A and I are in the process of fostering to adopt (we think). We kind of "fell" into fostering, if you are not familiar we HAD to get licensed when we became legal guardians/foster parents to our two nieces. They lived with us from May 08' to May 09'. We never really thought about fostering before but since we are licensed and really want to grow our family, I convinced A to attempt adopting our second child this way. Honestly we have different views on it but we have somehow come to a middle ground and decided to go for it.
A is worried about falling in love with a child only to have the child taken from us. This is understandable but I feel like we will have plenty of time to come to terms if a child does in fact go home. I'm also trying to make him understand that we kind of have to go into it with reunification in mind since that is the ultimate goal of our foster care system.
A also does not want a child older than G. He feels very strong that G should be the eldest. At first I did not understand this...this time around it does not feel vital for me to have a newborn. Don't get me wrong, I would love any child including a newborn, I just know that I can love an older child too. But then I listen to A and it makes sense. He feels like during the first year of G's life, we were more focused on our nieces. Which is true in some ways, but he was young, he will not remember that...A also really wants G to be the first to do many things, like play baseball or go to school. It's really sweet of him but not all that practical if/when adopting through FC. He also would like to provide foster care to only one child. So if you think about it, we are really limiting ourselves....one child, less than 21 months old.
When we talked with our placement social worker (SW), she stated that she will try to accommodate our needs but that it might take awhile. We have officially been waiting since the 1st of October, so it hasn't been all that long. The thing is....I'm afraid we made the placement SWer's mad. You see they called several times with sibling groups and I turned them down....as hard as that is...I did. For the last four weeks they have not called at all. The last call, I never returned b/c somehow I skipped the vm. It was for a sister sibling group, they were three and five. I honestly would have twisted A's arm to let him live here but like I said I somehow skipped the message and didn't get it for a few days. When I finally heard it, it was so many days later I didn't bother to call. Now Nothing!
I also have a second theory...maybe they are not mad, they just realize that
I've been thinking about calling to clear up my concerns. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn't mind a sibling group, maybe I could convince A. After all we are older and we really want three or four kids so why not? We had three kids for a year and even though it was stressful, I know we could manage. The thing that I have to definitely keep in mind is that our decisions also effect my mother. She has watched G while I work since he was born and I know she would watch another child but two...not so sure.
In a nutshell, I want to call B.ethany but I also don't know how many more sibling groups I can turn down. I love my family and definitely want more kids, this seems to me like the obvious choice...now why can't A open his heart just a little more and not be so restrictive????
