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Every one of us has had a moment of “I wish people really
understood.” Maybe it’s about the demands of a job or how much “free time” we
actually have. Maybe it’s the stress of raising a child with a disability or
the struggles that accompany a physical limitation of some sort. I’ve had many
of these moments in my life, and with time I have learned that people can’t
understand the specifics of my situation unless I tell them. This time last
year I was pretty ignorant about foster care. We were in the early stages of
licensing but there was so much that we didn’t know. We attended the classes
but there has been a whole lot of learn-as-you-go for us. Over the past year I
have had the opportunity to connect with a lot of other foster parents and many
of those conversations have made me realize that, while each of our situations
is unique, we share a common voice of what we wish other people knew. The list
is certainly not exhaustive and doesn’t apply to every family, but for Foster
Care Awareness Month, I wanted to share some collective thoughts that foster
parents have.
1.These kids are not “lucky” to have us
This is a comment that is well-meaning, I know, and is
intended to be a compliment to the foster family. Every foster parent I’ve
talked to has heard it, but do you want to know how it makes us feel?
It makes us cringe.
Foster kids do not feel lucky. They do not feel excited to
be taken from their family, or in some cases, the people who have felt like
family for a certain amount of time. They do not feel blessed to be in a room
with a nice big bed where they sleep alone in a brand new place. They are not
happy to be under new rules that are different than what they are used to. It
is not a fun thing to go to a new school and be the new kid. They are not “lucky”
to have no stability.
They ARE NOT LUCKY to be separated from their family, no
matter how tragic their family situation is. They don’t always know or understand
the bad decisions that have been made. Many times they don’t even know that
what their parents are doing is “bad” because it’s all they’ve ever known. It
doesn’t matter how fun or nice our family appears to outsiders, it is not fun or nice to be
uprooted from your sense of belonging and placed with someone else. In the
words of the great Morticia Adams, “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for
the spider is chaos for the fly.”
They are scared. They feel unheard. They feel like they don’t
belong. They feel small.
They might be safe, fed, and well-cared for now, but our
normal is their chaos. That is not lucky.
2.We are not superheroes
We are as “amazing” as they are “lucky.” I’ve said it
before, but foster care has been described as a least bad situation for a
child. Being willing to provide a least bad situation does not make us super
wonderful amazing people! I had a conversation with a lady a few months ago and
she was sharing how she felt so uncomfortable when people would say that and it
almost made her feel like she needed to confess about all of the times she yelled
at her foster kids.
Do you ever lose your cool with your kids? Do they ever get
on your nerves? Do you ever send a text to your spouse that says “Your child is
making me crazy today!” (ß
No? That’s just me?) Do you ever feel like you need a break from the whining?
Do you ever go a little bit loco over the shoes not being in the basket where
they belong?
Guess what? Foster parents do the same thing. They aren’t
better, less patient, or more godly than you are. They are normal people,
trying to parent with grace for their children and grace for themselves. And
they mess it up just like you do. They aren’t superheroes. They are just providing
temporary shade for a child who really needs it.
The praise often makes us uncomfortable. I haven’t talked
with a single foster parent who enjoys the feeling of being praised. Fostering
is hard and it’s a sacrifice for sure but it doesn’t feel right or fair for the
focus and praise to be on a misunderstood “goodness” about us. These kids have
tragic backgrounds and we are just trying to help. What they are enduring is
significantly harder than what we are enduring.
Pastor David Platt says, “We care for orphans not because we
are rescuers, but because we are the rescued.” That is our heart behind being
foster parents. Jesus has done a tremendous thing for us. He is the superhero.
3.There is
a whole lot that you don’t know
As a foster parent, we are privy to all of the information
that DSS knows about the child. We know why they were taken, what the plan is,
if there are siblings involved, known behavior or medical issues with the
child, how long they have been in foster care, etc. And almost all of that
information is stuff that we can’t share with you. We also know how the child
acts at home, at school, around other children, around other adults, when he or
she is scared, when he or she is angry, and whether or not we are concerned with
any of the behaviors taking place in those situations. What you see of the
child while we are all out and about is just a teeny tiny little snapshot of
reality.
This has been one of my greatest struggles personally. I
could not possibly count how many times we have been asked if we would try to
adopt our foster kids, or even worse been told “I hope that you will get to adopt
[him] or [her]” or “you should keep her!” I have had conversations with four
different moms who feel the same struggle when that topic is brought up. For
starters, foster parents have no control – none, zero, zilch – over whether or
not DSS will decide to recommend termination of parental rights, or even if
they do, whether or not a judge would determine that the rights should be
terminated. The number one priority in every single case is family
reunification. They do not move to plan B, C, or D unless reunification is not
a possibility. So hoping for a child to become adoptable is hoping that they
will forever be separated from their biological family. That’s not a good
thing. Sometimes the foster parents do have those desires to be a forever
family for that child but they are really wrestling with the idea of “wanting” that
when they know what it would mean for the child they love. Sometimes that topic
is similar to telling a barren woman that you can’t wait until she has kids one
day. She wants that too, but has no control over that.
Some foster parents have no desire to adopt but just want to be safety and stability in the interim. Not every foster parent has an end goal of adoption. Many of them are rooting for the parents to get their children back. There are many scenarios where the foster
family would never be able to adopt a certain child, for a whole host of
reasons, and more often than not, the people asking the questions would not be
able to know the “why” behind it. Some scenarios include: the birth parents are
working towards a plan to get their children back, the parental rights have
been terminated but there are siblings that need to be adopted together, the
child has needs that won’t be appropriately met within the structure of this
family, or the foster family is not equipped, licensed, or called to be more
than a temporary place for this child.
The adoption question is common and difficult to navigate
through, but this idea of there being things that aren’t known can play out in
many different conversations. For instance, I have been told often, “I’m so glad
she’s with you because she seems so happy.” And it’s not a bad thing that there are
appearances of happy, but you have to understand that foster kids have
experienced significant trauma, and as with any person who is internally (and
maybe externally with the help of therapy) dealing with trauma, things aren’t
always as they seem. There is often a lot more to the story than you know or
see.
There are more things I want to share with you, so check back later this week for part two of this post.