Our Foster Care Future

It’s time for our yearly renewal of our foster care license. Along with running around for physicals, finding things I need copies of, making sure we’ve taken our continuing ed classes, and filling out forms, we have to decide what our plan is for next year so we can be sure our license covers it.

Most people are aware that we have been doing respite care this year. Respite is basically just babysitting for other foster families or providing short term emergency care until a child can be placed in a home (we didn’t do any of these). We started in May when Ben turned 6 months. Our agency originally cautioned us to wait a year after having a baby, but I think that largely applies to taking in a full time child. You want to make sure your current family is established and healthy before taking a new addition in. We figured he was old enough to at least scream if anyone bothered him. All of the kids we have had loved playing with both of our kids, but seem really drawn to Ben because he’s a baby and needs help. We’ve had a ton of fun and really enjoy the kids. Since our agency is openly Christian, and the kids we get are coming from Christian foster homes, most of the time the parenting philosophies line up and similar household rules are in force so that makes everything really easy. Plus, when you only have kids for a short time, it doesn’t make sense to try to establish a lot of authority (only as much as you need to quench the short tantrums). Instead you basically get to be like “the grandparents”; keep them happy, wear them out, and then give them back. 🙂

So now we are at the year mark. Nate says, “Are you ready for three?” I say, “We’ve been doing four at a time almost every weekend this summer!”. We understand that is trivializing it a little bit and we both realize that having a full time placement will present new and different challenges, but we feel we are ready. We are starting to carve out the biological ages of our children from the ages we are willing to take into our home. Right now, that basically limits us to 4 and up. I suppose I could technically have had another infant by Jan, but that wouldn’t have been the way we planned a third bio and would probably cause a ruckus in Ben’s little world.

The Plan – Coming to the Moehring household Jan 2011
– We’d really like a school age kiddo, no sex preference.
– We’d really like one that has a reunification plan. While we would prayerfully consider adoption, right now we don’t believe that is the plan for us and whoever we get this year. Read more about our foster care philosophy here.

Pros:
– Primarily (and selfishly) because they will be at school for a large part of the day. This allows us to keep our established schedule with some slight modifications. Even a 4 yo would probably be in pre-k somewhere. I can still spend quality time with Hannah and Ben in the afternoons until time to pick them up.
– This also simplifies some things because if we got a younger kiddo, we have to figure out if our nanny is allowed to care for them and if we can get her paid through the state or out of our stipend and a lot of other little stuff.
– Although many people don’t do it this way (take in older than their bio kids and disrupt the birth order), it has been very nice to get some experience with an older child before my children get there. I feel like we learned a lot from our previous placement.
– I think its good for my kids. Of course, an older child with major issues could teach them some bad habits, but overall its good for them to have to share. Its good for them to see how mom and dad deal with certain things. Its good for them to be exposed to someone who has to do homework. Etc.

Cons:
– Older children do come with baggage. I don’t believe there is any more baggage than with younger children, but older ones usually are better able to verbalize. That means they are ready to process and work through some of that hurt and pain. In many ways that provides us with more opportunities to love them, but it will be challenging.
– School (I know I listed it on both categories). I’m not sure if I am ready for bullying, homework, teachers, other parents, and all the “we need your help” propoganda. Like I said above, it will be nice to gain some experience in this area before my children get there, but I’ll need some prayer in this area specifically.
– There is always a danger of any child we bring into the house being dangerous to our children. Older children are more dangerous than younger children just due to size and knowledge. I comfort myself that we are vigilant as parents, the children will never be left alone together until we are satisfied they are safe, and that God is watching out for them.

Since we are sensitive to confidentiality, I won’t be blogging anything specific regarding the upcoming experiences. Last time around we had an email list that we sent out updates to. It was very helpful to us to process some of the things we were going through and ask for prayer. If you would like to be on our list and support us in prayer, please leave a comment, give us a call or email, or let us know.