The Beginning of Our Fostering Journey

I have so many thoughts I haven’t yet been able to record because things started happening so fast! This past summer we completed a 24-hour Pressley-Ridge training class with our fostering agency, Youth Care of Oklahoma. Following our training, we finished up our home study and then had an interview for Intensive Therapeutic Foster Care. Six days later we were matched with a placement!

Intensive Therapeutic Foster Care, or ITFC, is a new program in Oklahoma. Its goal is to get kids out of group homes and back into traditional families and to eventually step down to a lower level of care. In other words, the idea is to take the “hard kids” and help them learn to function in a family setting. That’s not a fair way of looking at it though. These aren’t really hard kids; these are kids who have come from hard pasts and endured things no child should ever have to endure. They have been denied the benefit of having a safe and nurturing home and need someone to teach them what that looks like and how to exist within a safe and loving family.

For about a year, our family had been planning and preparing to adopt an elementary aged girl from DHS custody. But when I decided to quit teaching and stay home we realized that we could be a great foster family and so we began to pursue that. With our shift in focus from adoption to fostering, we also shifted our focus from girls only to either gender. So that’s how we went from planning to adopt a girl to being matched with a 9-year-old boy.

It just so happened that when we got the call about our placement, my husband was home for lunch, which never happens. We put the phone on speaker and listened as our caseworker shared all the details about Little Man, his current placement in a group home, his trauma, how long he has been in care, and how many placements he has had in that time. If that had been all we had to go on, we would have said yes. As it was, the more our caseworker talked about Little Man, the more perfect we realized our family would be for him, and he for us. At the end of the phone call, our caseworker told us to take some time that afternoon to talk it over and then let her know by the next morning. But we had already looked at each other and agreed without words that we wanted him. We told her we didn’t need any time to talk it over — we couldn’t wait for him to come home to us!

Initially, we had been told that once a placement was found for our home, he would move in within 48 hours. So it was very surprising to find out that our foster kiddo’s therapist wanted to transition him a bit more slowly. He gave us an almost two-week window. It felt like forever! We arranged for a phone call and two visits during that time.

Our first conversation with Little Man was on a Saturday in a FaceTime call. He was at the zoo on a field trip but was very excited to talk to us and was very chatty. My husband and I huddled together so he could see both of us on the screen and we kept squeezing each other with excitement. It wasn’t hard to like this little guy. Two days later we hopped in the car and drove the hour and forty-minute drive to the group home where Little Man has been for almost a year. We could tell he had been anxiously awaiting our arrival because he was outside riding his scooter right next to the parking area and gave us a good hard look when we pulled up. We spent about three hours with him that morning just watching him show us “tricks,” asking him questions, answering his questions, and showing him pictures of our family and home. Before we left we asked if he would like to come live with us for a while. He said, “Yeah, you guys are gonna be my foster parents. I get to stay for a whole week?” We tried to help him understand that a foster placement was a long-term thing, but in his mind, it might be two or three weeks and that would be a long time. It was so heartbreaking to realize that he has been bounced around so many times, that he has no concept of how long a foster placement is supposed to last or what a loving family is supposed to look like. Nine years old and he has never had anyone he could really trust.

Four days after that first visit, Little Man came for an overnight visit at our home. The girls were so thrilled to finally meet him and especially to show him his bedroom. My husband was at work, so the girls and I went to pick him up ourselves. The drive home was a bit comical, as I was already managing things I hadn’t expected to manage quite so soon. Things like bad words, “We don’t say that word, Little Man, we say this instead.” He started to talk about some of what he had been through and I knew it wasn’t anything my girls needed to hear about so I intervened there too. “Let’s talk about that later when it’s just you and me, buddy.” But the girls peppered him with questions, “What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite animal? “What kind of pizza do you like?” Less than two hours after meeting him my oldest, who is just 11 days older than him, whispered to him, “You’re the best brother ever!”

Our time together went really well. Of course, it was exhausting in some ways, because it takes a lot of time and attention to help a new kid understand what’s expected and allowed in our home — where he can go without asking, what he can eat, how he should act, and so on. Not to mention the fact that our little guy has trouble accepting “no.” He doesn’t necessarily argue in the way you might expect, but he seems to try to find a way around the “no.” 

“Can I have a cookie?”

“Sure bud, you can have that cookie after lunch. We’ll eat in ten minutes and then you can have the cookie.”

“I’m just going to eat it before lunch.”

“Nope. I need you to put it back on the plate and save it for after lunch. It’s important to eat healthy foods before you have sweets.”

“Okay, well I’ll just eat half of it now.”

“Nope. I already told you to save it for after lunch and that’s still my answer.”

“I’m just gonna look in the fridge for something to eat then.”

All. Day. Long. It cracks me up, but it’s kind of exhausting too!

But Little Man is a super sweet kid. He definitely doesn’t trust us yet. That’s going to take some time. And he says he has never had his own bedroom, so he is really nervous about sleeping on his own. It’s something we’ll have to work through. And I’ll have to find times for naps during the day for a while until he gets the hang of staying in bed all night!

We had such a great time together and spent a lot of time talking about how after the visit we would only have to wait six days to be together again. We made a paper chain together that he took back with him so he could count down the days. The kids made bracelets together so that all five of us could have matching bracelets to remind us of each other while we were apart for those six days. We picked out bedding for Little Man’s bed so that it could look just the way he wanted when he returns. We even took a family picture together so that I could hang it on the wall before he came back. All this and yet when we took him back to the group home he looked up at my husband and said, “Are you really coming back for me in six days?”

I can’t wait to prove to him that he can trust us! Friday we have intake and then he will be home with us. It will be a big transition for all of us, but I know that God’s hand is in this and I can’t wait to see what he does in our lives!