We get that question allllll the time about our foster kids and my answer is always “I don’t know.”
Do we want to adopt? Yes, we’d love to adopt a child or two. But that may never happen and I have to find a way to make peace with that.
One of the hardest things to adjust to in being a foster parent is not knowing a damn thing about the future. I don’t count on what’s going to happen next week. The reason for that is that things can turn on a dime, and all everyone’s expectations can go right out the window.
And it can go either direction. Or back again.
Our first brush with this happened with Gronckle, our third kid. We were told from the outset by folks at the agency and by Gronckle’s former foster parents that it was expected that Gronckle’s placement would end in adoption. Gronckle‘s mom was very very young and was not doing any of the things she needed to do to get him back. Dad was in prison for the long haul. And no other family members had turned up on the radar as being a resource for Gronckle to go to. It stayed that way for months, with the court using the words “concurrent planning” in regard to Gronckle, which means that the agency’s priority plan, which is always “return to parent,” wasn’t working very well and the agency was working on an alternative plan at the same time, which was adoption by Seth and me.
We were idiots and got our hopes up. We told people we hoped to adopt Gronckle.
And then one day in court a new relative was mentioned – a paternal grandmother – and within a few short weeks the grandmother had been assessed by the caseworker and passed the background check and Gronckle went to go live with her. It happened so fast our heads spun. And our hearts were wrecked.
Now, I still have some doubts about whether this was the right choice for Gronckle. On the whole we are majorly pro-family but there were some… circumstances. And we have no contact with the family so have no idea how things are going.
Then there was Mouse. She was our next kiddo, and from the start it seemed to us that there was no question that she would go back home. We weren’t even sure whether she should have been removed in the first place because her parents seemed remarkably competent. And then mom and dad missed a court date, and some allegations were made about some activities they had potentially been involved in, and in one court appearance we were suddenly back to talking about concurrent planning again. We were asked whether we would adopt her. This time, thankfully, we kept our heads screwed on and didn’t get too excited about the prospect because we had seen what could happen with Gronckle. It’s a good thing we didn’t get too excited about it because she did indeed go home, and to pretty good circumstances too I think. I ran into Mouse‘s mom a few weeks ago, and while she sadly didn’t have Mouse with her, we did have a little chat and it seems like everything is going really well. Mouse is thriving.
At one point during Tiny’s stay with us, the agency planned to move her to a different foster home. That is a whole long story that I can’t get into, but we almost lost her then. And now, questions have come up again about whether her mom can do what she needs to do to get Tiny back. I don’t know the answer. And I’m really really torn about whether Tiny should go home or stay with us. Neither option is ideal.
I won’t ever let myself believe that adoption is going to happen unless I am actually signing adoption papers in a court room, because things can turn on a dime at any time. And I mean any time. Even after a child has been surrendered by parents or their parental rights have been terminated sometimes the adoption doesn’t go through, and not because of a choice the adoptive parents make about it either. It’s just such a complicated system with so many moving pieces and so many competing interests that it’s hard to count on anything.
When we took our initial foster parenting classes, we took them with a group of people that we largely stayed in contact with afterward. None of the ones we stayed in contact with are still fostering. Several couples adopted the first two children who came to them. (A couple of others quit because the foster care system is so broken and it really got to them.)
Am I jealous of those couples who got to adopt the first few kids who came to them? I have to admit that I am. But I’m also torn because I know that adoption is by definition traumatic for kids. They lose their whole first family and wind up so very often missing them their whole lives. That’s not some thing I want to wish for for any child. But it does happen. And I’m a little sad that, if it’s going to happen for a certain percentage of kids, that we haven’t happen to have any of those kids when it did happen. But, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are if we had adopted a kid already, and I like where we are and love taking care of Tiny.
Who knows what the future holds. We have Kiddo in our lives for the long term, which is something for sure. We are blessed and lucky that we get to watch at least one kid grow up. And we genuinely love fostering and being able to send kids back home to families that have healed during their time apart.
But for people who want to straight up adopt and don’t have the heart for fostering, foster care is not the best way to go about growing a family. There are too many moving parts, too many lives and personalities and situations involved. It’s a hard way to go.
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