Donald and I get asked a lot why we chose to build our family through foster care and to be honest I cringe each time I give our answer. Why? Because it isn't a glamorous reason but it is a real honest answer. We wanted to be parents again, and now that we are 10 years into being a completed family I think that is the absolute best reason, and here is why.
Parenting children that know significant loss, abuse, neglect and often times special needs because of these situations are different than children that are born "happy and healthy". They know that those that should love them the most can also hurt you the most. They know that parents can choose to walk out and not look back. They have known severe need of the most basic human necessities. They come to us broken, hurting, needing. This often times in my opinion and in my experience is overlooked completely or is discounted. If we do not understand what it means to truly parent these blessings we can inflict more pain, damage and harm on them.
We need to accept them into our homes as equals in our family. They are not enemies or encroachers and if you view them as such you just might not be ready to parent these wonderfully strong children. They deserve to be accepted into your family 100% at the start. We did this as parents to a 10yr old girl and 6 yr old boy and it has benefited our family in ways we could never have dreamed of at the time. Donald and I knew no other way to parent, we just knew to love... Our older children were selfless, they accepted each placement as their brother or sister from day one whether it was a short or long term placement. They never resented the extra time or love that their new siblings required because they knew that we were willing to invest in ALL of our children the same way. We never allowed them to escape when things got tough.We talked about it, we sought counseling at times and we worked through it. Why? Because we wanted to cultivate 100% commitment in all of our family members, we were and still are in this together. In my opinion one of the biggest things to damage adoptive families is an "us" versus "them" mentality. If you give into this you will never have the family unity you so desire. It can be tempting to ask grandma to get your existing children so they can have a break from your new children but in my opinion this reinforces the thought that the new children are the enemy to the family's happiness, especially in the early days or before adoption.
Parenting is hard at best. When you factor in abuse, neglect and loss and the damage it can cause it can some times seem downright impossible. Out of our 5 blessings 4 are considered special needs. We are faced with autism, ODD, Severe Anxiety (separation, learning and social), dyslexia, dysgraphia, emotional disabilities and a brain injury, food intolerances, food allergies and chronic gastrointestinal issues...on a daily basis. If we didn't have an ALL IN mentality we would have failed long ago. We have spent and probably will spend countless hours researching the effects of abuse, best educational approaches and diets for our children. A lot of what they have been diagnosed with was brought to the attention of their medical teams because Donald and I followed our gut and wouldn't let things go until we knew our children were being advocated for properly. And I don't say this to toot my own horn. This is all God, He meets us in these needs and provides just what we need when we feel weak, inadequate and just plain tired.
Our children need extreme nurturing and compassion. Now that doesn't mean they get a free pass to be rude, mean or do physical harm to others. However it does mean that if these situations arise we calmly work through it in a loving but firm manner. We are careful not to tear down what we are working so diligently to build, remember that our words and actions can hurt or heal, there is always a choice to be made. We don't make our children feel bad about the person they are, but we set the bar higher so they look forward to becoming better versions of themselves because they know we believe in them, love them and that they aren't alone even when they are pushing everyone away. And if this fails to redirect behavior then we remove ourselves from the situation and LOVINGLY discipline our children in private and rejoin the others if we can and if not we politely leave so we can give our child time to regroup. If we have to leave we reassure our child that they will do better next time and that they are learning and when we learn, mistakes are made. We as parents should be their safe place, their soft place to land when the demons of the past catch up with them.
When we started our foster/adopt journey it wasn't the thing to do. Many of our friends and family thought we were crazy to be starting over just as our youngest was starting school. We had almost no outside support so we had to learn to draw what we needed from each other and in doing this it became enough to just want to keep everyone together and happy. If we had done this because of popularity trends or to get attention or even for the "money" we would have given up long before our family was completed. We wanted these beautiful children, we wanted to be mom and dad to them. To advocate for them and their best interest and for them to know no matter what we were in their corner helping to make their lives everything they deserved for it to be. We have had a situation where we couldn't be forever parents to one of our foster children and it hurt us immensely to have to say we couldn't adopt after spending 4 1/2 months bonding and hoping for the best but saying no was in his best interest and God honored that and he was placed with a family that could give him everything he needed. We were a part of his story and hopefully a happy part of his past.
I say all of this to let you know that ALL children deserve to be loved, protected, advocated for by parents that have counted the cost (monetarily, emotionally, physically, socially) before they commit to a lifetime. If we cannot give our ALL then we should leave it to someone who can. When we are handed our new child all we know is that they are ours just like the parents that are handed a newborn. There is a world of exploration that needs to be done to get to know this new little person. Throw out all of your stereotypes, ideals and expectations and just get to know this little person God has blessed you with, whether it is forever or for a time. Enjoy the journey no matter where it takes you!
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