I wonder if it's a good omen, like rain on a wedding day, that it's
raining in the middle of the summer, on my first day of motherhood.
Though I'm not normally a superstitious person, I have to say the
raindrops on my window gave me pause. The weather on this soggy, muggy day in the middle of June will hopefully be the only unfortunate thing that happens today. This blog is going to be my truth, but that does not make it truth. All of these events are process through my eyes and my experience. I'm sure the stories that follow will have a different emphasis and interpretation when viewed through the eyes of every member of our household. All names will be changed to protect the privacy of those in my life.
I'm going to try and keep track of my experience of being a foster mother on this blog for several reasons. The first is I want to encourage anyone who is considering opening up their home and their hearts to a foster child to do it. My situation is the epitome of, "if I can do it, so can you." I am too young, too mouthy, and far too short tempered to be a foster parent. And yet, here I am, imperfections and all, picking up our daughter from her high level group home in a few hours. The second reason is for my own sanity and reflection, I find that writing keeps me present to what I'm up to and helps to encapsulate and define times that without reflection wouldn't be processed. The third and final reason to enumerate at this point is for my daughter. I would love for her to have something to look back on and to remember our time together, as well as to encourage her to give back to her community, even before she feels that she's able.
From the time I was first in foster care, when I was 14, I knew that I wanted to be a foster parent. Never had I seen so much need, and what a child's life looks like when they don't have a parent who is willing to care for them and able to take care of them. Without that fundamental security children become lost. There are so few homes for teenagers in foster care and so they end up in group homes or staying long term at the shelter. I was at the Children's Shelter of Santa Clara county for months before my social worker found me a placement. Lynn, an estate attorney, and Dan, a solar specialist and entrepreneur took me into their home. They already had an older teenage daughter who was a junior in high school and their eldest daughter, who had just started at USC. They opened their home thinking that I would only be staying there for a few days or a week, I stayed their (mostly) until I went to college, which they lovingly packed me up and drove me down to. I made the decision that as soon as I was able, I would foster children for myself. I remember so clearly my best friend and I planning to support each other in fostering kids whenever we could. We didn't need a man, but if we did find one, they would have to be okay with foster parenting.
In college I stumbled onto a job that required EMT qualifications but was a night shift and not in the hospital. When I called and spoke to my employer, she told me that she had two medically fragile foster babies, who were 6 and 10 months old, and that she needed help with the night shift for these babies because she was now a single mother and wasn't getting sleep. I jumped on it immediately. I started spending nights are her house, sleeping next to and comforting the two very disturbed babies. Soon they were sleeping soundly, and too soon I was no longer needed. But I would still come by often and "babysit" those wonderful babies as they grew into toddlers.
When my boyfriend and I started talking seriously about spending the rest of our lives together, I told him that being a foster parent was a non-negotiable for me. Brenden said, "I'm worried I won't love them like I would my own biological children, and I would never want any child to grow up in an house where they didn't feel fully loved." This sentiment wasn't a stopping point for me. I told him that he should spend his summer down here (we were both still in college) and visit with the kids I work with and see how he feels after the summer.
He got an internship at a neuroscience research institute in San Diego and spent the summer in my apartment and taking the kids out with me. On the first day I brought him over to Erica's house (the full time foster mother) so that we could put up some shelves for her. Brenden sat down next to John, the now blossoming toddler who before had been the worst case of abuse San Diego County had ever seen, and began to take apart the pieces for the shelf. He taught John which screwdrivers work for which screw and then visibly beamed when John picked up the correct screw driver and handed it to him. Brenden look at me and said, "I can never imagine doing anything else." That was the moment I knew I would marry him.
Brenden reveled in finding new avenues for John's brilliance.When you would come to the door, the first thing John would do was take your keys from your hand and meticulously go to every door, testing them to see if they would open the lock. Brandon wanted to encourage this curiosity and so made John and his sister a box with 9 compartments and 9 different types of locks, for John to try to open. This gift was such a hit at their second birthday party that we had several orders for more boxes by the end of the day. Brenden would take the kids around to the zoo, explaining all of the different animals, where they lived and what they do, and would patiently answers every single one of the litany of questions that only a toddler can supply.
Right before the end of the summer, as Brenden was headed back up the coast to another semester, John was reunified with a distant family member in Texas. The family had requested that we not contact John again, and so when we dropped him off with his social worker at the airport, we knew that it was a permanent good bye. This abrupt placement tore us apart from John's foster mother, Erica. I think we all found it really hard to be around each other without him. Brenden and I decided that we couldn't open our hearts up like that again, and foster parenting was tabled for the time being.
Many years, a home, and a wedding later, Brenden and I had run out of excuses to not have foster children. We had the money, the time and the concern and only had the worry of heartbreak holding us back. I had been mentoring for foster youth in a high level group home in the city, but that didn't seem that I was doing enough to help these unclaimed children in our neighborhood. So we signed up for foster parenting classes through the county of San Francisco and showed up for our first Saturday morning class.
Lorry and Dean (a current foster mother and former foster youth respectively) walked us through the different cultural competencies and concerns of foster parenting. Brenden and I are both, more than anything, excellent students. And so our foster parenting class made us feel even more prepared to settle in to the idea of become parents. Though we knew that we didn't know anything, we saw, frankly, that we knew a lot more than those around us (there seemed to be a lot of financial motivation for the other foster parents and we were the only two college educated people in the room). As the people who might have the wrong intentions for going into foster parenting (making money from home) were weeded out, we kept raising are hands and voicing our concerns (I'm too young, we work a lot, I 'm still in school...). Though the list kept expanding and kept looking for more reasons to not become foster parents, Lorry and Dean kept approaching us and telling us how excited they were to have us become parents, and how they knew that we'd make it work and would make a great home for foster teens.
After finishing our courses and getting our home checked, a long but very simple interview with a licensing worker and another with a placement worker, we went on THE LIST. Once Elton, the placement worker who tries to find homes for whoever comes into the foster care system in San Francisco County every day, found out that we wanted to take in teens, he kept asking me when I was ready to take a child in. I replied, "How about today?" Later in the interview he asked me again, "So when do you want to start fostering?" I answered, "Is today good for you?" And as he was about to leave he asked, "So, when do you want to start fostering?" "Today, or yesterday Elton, it's up to you." "Okay," he said, "look for my call this afternoon.
He called me at 12:05 and said that he had 15 kids who he thought were really special and had a lot of potential and needed a home. I wanted to say yes to all of them, but one in particular stuck out. She was doing very well in school and wanted to go to college. She knew that her mother, who she had been removed from years before due to incarceration, wouldn't be able to get her there, and she wanted to find a family that would. That was our girl. Elton, who had become strangely protective of us (for which I couldn't be more grateful) said that she would be a tough placement, but that she really needed a home like ours. Her social worker called while I was still on the phone with Elton, to schedule a meeting for us to meet Jacquelin on Thursday. I called Brenden excitedly, and we cried with joy together, as new parents.
I'm going to try and keep track of my experience of being a foster mother on this blog for several reasons. The first is I want to encourage anyone who is considering opening up their home and their hearts to a foster child to do it. My situation is the epitome of, "if I can do it, so can you." I am too young, too mouthy, and far too short tempered to be a foster parent. And yet, here I am, imperfections and all, picking up our daughter from her high level group home in a few hours. The second reason is for my own sanity and reflection, I find that writing keeps me present to what I'm up to and helps to encapsulate and define times that without reflection wouldn't be processed. The third and final reason to enumerate at this point is for my daughter. I would love for her to have something to look back on and to remember our time together, as well as to encourage her to give back to her community, even before she feels that she's able.
From the time I was first in foster care, when I was 14, I knew that I wanted to be a foster parent. Never had I seen so much need, and what a child's life looks like when they don't have a parent who is willing to care for them and able to take care of them. Without that fundamental security children become lost. There are so few homes for teenagers in foster care and so they end up in group homes or staying long term at the shelter. I was at the Children's Shelter of Santa Clara county for months before my social worker found me a placement. Lynn, an estate attorney, and Dan, a solar specialist and entrepreneur took me into their home. They already had an older teenage daughter who was a junior in high school and their eldest daughter, who had just started at USC. They opened their home thinking that I would only be staying there for a few days or a week, I stayed their (mostly) until I went to college, which they lovingly packed me up and drove me down to. I made the decision that as soon as I was able, I would foster children for myself. I remember so clearly my best friend and I planning to support each other in fostering kids whenever we could. We didn't need a man, but if we did find one, they would have to be okay with foster parenting.
In college I stumbled onto a job that required EMT qualifications but was a night shift and not in the hospital. When I called and spoke to my employer, she told me that she had two medically fragile foster babies, who were 6 and 10 months old, and that she needed help with the night shift for these babies because she was now a single mother and wasn't getting sleep. I jumped on it immediately. I started spending nights are her house, sleeping next to and comforting the two very disturbed babies. Soon they were sleeping soundly, and too soon I was no longer needed. But I would still come by often and "babysit" those wonderful babies as they grew into toddlers.
When my boyfriend and I started talking seriously about spending the rest of our lives together, I told him that being a foster parent was a non-negotiable for me. Brenden said, "I'm worried I won't love them like I would my own biological children, and I would never want any child to grow up in an house where they didn't feel fully loved." This sentiment wasn't a stopping point for me. I told him that he should spend his summer down here (we were both still in college) and visit with the kids I work with and see how he feels after the summer.
He got an internship at a neuroscience research institute in San Diego and spent the summer in my apartment and taking the kids out with me. On the first day I brought him over to Erica's house (the full time foster mother) so that we could put up some shelves for her. Brenden sat down next to John, the now blossoming toddler who before had been the worst case of abuse San Diego County had ever seen, and began to take apart the pieces for the shelf. He taught John which screwdrivers work for which screw and then visibly beamed when John picked up the correct screw driver and handed it to him. Brenden look at me and said, "I can never imagine doing anything else." That was the moment I knew I would marry him.
Brenden reveled in finding new avenues for John's brilliance.When you would come to the door, the first thing John would do was take your keys from your hand and meticulously go to every door, testing them to see if they would open the lock. Brandon wanted to encourage this curiosity and so made John and his sister a box with 9 compartments and 9 different types of locks, for John to try to open. This gift was such a hit at their second birthday party that we had several orders for more boxes by the end of the day. Brenden would take the kids around to the zoo, explaining all of the different animals, where they lived and what they do, and would patiently answers every single one of the litany of questions that only a toddler can supply.
Right before the end of the summer, as Brenden was headed back up the coast to another semester, John was reunified with a distant family member in Texas. The family had requested that we not contact John again, and so when we dropped him off with his social worker at the airport, we knew that it was a permanent good bye. This abrupt placement tore us apart from John's foster mother, Erica. I think we all found it really hard to be around each other without him. Brenden and I decided that we couldn't open our hearts up like that again, and foster parenting was tabled for the time being.
Many years, a home, and a wedding later, Brenden and I had run out of excuses to not have foster children. We had the money, the time and the concern and only had the worry of heartbreak holding us back. I had been mentoring for foster youth in a high level group home in the city, but that didn't seem that I was doing enough to help these unclaimed children in our neighborhood. So we signed up for foster parenting classes through the county of San Francisco and showed up for our first Saturday morning class.
Lorry and Dean (a current foster mother and former foster youth respectively) walked us through the different cultural competencies and concerns of foster parenting. Brenden and I are both, more than anything, excellent students. And so our foster parenting class made us feel even more prepared to settle in to the idea of become parents. Though we knew that we didn't know anything, we saw, frankly, that we knew a lot more than those around us (there seemed to be a lot of financial motivation for the other foster parents and we were the only two college educated people in the room). As the people who might have the wrong intentions for going into foster parenting (making money from home) were weeded out, we kept raising are hands and voicing our concerns (I'm too young, we work a lot, I 'm still in school...). Though the list kept expanding and kept looking for more reasons to not become foster parents, Lorry and Dean kept approaching us and telling us how excited they were to have us become parents, and how they knew that we'd make it work and would make a great home for foster teens.
After finishing our courses and getting our home checked, a long but very simple interview with a licensing worker and another with a placement worker, we went on THE LIST. Once Elton, the placement worker who tries to find homes for whoever comes into the foster care system in San Francisco County every day, found out that we wanted to take in teens, he kept asking me when I was ready to take a child in. I replied, "How about today?" Later in the interview he asked me again, "So when do you want to start fostering?" I answered, "Is today good for you?" And as he was about to leave he asked, "So, when do you want to start fostering?" "Today, or yesterday Elton, it's up to you." "Okay," he said, "look for my call this afternoon.
He called me at 12:05 and said that he had 15 kids who he thought were really special and had a lot of potential and needed a home. I wanted to say yes to all of them, but one in particular stuck out. She was doing very well in school and wanted to go to college. She knew that her mother, who she had been removed from years before due to incarceration, wouldn't be able to get her there, and she wanted to find a family that would. That was our girl. Elton, who had become strangely protective of us (for which I couldn't be more grateful) said that she would be a tough placement, but that she really needed a home like ours. Her social worker called while I was still on the phone with Elton, to schedule a meeting for us to meet Jacquelin on Thursday. I called Brenden excitedly, and we cried with joy together, as new parents.
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