Harder Than I Ever Knew

Someone recently asked me what fostering was like. I immediately said, "Foster care is harder than I ever knew. And the blessings are bigger than I ever guessed!"

Even just writing those words, I am almost in tears.

I am friends with many foster care parents around the nation, and in order to protect the privacy of my personal fostering situation, I am going to share my thoughts and feelings while using illustrations from many families' circumstances. Please do not take any illustration from this post and apply it to my personal situation or the personal situation of my foster sons' family! However, each of these illustrations is genuine and recent, from a fostering family whom I personally know.

Fostering children is an emotionally excruciating experience.

On the one hand, in order to care well for the children, a person must care about them. Love them, even. Especially with young children, they can't wait for love. They can't wait for someone to treasure them. They've already been through trauma, or they wouldn't be in foster care. Healing from trauma begins when they start to trust someone again. It takes time. It's not an easy, straight, or simple path.

On the other hand, you can't get "too attached." I'm not sure how a foster parent would avoid getting attached to their foster children, but the reality is (and the hope is) that the child(ren) will be leaving the foster home to return to their parents. I know of many foster parents who walk the tightrope of loving their foster children with the hope of adopting them and praying that the child(ren)'s family is successful in reuniting their family. What a difficult situation!

Sometimes a foster parent will sit, rocking a baby to sleep, and wonder at the love that flows through him/her for this child. And sometimes that same foster parent will leave a courtroom, crying at the knowledge that the same child will never again sleep under his/her roof. It's a roller coaster that is controlled by everyone except you!

I have found that foster parents almost always love their foster children's parents. Foster parents root for birth parents! They cheer them on. They talk about them positively with their foster children. They want the biological parents to succeed in their case plan, in their sobriety, in their quest to reunite their family. Obviously, there are cases of abuse so heinous that the foster family cannot be positive about birth family, but even in those cases, I know foster families find positives to say to their child about their birth families. I know one adoptive family who speaks of an unknown birth father, saying that "If he hadn't stepped up to claim you, you wouldn't have been enrolled in the tribe. And if you hadn't been enrolled in the tribe, we never would've met you!"

And because foster parents cheer on birth parents, it is extremely painful for the foster parents when the birth parents fail to show up for visits, get arrested for their fourth or fifth DUI, say hurtful things to the child(ren) during a visit, or disappear for weeks (or months) on end. It's painful because they care about the parents, and it's painful because the foster families deal with the fallout from the parents' failures. The questions from small children, "Where is my mom?" (The answer: "I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't. I do know that I am here, and I will stay here, and I will take care of you."). The tougher questions from older children, "Why doesn't my dad care enough to call me?" (The answer: "I don't know. I wish I could control his choices, but I can't. I do know that we love you and will take care of you for as long as you are here.") And the toughest questions, "Why does my dad drink so much?" or "Why is meth more important than we are?" (The tougher answer: "Addiction stinks, Sweetheart. It's very hard to make good choices when a person is addicted. I'm sorry addiction has taken your mom/dad.")

Foster parents deal with the aftermath of a visit where the child is told that the foster parents "are not your real family! You don't have to do what they say!" Foster parents deal with the aftermath of a planned visit where a parent does not show up. Sometimes, this is the fault of the parent. Sometimes, this is the fault of the system, which should be protecting children from these situations. Foster children come home confused, angry, and scared. They throw temper tantrums, steal, smear feces on walls, run away, and refuse to comply.

Being a foster parent is emotionally excruciating.

But the blessings! Oh, the blessings!

The foster family sometimes gets to see the child(ren)'s family remake itself into a healthy whole. And even if that doesn't happen, the foster family sometimes gets to transition into an adoptive family. And sometimes the adoptive family gets to maintain relationships with the birth family... in fact, sometimes the adoptive family and the birth family become one big family, which is such a blessing to the child!

Not to mention the day-to-day blessings of rocking a baby to sleep, of soothing an aching toddler, of watching foster children experience their first real Christmas, their first trip to the ocean, their first entirely new outfit...

Foster parenting is one of the toughest things I've ever done.

Foster parenting is one of the best things I've ever done.

It is a wild ride, with wide swings of emotion and expectation. I thank God for the opportunity to do this task, to fill this role, to be this foster mom. And I ask Him for the strength to hang on through the wild swings!

Both Sides Now

I have been involved in the adoption world for more than thirty years, having completed my first adoption in early 1987. All three of my adopted children came to me through the foster care system. Each state's system is different, as is the child welfare system here on the reservation. But I think my experiences would translate for most adoptions in most places.

There are two "kinds" of adoption: open and closed. And of course, there is a continuum between those two choices. One of my older children has had no information about and no contact with their birth family. That child is now an adult and knows almost nothing: no medical history, no information about the situation of their birth, nothing.

 My other older child came to me with little information, but it was enough to locate their birth mother when the child was eight years old. The child and I each wrote a letter to the birth mother, and she wrote back, sending precious newborn photos and copies of pages from a journal she kept while pregnant. She wasn't interested in meeting at that time, but we exchanged letters and photos from then on. When our child was about 14, the birth mother wanted to meet, but at that point the child wasn't interested so we continued to communicate via the mail.

At 19, our child and their birth mother were both ready. We met at a neutral place, with the birth mother's husband and two young children. Immediately, we were family. My child had little siblings, a stepdad, and most-importantly, another mother. At one point, we two moms turned to each other and said in unison, "She's so much like you!"

My now-grown child still has a wonderful relationship with both of these families: birth and adoptive. This grown child can turn to both families for support and advice. We do not compete or get jealous; we're just all family.

Our younger child came to us as our granddaughter. I have the blessing of having a picture of her in my arms the day she was born. We knew her before she came to us as a kinship foster child, and we knew her birth family, at least somewhat. Her birth family has become family to us. Think of it like a marriage: When we marry, we gain our spouse's family-of-origin as our family. The same happened when we adopted our granddaughter: We gained her family-of-origin as family! It's nine years later, and we all identify as family, as far as I can tell.

And oh, the joy of this completeness for our daughter! She knows who her nose comes from. She knows her siblings on both her birth mom's and her birth dad's sides. She knows her birth parents love her, and our daughter loves her birth parents. She sees her birth parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. as often as we return to the Midwest. It's just as important to all of us for her to see her birth family as it is for me to see my family or my husband to see his!

I heartily support open adoption like this, unless there is a grave safety concern for the child. I'm sure there are activities that our daughter's birth parents participate in that I would rather not have as influences for her, but they want the best for her, too, so they don't bring those influences into their visits with her. No one is perfect, and we all want what's best for this child.

There are certainly particular situations where contact with birth family is unsafe for a child, but in most situations I've seen/heard about/been involved with, healthy boundaries can be established and contact can be maintained at some level.

I have experienced adoption from the adoptive family side for over 30 years, and I have experienced much joy in this. In the past year, though, I have begun to experience adoption from the birth family perspective. The joy is much less here, and the conflict much greater. I've known this, theoretically, but lately I experienced it more personally. Two sets of our daughter's siblings, one on her birth mom's side and one on her birth dad's side, have entered the foster care system in the past year. In one case, we requested to have the children placed here with their sister and were denied; the children were placed in a non-family foster home. In the other case, a nearby family member took the children into their home.

In both of these cases, the system gave the birth parents a case plan and asked them to comply with certain expectations. In one case, the court has already found that the birth parents did not comply with the case plan and the parental rights were terminated. In the other case, the birth parents still have a certain amount of time to show significant compliance or the parental rights will be terminated.

From the perspective of the birth family, this time... We have watched as beloved siblings were taken away from known loved-ones and given to strangers. We have nervously asked if we could possibly maintain a relationship with our daughter's siblings/our grandchildren, aware that the adoptive family had the power to completely sever that relationship. We have anxiously awaited a court's determination of who these much-loved children would call family. We have visited our daughter's siblings in a new home, where they call a different woman "mother" and have tried to explain to our 10-year-old why they couldn't live with their previous mother, whom she loves. We have watched as our daughter processed the possibility that her siblings' names would change and how confusing that is for her.

And in the midst of all this, we were asked to take in our foster boys. To love them with the uncertainty of how long they will stay. To support their parents in their journey to reunite with their children. For our daughter to adjust to having siblings in the house, knowing that she will grieve their leaving, when that day comes.

Through all of this, I have come to believe deeply that children belong to themselves. When we act like only a portion of their story (that we like or that we are a part of) matters, we rob them of part of themselves. As either party in an adoption, we need to treasure the whole child, all of their story, even the parts that do not include us.

The joy of becoming a parent through adoption is accompanied by the grief of losing a child for the birth family, of losing a family for the child. Even in open adoption, that loss is genuine. Surely we want the child to share the joy, but it's also essential for the adoptive family to validate the loss for the birth family and for the child him/herself.

As we Christians move toward foster care and adoption as a way to care for "the least of these," (Matthew 25:40), we must be deliberate in our acceptance of the child's whole story. We must include as many of the players in our children's previous lives as is safe. We must not act like these children belong to us. They are God's, and He has orchestrated each day of their lives, including those days which do not include us. Their birth story is just as much theirs as their adoption story is.