I went to a missionary farewell at my old ward today. It was fun to see old friends and catch up on their lives. One family sticks out in my mind. The father was just released as a singles’ ward bishop. He and his wife have raised several children of multi-races and ethnic backgrounds. While the parents (I’ll call Bob and Mary) have always been stalwart members of the church, their children are anything but stalwart.
One daughter (I’ll call Terri) had a child out of wedlock, and that boy lives with his grandparents, Bob and Mary, instead of his mother Terri who lives just 3 houses away. He is a fine young man, and plans to put his papers for his mission around the end of the year. Terri has two other children from a different father that she divorced a few years ago. Her middle son (Kevin) is the same age as my son, and the two have loved playing together.
Terri is living with her boyfriend (Jim), who just moved here from Florida. I asked how Terri and her boyfriend are doing. Bob told me that Jim is taking the missionary discussions, but seems to be in no hurry to marry Terri (nor is Terri in a hurry to marry Jim.) Jim has been a very good influence on Kevin, and Jim is a good man. Bob and Mary have tried to be good examples, and hope that Jim will join the church and get married to Terri.
It got me thinking about foster parents in general. My sister has been a foster parent in Colorado twice. In the first case, they had a young girl whose mother had a drug problem. As part of the court-ordered sentencing the mother’s daughter was put into foster care, and my sister raised her for about a year or two. The mother completed drug counseling, and got custody of her daughter back. My sister still sees mother and daughter on occasion.
The second case was similar, but because the mother did not complete her drug probation successfully, the state take custody away of the mother, and my sister ended up adopting the little girl. Both little girls have been challenging to raise, and my sister is well aware that this child may follow her biological mother’s examples of bad choices, drugs, and teen pregnancy. This little girl has behavioral issues, but seems to be behaving better under my sister’s care. God bless my sister for taking on a challenge that I am not prepared to deal with.
On the other side of my family, my wife’s brother and his wife have been temporary foster parents of older teens. They didn’t describe any horror stories, but a year or two after one of their foster children turned 18 and moved out on his own, he was involved in an aggravated kidnapping of two women in a bizarre high speed chase through multiple counties. (It was on the local news.) Thank God nobody in their family was hurt by this crazy foster child.
I thank God for foster parents. I know that they are a blessing to society, and I know that they put up with a lot of grief from children raised in bad homes. Sometimes I feel bad that I don’t do more to help society, but I just don’t feel I have the personality to be successful as a foster parent. What are your thoughts?
Wheat & Tares 
It is so easy to talk, and a lot of people talk about others — but actually doing something is a different matter, actually engaging someone in a meaningful way seems so rare. God be praised for those who actually do something.
I was a foster parent for three years.
Our first case was a 14yo we were told wanted to go to law school and get on the honor roll and needed mentors to help navigate the next 3 years. Nope, she was a wannabe gangbanger (el trece) smoking weed as much as possible, hooking up with guys at school (had to put her on birth control), had to get a security system to keep her in our house at night, and she contacted her drug-dealing birth father from school (the one who physically threatened her case worker insomuch that she needed police protection). She was sentenced to juvie on the same day we had planned her quinceanera. after she left our home she ended up a few years later getting beat with hammers by her gang “friends” and pushed into a river. she pretended she was dead and floated down until she could escape and call 911 at the nearest home. We are still in contact.
We had a few other smaller cases/placements before we had a placement of a 6yo boy and 2yo girl (our own daughter was 3). We had them for a year and a half and went into proceedings for parental termination and adopting them, when complications arose due to federal ICWA laws and their 2 step sisters’ adoption. It fell apart, dept blamed everyone but themselves and hoped for long term foster care, accused us of child abuse, new placement were ignorant LDS mormons with a savior complex that said horrible things about us and wouldn’t let us see the kids, I testified on the birth mother’s behalf to let her have her kids back, and she let us see them on and off. Now the dad has full custody and we were invited to their joint baptism (now they are 8 & 12), my husband got to confirm the girl and ordain the boy to the aaronic phood.
I am considering foster care again. Maybe. It’s taken me 3-4 years to recover from last time. I had a social worker tell me we had two of their hardest cases the dept had seen in the last 5 years. I think I have some realistic advice for those considering starting foster care. It’s full of people on a “savior complex” kick . . . and I think I was able to avoid that because my own sister is an addict who was in and out of jail her whole life with 3 kids, and I was able to support the idea that birth families with issues are better than my own home sometimes and I could be a real ally in family reunification. My foster kids’ birth mom was way better off than my sis, and the dept wouldn’t remove my sis’ kids. It gave me perspective.
Yes, I agree: thank God for foster parents! They are amazing – I could only handle 3 years at a time. Because seriously, potty training a foster child (that doesn’t have any attachment to you or acknowledge your authority) was one of the the hardest things I’ve ever done in my whole life.
Forty years ago my wife, toddler daughter, and I moved from the Great Basin to Illinois. There, as we participated in the ward, we watched an older couple who had fostered and then adopted two boys who were about my age; one married, one not. The adoptive parents’ faith and love shone stellar, while the two adoptees, despite the continued support and charity of their parents and ward members, tried but seemed continually to falter. My wife and I discussed the dynamics of the situation based upon our distant observations, acknowledging how difficult it was or seemed for both the adopters and adoptees. Also, my wife’s family had been both fosterers and adopters, so she had first hand experience.
We moved away and got on with our lives, among other things attempting to give our little toddler some “natural” company. We then experienced fertility issues and wouldn’t probably have considered fostering or adopting otherwise because of the challenges we’d seen and experienced. After a couple of years, we adopted, eventually ending up with three wonderful adoptees to give our first daughter some company and to fill our nest, which often seemed an unstated requirement in Mormonism. To shorten this, in fostering and in adopting there seem to me to be (and in our case were) some very, very difficult challenges, sometimes even extreme. But such hardships can also lead to great rewards and satisfaction.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are just starting up to be foster parents. I’m really proud of them to be so brave and willing to help strangers, but I don’t think I could do it. I have two adopted siblings, and I know my dad had a harder time raising them than his biological children, but they were babies when they were adopted and this has always been their family so that was probably easier than with foster children. As for me, I am preparing to become a therapist, so I will be able to help families with problems that require foster intervention or for the families who do foster. So that is the way I found that I can help people, but it is more indirect. That’s as far as I can go at this time. I know there is such a need for foster families though.
I admire people who do it, but I don’t think I could. My own upbringing wasn’t ideal, and I had plenty of doubts about my ability to raise kids of my own. Handling someone else’s pre-existing problems is more than I ever wanted to think about.
We were lucky that we never had fertility issues and that our five are for the most part healthy and fairly well-adjusted. I would have been reluctant to adopt an infant had it come to that, but would probably have done so for the sake of my wife and been just fine with it. I do not think I could ever foster.