lifewithfosterchildren

Foster Parents may have children in their home from several families. While blended families, where Mom and Dad bring their own children to a marriage and may have children of their own, often have difficult times at least the children have a biological parent as part of their life. Foster children might have a sibling placed with them in a foster home, but it is not unrealistic to have as many as six children in a foster home from different parents. That’s six different sets of family values that must be meshed together in a new household.

I have children from two different families. Two are siblings, a four year old girl and a three year old boy. My other child is a five year old little boy that I have now adopted. Even though this 5 year old has sisters of his own, for my home he wishes to act like an only child a lot of the time. He likes to be in charge and have his way in everything. The four year old girl gets jealous if the 5 year old gets his way.

Structure, consistent routines, and special one on one time with each child helps keep arguments to a minimum. Foster parents with more children than I must work hard daily at trying to maintain a normal household. If you know a family like this, see if there is something you can do to help these foster parents in the daily lives.

 The 4 ½ year old little girl I have in my home is a ADHD child among other issues. She does not take any medication at this time due to her age and all the other issues she is having to learn to deal with. Issues such as learning to wear glasses, having to wear a patch on her eye 2 hours a day, speech issues, and now Occupational and Physical therapy. Given all of this going on in her life the ADHD rest on the back burner to be addressed. To best meet the needs of a child that have many different problems being addressed a structured, consistent routine is imperative. Vary from the routine and the child can not focus and has a difficult time in maintaining control.

Last week a note was sent home from the child’s special education class telling me she had a very bad day and lost certain privileges. In three months of class this is the first time a note has been sent home. When I thought about the day the little girl had, I realized that pictures had been made at her preschool that morning, changing her routine. She never recovered from the change and she could not fall into her normal routine at the special ed class.

Since that day there have been no notes. Routines have returned to normal and she has settled down.

As an adult, I must have structure and routine. Without it I often forget have the things I am supposed to do. If it’s that difficult for me, I can only imagine how a child deals with issues.

My son’s name is Jonathan A.J. He chose this name for himself. His name used to be Jonathan Alexander Jay, so his new name is much easier to spell. When Jonathan first came to live with us we were concerned with his speech and his auditory processing. He was 4 at the time but had the vocabulary of a two year old. He had great difficulty in understanding questions. Thanks to a wonderful speech teacher, and a special education teacher he is no longer in speech. Each day he amazes me with just how smart he really is. Currently enrolled in a Pre-K class, he is finding Dr Seuss books fascinating. He is a class example of how you environment effects your learning abilities. If you have a child having learning difficulties search your local county school system for services to assist you with helping your child reach their greatest potential.

In the last 45 days I have gone from fostering a almost six year old boy to being his adoptive mother. This process moved faster than I expected. There are foster families in the county that I am from that should have completed the adoption process for the children in their homes long before I did. It all has to do with the attorney you have representing you. All children in foster care in Catoosa County, Georgia have as their legal council a local attorney by the name of Jennifer Hildebrand Ms. Hildebrand s a local law office and handles divorce cases, custody cases and adoption cases. Yes, adoption cases. Since she represents the children in their DFCS cases she is familiar with the system and the local judges. I signed adoption papers with DFCS on February 2^nd and on February 18^th my final adoption decree was granted, less than 3 weeks later. There are other families in the area that have signed papers with DFCS in December that are still waiting for their court dates. I am thankful that I chose Ms. Hildebrand as my attorney.

After  fostering a little boy for nearly 18 months my husband and I have signed adoption papers; he is now a permanent part of our family. Adoptive was the biggest reason my husband and I became foster parents, but over the last 4 1/2 years of fostering  my philosophy about fostering has changed.

Children enter foster care for many different reasons. Somethings the parents do bad things but for the most part, parents are trying to do the best they can. These parents may not have had the greatest of childhoods themselves and do not know the best way to parent their own children.

Over the last five years I have dealt with several parents that have just needed encouragement and proper direction in their lives. These parents have gotten their children back, and are doing a good job at raising their children.

When you hear the words, foster children, keep an open mind.

Children enter state custody and foster care for various reasons. Some parents just need a little help to get back on their feet and find proper housing for their families. Sometimes the parents do have  issues they must deal with, drugs, alcohol, jail time, and once these issues are dealt with parents can begin working on reuniting with their children.  As responsible adults in society we need to make every effort to support and encourage these struggling parents. Often times an encouraging word may all it takes to push these parents to  focus on the right things to do for survival of their family.   I fostered a sibling group of three for ten months , before the children returned home to their dad. This was over two and 1/2 years ago and I am still in contact with this family today. The calls are still about supporting the parents, encouraging them and reassuring them when they have to make tough parenting decisions. I feel  good about the influence I am making on this family.

My 5 year old unfortunately has a 7 year old sister in foster care in another state. She did not enter care until October of last year.  This child has not talked to his sister since October. The foster mom she was living with and I were working on these two children having regular calls when the little girl had a breakdown and had to be placed in a more therapeutic foster home.  Since that time we have missed two phone calls from the little girl. Last night the sister called again and the two children got to talk to each other. I was concerned a little because we have begun discussing with the 5 year old about adoption and what it means. He is excited about being adopted and I was afraid he was going to share the news with his sister last night.  He wasn’t very focused on the call so the adoption talk did not come up, but the sister called again tonight. She was worried about her brother last night.  I did not get a chance to prevent the discussion, the child was excited to tell his sister he was going to be adopted.  I am not sure how well the girl will deal with what she was told. More importantly, she talks to their mom every Monday night and I am sure she will tell mom what the boy said.  Since we have not heard from Mom in two months I will be curious to see if she calls next week. I hope the little girl does not have a difficult time with this.

Today was day thirty, the last day parents had to file an appeal in the courts again the termination of rights the juvenile court judge granted DFCS. I have not heard from DFCS  about an appeal so I am hoping that this is a good sign. Monday is the day we have an appointment with DFCS to sign intent to adopt papers. I will try to breath between now and Monday , but it will not be easy.

The medicine of choice for the five year old with ADHD is Concerta. We had started with Adderall but this medicine caused the child to be moody and depressed so we tried the Concerta and it has been a hugh success. The one down side to this medicine is the child does not want to sleep. We are up at 6:30 each morning, no nap, and if we let him the child will stay up until 10 pm at night. I let him stay up one Friday night just to see his dropping point and it was 10 pm, but he was back up at 6:30 Saturday morning. When I discussed options with his doctor about the sleep problem he suggested we try Melatonin. I purchased the lowest doze of the medicine and we gave it a try. The melatonin helped him get to sleep and I was pleased, that is until Monday of this week.  Monday was our regular visit with the Psychologist that diagnosed him with ADHD. He was all over the place acting crazy, turning flips. She decided to retest for the ADHD. Low and behold, the test was showing clinical numbers on the positive side for ADHD, something you should not see if a child is taking medication. He tested scores had been great when tested shortly after beginning the medicine. The only thing different now was the melatonin. She suggested we stop the melatonin and see what happens. I was amazed at the change in the behavior once he stopped taking the drug. I am not sure what exactly how the herbal drug effected the ADHD medicine, but obviously it did since he has calmed down and can focus again. We will try to find another avenue to help him get to sleep at night.

My four year  old is a little girl. She has confirmed learning disabilities in the areas of speech and communication. She test at about a 2 1/2 year old in most communication areas. She currently attends special classes to assist with this problem. At home we work on things like counting to 10; not there yet, and saying our ABC’s; we get to G.  We have been successful with learning to spell our name, say our birth date and our age.  Somehow she has learned our phone number, not something we have even worked on together. I can only believe she learned it from listening to a 5 year old in my home learn the number.  All this history  so the stage is set for today’s update.  The child has a neat ABC puzzle. It’s a wood puzzle that has the letters on the board underneath the puzzle pieces. Today, for the first time every, she put all the pieces back on the puzzle correct on her very first try, TWICE!  I took the opportunity to spell her name out with the letters. We then touched each letter as we spelled her name. We repeated this about 20 times then I asked her to show me certain letters from her name. She could not do it; she kept trying to find the letters from the letters not in her name!

She can not play by herself; she has to be with the boys and manages to sneak by us to go to their room. She did this today and we heard a horrible noise!  It seems she had picked up a big Lego block, headed up the ladder to the top bunk of the boys bunk beds(of which she got in trouble for yesterday as she was jumping on the top bunk hitting the ceiling) and threw  the block into the light cover  shattering it everywhere.  She had no clue where she was throwing the block or what it would do!

Yesterday , when walking to tell my husband hello when he got home she drew back her fist and hit him in the stomach about an inch above his private parts. She packs a punch, he’s not a little man and this punch caused him some pain. She had no clue!

There are times when we question exactly, to what extent, her learning disabilities are, the last two days have made us question it even more.