About two hours ago we just got another phone call from the county. A social worker asked if we could take an infant. We still have the second foster care child. We said yes. Janine drove over and picked up our third foster care child. In about eleven days we've had three children.
I've struggled with what to have the children call me and Janine. With the two infants it hasn't been a problem. The five year old on her own started calling us mom and dad. I don't want the children to feel like I'm trying to take the place of their parents.
Our daughters have reacted in various ways. For the most part our 13 year old and our 11 year old have enjoyed having the children. Most of the time our seven year old enjoys playing with the five year old. The five year old can be a bit bossy. Our youngest daughter doesn't like it, but doesn't handle it well. We're trying to teach our seven year old to be pleasant, but to draw boundries.
I think we will all learn a lot from being foster care parents. At this rate we could have fifteen to twenty children go through our house by the end of the year.
----------
Technorati tags: parenting, children, foster, care
8 comments:
I think they will be too! I hope it goes well for you all.
Henry,
Wow! You and the rest of the family are certainly in our prayers.
When I was a child, our family was a foster family for a time. We had infants and toddlers for the most part, but one time we had an infant and his 12-year-old uncle/brother. I think I was about 13 at the time, and the 12-year-old was very possessive of the baby, so that wasn't a fit.
One toddler girl walked in the door calling my mom "Mama".
It was a good but hard experience for our family. Only one was adopted out and went to a better situation (she's an adult now!), and the rest went right back to the same situation.
Good for you and your family for serving your community in this way!
Best of luck to you with your foster children. The people I know who've been foster parents for non-relatives usually go by Mom & Dad + their first names (i.e. "Mom Janine" and "Dad Henry"). That way it's affectionate but not like they're trying to usurp the place of the biological parents.
>Mom & Dad + their first names (i.e. "Mom Janine" and "Dad Henry").
Thanks for the suggestion. I like how it sounds.
We appreciate the support. It was a very rough day today. The baby cried on and off all day long. I sure hope we can get some sleep tonight.
We were foster parents early in our marriage. One of "our" children was also a baby who cried almost nonstop. Apparently, it was a dietary/formula issue, as the wonderful family who ended up adopting her discovered.
I wish you all the best, and am amazed you are still finding the energy to blog.
God bless you both...and all the foster children I worked with walked into their foster homes calling the foster parents mom and dad. It does bother the biological parents, but at the same time, it is very difficult to keep them from doing this.
I had kids that I had for respite (a weekend break) call me mom. My husband always tried to get them to call him something other than dad but it never worked.
Post a Comment