It is 2:00 AM and I am up on facebook because I have littles that crawled into bed and its just not enough room because they are not so little anymore. So as I am going through facebook I come across a post that someone shared that really hit home and made me think. Here is the link to the post:
http://www.raisingarrows.net
It was titled why-large-family-moms-wont-tell-you-what-its-really-like
It has some great insight. This Mom has 8 or 9 kids and they are biological kids I'm assuming because it is not an adoption blog but a home school blog. Many of the things she shares are true and then I think there is even more when you are sharing the dynamic of adoption and/or foster care.
You can never make people outside the foster/adoptive world understand why you would choose to take in children that other people have given birth to, that are so damaged that they act out and lash out in such a way that others can not see the precious children they are.
You can not tell about the hours you spend sitting in the psych hospital waiting with this child that is telling you how much they hate you because you can not make these people understand that they hate you so much because they need you so much.
You cant tell about how you wash load upon load of laundry and consider yourself blessed on the day you do not have to wash pee sheets because no one had a nightmare last night.
You don't dare talk about how you have to have an exterminator come monthly to avoid bugs because of all the stashed food around the house from kids that hoard because they have been starved.
How the police know your family well because they come to your house so often to break up fights with teens, look for run aways, take suicidal kids to hospitals. They have been to your home so many times in fact they know where the coffee pot is and the rest room.
How the phone rings during school hours and you cringe hoping against hope it is not one of the schools but it usually is. How you have had to go to school to coax a child from behind bleachers, from under desks or out of a bathroom because they are having flash backs.
How you are constantly doing home repairs from teens punching holes in walls, kids peeling paint from walls during anxiety attacks, or just deliberately destroying the house because they have so much anger inside and don't know how to deal with it.
How you can not take your children to others homes because there are so many and they don't do well out of their routines or comfort zones.
We dont tell because there are over 397,000 children in the foster care system. We do not want to discourage even one person from stepping up and caring for these hurting children.
But we are always proud to tell of our children's accomplishments.
We are proud of the rare hug or I love you that some children give once a year because when it finally happens it makes it even more precious (Ashley Rooks)
We are proud of the B or C that our child made because they were making D and F because they cant keep up from being moved from home to home.
We love the fact that our kids learn to love and don't see race of disability because they have learned to be a family.
And yes we do let them move back home after they grow up and move away, sometimes again and again. Because we want them to grow up but we want them to know they will never be without a family again.
Comments