Disappointment and Foster Children's Birth Parents

During foster parent training, we listened to a mother share her personal story about her son, who was formerly in foster care.  She had to work through some things before she was able to get him back, and she expressed her gratitude for the foster parents who watched him while she was getting better.  Even before going to classes, I knew that my goal as a foster parent was to reunite foster children with their parents.  I'm not here to snatch them from their families.  Most kids want to be with their biological parents anyway, even when they've suffered extreme pain and loss from them.  Kids want their parents.  I want to help kids whose parents need to pull it together (or, in other cases, whose parents are no longer alive... but that's a different case).  And I sincerely hope that parents learn to master their addictions, put their children above their boyfriends, control their emotions, provide for their children, and make the changes that they need to implement in order to become fit parents.  That's what I hope the parents are doing while we've got their kids.  Meanwhile, we don't use drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; we don't hit or yell; we don't fight; we don't demean; we don't neglect.  We provide healthy meals, structure, reading time, play time, school support, and a safe environment.  We create a place for children to grow while they are going through a stressful time in their lives.

Cody and I make it a goal to never speak poorly of parents.  We validate children's feelings of missing their parents, listen to stories about their parents, ask them to share good things about their parents, and encourage visits with their parents.  We show respect for parents in front of the children at all times--even when we are absolutely furious about things that the parents say or do, which we discuss behind closed doors well after bedtime.  We do our best to not discuss the parents or their situations with others, even when it's tempting to vent.

Because of this goal, I have gone back and forth on my desire to share some of the intricacies of working with biological parents on this blog.  A month and a half in, I'm still not sure how much I should share.  The decision to write today's post comes as I've been noticing the page views climb weekly, with over 100 clicks on this blog yesterday alone, in countries such as the US, the UK, Chile, Poland, Russia, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Honduras.  I figure that people are interested in learning about foster care, and that I would like to share those things I wish I had known about before experiencing it first-hand.  With that, I would like to paint an accurate yet anonymous picture of what it has been like working with our first set of biological parents.

First of all: it's been nothing like the experience shared by the biological mom at our foster care classes.  We've been insulted, degraded, and outright hated.  Our foster children come back from home visits with stories that make us want to scream, but we keep it hidden from of the children.  I would like to limit my examples to four, which I believe will paint an accurate picture while not going overboard on detail.  The negative sucks, and we weren't quite prepared for it.  I don't want to dwell on it, but I would like to let good-intentioned people interested in foster care know what I wish I had been prepared for.

1)Creating fear: We didn't understand why our kids reacted a certain way when they first arrived at our house, but after consulting with various resource people, we finally learned that the children had been told to stay on guard around us because their foster parents would try to sexually assault them if they weren't careful.  Yeah, let that sink in.  Having a child be terrified of you because they think you're going to abuse them in that way, because their loved one told them you would.

2)Passive-aggression: We keep a spare change of clothes in the baby's diaper bag, in case of accidents.  She repeatedly would come back from visits wearing the spare pair, while the original clothes still looked clean.  I asked the children why the baby's clothes kept getting changed during home visits.  One of the children said it was because they said that the baby smelled like rotten food and they couldn't stand the smell.  Mm-hmm.  Because we feed our children rotten food?  Because we hadn't put fresh clothes on the baby to look her best for the visit?  They have come home from the past six visits with numerous bags and boxes full of clothes, toys, and candy because the parents say they are worried their children are not being taken care of.  Our garage is full of garbage bags of old clothes (after their individual dressers are already overflowing with clothing), out-of-season winter clothes including 6-10 heavy winter coats per child, dozens of stuffed animals, grocery bags full of candy and junk food, etc.

3)Cancellations: Soon after arriving, the children were given two scheduled visits per week with their family.  Three times in a row, we received a phone call ten minutes before the scheduled visit that it would not be happening due to a last-minute cancellation on the part of the parents.  On one particular afternoon, we dealt with alternating meltdowns every 10-20 minutes until bedtime: screaming, crying, yelling at the top of their lungs, absolute mayhem.  After three or four cancellations, the visits were changed to one day per week, at the request of the parents.

4)False hope: The children often come home with stories about how their parents say they're about to come home at any minute--which is completely unrealistic and untrue.  The latest story is that the parents are trying to get the children to be able to stay with their grandmother's brother, so that they can stay with someone they feel comfortable with, instead of strangers (the child's exact words).

In essence, it sucks.  Not what I had expected.  Wish I had prepared myself to be a little tougher! Ha.

Parental Death, Drugs, Abuse: Realities for Foster Care Children

The 8-year-old told me that her friend at school is in foster care because her parents committed suicide.  I asked her if she knew what suicide was.  She nonchalantly answered, "Yeah, both her parents killed themselves."

Another little boy we met is in foster care because his mother died of cancer, his father terminated his rights, and his relatives are unfit (like, people getting shot in the home because of who they hang out with).

But the majority of foster care situations I'm aware of are due to abuse or neglect, and many times those things happen because of drug abuse or alcohol abuse.  People are no longer able to put their children first because of their addictions.  At the alternative high school where I teach, I tell my students all the time to break their drug and alcohol habits now because the addictions get harder to fight, and a lot fewer kids would end up in foster care if their parents had kicked the habit in high school.  No one starts a family thinking that they'll lose their kids because they can't handle their recreational activities.  Everyone thinks they can quit drugs or alcohol if they really wanted, whenever they wanted, even today if they wanted to--but they're still having fun and/or coping that way.

I have one piece of advice for my high school alternative students, for teenagers in general, and really for anyone who still has their reproductive organs intact: (A) never start drugs if you haven't yet, or (B) quit drugs as soon as possible if you already have.  Do it for someone besides yourself, even if that someone hasn't been born yet.  And for those people who don't have any kids and don't have any reproductive organs or any desire to adopt or be around children for the rest of their lives: I guess you can do drugs if you want.

Funny foster parent texts :)

An actual picture I have texted to my husband within the past ten days

Fairy Godmothers:
I have officially outlawed the phrase "I wish" from our house, directly following the fifth "I wish I could have cereal for dinner..." comment that I had already responded to three times.  They are allowed to say directly, "can I have this?" and then listen to the answer, but they're not allowed to wistfully say "I wish I had that," progressively getting louder until I hear them.  I told them we are not fairy godmothers.

Hypocrisy:
They asked for cereal for dinner and I said no, and now I am having cereal while they're in bed because I need it, and also because I am a bad person.

The Baby Hooha Talk:
We had to cut baby naked time short due to extensive curiosity that I was not ready to address.
Maybe you should take the time to explain it now.  Let's be ahead of the game.

Naughty baby daughter:
Former cute baby for sale.
I have a dollar.
How about 50 cents?
Deal, I'll take her.  Could you make her cute again though?
No I couldn't, the cuteness has expired.
25 cents then?

Honey badger babies:
This honey badger has slept 45 minutes since 6am, and it's 11:52. I'm scared of her.

Toxic waste:
I could have used a respirator for that last diaper.  Why couldn't she be anything like me?

Bedwetting:
He just said, "today's my fifth day of not wetting the bed!"
Was he really sleepwalking through all of that last night?!
He just asked me, "why am I in my underwear?" and I said, "do you remember peeing your pants in the hallway last night?" Nope.

Baby thieves:
Um I noticed that you had not quite opened your oatmeal cream pies.  I think the babies might steal some or something.  Sorry bout that.
But babies don't need oatmeal cream pies.
Tell them that! There are two missing!
Naughty, naughty babies...

Glorious Respite Care! (when you need or want a break during foster care)

I can't think of enough positive exclamatory words to profess my love for respite care.  After not sleeping for 4 weeks straight, we were given a two-night vacation from our foster care parental duties while all three kids spent the night at foster-certified babysitters' houses--the girls at one house and the boy at another, due to bedroom regulations and available space.

Adding the foster baby was WAY harder than bringing our daughter home as a newborn, as we didn't have the luxury of maternity/paternity leave, we had another baby that started waking us up again at night, and we had two other kids to take care of in addition to our home and work responsibilities.  (Our house is still not as clean or as organized as it was on our "worst" days pre-foster care.)  With our foster baby and our daughter taking shifts keeping us awake at night, we were walking zombies after a week, and nearly-dead after a month.  When we were reminded of the possibility of respite care, we asked our caseworker to warn the baby's potential respite family that she doesn't sleep and that we have been waking up every 1-2 hours since she got here.  She was unable to place all three kids together (hence the need for more qualified foster parents, even if they solely do temporary respite care, hint hint!), but she did find willing families to care for them for a weekend, and they later said that they'd take them again, woohoo!

I hope it doesn't sound terrible expressing my joy at having a one-baby weekend... but holy freaking crap we were absolutely exhausted.  We had even mentioned to our case worker that we had dedicated one month to helping the new baby adjust, and we were willing to give it one more month to see if she would stop crying incessantly during the night, but that we would have to find a new foster home for her if she didn't show some improvement at night so that we could get some sleep.  

When she came back the morning after her second night, she practically leapt into Cody's arms, giggling.  He put her in her crib and she gave a big sigh, and went right to sleep.  Since then, she's been slightly better--which has been really weird.  We still have nights where she wakes up every 40 minutes for a few hours, but we've also had some nights where she sleeps for 3+ hours in a row.  And she doesn't whine nearly as much during the day.  We're not sure what changed--or if she was just feeling our exhausted energy before she left?  But things have gotten significantly better, for some reason.

Cody and I have a big vacation planned with our daughter in June: two weeks in Australia and New Zealand!  Foster children aren't allowed to leave the state, so they will be staying in respite care again for those two weeks.  Knowing that we have this additional resource makes it so much easier to not feel trapped by foster care.  We will probably use respite care again once more before our trip (and maybe twice, if I end up having to serve in jury duty, ugh) and it just feels like guilt-free, worry-free freedom to know that your children are in good hands when things get overwhelming and you just need a break.  Which, again, I hope doesn't sound terrible to be so excited about child-free partying... but we totally were. :)