Foster Family is Still Family

I was recently writing about gratitude and mentioned how grateful I was for my family. For my 13 year old daughter, my 9 year old son and my amazing husband. I did not mention how grateful I was for our experience at being a foster family for the last year and a half. It isn’t really something I talk about a lot. Partially because Child Protective Services has a lot of restrictions on what we are allowed to share or post. This of course is for protection of the children in the system. However, I feel like I need to share a little bit more about our experience.

Since I mentioned in my last story that I am grateful for everything I already have, you might ask why I would become a foster parent. I am grateful for having my two amazing children, but I had always hoped for 3–4 kids. Pregnancy and I didn't get along well. Labor and delivery was the easy part, but 9 months of pregnancy was not compatible with my body so we stopped at 2. They are my everything! They are true gifts from God!! And yet, we still knew we had big enough hearts to love more and we felt called to step up.

So the truth of the story is that we were sitting in church one day and talking about these 3 little kids sitting by themselves and how we wished we could give them a better life. One of the children was coming to church with quite a few bruises that he claimed he was getting from an older cousin. Almost 5 days later we hear that the 3 kids were put into foster care. Their dad was abusing their mom and so the mom was abusing the dad’s son. Awful, awful situation that my mind never wants to think about.

We had heard that the grandparents of the girls was going to take them in, but since the boy wasn’t a blood relative we weren’t sure if they would take him. Long story short, my husband made a comment about how someone should step up…..he went on to say that he felt the week before wasn’t a coincidence and that we should in fact be the ones who stepped up. So we did! Now this is where the story shifts. The grandparents did take all 3 kids and we are happy to report that their adoption was finalized recently (over 2 years later).

When we found out that the grandparents were interested and happy to keep all three kids, we decided to keep going since we had already started the process to become foster parents. We stuck with it to see where God would take us. Since the kids we started the process hoping to take in were now in a safe space, we thought that God was leading us towards fostering to adopt (FAD) and growing our family that way. IT TOOK OVER A YEAR FOR US TO BE APPROVED TO FOSTER!! So we make it through all the hoops the government puts up right as the world entered into COVID (that means you can’t blame covid for the process taking so long only the awful system can be blamed….not even the employees, just the system)! The day we received our approval and certification by FAD, we also received a call about two brothers who need a temporary place to stay while a friend of the family finishes their home study. The boys were living in a shelter over 5 hours from home. CPS claimed that since it was a kinship home study it would only take 3–4 weeks tops.

I will be 100% honest with you, if I would have known from the beginning that it would have been a long term placement and not a temporary placement, I would never had said yes. That sounds hard, but my daughter was 11 almost 12 at the time and bringing in a 9 and 10 year old boy that we had no information about would have been out of my comfort zone. But God knew that they were the boys for us…..so we went in thinking it was temporary.

These boys were (and still are) amazing. When they moved in our son was 8. So we ended up with 8, 9, 10, and 11 year olds. We had the perfect bookends for them to transition seemlessly. We had the best honeymoon experience. From May of 2020 until Christmas 2020 we never had a real outburst or problem. There were at times a little bullying or jealousy had between the 4 kids, but never a real issue. At Christmas we had a few panic attacks with the younger boy. This started when their dad showed up to some of their moms visits and threatened to take them back (he never did any of his services for CPS so that wasn’t a reality and technically he was not allowed to even be at the visits). Once we talked it through with the younger one, we went back to our big happy family. CPS started talking to us about the idea of adopting the boys if mom lost her rights in early spring. This wasn’t something we had thought would be an option. Mom was present at every visit or sporting event we invited her to (when she wasn’t in jail).

The real issues started a few months later when their mom had a baby boy. Their little brother and mom tested clean at the hospital so he was allowed to stay with his mom. We were happy mom was staying clean and happy the baby was able to stay with her. Her and the baby checked into rehab about a week before she was going to loose her rights to the older boys. At this point, her case was extended 6 more months and we also learned that the boys had an uncle that wanted to take them in. The judge didn’t let them move to their uncles house because he lived several states away and that wouldn’t be an option until mom’s rights were completely revoked. The judge did approve the boys going to stay with their uncle for two weeks during the summer as a trial period for future placement.

So what were the real issues? Mom unknowingly kept talking about how the baby kept her clean and how the baby kept her sanity while she was working to get the boys back. Younger brother automatically felt replaced by the baby, jealous that the baby didn’t get taken and unworthy of mom working to get them back if it wasn’t for the baby. The issues weren’t little brother’s fault and older brother wasn’t a perfect angel the entire time, he had had a few anxiety issues when he first moved in and a few motivational issues when school started. But I am not exaggerating when I tell you these boys were amazing and how lucky we were to have them live with us and become part of our family!

Even these issues weren’t outright impossible to put up with, they just were little things that kept getting bigger. Failure to do chores, talking back under his breath, bullying our youngest son when nobody was looking, refusing to get up on time and refusing to go to bed on time, refusing to brush his teeth and wear his glasses…..overall tiny little things. The biggest problem was when he tried to push his limits by punching the autistic boy across the street in the face. The boy was physically older and stronger, but mentally younger and gentle as they come. The story goes that little brother (unprovoked) ran across the street, hit the kid, laughed and ran home.

The bigger issue came around the time CPS started saying that they weren’t going to allow the boys their summer visit with their uncle. Adding that on top of the jealousy of the new baby brother and anyone could understand why the boys felt so lost or stuck in limbo. They also felt like we were keeping them from going home. We always called them our boys and the kids always called them their brothers. We wanted them to know they were loved and would forever be a part of our family, but we could never give them anything solid because we never wanted to make promises we couldn’t keep.

We fought with CPS and worked with the boys amazing court appointed lawyer (she is a saint and has a heart of gold) and finally were able to get the trip with their uncle approved…..3 days before they were supposed to leave. Their amazing uncle (with no real notice or knowledge that he would get to have the boys) bought bunk beds so they would feel at home and know that they had a place with him. He drove 9hrs to get the boys because they were afraid to fly and then took them on some really awesome adventures for two full weeks. The boys returned home refreshed and ready to start the transition home with their mom.

The boys were able to go to church camp for the second summer in a row, we were able to get them the counselor they wanted and again they came home refreshed and happy. The transition period was not so great. They had a full day with mom, week with us, weekend with mom and then week with us. This was supposed to go on for a few weeks. It was torture for all of us! They were torn with emotions and hated going back and forth. All they wanted was stability and to be home. It was heart breaking!! Heart breaking and bittersweet. It was great that they wanted to go home, but it killed me that they wanted to go home. I knew that it was the best for everyone. The last few months of little issues had started to fester and it was a relief for us to feel stability in our family as well. The hardest things were seeing an opportunity for young boys to have a steady father figure in their life. Then to see mom take them back to the same friends and family she lived with when her addictions were at their worst. On top of all that to see their uncle (and us) helpless to protect them or to even know if we would ever get to see them or talk to them again once they went home.

So that is where we are still at today. It has been just under two weeks since they left us and we know nothing. We can only hope for the best and pray God made enough shifts in their lives during our short time together. We hope that the time with us showed them they have other options and life choices they can pursue. That family trees can be changed and that family isn’t just the people that have the same blood line as you.

For now, we aren’t going to look into fostering or fostering to adopt again. I say for now because I think the future might have more opportunities for us to help, but for now we need to focus on our family and our healing from the process. We gained a lot from this experience, but we also saw the pressure and drain that it put on our kids. Maybe when our youngest is in high school we can look at helping older kids…..we will have to wait and see what God has in store for us. Have faith in what will be has been a motto of mine for years! It still rings true, but now I know that as long as I trust in myself and God it will all come at the right time and with grace and ease! If you have any questions about fostering or about the process of becoming foster parents, please feel free to ask anything!