Reasons NOT to do foster care

I keep hearing these from people who know I do foster care:

1. We're a really busy family right now.  Maybe later...  Later, after these kids age out of the system and produce more kids into the system.
2. I don't think I could ever give them up again!  So let's deny them that love now in order to protect ourselves from the pain.
3. Don't they come with a lot of problems?  Yes.  Some do.  Some don't.
4. I don't think we can afford another child.  They mostly are self-supporting, for one thing.  For another, what is a child's soul worth?
5. Our family is complete now.  We don't need another one.  But a child may need you.
6. We don't have a big enough house or car for another child.  This is tricky.  A car can only hold so many car seats.  But children can share rooms.
7. I have to consider my own children.  I agree; protect your own children.  But taking in children carefully might build your children's compassion and character.
8. I knew someone who took in foster kids when I was a kid.  She did it just for the money.  The system is corrupt.  The "system" stinks.  Wouldn't it be great to have a bunch of foster kids, foster parents, and low-level workers revamp the whole thing!  But the children inside this system can't wait for a perfect system.
9. I don't think I could do foster care.  Not everyone can.  But could you be a CASA?  Or a grandparent/aunt/uncle to a foster kid?  Or provide dufflebags for a foster kid so he doesn't have to carry his stuff around in trash bags?  Or teach money management to foster kids who are about to age out?  Or pray for the case workers who are overloaded with cases?
10. Bless you for taking in those poor kids!  Hmm... thanks?  I like taking in kids.  It must be my ADHD.  I don't think of mine as being "poor kids" -- unless I'm trying to get something more for them from the system! :)

Women (and one man) Who Shaped My Life

I don't remember a time I didn't know my calling was to care for orphans.  I grew up on stories of women (and one man) who did the same:
a missionary in the fictional book Star of Light
Gladys Aylward (missionary to China; Inn of the Sixth Happiness)
Amy Carmichael (missionary to India)
George Muller (started an orphanage in England)
Mary Slessor (missionary to Africa)
I also saw countless street children, beggars, and refugees overseas.  One little girl stands out in my mind.  She lived in a Nuristani village near where we spent our summer.  She had a cleft lip.  No one would play with her; they threw rocks at her.  I wanted to take her home with us.  She stood in the street and stared at us, her mouth gaping, snot dripping, blood trickling down her face from where a rock had struck her.  I've always wondered what happened to her.

Way up... and back down...

Back on the roller coaster ride:  Yesterday Brooklynn's case worker got a call from some distant relatives who just discovered she was going to be adoptable.  So they want to adopt her.  The laws have changed since I adopted Derrick; foster parents who have cared for a child over a year are no longer considered at the same level as relatives who want to adopt.  In other words, the relatives will likely be preferred over me in this adoption, unless they are considered too far distant.  Feels like a punch in the gut.

Songs of the Store

We took Brooklynn shopping while at the beach and lived to regret every moment!  I'm sure the folks in Goodwill were ready to call Children's Services:  "Mom!  You're hurting my hand!  Let go!  Waaahaaaa!  Mo-o-o-o-o-o-om!"  (Note to DHS workers who may be reading this blog: I was holding her hand loosely; the problem was that she was throwing herself on the ground while I was holding her hand.)

Once we got home, she had a cup of milk and went straight to bed where she composed her latest song:

"We went to the store,

And I cried, cried, cried.

And tomorrow we'll go to the store,

And I'll cry, cry, cry.

It doesn't matter,

I'll just cry, cry, cry.

When I'm hurt

I cry, cry, cry.

Sometimes when I'm not hurt,

I still cry, cry, cry."

National Foster Care Month

May is National Foster Care Month, and I've been wearing my little blue ribbon faithfully.  Many people have asked about it, allowing me to (briefly) point out some of the needs of foster care in our state and county.  Tomorrow I get to share in our middle school chapel about how I came to do foster care, and how middle schoolers (and their parents) can help foster kids.

When I was seven years old, I went to a private Christian school in Hesperia, California.  My teacher's name was Mrs. Thompson.  She was rather large, and black hairs stuck out through her nylons on her legs.  But I loved her.  Surely there could be no teacher so caring as Mrs. Thompson!  And she read to us every day.  One story she read was Star of Light, by Patricia St. John.  The story tells of a fatherless boy who rescues his blind baby sister from being sold to a beggar.  The boy takes this baby to a city where a missionary lives.  The missionary opens her home every night to feed street children and tell them the gospel.  The boy, Hamid, sets his sister Kinza on the missionary's doorstep, hoping the lady will have pity on the blind girl.  Of course she does, and everyone lives fairly happily ever after.

This story was the first time I realized that there were children in the world who did not have parents caring for them.  I made a vow in my young heart that when I was old enough, I would run an orphanage for kids with no homes. 

One of the lessons in Toddler Boot Camp: how NOT to drown

Well, fast forward 21 years, and I realized that I couldn't actually start an orphanage single-handedly.  Foster care seemed to be a good way to get my feet wet.  So I signed up to take in school-aged children.  I got a call for a baby boy.  Isn't that how foster care works!  Of course I took him, and now he's my own son.  I gripe frequently about "the system", about children bouncing in and out of care, about never having a "settled life".  But the truth?  I love doing foster care!  I love taking small children through "toddler boot camp", where they learn to eat properly, talk, play in the dirt, bathe, and sleep through the night.

Part-time Parenting

When I first started fostering, I ran into an acquaintance at the store.  She asked me about my foster son.  When I explained that I was a foster parent, she responded: "So you're, like, a part-time parent?"
Really? Which part is "part-time"?  Perhaps it's the meeting with the case workers.  Or the certifier.  Maybe she meant all the phone calls with the CASA*, or going to the CRB* meetings.  Possibly it's the extra doctor appointments to catch up on missed immunizations.  Or the developmental screenings.  Or the WIC* appointments.  Or the sleeping outside a RAD* child's door so he doesn't get up and harm someone in the night.
Yes, it's like being a part-time parent, on top of being a full-time parent.

CASA -- Court Appointed Special Advocate, who speaks to the judge on the child's behalf, and is usually the only one who can really say how s/he feels about the whole situation.
CRB -- Community Review Board oversees the county foster care system; their main question seems to be "Has the child seen a dentist yet?"  (Ummm, no, we've ben working on getting the child to eat more than chicken nuggets, and getting her to say her first word at 2 years old.)
WIC -- Women, Infants, and Children, a program that provides nutritious food and training for low-income families with children under five; for years they provided peanut butter, but no bread, and frosted shredded wheat, but not plain.
RAD -- Reactive Attachment Disorder, when a child fails to bond with his first caregiver, and cannot bond with anyone after that; results in the child giving threats such as, "I'm going to burn down the house!" or "I'm going to eat grass and take off all my clothes!"  (The latter threat being somewhat ineffective, unless he meant to make us all laugh.)

What they DON'T tell you in foster parent training:

1. You'll constantly be checking the inmate list to see whether the bio parents are in jail.
2. You'll be comforting the extended family while they wonder where the bio parents are.
3. You'll preface every plan with "If you're here in the summer..."
4. You'll never know exactly how many children you have. Do you count the ones that stayed six months or more? Or the ones that bounce back? How about the siblings of the ones you've kept?
5. You can't possibly draw your family tree. Unlike Hickville's (which has only one branch), yours has seven trunks.
6. You expect a knock on the door every birthday and Christmas from bio parents who haven't been in contact in over a year.
7. Every time you see "Drug Bust" in the headlines, you hide the newspaper until you can check that it's not your child's parents.
8. You'll need to explain drugs, half-siblings, arrests, depression, overdoses, and suicide attempts to children who can't yet tie their shoes.