Everyone who reads this blog should know by now that I love being a foster parent. It’s not just something I do. It’s who I am.
We didn’t become foster parents until I was almost 40. Do I regret not having become foster parents sooner? Yes, yes I do. I sometimes think about all of the kids we could have known if we had started sooner. I wish we had.
But then again, the only reason we took Kiddo and Brother as a placement is because we were new and inexperienced and didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into with them. Now, I would meet Brother as he was back then, and know immediately that he was beyond the scope of anything we could handle. And if we hadn’t met Kiddo and taken her as a placement? My heart breaks at the thought. I can’t imagine my life without having her as my “1st born” so to speak. So perhaps things worked out for the best.
I also think I needed a bunch of child free years in order to work through some of my own issues, and get my career going, and get some fun out of the way first. So probably it all worked out right.
The problem with not having started as a foster parent until almost 40 is that I’m getting older with each successive year (damnit, I haven’t figured out how to stop that yet!) and at some point we will be too old to keep up with toddlers. We are a foster to adopt home, which means that if a child who lives with us becomes freed for adoption we would most likely adopt them. I don’t want to be 80 at my child’s high school graduation. So there’s a limit as to how long will be able to do this. Kids need parents long after they turn 18 and I need to be around for any kids we might happen to adopt.
The teen we have been meeting with who may potentially live here is legally freed for adoption, but at 16 it would be entirely up to her whether she wants to be adopted or not. That’s the way it should be. Adoption should never be forced on a teen who doesn’t want it. After all, she had a first family and may just want to stop there. I’m curious how things will play out. We don’t even know if she will decide to live here yet, and if she does, whether she would ever want to be adopted. Even if she doesn’t want to be, we are happy to be her “forever family” so that she always has a place to go and people to support her.
So how much longer will we be foster parents? Seth is thinking about going into pediatric ICU as a nurse, or else labor and delivery. If he chooses PICU, it’s going to be incredibly emotionally taxing work and he is going to lose kids he grows close to. We both worry about whether he will burn out and be unable to keep loving and losing kids as a foster parent. I worry so much about that happening because I need to be a foster parent. I am absolutely not ready to be done with fostering yet. How long that will be the case for me I don’t know. I just know that right now being a foster parent is who I am and I’m not ready to quit.
sprinklesonachaoscupcake.com 