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.