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.