Our experience with kids’ desires about their futures are pretty varied.
We started our foster care journey with Kiddo. She had just turned 4 when she came to us. Initially her parents were not doing what they needed to to get her back, and Kiddo was seething with fury at her Mom for telling CPS they could take her and her brother. But even so, there was never, not for a single second, any question that Kiddo wanted and needed to go home to her parents. She was bonded and attached to them and she resented us for a good long time. Even once she bonded with us, her Mommy was her Mommy and that’s who she wanted attention from, and who she wanted to live with. Period.
Thank all things in heaven her Mommy more than got it together and got her kids back. She’s now a friend of ours, and we “co-parent” Kiddo with her gracefully and joyfully, never losing sight of the fact that she’s the Mom and we’re the extra grownups in Kiddo’s life. It worked out as it should have.
After Kiddo, we had a long series of toddlers who couldn’t verbally express their wishes about where they wanted to live. Regardless of verbal skill limitations, I would like to stress that every single child we’ve had has loved his/her parents and shown incredible joy when being held and soothed by his/her parents. Two year old twins with some global delays knew their Mom and Dad were their Mom and Dad and were overjoyed to see them at visits. A 6 month old with medical issues from here to kingdom come knew her mom and snuggled into her when she saw her in ways she never did with us.
In our experience, kids know and love their parents no matter what they’ve been through with them.
With Miss Kicks, our then-16-year-old foster daughter, her Mom was no longer alive, so going home to her wasn’t an option. Nor was going home to her Dad for various reasons. But she longed to belong, longed for time with family members, and did not want to be with us. We were so different, and so strict compared with what she wanted to be out doing. She hadn’t had time to form a bond with us and frankly, she’d been so hurt by people in life that I don’t think she was capable of letting anyone in. She fled when adoption came up. Living on the streets by herself made her feel less emotionally vulnerable, so that’s the life she chose. What a hard road to pick, but I do understand why a foster teen might choose it.
Right now we’ve got two girls who are in very different places emotionally.
Sprout has finally reached an age and understanding where she can express her desire to remain where she is forever. Just this morning, she tearfully exclaimed “I don’t want to go to another house.” I replied that we weren’t moving any time soon, and she responded, “No, I don’t want a different Mommy and Daddy!” The poor kid is hearing about adoption and foster care, and she knows her sister’s position is different from hers, and she’s been worrying she’d have to move. I reassured her as best I could that we want to be her forever family and are trying with all our might to make that happen. She got a “sandwich hug” between me and Seth and calmed down and shifted her attention to the next most pressing question in her four-year-old mind: “Mommy, do you like swords?” (I said yes, and played her the sword fight scene at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity from the Princess Bride. She went to school cheerfully yelling “en garde!”)
Sunny is the exact opposite. Both girls love their mother tremendously, and miss her a great deal. But Sprout has been with us since she was less than 2, and barely remembers life before us. She’s been seeing the conditions of her Mom’s living situation on visits and it’s very different and unfamiliar to her, and she knows she wants to stay where she is. But Sunny wants to go home. Home is where her Mama and siblings are. Period. She’s content with us in some ways. If she HAS to be somewhere other than with her other family members she’d probably opt to stay with us, but her heart is elsewhere. She often says she wants to go home and doesn’t want to have to get adopted. It’s heartbreaking. All we can do for her is pray and help her mother in any ways we can so maybe Sunny and her siblings can go home. I don’t know if it will happen. It’s way too early in the case to tell. But it’ll be hard for Mama to do all she needs to, that much is clear.
I know keeping a connection with Sprout’s Mama is going to be critical to Sprout’s mental health. I want her to know and love her real Mama. I don’t want her to have to fantasize an idealized Mama. I want her to know her culture and her religion in real time. I know it’s going to be essential to make visits with Mama keep happening no matter what. And right now, it looks like we are in good shape to make that happen. I hope like heck it continues to be this amiable and do-able.
I also pray that Sprout’s wish to stay with us forever comes true. Anything can happen in foster care. Anything. I can’t count on an adoption happening until after it’s actually happened.
So far we’ve been able to witness kids getting what they want a lot of the time and it’s a joy to see parents do better and kids able to go home to the parents they long for. But this time with Sprout is different, and it’s a joy to be the ones longed for.
sprinklesonachaoscupcake.com 