Fostering Reality

Introduction

I want to talk tonight about what we have learned over the last several years of fostering.

Not the technical information, though that is valuable.

I mean at a philosophical and theological level.

Foster care will press you into deep questions about what you are doing if you will let it.

I don’t have all the answers, but I hope I have some.

Initial Motivations

We wanted to adopt this little boy.

That was it.

We already knew him and loved him and wanted to adopt him.

We were told it was be a quick and easy path to get there.

“This should be wrapped up by Christmas.”

While we were at it, we were open to helping other kids when and where we could.

We thought this just involved basically the same functions as baby sitting some kids belonging to your friends.

Maybe a little more hyper or troubled than typical.

But basically the same function.

I don’t think our motives were bad. But I do think they weren’t connected to the realities of foster care.

The biggest shift was when we realized that we came in with misguided notions of what we would get out of foster care.

This doesn’t mean we don’t get anything.

We just don’t get the things we thought we would.

We thought we would get a fairly easy path to the adoption of a little boy that we already loved. What an ideal picture.

But nothing about foster care is ideal.

The fact that foster care exists means something terrible has happened.

There are WAY more variables than we could have possibly conceived of.

Some of those you learn to accept as reasonable realities, others you learn to hate and fight against.

So, what are some misguided notions that you think people get into foster care for?

Money - at best, maybe someone views it like having a daycare.

The truth is the money isn’t enough to provide care and still reap profits.

You would have to neglect care in order to really profit from fostering.

I WILL give a word of caution here, you are promised certain assistance when you become a foster parent and you should not be made to feel bad when you request the things you are promised.

The department is receiving resources for the child in your care. Don’t feel bad for asking for those resources.

To satisfy personal emotional needs.

This one is dangerous.

You are asking the child to provide something they are not equipped to provide.

Maybe it is loneliness or loss or just the desire for a child in your life for whatever reason.

These are bad reasons to have biological children, they are REALLY bad reasons to bring traumatized children into your life.

They are the ones with voids that need to be filled and you need to be the stable one.

To help your marriage or family

Just yikes.

Not only will this not fix your marriage, it will put tremendous strain on it.

Now, a good marriage can grow stronger, but a bad one can grow worse or even end.

This isn’t family therapy. If anything, it will cause a need for family therapy.

Bad Coping Mechanisms

So after just a few months the plan that we thought would be so neat and tidy went sideways.

We became scared, angry, and overcome with a constant sense of dread and helplessness.

We could have dealt with the personal sense of loss but the thought of reunification in our specific case terrified us.

We called all the people, Googled all the questions, prayed all the prayers. Yet, the change in plans proceeded.

So many people plainly said “we all know what is best for this boy but these are the rules.”

How could the rules not provide for what is best for the child (how long do I have to talk here?)?

Other people offered empty hope (I know it will all work out).

We came to grips with a cold reality. We may soon have to say goodbye to this boy who was already our son in our hearts (and I believe in his as well).

Because of our initial motives, this led to dark moments in our house.

This was the whole point for getting into this in the first place!

So we tried to cope in some unhelpful ways:

We tried to go on a crusade.

How do we get on this DHR county board.

Who do we call at the state level.

We were going to change the system (you aren’t going to change the system).

We tried emotional distance.

If you keep your distance, you won’t hurt so bad.

We ranted (we still do that).

Mostly we begged God for the thing we wanted most.

This seems like a decent coping strategy but I’ll explain why it really wasn’t great.

Prayers are a GREAT coping strategy but you have to be careful how you pray.

What are some ways you think people cope with the disappointment and frustration of fostering?

Lessons Learned

Lesson 1: It was never about us.

“Foster care is not about us. It never was and never will be. Foster care is about serving, loving on others, and being the one constant in a child’s life when they are going through a really hard time.” - Jeremy Garman

Any notion of what you will get will leave you disappointed.

Let me be clear, I don’t mean you don’t get anything out of it.

But it is the sorts of things you get as a result of focus on another and not the things you expect to get.

They are the things you realize you got only after you get them.

They are things of eternal value but often limited in their temporal advantages (Jas. 1:2-4).

Lesson 2: Love isn’t wasted.

"You might be temporary in their lives; they might be temporary in yours. But there is nothing temporary about the love or the lesson." - Tonia Christle​

This was one of the most important.

We felt that if the outcome wasn’t what we wanted or even what we thought was best, then all of this was a pointless exercise in misery for everyone involved.

This goes back to point one but the reality is, this child is going through misery whether or not you get involved.

You can come in and give them at least a moment where they know someone loves them.

That isn’t wasted even if it is only the briefest of moments.

You may be the single brightest display of love they know and that may plant a seed for them to find their way out of generational disfunction that so plagues children in foster care.

From a Christian perspective I also saw that this was the very sort of thing God meant when He talked about storing up treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:20-21).

I believe we will truly see the value of the love we give here when we stand in the presence of the one who is love.

Lesson 3: I can’t do everything, but I can do something.

"To the world, you may be one person; but to one person, you may be the world." - Dr. Seuss.

When you first come into the world of foster care, the enormity of the tragedies can be overwhelming.

So you learn not to be distracted by what you can’t do and focus on the kids you have in your care.

It can feel like a drop in the bucket (and it is at one level).

But for that child, it is everything.

No one else can be as focussed on advocating for that child as you can.

All the other people working on this case have many many more cases to divide their time with.

But you see that child everyday. You know things no one else does. And you can plead for them with a more focussed love and determination than anyone else can.

THAT, is worth doing.

Use your anger and frustration as motivation, not demotivation.

Some might say, don’t get angry.

I would certainly say don’t lose your temper.

But if you don’t get angry at what you see in foster care then check your pulse.

But justified anger can provide needed motivation as we advocate for these children.

It is certainly better than apathy and despair.

There is a story of a woman doing a seeming small thing for Jesus that seems pointless to some (Mk. 14:3-10).

Lesson 4: They are all traumatized.

"In the end, it is impossible to separate the child from their trauma; it is a part of who they are. As caregivers, our job is not to erase the trauma but to help the child learn to live with it and thrive despite it." - Dr. Bruce Perry

Initially, we may not even have a decent grasp of what this means.

Some cases will be obvious while others are far more subtle to someone new to the foster care world.

We need to start by understanding that no matter what, if you have a child in foster care, that child HAS experienced trauma.

They haven’t all experienced the same degree of trauma and even with same levels they won’t all react the same way.

But we at least need to start with understanding the concept.

This means we have a greater responsibility than we may have realized.

It may even be a responsibility we aren’t ready to bear.

There is no shame if you need to step away.

This is a duty that you took up voluntarily not because you owed it.

You can set it down.

You can’t pour out of an empty cup.

I would encourage you, if you realize you are in over your head, to step away and tend to what has been exposed.

If you stick with it, you will need more resources than you were given in your training.

You will need a support system either in your family, your church, or your other communities (and or all the above).

You will need education from other foster parents and from literature (at some point you realize you are the one getting the calls instead of just making them).

Some of your instincts will serve you well (especially the instinct to love). Other instincts will run completely counter to what you see.

You will feel like you are in an alternate reality at times…and you are.

It means we will have to adjust expectations as we go.

There are two extremes we are trying to avoid here.

One is simply getting rid of expectations all together.

This only sets the child up for more trauma as life goes on.

In our abundance of compassion we can fail to see that part of our task is to prepare and train them for a life that will be a lot harder than your lap.

So, with compassion, we work to get them from where they are to where they are capable of being.

The other extreme is to rigidly hold them to traditional expectations we have for our biological children.

Perhaps we’ve raised children or at the very least know something about the subject from our interaction with good parents.

I don’t want to knock that wisdom.

I believe that much of that wisdom comes directly from God.

But the nature of Proverbs is that it is written to the normative situation.

Proverbs isn’t written to the exception it is written to the rule.

When you try to rigidly apply Proverbs to every situation you end up like Job’s friends.

You will do more harm than good.

We are dealing with an exception that this child hasn’t been provided with what all children OUGHT to have.

The natural course of things provides a child with the loving arms of a mother and father from the moment he or she comes into the world.

The natural course of things provides a child with constant attention and feedback from mother, father, and even extended loving family.

When those natural processes are disrupted, so are developments that naturally flow from those things.

We understand that when it comes to base physical nutrition and things like that.

But sometimes we don’t understand it when it comes to less tangible provisions.

The bottom line is that these children have been emotionally malnourished and just like you can just expect a child who is physically malnourished to have normal physical reactions to food, you can’t expect traumatized children to have normal emotional reactions to relational interactions.

We aren’t throwing out the wisdom of the ages. We are trying to apply it to an exception.

Some of them may always walk with a limp or speak with an accent and that is okay.

If you don’t learn a language until you are a certain age, you will likely never get rid of the telling accent.

So what do you do.

You can still learn the language and still function in that society.

Some will mock your accent, others will love you all the more for it.

Our hope is to help these children get to a place where they are able to function in this world that they got a late start in adapting to.

Lesson 5: Pray for what you need.

I said earlier that I came to think praying for the outcome I wanted wasn’t helpful.

Let me clarity, I went from JUST praying for what I wanted, to praying for what I needed.

Help me have the wisdom to know how to love this boy today.

Help me to have the patience and wisdom for whatever I find out on that next ISP or email from DHR or that next hearing (including when the next thing I find out is nothing).

Most importantly, help me survive the heartbreak if that day comes when I have to say goodbye.

I stopped setting all my hopes on things that I wasn’t promised and were out of my control and set my sights on things I have been promised (Jas. 1:5).

In these moments of prayer, we find the true essence of foster care – not in controlling outcomes, but in seeking the strength to love and care for the children entrusted to us, no matter what the future holds.

Conclusion

Maybe you just started, or maybe you’ve been in it for a long while.

I hope these insights are helpful to you as we all strive to remember the right reasons for doing what we do.

And I hope you will help remind me when I forget them.