The Waiting Game

I knew that most people don't get matched right away, but I also knew we were going to get matched right away. One month, two, or maybe three months tops. And so I started mentally preparing for parenthood. Not just any parenthood - parenting two traumatized kids at different developmental levels requiring completely different approaches to help them heal. Megaparenthood. That's what I was preparing for. And it was going to happen by July for sure, probably sooner. I started viewing my job very differently - as a paycheck and a place to put in my time and go home to what was going to become my real purpose, my real life. I was cutting back on long-term commitments because pretty soon I wouldn't have time anymore. I was racing to make my way through a staggering list of books about foster kids, trauma, race, belonging, attachment, loss, grief, healing, fear of sleeping, food hoarding before I ran out of time to read. I was gearing up for my life to completely change direction. And gearing up. And gearing up. And gearing up.

Just when I was starting to think maybe we weren't going to be matched right away after all, we got a call and we were looking at going into disclosure. The kids didn't exactly match our search parameters, but some special circumstances of what the kids were going through made our hearts go out them. We thought, could these be our kids? I was researching hair types, care, and maintenance. I was gearing up for raising Black kids in today's world, where brown bodies are unvalued, dismissed, feared, and slaughtered in the streets by the very police force they pay tax dollars to serve and protect their communities. 

The disclosure process surprised me. The professionals there were looking for just the right family for these two, very special kids who had been through a lot of heartbreak and trauma. The social workers, therapist, and program manager were extremely invested in these kids. They gave us 200 pages of information about the kids' history, including birth and medical records, every report their social workers had written from intake to monthly visits, and school and therapy progress reports. We read through them page by page at home, soaking in every detail, trying to know the kids through badly photocopied official forms and descriptions of their personalities, likes and dislikes. The older kid loved dancing and the younger one loved Frozen and jumping rope. The older one was social and boisterous. The younger one shy and reserved.

I had so many questions. I knew for sure that I could love these children, that I already did love them. And I knew I was dying to be a parent. But I worried that these kids were not mine, that I was not theirs. They were outside of our search parameters and I feared that I would come to resent them for not being the children I had been looking for. With some of the things they had been through and the expectations that had unfairly been put upon them by their birth family, I worried that I would add to those unfair expectations, wanting them to be different than who they were. They deserved a family that wanted every part of them. 

I felt overwhelmingly guilty. Why couldn't I be the right parent for these kids? Why were these kids not enough for me? Who was I to reject them? What was wrong with me that I couldn't open my heart and home to these beautiful, lovable children? But I came to realize that I had opened my heart to them, that I loved them enough to say that they deserved the right parents and that I was not that.

I often hear people insinuate that we would be the best parents for any children out there, probably because we are unusually well-read and educated about the issues of trauma, grief, and identity that pervade the foster system, and because of our experience with children and knowledge of child development. It is true that many people go into foster parenting and fost-adoption with very little knowledge on these subjects and sometimes little to no experience with kids at all. But we are not the perfect match for every child, or even the best match out there. Children are individuals, with individual circumstances and needs. There are kids who have birth siblings in Madera that really need a family that can provide frequent visits with their siblings. There are kids with significant medical needs or are medically fragile, and kids that really need a stay-at-home parent for several years. There are kids that act out their own experiences of abuse by hurting animals, and need a home without pets until they can heal and learn to be caring and have their needs met in a healthy way. All of these kids need and deserve families that are willing and able to meet them where they are, provide for them in the unique ways that are necessary for them to thrive.

And so we lovingly said no, which broke our hearts in a way that is very difficult to describe. The only comfort I have is knowing that their social workers and therapist will find the best possible parents for these two children.

For us personally, this devastating process brought one positive outcome: we became clearer on our search parameters. We solidified our own understanding of what we were looking for. We were told by our social worker and several other professionals that we were smart to wait for the right match, that we were doing the right thing by not rushing into the wrong match. And now we just had to wait for the right kids to come along.

What followed was a long period of radio silence. Months went by without a word from our social worker. I emailed to check in: had we been forgotten? Were they annoyed that we had gone into disclosure and then said no? Were we being cast aside for being too picky? No, we were assured. They were still looking out for the right kids for us, they hadn't seen any potential matches, but they were still looking. They still wanted us to stick to our gut feeling about what we were looking for. They told us that we were still considered to be early in the process and that it was not at all unusual for people to search much longer than this to find the right match. I began to realize that, in going into this process, you and outsiders are very concerned with how long it will take, viewing waiting parents as being on a list that they will eventually rise to the top of, like waiting in line at a bakery. In reality, the process is far more complicated than that. It is important and takes courage for parents to wait for the right match, and in the end it won't matter how long it took if the match is the right one.

But during this wait, a number of things happen. I'm sure many people experience it differently, but I know I am not alone in my own feelings and experiences because when I have expressed them to other waiting parents or other parents who have been through this process, they say "yes, I know exactly how that feels." 

I'm sure it is easy to imagine that I want this waiting process to go faster, but I would also be just as happy to have someone tell me that I would not be a parent for at least another 10 months. When I tell people this, their first response is often that it would be nice to make travel plans and know what I can commit to on my calendar. But that is truly the least of my worries when it comes to not knowing how long this will take. What is far more difficult to navigate is the emotional process of mentally preparing to be a parent without knowing when it will happen. I watched as my friends got pregnant, mentally and physically readied themselves for an approximate deadline, had their babies, took parental leave, came back to work, and commiserated with friends and colleagues about their collective experiences along the way. Although I have never wanted to become pregnant or have biological kids, I deeply envy the routine and predictability of their process to parenthood. I know there are plenty of "unpredictables" throughout their process, but when compared to fost-adoption, pregnancy and birth seem to consist of a very fixed set of relative similarities.

In this limbo I'm in, I am oscillating and disoriented. At first I wanted to take advantage of this time and read as much as possible about parenting foster kids, gather as many tools for my tool belt as I could. But the yearning to be a parent became more and more overwhelming as I read about kids like the ones I am going to have. I found myself feeling desperate for parenthood, like nothing else mattered except getting to parenthood. Then I worried that I was building it up in an unhealthy way - that when I got to parenthood I would be so stressed and overwhelmed that I would wonder why I didn't enjoy my non-parenthood while I had the chance.

So I started indulging in things that I knew would be much harder to have later on, like lots of quiet time, binge-watching shows, sleeping in, and taking naps. Ever-so-helpful parents of biological children would say things like, "Enjoy it while you still can, because pretty soon you won't have time for anything and won't have any sleep!" I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this, without an ounce of awareness of how extremely different my path to parenthood is than theirs.

As an aside, many foster kids have a deep fear of sleeping (it is the ultimate vulnerability to be unconscious), and can take a year or more to sleep consistently and healthily. On the other hand, some foster kids have no trouble sleeping whatsoever and will easily sleep through the night within a few days of moving in. The minority of foster kids that happen to be newborn babies have been inexplicably snatched from the mother they have been attaching to for months in the womb and are confused and terrified. Many of them are medically fragile because of substances they were exposed to in the womb, and may have tremors, need methadone, be severely underweight, and need feeding every 45 minutes. But the majority of foster kids are older, are developing attachments in unique ways and at their own pace, and may or may not have trouble sleeping. So thank you so much for telling me about the sleep I'm about to lose. What would I do without your vast and thoughtful wisdom?

Because of the nonstop, consistently unhelpful advise I get when I tell people that I am struggling with this wait, I have withdrawn a lot and don't give many details to most people. This is difficult for me because I am a distinctly not-private person. I like telling people personal details of my life. I am an open book. I do want to reach out more to other waiting parents and people who have gone through this before, which I keep telling myself I will do and I keep not doing. Of course I do have a couple of friends who bizarrely just know what to say without having been through this process at all, and countless others who are humble enough to assume they don't know everything, eager to learn, and quick to find out how they can support us. I really do appreciate all of them, and I know I will rely on them even more when this whole parenthood shit hits the fan.

But I'm so tired of hearing parents of four kids complain about how chaotic their life is as if their four kids appeared out of nowhere and the parents are heroes for stepping up to this completely unavoidable and unexpected challenge. I'm not unsympathetic to people for their struggles regardless of how those struggles came to be, but I hate that parenthood is the default for people, that it's viewed as a noble and selfless thing to bring additional people into an overpopulated world that has an excess of kids that need homes, that so many people make the decision to become parents with little or no consideration of whether or not they actually want to be parents, that people who decide not to have kids are unusual and often looked down upon. I don't begrudge anyone wanting to have biological kids that really want to have biological kids, and I know some really fabulous parents. I just dislike how many people really don't desire to be parents but just kind of do it, and then act like I should be grateful for their suffering through parenthood as their contribution to society. (To clarify, none of my friends are those people who shouldn't have had kids, but I know plenty of people who only ever wanted the idea of kids, and I have very little respect for those people).

So here I am. So close to parenthood, but not a parent. Waiting not only for kids, but for a basic timeline of major life changes, a mental map of what other cultures and identities I will be incorporating into my life, what color of dolls to buy, which hair and skin products I will need, how to decorate the kids' rooms, and the confidence to tell people to fork off when they don't know what the hell they are talking about. At least I hope I will have that confidence when I am a parent and will feel I have the street cred to say it, because right now I feel like I'm not allowed to say it as a non-parent. And right now, a non-parent is all that I feel I am.

Finding A Match

Now that we are on the brink of getting certified, I am getting a lot of questions about the matching process! So here it is to the best of my knowledge:

Step 0: Get certified
You can't look at any potential matches whatsoever until you are fully and officially certified. This is why we are looking forward to Monday when we can sign off on our final paperwork and start looking at kiddos!

Step 1: Looking for matches or waiting for matches
You can be as passive or proactive as you want during the matching process. Some parents choose to sit back and wait for their social worker to find matches for them. Others will be in the office every month looking at new cases that have come in and identifying which ones they want their social worker to pursue. 

Step 2: Reaching out
For any kids we might be interested in, our social worker will reach out to the kids' social worker to express interest and send our homestudy (that 15-20 page document they wrote about us). At this time, our social worker may also call us if a case comes up that she thinks might fit our profile. We can say no to any potential match. For example if we wanted kids of a particular age, ethnicity, level of special needs, etc, those parameters are all enumerated in our homestudy, and we will use our parameters to guide our search.

Step 3: Disclosure Meeting
Once a child social worker comes back to our social worker and says they think we might be a match, we set up a disclosure meeting. This meeting includes us, our social worker, the kids' social worker, the kids' lawyer, and the kids' therapist(s) or other professionals working with them. This meeting lasts several hours and during this time we hear everything they know about the kids, everything they know the kids have been exposed to (abuse, neglect, domestic violence, etc), any behaviors they have seen, and where the kids are in the legal process. We can also ask any questions we may have.

Step 4: Baby, Think It Over
After the disclosure meeting, we will meet privately with our social worker and determine whether there are any red flags from her perspective (obvious ones would be intentional harm to animals or fire starting*, but our social worker will also know the more subtle things to ask about). Then we sleep on it and think it over and decide whether to move forward or not. If not, we start over. If we move forward, that means we are committing ourselves to the kids. They don't want us to meet the kids if we aren't committed. (Imagine if a pregnant person gave birth and then said "well, i don't really like her, so let's give this one away and try again.")

Step 5: Meet the kids
Our social worker and the kids' social worker will work with the kids' current foster parents to set up a time for us to come to their house and meet the kids. We will bring the book we made with photos of our house so that they have something to imagine and it's not just a scary, mysterious place. We will also bring a gift for each kid to break the ice. We will be introduced as "friends" of the current foster parents.

Step 6: Transition
We will set up a time to come back and take them out to a park, then another time we will have them over to our house for dinner, then have them over for a sleepover, then for a weekend. This allows us to build up trust with them, to show them that we follow up on our promises, and to ease them into our family and our home.

Step 7: Moving in
When the kids' social worker thinks the kids are ready for it, we will set a move-in date with the court. This will also become the first day of our parental leave from work. Our social worker will visit once a week for the first month and then every other week to see how we are doing, see how the kids are, ask if we need support or paperwork, and help us keep track of any requirements we have (taking them to the doctor/dentist within 30 days of placement, getting authorization paperwork for access to special education services, etc).

Step Alternative 5-7: Rushing it
The transition described above often spans 2-4 months and is very beneficial to both the kids and parents. Anytime it is possible to do that transition slowly, it is done in this way. However, about 25% of the time, that transition must be rushed. Usually this is because the kids need to be moved as soon as possible to a new home, like if the current foster family suddenly has to move out of state to care for a sick parent, for example. If the kids are going to be moved suddenly to a new home, they would rather it be the kids' future adoptive home so as to minimize the number of transitions. For this reason, it is possible that we would get a phone call asking if we are interested in becoming a parent in two days, set up an immediate disclosure meeting, and get an immediate move-in date. This is why we don't know if we will have any lead time on when we are going to be parents. One set of adoptive parents we met got a call about a kid with a move in date five days later. They managed to get the kid's foster mom to bring him over to their house once before he moved in so that it was less of a shock. More likely once we get matched we will have some sort of transition, as well as some sort of idea of when they might move in with us.


* Note: Kids who have done intentional harm to animals or started fires absolutely deserve loving homes and families. Nevertheless, every family has to decide what they can or cannot commit to before any kid comes into the picture. It is incredibly harmful for a kid, especially one with developmental trauma, to bounce in and out of a home because the parents didn't know what they were signing up for. A single parent household or a household with two working parents may not be the best family for a medically fragile kid or a kid with extreme behavior challenges, for example.

Foster Care Regulations: Ug, What A Pain!

Foster care is full of regulations that at first glance may seem obnoxious and unnecessary. For example, anytime you take your kids out of your home county, you have to run it by the children's social worker. And if you are going to take them out of county overnight, you may have to give quite a bit of notice so that the social worker can get a judge to sign off. What's the big deal? If I live in Palo Alto and want to go to the zoo in San Jose, I have to get permission??

Well, let me tell you a story. A few decades ago, a man named Jim Jones was building a cult, and he encouraged his cult families to become foster homes. They brought the foster kids with them when the cult moved to South America. In 1978 Jones organized a mass murder-suicide, poisoning and killing almost 600 adults and over 300 children, many of whom were foster children. After this massacre, investigators found that not one of the children's social workers knew of the kids' whereabouts.

For every foster care regulation that inconveniences families on a daily basis, there is an underlying protective purpose that makes the extra effort worthwhile. So we are going to try to be patient and grateful for these inconveniences because they make it much more difficult for dangerous people to hurt foster kids.