Which sometimes feels a bit like life support when your really in need of some good respite.
Tonight ‘Abby’ and ‘Carter’ will be coming to stay with us again. We did respite for them the weekend that the boys came to us. They’ll be with us until the end of the week. Their foster mom is super overwhelmed. Like really, really overwhelmed.
Maybe the kids should move to a new home? I’m not sure. Disruptions are hard – much harder than just saying goodbye.
We’ve not ever asked a child to leave – but with X-man we were darn close. I had just had Sylvia, my hormones were somewhere between euphoric bliss and crushing discouragement at any given moment, I was having a very difficult recovery from child birth, and X-man was 17 months old and still not eating food or walking. Developmentally they were about nine months apart, and there were a lot of things that X-man still needed one on one care for in order to get caught up. Overwhelmed doesn’t quite describe the first few weeks after she was born.
Long story short, we almost asked to have him moved. However, our worker is incredible and gave us the support we needed to get through my recovery so that we could maintain placement. The decision to maybe have him moved was one of the most heart wrenching decisions I’ve ever made (post-partum hormones aside).
Initially I would say it’s mostly pride that makes you not want to throw in the towel. But really, I don’t think that’s it most of the time. It’s just that you want to be there for those kids. You want to tough it out with them. You want them to know that you love them. You don’t want to cause more hurt.
With that said, sometimes disruptions are necessary. There are a handful of times that the best thing for the kids is for them to move. They need to be somewhere where their needs and emotions can be cradled and nurtured.
I don’t know if Abby and Carter need to move. Not my call. We’ll just do our best to support them and their foster mom for the time being. We’ll see how it goes! Back up to seven in the Popp home!
Have fun with the extra two kiddos! We've done respite several times and had our kids in respite (while we're on vacations) several times. I think a lot of times people feel that being a respite home isn't important, but YES it is. Until we got the girls last week, we had talked about opening our home up just for respite, but God had other plans!
ReplyDeleteOh, how I wish we were neighbors! I've lamented before that even though our case worker is amazing and we're memebers of our local foster parent organization, there really isn't an opportunity to connect with others and I don't personally know any other foster parents.
ReplyDeleteWe're trying to get some of our family registered as natural helpers, but we don't want to constantly burden them... this isn't their heart like it is for us.
I pray for foster parent friends like the Popps!
Oh, and you're dead on with the disruption bits. Thanks for seeing that.
Great to know! Hubs and I have talked about starting out as a respite home for other families. I'm loving your blog because I'm getting so many great life tips from it! Keep sharing... I'm like a sponge! :)
ReplyDeleteI don't believe we've ever met, but I was friends with Amy Popp in high school. I've been reading your blog off and on and I'm so impressed with your work with the foster care program. I can see it is a very difficult job but your love for the children really shines through. The world needs more people as caring as you.
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