Do the parents know where we live?

Nope. Definitely not.

Even Kiddo’s mom, who has become a good friend and is welcome at our house literally any time, has only been coming to our house for about a year now. Until then she didn’t know where we lived.

Why? If we want to have good relationships with our kids’ parents, why wouldn’t we invite them over to see our home and gain a sense of security knowing their kids are in a nice place?

Well, safety. Safety of us, safety of our kids. Twice now we have had bio parents make threats against us. One made an indirect threat on FB (the parent was not smart enough to make their page private first), and one made a threat against us in a hallway of a courthouse. Strangers having your kids is an emotionally charged thing and people have been known to fly off the handle about it. Just today in the news there’s a story about an Amber Alert in Rochester because someone broke into a foster home and abducted two children. That’s freaking horrifying, and my worst nightmare.

Additionally, we want our home to be as trauma trigger free as possible for our kids. As much as our kids love their parents, very often their parents are associated with traumatic incidents from their past, even if it’s just the removal from their parents and placement in foster care. Our kids need a safe place to be, and they need to feel a sense of relief when they arrive at our house each day knowing that they don’t have to expect family members to complicate things for them.

It’s one of my pet peeves that many medical facilities will read back my address to me when I check a child in for an appointment. If a bio parent is at the appointment with me, I don’t want my address read back aloud. But it’s happened, and it’s unfortunate. I wish medical facilities had training to be more discreet when kids are in foster care.

Once kids have gone home we use our discretion to determine when the time might be right, if ever, for a parent to come over. So far it’s only happened with Kiddo’s mom. Tiny’s family might become another exception. They’re lovely people.

I know other foster families who have had different philosophies about it. One of my friends had two different families knowing where she lived, and she would invite them for things like birthday parties for the kids. It never became an issue and worked well for her. But I’m a bit of a nervous Nellie I guess, and news like today’s heartbreaking article about the abducted children doesn’t help me feel less anxious about the idea of parents knowing where we live. I’ll continue to keep it secret from bio families as much as possible.