Hello, spaw. I can't stop thinking about the conversation with Tris that you described in the thread on austism. I thought you might have left that thread, so I decided to start a new one.

In that thread you described Tris' anxiety over going to visit his Aunt Connie. That reminded me of my cousin's foster daughter. Years ago, my cousin took in (and kept) a disabled girl of seven. Her name is Judy. Things were going okay until it was time for the family to visit distant relatives.

Judy was very anxious. She suspected that they weren't going to visit relatives. They were going to put her in the car, take her somewhere (such as a state agency) and leave her. Maybe it had happened to her; maybe somebody at school teased her about it.

No promises could convince her. Then one day she counted the underpants for herself and for my cousin's own daughter. She saw that both of them had the same number of underpants for the trip. That convinced her she was coming back.

So maybe your Tris is worried in the same way. He secretly fears that he will 'go to Aunt Connie's' and never come back.

Here's another true story. A friend of mine, Jenny, is now 63, but aa girl she was a foster with an alcoholic mother and no father. One day she started telling me about a 'nice lady' who took care of her at age 10. This lady had a number of foster kids, and she was very organized and operated on a schedule. Jenny said, 'It was SO NICE, after what I had been through, to know that I would have a bath on Wednesdays and that I would be taken care of.'

So I was thinking, maybe when you take a trip, post a list that shows that everybody will be taken care of.

SCHEDULE FOR SATURDAY