiopia but the truth is that it’s polluted and smoggy with an unmistakable diesel-mixed-with-raw-sewage smell, and they teach weird, backward things in health class. It will not build trust in your child to look incredulously at them when they tell you their health teacher taught them eating ice will give you tonsillitis or that Michael Jackson turned white because he had his skin turned inside out.

Perhaps the parents could focus more on the positives about Ethiopia (and there are a lot) and leave the attitude of American superiority behind.

 I live in a rural area that smells like diesel mixed with either cow manure, pig manure or turkey manure depending on which way the wind blows.  The area I grew up in smelled like gasoline fumes mixed with stale fast-food or industrial machinery depending on which way the wind blew.  The places I like to vacation smell mostly like rotting fresh water plants, dead leaves, and the occasional whiff of animal urine.  It's all about perspective - and what you are used to.

Is it so crazy that eating ice in Ethiopia might cause tonsillitis - or at least one hell of a sore throat?  Let's say the health teacher was completely wrong.  We have people in the US who believe that homeopathy works, taking colloidal silver during pregnancy reduces morning sickness, and that psychological struggles by adopted children can be cured by forced hugging.   Go to a public place in the US and ask 30 people why Michael Jackson's skin turned from brown to white.  How many different answers do you'll think I'd get  and what percentage would be correct?  Plus, these kids spent most of their lives speaking a different language and have only been immersed in English for 20 months at this point.  I can only imagine what kind of a mess I would make if I had to explain how a vaccine works in Amheric or Oromo - even with 20 months immersion.

This next one freaks me out in terms of inappropriate bashing of a teenager:

Do not minimize felt discomfort. We respected their boundaries pretty well for the first 3 months. Then the honeymoon ended and so did my patience. Instead of honoring the fact that eye contact felt weird or that hearing the words “I love you” (even between two other people) were like nails on a chalk board, we verbalized how ridiculous they were acting. We probably should have tried “I wonder why ‘I love you’ makes you so uncomfortable?” (and been okay with a non-answer) when we really said, “That’s unhealthy. What are you going to do when you get married?…Nope, you won’t find a husband that’s okay with never saying those words. No really. Not going to happen. Ever. And that’s why you’re still in therapy, since you asked yesterday.”

First, thirty seconds of imagination should cure people of struggling to understand why it takes a long time for people to change their patterns of eye contact and expressing affection.

• Imagine being transported to a culture where people always look over the left shoulder of the person they are talking to as a sign of respect and looking someone in the eye is a sign of rebellion or disinterest.  I'd be insulting people left and right - and 20 months would barely make a dent in the habit.
• Now, imagine a culture where the accepted affectionate greeting between romantic partners is a deep tongue kiss.  Saliva should be exchanged.  People do this at the store, in church, at home and in front of elderly relatives.  I'm an adult and it would take me at least a year to not have a shocked / vaguely repulsed expression on my face when people played tonsil hockey in front of me.  Teenage me would have been even worse.

Melissa's response to her daughter's repulsion at hearing adults say "I love you" was brutal and callous.   She essentially tells her daughter that she's not marriageable because verbal affection in public bothers her.  Guess what?  There are plenty of cultures where married adults do not exchange romantic or affectionate gestures in public or around other people.  Better that her daughter find someone who can respect her personal boundaries than force herself to be uncomfortable all of her married life.

Her flippant and cruel taunt about therapy was childishly hurtful.  Therapy has saved my life and greatly enriched the lives of many people I know.  I'm sure her daughter is in therapy to deal with issues surrounding the loss of her biological family, the loss of her culture, the trauma of an international adoption, and the stress of living with a family of complete strangers.  That's plenty of issues to work on that are far more serious than not liking public displays of affection.  Melissa needs to get some individual and group therapy herself to learn better skills to control her anger rather than vent on a hurt teenager.  

This next one boggles my mind coming from an experienced, successful home schooling parent:

Do not build expectations based around age. I wish we had established early on that we would make decisions and create expectations around currently exhibited skills. I love the way my friend, Alex, uses language such as, “Your behavior is communicating to me that you don’t feel safe enough or able to (insert something like "make your own food decisions" here). Let me help you this time and we’ll try again another time.” My tendency has been to frustratingly point out that kids their age should be able to follow a 2 step direction or copy a paragraph with minimal mistakes. We’ve also used words like “catch up” and “act like a big girl/boy” and “you SHOULD know that.” Bad ideas…even when your teenager showers with the shower curtain all.the.way open with no rug on the floor because the rug was hanging on the rod which, of course, made the curtain impossible to close.

A real benefit to home schooling that I believe in is that parent-teachers can meet their kids where they are functioning and help them move forward to the next level. Nearly every home schooling parent blog has at least post about how public schools are failing to meet their child exactly where they are at. (Ironically - so does Melissa. It's in reference to one of the adopted kids no less - but that's another blog post.)  When confronted with having to practice that level of adaption her home school, she decides to tell her teens how badly are doing compared to other teens their age to shame them into working harder.  That's unacceptable behavior for a teacher in a public school - and so much more hurtful when the teacher is also your adopted mother.

This last one made me laugh.  Melissa has spent a lot of time around home schooled teens - but maybe not so much the average teenager at home before adopting her teens.

Do not assume anything. The attitude-y body language drives me nuts just like the next mom, but when they totally deny it…ERRRG. I’ve actually come to the conclusion that they are usually completely clueless to how they come across. So all those redos and lectures about such behavior…totally lost and probably caused loads of relational damage since the accused parties honest-to-goodness think they are innocent.

I need to thank my parents again for ignoring and overlooking "attitude" body language.  Teenagers need some way to blow off the emotional energy created by every teen's beliefs that 1) their parents are overbearing and obnoxious, 2) no one understand them, and 3) life will be so much better once they are out of the house.   I'm willing to bet the teens knew that their body language was angry, grumpy, bored or checked-out; those types of body language are pretty universal.  What is equally important is that the parents -and teachers - pick their battles wisely.    I could care less if a student was slouched in their desk or spent the whole hour glaring at me - that's their choice and it's not hurting me or anyone else.

I agree battling over body language was pointless and counter-productive - but mainly because micromanagement of teenagers is a bad idea.

Well, those are the four that I found disconcerting.  The original post has six more issues the Corkums ran into.  Next, I'll look at a post that shows how teachers can say things that are heard very differently by the parents of a student who is having behavior issues at home.

Completely OT - but hey, that's the benefit of blogging - while this is being posted, I'll be at the doctor's office with a screaming 13.5 month old baby who needs 5 injections (two for RSV, one HepB, one MMRV and one polio) for the second month in a row.   Last month was two for RSV, one for HiB, one for HepA, and one for PCV-13.  I'd rather he have the transient pain of a shot than any of these diseases - but damn, I'll be glad when April rolls around and he's back to one or no shots at the doctor's office.