We have been foster parents for about 13 years now.  We have had many different kids come through our door, their stories may be similar but they are all unique little people.  They immediately bond with certain members of the family, differs every time and after 58 kids I see no pattern in how that works.  Everyone has their “special” little ones that come through.  

The calls we get in the middle of the night, and the calls for the kids who have experienced abuse and are literally broken are the ones that we just can’t say no to.  It’s a wake up call for any drama going on in our lives…we have it pretty damn good.  There is NOTHING that compares to having a worker show up at midnight with a sleepy child, who is scared and really not wanting to be passed off to another adult saying that they are now going to be safe.  They have just lost everything familiar to them, no matter how scary or abusive it was.  It was home, it was what they knew.

I think about the note I write if our kids are with a babysitter – how much/what they eat, how often, if they prefer a back rub at bedtime or to be put in bed with a story and a sippy cup of water, do they take a pacifier? or have a nickname? The list is long…and when kids come to us, we get their name and birth day and sometimes even that isn’t right!  We do a lot of guessing and get many “are you crazy?” looks when we try what the norm is for our kids.  We once had a little girl who only ate things that came out of packages.  We learned this quickly – and put carrots into mini chip bags and as long as it came out of a package she was good.  After about a week of her being at our house, we drove through McDonalds for a quick dinner and she was so excited, bounced up and down in the backseat yelling “yay, food!”  In her mind, we were finally feeding her!

Daily life is so different, depending on the family.  I think we are pretty typical, but I am told so often that we aren’t.  I keep going back to the saying, “Will it be easy? Nope.  Worth it? Absolutely.”