The Brady Bunch..Sorta

Summer 2002

By the middle of summer in 2002, we felt like a family, and I felt like I'd been doing this forever, not just over a year. We developed a game to play with the girls to give them an opportunity to earn rewards. See, we're big fans of two reality TV shows: Survivor, and Big Brother. So we started giving the girls Big Brother Challenges. Like, for instance, we obtained chop sticks from a local Chinese restaurant, and played Egg-Foo-Young...first they had to hold an egg with their chop sticks and run a specific pattern in the yard, handing the egg off to the next like in a relay. Then they had to use their chop sticks to tie their shoes (which rhymes with foo), and last they had to hold a piece of sidewalk chalk with the chop sticks and write their name on the driveway (they are young). All this had to be done in a certain amount of time. For this they earned dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

I guess, in going back and writing about my life as a foster parent, it's making me look at all the things I did with my girls that made our house a family rather than just a foster home. Like I said, I often look back at these times with my girls and wish it were still like that. I long for my family, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that our time together was so short. And never since that time have we had that same feeling of family in our home.

So that summer, we were blessed with three more kids...boys. They were younger, one a toddler, Hank, and the other two brothers, 6 and 8, Owen and Ivan. Of course, the girls and I instantly fell in love with Hank. It's really hard not to immediately fall in love with the babies! And I suppose that's best, because they are at a crucial developmental stage when they learn to love and be loved, and they need their caregivers to do just that. The brothers were a bit more of a challenge. They'd been in another foster home who couldn't handle them anymore, and the deal was, they were waiting for all the red tape to be gone through to get moved to a relative in another state. We took them and were told it would be for about a month.

Owen and Ivan have a place in my heart that probably nobody else can go. They were very special boys who needed so much! And yet, they were near impossible to handle. The younger one, Owen, would get in so much trouble, the year before while he was with his last foster parents, he'd been kicked off the school bus indefinitely...on the first day of school. And he was only in kindergarten. Ivan was different, he was a charmer. People thought he was an angel. But if you listened at their bedroom door, you could hear him telling Owen to do things that would only get Owen in trouble. You could hear him saying things that would send Owen into a rage. Has anyone seen the Omen? J/K J/K

Anyway, a month turned into two, and suddenly we were registering the boys for school. Hank was doing well, catching up...he was nearly two, and we had to teach him to eat solid food, walk, and start making talking sounds. Allee especially fell in love with him, and worked with him a lot. I think he was as good for her as she was for him. Owen and Ivan were starting to wear our patience thin. We actually had to start putting them in respite care almost every weekend towards the end of their stay with us. By mid September, I was hounding their case worker almost daily to see where things were with getting them to their relatives. (They were with us into October.)

This brought about a new feeling for me. I loved these boys, and I still think about them often. I hope they are well, and have found their place in the world. But I found myself needing them to move on, and I was conflicted...how do you feel that way about someone you love...about a child? The mom in Florida, who wants to unadopt her adopted son...I understand that. When you have kids who are emotionally and physically destructive, you have to start thinking about a bigger picture. You have to think about everyone in the home, and what's going to be best for all. Owen and Ivan needed a smaller family, people who could spend a lot more one on one with them. Not all kids do well in large families, and we would always be a large family. Some kids are going to need special care that will involve therapy, even psycho-therapy, and medications, and a house full of people will only over-stimulate them and hinder any progress they could make in a less populated house.

Now, to add to my feelings of conflict over finally getting these kids moved to their relative, in the years since, I've kept track of them. They eventually ended up back in Idaho in foster care because the relatives used corporal punishment, and probably went a little further than spanking. Then I found them on Wednesday's Child, looking for an adoptive home. My guilt grew because I knew the chances of them being adopted at their age was slim, of staying together even slimmer. But I have to keep telling myself I did the right thing for my family...they were never going to stay with us permanently anyway, I just pushed to speed up the process of getting them moved to their relatives.

But before they left, something very exciting happened...Annie came home. She'd been gone 8 long months, and that August, she was home again. I'll tell you more next time.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.