The phone just rang, your social worker was on the line and told you that you have been “matched”. They want to place a kid with you. What now? When you meet, what do you say to the kid? What should you do, or not do? Will the kid like me? Hug me? Be scared of me? A hundred questions just for the first meeting. And as the relationship between you and the kid develops, there will be thousands more.

First, don’t panic. It will be fine. Carry a smile, but always be yourself.

It has been helpful to me to think of the relationship between the kid and me as going through a few distinct phases over time. What the right thing to do or not to do is, depends on which phase you are in.

In that first meeting, it starts with:
Phase 1: Getting to know each other (separate post).

Once your kid is placed with you, you get to:
Phase 2: The best-behaved kid you can imagine.

In Phase 3: Testing, things go from very bad to much worse. Sorry.

And once you made it through, you finally get to
Phase 4: Learning to live together, warts and all. This is where normalcy begins to happen, and where you probably wanted to be in the first place.

I add links to longer posts for each phase once I have them. Stay tuned.

There are many sorts of foster parents. (I will call them “foster parents” on this blog, and not “foster/adoptive” or “adoptive” parents. While the legal situation may be different, the parenting challenges are largely the same. So let’s stick with a simple term.)

Many foster parents are genuinely warm, enthusiastic, capable people who do incredible things for kids who really need it: in other words, the ideal foster parents. If you are one of them, this site is for you.

Well, actually, if you are already one of them, you already know most of what I’m writing here, so it’s not really for you. But if you are only starting out as a foster parent and want to do a good job at it, this site is for you. As they say “experience is cheapest second-hand”. So I’d like to share what I know, or what I think I know. Your mileage may vary, but I figure it’s better to have it written down for others to read, than not to! Feel free to talk back in the comments.

Unfortunately, there are also many other kinds of foster parents.

Some are just in it for the money. It’s hard to believe, because the government does not exactly pay a lot to make you put up with a lot, and you need to feed and cloth and entertain etc. your kid from what they give you every month. But there are people in the system as supposed foster parents who fundamentally don’t care about the kids, only that they get paid if they put a bed into the walk-in-closet and call themselves a foster parent.

Others seem to think foster parenting is a simple and legal way to get a cheap personal servant into the house who will do all the chores you don’t want to do. Yes, it happens. My disgust goes to you, free of charge; no, you don’t need to thank me.

There are even those foster parents who by all means should have had their own children put into foster care because they are child abusers themselves. I’m sure you have read newspaper stories. I don’t know whether a religion exists where you go twice as deep into hell if you hurt a child instead of an adult while pretending to do good for the child; if there is, I would consider joining it.

For all of you, I have nothing to say, except: Leave our kids alone. They have enough troubles already, they don’t need to be taken advantage of by yet another “parent”, and I would use bigger quotes if I could find them on the keyboard. This site is most definitely not for you.

Back to more pleasant subjects. You! You aspire to do some great things for some kids to whom few great things have happened (and many awful ones), you are all motivated, slightly nervous, and ready to get going! This site is for you … and in particular for coming back to in those late-evening hours when the kids are finally in bed, and although you are deadly tired, you are too bewildered to go to sleep. (I could have used a better word than “bewildered”, but then you won’t become a foster parent, and I don’t want to discourage you.) Trust me, those times will come. I hope I can put some nuggets of usefulness on this site for you.

They won’t tell you this in parenting classes: There are two kinds of foster/adoptive parenting around: short-term or life-long. What you can reasonably accomplish with your kids, and how you best attempt to do that, depends highly on which of those two you choose. It is a stark choice, and you cannot hedge, it’s one or the other but not both, so this is important.

Here is the way I think about it. It helped me figure out what to do and what not to do, and why; where I could take it easy and where I have to push on regardless of how hard it might be.

Short-term fostering: If you are a short-term foster parent, you tend to take care of a kid for as short as a few days, or as long as a few months. (Sometimes even years, but that isn’t supposed to happen.) This kind of foster parent is needed for the time when the kid needs a place to sleep tonight but nobody is committing to anything long-term. For example, a teenager might have run away from home/another foster home/a group home and refuses to go back for whatever reason. They need to be put somewhere until the situation is sorted out. Or, of course, if police and/or social workers removed kids from their parents that day; putting them in short-term foster care is the next step so they have a place to sleep and eat and live. (They used to put kids into shelters instead of homes, but thankfully that practice is being ended in many places.)

If you are a short-term foster parent, your task basically is to take care of that kid until other plans have been made. Then you say good-bye, and it’s very well possible that you and the kid will never meet again. This is of course a useful thing to do, and if you want to do that, more power to you! If you hear of foster parents who have taken in dozens or hundreds of kids over the years, they have been short-term foster parents. On the downside, you will not be able to establish a meaningful, long-term relationship to the kid; there is not enough time for that and neither you nor the kid will put the kind of energy into the relationship so that it could be meaningful in the long term.

I have very little to say about that, because I have never done that.

Life-long parenting: I have done that! Actually, I am right in the middle of it, perhaps even closer to the beginning than the end, because although even the youngest of my kids is old enough now to turn 18 this year, I will continue to remain a committed life-long parent until the hour I die. That could very well longer than the time I’ve been a parent so far. So “life-long parenting” is a bit of a project :-).

As you can tell, this kind of foster parenting is all about commitment. The commitment that you, the parent, make to the kid, for better or worse, for richer and poorer, and all of that. And without expecting that the kid makes a similar commitment to you.

For me, it’s a little like marriage. Except, of course, that you can get your marriage divorced. Which, in my view, cannot be done with your children (if you indeed are that wonderful person you say you are) because if you did any kind of divorce from your children, you would have hurt them much worse than if you had never committed to them at all. Think it hurts for a kid who grew up in normal circumstances? It hurts much worse for a foster/adoptive kid.

If you decide to want to be a life-long parent to a kid, you are making a commitment that is probably the strongest commitment you make in your entire life. I can’t think of a commitment that could be stronger. It certainly must be stronger than your marriage vows.

Nobody will hold you accountable for your commitment to your kid, because there is no law that says you must (at least after age 18). In fact, some people will look at you extremely strangely if you do. (Think of: “and she is still sticking to him, after all he did!!” Or whatever the genders may be.) So please choose “short-term fostering” unless you absolutely, positively, mean that “until death does us part” you will do whatever is in your power that is good for your kid, regardless what else happens.

So think about this very, very carefully. You cannot change your mind, not tomorrow, not 10 or 20 years from now.

Note I’m not talking about adoption here. If you make that life-long parent commitment, you very likely will want to formally adopt your kid. But there are circumstances where that is not possible or desirable. Unfortunately, money is one of those circumstances, as you would become, for example, legally responsible for large health/counseling bills if your kid needed those in the long term. (If you don’t adopt, the state may pay for them under some circumstances.) There are also the many difficult situations where the kid goes back to birth parents, or runs away from you (I have more to say about that — it’s not what you, or most people, think), or is placed somewhere else by the social workers, and you might not even know anything about them for some time.

But you must keep your commitment to the kid to the best of your ability: it’s not a commitment to social workers, a legal requirement or conditional on successful completion of an adoption. If you are thinking something like “I commit as long as …” you are not ready for life-long parenting. Stick to short-term fostering: it’s useful, it’s worthwhile, and you can do good there. Life-long parenting is a commitment that’s between you and your conscience, that lasts for your entire life, and that cannot be renegotiated regardless what happens.

If you really want to help a kid in need, this commitment is the one thing that makes a much larger difference to their life than anything else. Forget counseling, special education services, fun outings, or a shiny new tricycle or Porsche. Commitment by a parent is it.

There is no third way. It is either short-term or life-long. This is very important. Many foster or would-be adoptive parents get into fostering or an adoption, assuming that they will have a wonderful relationship with a kid, but hedge: if the relationship doesn’t work out, if they change their minds, if the social workers or birth parents or courts aren’t doing what was expected, if they need to move out of state or get divorced or re-married, the kid can go into foster care again or get adopted by someone else, and everything will be fine. No, it will not be fine. It will be hell for the kid. A worse hell than the hell you supposedly got them out of in the first place.

I hope you are not getting into foster parenting and think it is acceptable that perhaps, you might make life worse for your kid. You simply cannot do that.

If you hedge, you are a short-term foster parent only, and don’t pretend that you are anything else. Note, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with being a short-term foster parent. Only that there’s something seriously wrong if you believe you are in for the long term but you are not.

You cannot make your kid believe that you will be there “forever” and you won’t be. If you do, you will hurt your kid just as bad as the original abuse or whatever it was that got them into foster care. Or maybe more.

So: if you are not willing to bet your life (and your marriage — it happens — and your wealth and your health) on this particular kid, be clear to yourself and to your kid that it is a temporary affair only. You still can do wonderful things for the kid.

Of course, as you can tell, this site is about how to survive being a committed, life-long (foster, adoptive, informal, de-facto, run-away-from, returned-to, forgotten-about, hated-the-most-ever, loved-the-most-ever, … you get the picture) parent.

Most of the examples that I am mentioning in this post I have seen first hand (like “failed” adoptions, people changing their minds etc.) so I’m not making this up.

I have been fortunate enough that my kids on my occasions have let me get close to their hearts. I have seen a (probably small) part of the pain caused by those “parents”, and unless you have gone through a similar situation yourself as a kid, you simply cannot imagine the pain that those commitment-what-is-that-I-don’t-remember “parents” have caused.

So: choose wisely.

 

I’ve been a foster and then adoptive parent for over 16 years. Looking back, when my wife and I got licensed, we had not the slightest idea what we were getting ourselves into. Truth be told, if we had known what we know now, we might not have become foster parents. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have the lasting relationships with three remarkable young people who we have chosen to think of as our kids. These relationships are truly important to me, and I would not miss them for the world. Certainly, being foster parents changed us a lot as people, in unexpected ways.

Now that our youngsters are growing up (the youngest is about to graduate from high school), it’s time for me to write down what I learned over the years, in the hope that it is useful for others. I know that what I’m about to write down would have been useful for me back then! In fact, much more useful than what they tell you in the parenting classes that are supposed to make you ready to be a foster parent. (Hint: they don’t. And yes, I will express my opinions on this blog, that’s what you are here for, right?)

Disclaimer: I know nothing about caring for kids below 4-and-a-half. We never took care of any kid younger than that, and I’m certain there are lots of things to know for younger kids that I simply don’t know. On the other hand, we do know the rest of the age range from 4-and-a-half through the teenage years, all the way well into adulthood. And no, parenting changes but does not stop there.

If you feel like it, feel free to leave comments anywhere on the site. I’ll try to respond.

Let’s get started.