Road to the least of these

Honesty is always the best policy

2012-02-12T21:37:00.011-05:00

As foster/adoptive parents, we will be required to adhere to the agencies rules. Since we both have the same goal; keeping the children healthy and safe, I don't see this being a problem. Most of the time, I don't see this being a problem. I do, however know from the get-go, there will be disagreements in values, judgements, and decisions.

This won't be on purpose. It's just natural that we wouldn't all be on the same page about everything. So far, we've been coming along swimmingly. The agency by now is very aware of where we are at, religiously, financially, mentally, physically. And so far, they haven't made any beefs with it.

We did get our first "red flag" (for lack of a better phrase) the other day during my last interview. Angela, our social worker was concerned with our Christmas traditions. Specifically, our not raising our kids to believe in Santa Claus. (I know, I know. Most people are now screaming to themselves "what kind of monsters don't let their kids believe in Santa Claus?") Out of four kids, we "did Santa" with the oldest one. She now refers to that time in her life as "the only lie my parents ever told me".

Although no one wants to think they lie to their kids, the fact is telling your kids there is a Santa that comes into your house to bring gifts is not true. As much as I didn't like being rebuked by my own kid, I had decided that I didn't want anymore kids telling me I'm a liar.....especially since in our house lying is a punishable offense.

My kids are very aware that others do celebrate with Santa and although people have told me "they better not ruin it for other kids", my children are very graceful about it and politely say only "santa doesn't come to our house".

Since the agency promotes a Secret Santa program at Christmas time and they do encourage the kids to believe in Santa, they were very anxious to know how we would handle a "Santa fan" if they were placed in our house. I don't like the idea of intentionally letting them think something I know isn't true but I'm also the last person to tell a child, who has spent most of their life in chaos that they are being lied to.

I told Angela that we would not have Santa in our house. If we have a believer, I will tell them that Santa doesn't come to our house and that we buy gifts for each other because we love to give. The agency will have gifts for them "from Santa". Any questions of the validity of a Santa will be directed to the agency.

Angela seemed alright with my response. I assume that it won't jeopardize our chances of having kids that believe in it placed with us. But I also recognize that they may feel a child would be better off in a place that promotes Santa. If it came down to them saying "this child has no place else to go, but we need you to say there's a Santa", we will absolutely not agree. We will always do what's best for the kids, we will sacrifice anything for them. But we will not sacrifice our values. We cannot be dishonest even if it seems to be "for a good reason". We've drawn our line in the sand, have been completely open about everything we stand for and believe in, and have left the rest in the hands of the agency. We pray that everything will happen God's way, in His time, and for His glory......not Santa's.

Please fill out these forms

2012-02-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

When we first started our pre-service training, we were given lots of papers to fill out. When we finished our training, we were given the mother load of papers to fill out! I answered questions from "what is your mother's maiden name?" to "What do you like most about your husband?" It spanned several pages and was exausting. As if that wasn't enough, once that was complete, I had to write a several pages long autobiography about my whole life; from birth to now.

To give you an idea of how welcoming I was to this portion of the process, as of this writing, three of my kids have diarrhea and are throwing up. I prefer that to the paperwork.

I know these things are necessary and that's why I ~~screamed and ranted the whole time I had to do the stupid thing~~ happily complied with what was asked of me. The agency has a hard job to do. They have custody of kids that were taken away from their parents under awful circumstances. Their futures are in jeopardy. Their job is to choose their new parents. That's a tall order. I don't want that job. Ewwwww. So the best way for them to do an impossible job is to get as much information as they possibly can about the people that show up claiming to be good moms and dads.

So I ~~still think it's annoying~~ totally understand the reason for the countless hours of reading, writing, answering, and references. In the end, it's one more evidence to our future children that we worked hard for them. And they're worth something....and it's more than about a forest full of paper and an octopus full of ink.

Interview for parenthood

2012-02-05T17:30:00.000-05:00

This is being written the night before my third interview with our assigned social worker, Angela. Last time she was here, my husband worked the night shift as a truck driver, I worked full time days as a medical secretary, and we exchanged hellos and good-byes at the door when I got home. Tomorrow, I'll explain to her that I quit my job entirely, leaving DH to make up the loss of income and health benefits on his own. (Don't worry, he likes that sort of thing).

Whether it is stress related or the fact that my office was in a wet basement, I began having health issues that made it impossible to continue working all day and raising a family. So something had to change. I had to give up my kids or my job. The angency would've frowned on giving up the children so I put my two weeks notice in at work and told kids I was coming home!

In our first two interviews Angela mostly sat back while I told the story of my life. Each interview was about two hours long at my home. Mostly just a factual account with little "how did that make you feel", I went over all the details of my upbringing, what it was like in my neighborhood, who my family was, and what I did with my time. This went on for two sessions until I reached present day.

Tomorrow, we'll be discussing my life as it is now. She'll want to know how I spend my free time, what my "religious affiliations" are, how I discipline my kids, what I would say if a child told me they were being abused.

During DH's last session, he was asked by Angela how he handles awkward situations. At that time my five year old daughter walked up to him, with no pants on, and asked him to open the bologna in the kitchen. He asked her why she didn't have pants on, she ignored him insisting on bologna, and the whole situation answered Angela's question.

I do look forward to these interviews. Although at first the thought of telling someone the story of my life would be strange, it's actually helped us, in just the course of a few weeks to make very important changes in our lives. Hearing myself describe how I get up everyday and do what I do allowed me to look at myself almost from someone else's perspective and say "whoa, there's a lot going on there, something's gotta give"

When you think of people deciding to adopt, you think of those who "got it all together" and have tied up all loose ends before they took on something like this. I never thought that not only would we get involved in adoption without having it all together, but that the experience would help us see the issues that need to be addressed right away so that we could continue and still grow as parents and people.

Keeping a secret

2012-02-02T19:21:00.001-05:00

By the time we decided to begin the licensing process, we had already talked about it for years, prayed about, received counsel, and tried to predict resources for doing so. The next step was thinking about how to tell our friends and family. One of the things I imagined was unnecessary criticism.

We knew that the classes would be quite taxing on us emotionally. So we decided that it would be best to wait to let everyone know. Except for just a select few, we didn't see a reason to announce something and have to deal with harsh opinions that didn't matter. After all, we had already done the difficult work of giving it considerable thought. It's not like someone would have a good argument not to go forward so any negative judgments would just be wasted words that we didn't need in our ears.

Telling people you're adopting is different than telling people you're pregnant. When you joyously announce you're pregnant, no one is going to look at you wide-eyed and ask you why you would do such a thing. It's not as though they can talk you into changing your mind and not being pregnant anymore.

It's not the same story with adoption. The second the "A" word comes out of your mouth, you get a look as though you just said your belly button fell off. Questions like "why would you do that?" and "do you know how messed up those kids are?" bubble over as if they feel if they weren't said, they'd explode. Whether it's shock, ignorance, surprise, disgust, I don't know. Although not meant to be intentionally rude or uncalled for, it tends to be. And by God's grace, we had decided from the start to keep it to a minimum.

Of course keeping something a secret is a lot easier when you don't have kids that are dying to shout it out! They "accidentally" told quite a few people. In hindsight, we should have offered to pay them for their silence. My little worker bees will do anything for a buck.

But now that the secret's out, I got less work to do. No more needing to leave work early and not say why so I can make it to class on time. Hoping no one starts to wonder why the social worker is always at my house. And now that it's out, I pray that everyone will support us in this new area and rejoice with us when we eventually announce the homecoming of new additions.

Our first class

2012-01-31T18:33:00.001-05:00

In order to become foster/adoptive parents in Ohio, one must sit through 36 hours of training or "pre-service". Typically, these hours will be divided into about 12-3 hour evenings over the course of a couple months. These classes are designed to give you insight into the types of children that come through the system and also test your ability to handle new and often times difficult situations, whether physical, environmental, or emotional.

Walking in to our first class we found 6 other couples along with a few single individuals. In my awful mind, I immediately started to size everyone up. I tried to figure them all out and wondered what their motives were. Terrible, I know. But by our last class, I was sad that I wasn't going to see them every week anymore.

The first session was a Saturday. A seven hour class broken up by a one hour break in the middle. During the first three hours, we were introduced to our classmates, the agency staff, and did some paperwork and heard an introduction from our trainer, Rhonna, a nurse and mother of five, two of whom were adopted from foster care.

The second half of the class got into a little more. We had a break mid day and when we came back we watched a video about a boy in Canada's foster care system. The movie began with a picture of the boy hanging from a fence after taking his own life. The boy was a teenager and he had left a note, explaining that the reason for his death was that no one loved him, no one had ever loved him, and if someday they did, he wasn't sure if he would even know what it felt like. This video set the tone for not only the rest of that session, but the classes that were to come.

We were all given paper and we were told to write why we were there. There was a range of answers from "to help kids that have no one else" to "because I want a baby". We were challenged to understand that this was a huge undertaking because most of the kids in the system were not only older but they were very broken. I think everyone left that first class questioning whether this was right for them. By the time our next class came, three people had apparently decided it wasn't.

The begining of a begining

2012-01-30T18:31:00.000-05:00

It all started a long time ago........

and now we're here. Couldn't bore anyone with all the details of why we're doing it and what got it all started. That would be tragic and no one has that kind of time. The short story is we're adopting. We're becoming licensed through our county in Ohio to begin adding to our family.

As of this writing we're a bit close to being done with the process of licensing but I'll try to back track a bit and paint a picture of what it's like to sit through mandatory parenting classes and have your whole life under the prying microscope of social workers who are looking at every inch of your existence. (It's not as bad as it sounds, really.) So come along and you'll see.