Work Life Balance as a Foster Parent

It’s 5:30 AM as I’m writing this. People keep asking me how I find the time to blog when I am a foster parent and work, and it is a tricky tricky thing just to foster parent and work full time at the same time, let alone blogging. 

For 15 years I worked at an excellent law firm in downtown Syracuse. I was an environmental attorney, which means I dealt with cleanups of contaminated sites, compliance with environmental regulations, litigation related to those things, renewable energy projects, etc. I did some zoning work as well. It was sophisticated work, and I had brilliant and accomplished colleagues who do incredibly good legal work in a wide variety of fields. 

For the first 10 years, I went back-and-forth between loving and hating my job. Everyone who works knows that personalities can be the biggest challenges in a work environment, and my law firm was no exception. The work was good, but the politics and personalities sometimes really got to me. That said, I didn’t know what else to do, or how I could possibly transition to any other career, so I stayed. I worked my way up to being a Partner at the firm. 

And then I became a foster parent. 

And from the first day of foster parenting to my last day at the firm, I felt like I was being pulled in two very different directions. My heart went one way, my work the other.

Foster parenting is a hard gig. It is incredibly emotionally taxing, and there is a lot that has to be done during the work day. Caseworkers have to do home visits, and while a few have been willing to come at the crack of dawn so we could get to work on time, most needed to come to the house during the workday, meaning at least one of us had to come home to be there for the visit. Kids have doctor appointments, and our kids have a lot of doctor appointments. Kids have behavioral issues, and sometimes need to be picked up from daycare in the middle of the day because they’ve been suspended or expelled, as happened to us with Brother. 

The list of reasons we needed to leave work in the middle of a work day is pretty endless.

I have a friend who is a single foster parent and works full-time as a teacher. I don’t know how the hell she does it. With two of us alternating taking time off from work, we still had issues. At one time Seth had a boss who reamed him and threatened to fire him when he needed to leave work in the middle of the day to pick up Mouse from daycare and take her to the emergency room. I mean, really. That could happen to any parent not just a foster parent, but the man had the audacity to tell Seth that “she isn’t even your kid.” 

I kid you not. 

My firm was gracious about it to the last. Their approach was that, so long as I got the work done, I could come and go as I needed. Trouble is, I started not getting the work done. Law firms have billable hour requirements, and I wasn’t meeting mine. I had colleagues who manage to go home and put their kids to bed and go back to doing work on the laptop, but that’s a skill I have never mastered. Once we wrangle children into bed, I turn into an exhausted soggy mess and need to crawl into bed myself. So I wasn’t putting in enough hours during the day, and I wasn’t making up the hours in the evening. 

Still, my firm remained gracious about it. I kept my job. But I got a lot of reminders about how I wasn’t pulling my weight, and the guilt about it started to eat me alive.

So I went down to part time. I resigned the Partnership I had worked so hard for, and took a position Of Counsel to my firm so I could work only 25ish hours a week. But by then it was too late. I was so exhausted from the push and pull of work and kids, and so sick of the work that didn’t make my heart happy, that it wasn’t enough to keep me at the firm. 

One of the many reasons I would have to leave work to deal with foster parenting issues was court. Everything related to foster care is overseen by the Family Court system in New York State, and there are regular court dates that foster parents are invited to attend. Seth and I have always attended every court date we were able to go to, because we want to know what’s going on with families of our kids, and sometimes we have valuable input into the level of care a sick child will need – which parents have to be able to provide – before the child can go home. Every child in foster care is assigned an attorney to represent his or her interests. These attorneys are called Attorneys for the Child, or AFCs. 

We have had some colossally shitty AFCs representing our kids. We have also had three incredibly good AFCs representing our kids. 

One of those good ones became my mentor when I decided one day that I, too, wanted to become an AFC and represent kids in neglect and abuse cases and in custody disputes. 

Once I decided that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I did. I am incredibly proud to say I am now an Attorney for the Child, and I have a part time caseload of kids who are the subject of neglect or custody proceedings. I used my newly freed time as a part timer at my firm to shadow other AFCs to fulfill my requirements for becoming one myself.

I can never repay the debt I owe that amazing attorney who became my mentor. She let me shadow her, introduced me to judges and other attorneys, sent me sample forms for various documents, and generally showed me the ropes. She’s still mentoring me, and God bless her, she picks up the phone when I call with the most inane questions because it’s all so new to me.

I work mornings from my home, and the occasional afternoon. I’m able to be home in the afternoon for all of Tiny’s service providers, and she’s just in daycare in the mornings. 

I like working part time though I do hope my case load eventually increases so I can be full time. I do better when I’m working a lot because parenting is not something I’m cut out to do full time. My brain gets soooo bored with just being a mom. (I try to say that without mommy guilt but it’s hard!) I think full time AFC work will happen for me over time because one of the rural counties I work in has a pressing need for AFCs. 

And so help me, I LOVE the work. I love the kids. I love the judges in that rural county. It’s all coming together in amazing ways and I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be.