Forever Family

Yes.  It’s time.  I haven’t been fully upfront about of foster to adopt experience.

Stephanie at Rocket Scientist had a wonderful, fantastic, awesome post about our current child welfare system.  Go read it …it is a prerequisite to my post today. 

Before I begin, I need to say a couple things.  First of all, I can’t even convey just how much I love my little boy.  Sure, he doesn’t share my genes, but it SOOOOOOOO does not matter.  I would actually challenge I love him more than some bio parents love their own kids.  I would NEVER EVER EVER give him up or change anything.

Second, for all the pitfalls and challenges of foster/adopt, I would absolutely do it again.  In fact, we probably will be doing it sooner rather than later.  I’m not naive enough to expect that the road to parenthood should be trouble free, no matter what route is taken.  I wouldn’t be wasting my time with this blog trying to convince people to consider it, if I didn’t feel very strongly that it is probably one of the most rewarding things you can ever do in your life.

Now, that being said, I’m going to dismantle a few mental blocks I’ve erected, and recall some of the emotions I was experiencing in the early days of our license and placement process.

No doubt if you’ve been following my blog, you’ve picked up on some cues that it was a difficult time.  They place this darling child in your care and ask you to love and care for it as if it was your own, but at the same time expect you to be prepared to give the child up at a moment’s notice.

As you raise that child, the system (being DFACS and the court) is doing everything in their power to reunite that child with its birth family.  They will mandate court ordered therapy, rehab, financial assistance programs, shrinks, docs, social workers, and time frames to try to aid those parents to regain custody and make them “fit.”  When they don’t follow the mandates, the courts will give them another chance.  They are given every opportunity to pull it together.

They will be allowed to have some access to their child, and as the foster parent, it will be your responsibility to produce the child on a schedule that suits THEIR needs.

Imagine you’re fostering this darling child you plan to adopt (if possible), and once a week, you have to take him in for a visitation.  You are willingly delivering that child into the hands of the person that abused or neglected them.  How does it feel to send your child into a room with the person who was hitting them?  How does it feel to watch your child spend time with a person who was too busy getting high to take care of them?

Then after the visit, you have to deal with helping the child understand what is going on.  They are confused…torn…afraid.  Even in an infant, they are aware enough to know something is horribly wrong.  They are conflicted with love for their bio parents, but also love for their foster parents that are providing them with a safe and caring home.

As a foster parent, I felt an immense amount of guilt and pain during these visits.  My son was extremely distressed afterward for the rest of the day, and sometimes even into the next.  He TRUSTED me.  He was BONDED with me.  His time with his bio parents was awkward at best.  They DID NOT KNOW how to care for him.  They DID NOT KNOW that this cry meant he was hungry, or this cry meant he was wet, or that this cry just meant he wanted to snuggle.  They brought in formula that made him sick and they stunk of cigarettes.  Sometimes they just wouldn’t show up at all.

For all of his trust in me, every week like clockwork we would pull up to that building and prepare for another visit.  In his tiny little eyes, I could see the confusion as he was taken from me by a strange social worker and whisked away.  I could not help but feel like I was betraying that trust and that bond, but what choice did I have?  Playing by the rules was the only way to get the outcome I wanted, but how do you make a child understand that???  

Think of taking your child to the doctor and it’s time for shots.  You act happy and try to distract the child from what’s coming.  You bring some toys, or maybe even promise a treat afterward for being such a good boy.  Then comes the needle, followed by an unearthly howl, tears, and a look of accusation.  That look only says “how could you do this to me?”  Ok…now take that feeling of guilt and look of accusation and multiply it times a hundred.  Now do it once a week (or more).  That’s kinda what it feels like to be a foster parent doing visitations with your child.

When the visits were finally over (those were the LONGEST hours of my life), the social worker would bring my kiddo back out and report how it went.  She would say things like “they changed his diaper,” or “they held him today,” and she would report these things like they were A BIG DEAL.  These were parenting milestones for them!!!!!!!  Yet, I’m supposed to be ok with the fact that DFACS is working to reunite them together…even though holding him was the most that could be hoped for in a 1 hour visit.  

I had a very awkward relationship with these social workers.  I LONGED to speak my mind and say what I was thinking, but absolutely under no circumstances wanted to jeopardize my position.  What could I do?  What could I say?  

They held him today.  Just smile and nod…and get the hell out of there and back home so I can check him over for lice.

And no…I’m not being sarcastic or even judgmental.  Lice was a problem.

Wow…I’m emotionally taxed.  My next post (can’t promise it will be tomorrow, but in the next 2 days at minimum), I’ll write about our fight to get Kiddo out of temp care and into our home.  That was really ugly.

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