Parent and Child Reunion (foster parenting edition)

Yesterday, Val and Alex got to see both their parents for the first time since Halloween, if I remember correctly. It had been way too long for a four-year-old and five-year-old who missed their incarcerated parent terribly. That parent was released yesterday morning and both arrived at our house right before I got the kids home from school, so they were able to spend an hour together before their parents had to go to one of the mandatory classes the non-incarcerated parent has been taking for months and months. Getting your kids back takes work, and these people are absolutely doing the work.

It great to see both how happy and relaxed both kids were with their parents, but it also seemed good for all of us that the kids got overstimulated and exhausted and emotional and they got to see their parents and foster parents address it in a consistent and supportive way. When Alex went into the living room with a sippy cup, his dad said, “Well at least he can’t spill that as easily as usual!” and I said that he was doing better, generally getting almost to the end of the meal before spilling his drink. His mom laughed and said, “Yeah, but how many times has he fallen out of his chair by then? He always does that!” And maybe that sounds cruel written out, but there was sort of a palpable exhalation then as the three of us acknowledged that yes, our interactions with him while he’s been in my care, at home with both parents before entering care, with the other parent at the visits during the incarceration have all been about the same kid we all love and mop up after with stunning regularity.

It’s always been clear how much their parents love them, but seeing Alex’s mom cry because she’s so proud of him as he showed her how he can write his name now (albeit with most of his letters mirrored) was just awesome. Seeing Val curl up between her parents as they casually draped their arms around her showed how ready they are to go back to normal day-to-day family life. Val showed off her homework and the hairstyle her half-sister had given her over the weekend. Meanwhile, I was able to empty the dishwasher and tidy up the kitchen without having to worry about what the kids were up to. They were being parented. They were safe, secure, happy.

I’m tying up the loose ends to get us ready to transition them back to their parents’ care, whenever that will happen. We’re still a week or two away from the meeting where the details will be decided, but I’ve gotten their cavities sealed, taken them to the eye doctor. I’ll print out a list of all the doctors they’ve seen and when they’re supposed to go back again. I gave their parents a big stack of photos, but I’ll also have to gather all the pictures I’ve taken and make sure I burn cds or something to make sure the parents have copies of all the originals and can get more made if they ever want to. I need to finish the kids’ lifebooks, which in this case will be a little bit about where they lived before coming to us and then mostly just what they did while with us, and get them printed.

Assuming everything stays on track, starting after school Friday the kids will get their first weekend with their parents since before they came to us in September. They’ll be spending the school week with us and their weekends with their parents until we have a plan to do more time there (which would be logistically difficult as they’ll be living almost 30 minutes away) or move them permanently.

Lee has been doing so much better these past few weeks. She’s taking a more active role in parenting to some extent, but mostly it’s just that she’s supporting me in ways that are actually helpful. When we have our weekends without Val and Alex, our little family, she’s been making it a priority to stay with us and be actively involved with us, where in the past she’d have wanted to go out and socialize with her friends or take long naps or watch sports with minimal interruptions. I still don’t know whether this means fostering again might be in the cards for us, but it’s made my life so much better and improved our relationship significantly.

I know there’s been a lot of grief in this whole process — Val and Alex missing their parents and the relative who’d been raising them, their parents deeply hurt by their lack of access to the kids, what I think was Lee’s trauma-influenced response to having extra kids around, the way I had to put my life on hold to pick up the slack, Mara’s chance to love another “brother” and “sister” who won’t live with her forever — I also think it’s been as positive as it could be in many ways. I don’t think the kids’ parents would have been as open with us as they have been if this had been the kids’ first placement after removal, but they’d had time to get used to the idea of separation and were able to want the kids’ needs to be met while they got themselves ready to parent again. Our worker thinks that it helped that I laid the groundwork for trusting and supporting them from the very beginning, made it clear that they were welcome in our family and our lives because their children were going to be a part of our family and our lives. The more time I spend at the foster parent support group, the more I realize how rare that is, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes I really think just because the foster families are insecure. While I assume Val and Alex will have to switch schools and that grates when the reason we accepted a placement outside our parameters was to keep them in their schools, they’ve gotten through half the year with that stability and security and I’m sure that being with their parents will help smooth the transition to a new school. And the odds are good that if they’d gone to another home rather than ours, it wouldn’t have been in the rural area where their relatives live and so they’d be changing schools for a second time this year, which is definitely not good. Val and Alex have had their ups and downs, but their teachers and parents agree that they’re thriving here, that we’ve helped them do well in school and emotionally, which I hope will help give them the grounding to get them through their next move.

They could be with us another month, but it was clear to all of us that yesterday was the beginning of the end. And it was a beautiful thing.

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