Robinson, Phoebe E.

[BWI Admin]

Adolescent Application

Hi! My name is Phoebe Eloise Robinson and I am in the 7th Grade. I am 12 years old. Please use she/her pronouns when referring to me!

Basic Information

Full Name: Phoebe Eloise Robinson
Age: 12
Birthday: March 12th
Sex: Female
Pronouns: she/her
Current Grade/Year in School, if Applicable: 7th
Special Needs: Insulin and a special diet. Phoebe is T1D

Appearance

Height: 4'10"
Build: slender, slightly underweight
Hair Color: blonde
Eye Color: blue
Distinguishing Features: round face, full mouth, glasses
Brief Description: Phoebe's a cute girl, with a round face, full mouth, and deep-set eyes. Her smile ranges from gentle to truly bright, although she doesn't smile often. Her eyes often reflect a deep sadness that comes from years in the foster care system without finding anyone interested in adopting her. She usually wears her pale blonde hair loose halfway down her back in very loose waves, but sometimes she wears it in a braid or a ponytail. Typically, she dresses in jeans or shorts with a t-shirt or sweatshirt, and most of the time she keeps her body covered. She has prescription eyeglasses that are round and a bit too big for her face.

Personality

What are your greatest strengths? creativity; perseverance; willingness to try; accepting of other people; nonjudgmental; quickness to commit; awareness of others; general obedience
What are your greatest weaknesses? easily distracted; not especially bright; struggles to make friends; jealous; easily disappointed; withdraws when upset; sensitive to criticism; easily tired
What do you struggle with? waiting for 12 years to be adopted and feeling like nothing is ever going to change
What are your hobbies or interests? loves to draw; enjoys board games; caring for plants; roller skating; horseback riding; adult coloring books
What do you really enjoy? having chores to do; meals that make her feel normal; attention from adults; field trips; watching movies with friends; making new friends; being outside; shopping for new things; real carnivals; sleepovers; cats; horses; grownups who talk to her like she's human; girls; new clothes; gaining weight
What do you really dislike? reading; school; school parties; eating at friends' houses; having friends over; injecting herself with insulin; going to the doctor; having to make the right choice all the time because wrong choices could literally kill her; getting in trouble for actual accidents; "adoption fairs;" dogs; social workers
What are your favorite things? Nearly-completed coloring books full of her own coloring work.
What do you fear? never being adopted; dogs; snakes; opossums
Describe your personality in 100-500 words: For everything she's been through, Phoebe is remarkably outgoing, sociable, and friendly. While she's not always kind, most people perceive her that way at the outset. The trouble is often that people begin to layer her truth over her personality and then their perspective of her shifts from seeing the person she is to seeing what she might have been had her circumstances been different. This is what makes Phoebe hard for a lot of people to get to know; They superimpose their perceptions of her experience on top of who she actually is, and when that happens, she is quick to withdraw, which changes her significantly from an outgoing, friendly person into a withdrawn adolescent who wants nothing to do with the people who so easily pass judgment on her.

Relationships & Behavior

How do you normally get along with adults? It really depends on the adult, to be honest. For most of her life, Phoebe has been an inconvenience to people who aren't prepared to take on her special needs because as impactful as her diabetes can be on her life, social services has not considered it to be an especially high need, which means that she's been repeatedly placed with adults who consider her more of a burden than she ought to be on them. Phoebe is good enough to give most adults the benefit of the doubt, and she doesn't judge them on one mistake, but those who don't know how to handle her disease or her angst over 12 years in foster care often wind up being the ones she's most likely to avoid. This quickly turns into a vicious cycle.

How do you normally get along with teenagers? Not especially well. Phoebe's high needs tend to generate a degree of jealousy in foster care environments, and teenagers have typically had a tendency to make fun of her. As with children, her needs often impact the entire household in ways that other adolescents don't appreciate, and Phoebe is sensitive about their judgment of her and their feelings that she's impacting the way they're allowed to eat and not eat. She's always been told by adults, as well, that it's her fault that the household has to eat this way or that way, and so she's had a lot of bullying from teenagers over the years, causing her to avoid and distrust, judgmental or not.

How do you normally get along with other children? Similarly to teenagers. If food and eating don't come into play, and if she doesn't have to stop to make sure she gets her blood sugar up, she can enjoy playing with children close to her own age, but often relationships drift because friendship with Phoebe becomes inconvenient for the other child. This is obviously impactful and hurts her deeply, so while she is friendly and outgoing, she doesn't tend to seek out long-term friendships because of concern that she'll wind up losing those friends when they find out the "truth" about her.

How independent are you? Phoebe has had to be pretty independent because she's inconvenient when she's not, but the truth is... She really relies on adults.

How do you normally react when you get into trouble? It depends on what her relationship with the adult with whom she's in trouble is like. If the relationship is close, she's more likely to be cooperative, but tearful. If it's not close, she's more likely to shut down emotionally and refuse to engage.

Link to your discipline sheet: click here ✅

Orphan Village

How long have you lived at the Orphan Village? Just arrived
Which House do you belong to? Birch House
Are you currently enrolled at the Orphan Village Academy or BWI College? Orphan Village Academy
What jobs or responsibilities do you have at the Orphan Village? Keeping up with her own health regimen is a full time job. Phoebe also helps with the community garden when it's in season

How did you come to live at the Orphan Village? Phoebe's case worker was at her wit's end. There was, in her mind, absolutely no reason why Phoebe had not been adopted in the twelve years that she'd spent in foster care, and she hoped that by moving Phoebe into an entirely new system, she would open doors to getting Phoebe adopted.

How do you generally get along with caregivers and authority figures? It really depends on the caregiver and how they treat Phoebe. The ones who treat her like she should be wholly independent at her age are going to set themselves up for disappointment, and she will spiral. These will not be strong relationships. The ones who hover over her like she can't possibly be trusted to take care of herself are going to set her up for frustration and disappointment, and she will spiral. Her strongest caregiver relationships will be with those who understand that they may need to prompt her to check her blood sugar but not remind her that she shouldn't partake of a cookie at the party. She knows she can't eat sugar all the time, but she doesn't like sticking herself. There has to be a balance, and with those adults who find the balance for her, the relationships will be strong and satisfying. They might even be able to earn her trust after a while.

For what it's worth, the most interesting scenario for Phoebe is if she encounters a mixture of adults who fit different roles for her.

How do you generally get along with younger residents? Phoebe honestly doesn't have a lot of use for younger residents. It's not personal, except that it is. Like most kids who reach early adolescence while in foster care, she's watched dozens of little kids get adopted while she waits for anyone to give her the time of day. What's the point in getting to know someone who's going to move right back out of the house when they get adopted? Yes, to a certain degree she's resentful, but mostly she understands the math: She's more likely to be here for longer, and she's going to be hurt when someone she likes moves out of the house and she never sees them again. In that respect, what's the point?

How do you generally get along with your peers? Except in specific cases, Phoebe gets along pretty well with people her own age because she is empathetic and understanding. Most of them haven't been through quite what she has, but she knows that they are in a tough situation and she has the experience with foster care to do her best to help them adjust to their situation. Her kindness matters in these situations, and most of the time it helps her to make friends with people in her own age group. The trouble comes in when jealousy arises -- either she will be adopted before some or they will be adopted before her and this can be highly disruptive to her emotional wellbeing. Another factor with her peers is that Phoebe isn't the smartest kid, and this sometimes results in teasing and bullying.

Do you prefer to be adopted or remain in the Orphan Village? Phoebe's dream is to be adopted

Describe your ideal adoptive family. I'm restarting Phoebe but intend for her to go with the same family she's been with before, since it is a damn-near perfect fit

Is there anything else we should know about how you get along in the Orphan Village? Oh yes.

First, Phoebe sometimes knowingly does stupid things that could hurt her. It's not that she's trying to hurt herself, but she gets so tired of being left out of things that once in a while she'll eat something that spikes her blood sugar. While this doesn't usually cause her blood sugar to go dangerously high, it can result in a significant drop in blood sugar later, which is very dangerous for her. She's not exactly doing these things intentionally, but she sometimes does them, knowing the potential outcome, just so that she can fit in with the other kids. It is, therefore, important to ensure that at all times there is a way to keep her involved and include her in things that other kids are doing, without requiring them to meet her at her level. It's not even about meeting one another "halfway." There's no excuse not to provide options for Phoebe alongside regular options for the kids who aren't dealing with her disease.

Second, Phoebe has been waiting to be adopted since she was an infant. Notably, infants in any system tend to get adopted fast, unless there is something wrong with them. While her diabetes wasn't diagnosed until she was two years old, she had health problems as a baby that prevented her from being adoptable. Everyone wants healthy infants, not infants with heart problems or high medical needs, so she went into foster care, where she waited. And waited. There's no reason for her to be a priority placement, especially considering that behind the scenes we know 100% where she's going to go when the time is right, but this reality impacts her behavior, and adults need to be aware that she is going to need a lot more reassurance and work than some other children in the village might.

Background

Describe your history in 150-1000 words: Phoebe entered foster care when she was six months old. Her mother, who she has no memory of at all, left her at the hospital when she was emotionally exhausted from having a child in the NICU for so long. Because Phoebe was medically-complicated, she spent a lot of the next two years in and out of the hospital. At two years old, she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. While her heart had been repaired and she was in better shape, the diagnosis made her complicated for a new reason, and regular foster parents struggled to figure out how to best care for her. She was shuffled around a lot.

Early on, there were two failed adoptions that nearly broke Phoebe. Each time, she went back into foster care feeling worse about herself. Meanwhile, she watched younger children be adopted while she continued to struggle to find anyone who liked her enough to so much as give her a chance. The longer and the more she waited, the more she acted out. The more she acted out, the more she got shuffled from place to place. She might not be the smartest kid, but she was able to put two and two together. Acting out meant that she got shuffled. So she tried even harder. In the end, it made no difference.

After twelve years of struggle, a new social worker finally decided that maybe a change of venue was the best thing for Phoebe, and so she brought her to Birchwood Isle and set her up in the Orphan Village in the hopes that the right parents could be found. If not, at least the Village provided a family atmosphere where Phoebe could potentially thrive.

Other

Is there anything else we need to know about you? Yes. Phoebe is not familiar with corporal punishment and it is going to hit her hard when the first few times do come. Just something worth noting!