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!
