Three weeks ago our five year old foster daughter returned home to her birthmother. We have spent the 16 months of parenting her developing a strong relationship with her birth family. Not just developing a relationship with her parents, buts aunts, uncles, significant others, and grandparents as well. We worked on building this relationship for several reasons. First, we had parented this child for nearly a year when she was one and two years old. Therefore, we love her, we have known her for most of her life, and she feels like a member of our family. In addition, we adopted... more

How many times have you heard a foster parent complain about their children’s foster care worker? If your state’s foster care system is anything like ours, then probably too often, unfortunately. It has been our experience during 14 years of foster parenting that foster care workers do not stay at their job for very many years. Many are young, fresh out of college, without children of their own, when they start. They are full of ideas about changing the system or making a difference. They are confident in the parenting techniques they have learned at college and expect you to follow.... more

The day finally arrived for Ali, our last foster daughter, to say goodbye to our family and return home. She has been part of our family for 16 months, this time. She arrived a month before her fourth birthday, and now she is five. She also lived with us for nine months when she was one year old, which is why we took her back. (We were not going to foster any more children.) It was a busy day today; Ali had a vision appointment at 1:00 PM. We picked her mother up on the way to the vision appointment so she could be part of it. I had my two granddaughters with me who... more

A comment on a previous entry said that a family should not consider fostering children until their biological children are raised. The commenter said that the welfare of the biological children is at stake by bringing foster children into the home. Most of the foster parents that I know have biological children at home as well. If no one with biological children at home would foster children, we would probably have to regress to keeping children in orphanages. Let’s face it; few older people or childless people are willing to open their homes to abused or neglected children.... more

Our local newspaper is covering the desperate need for foster parents this month. As Jenna pointed out yesterday, May is National Foster Care Month. The national slogan for the month is “change a lifetime,” referring to the lives of children who enter foster care. It is a change all right. While the final results of living in foster care, usually outweigh the initial horror children experience when entering foster care, they rarely consider throwing a party over the whole experience. The... more

A reader posed a question to me after reading a blog I wrote for my daughter on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The blog was a reminder that racism and prejudice are alive and well in today’s world. I suggested that it is up to us parents, to change the world’s thinking, at home one child at a time. We cannot allow our children to make racist comments, repeat, or even listen to racist jokes at home. Educate your children about judging a person by his or her heart, actions, and words, instead of by the color of skin.

Here is the readers comment.

Question... more

Transitioning foster children back to their family home is a difficult process for everyone involved. Regardless of their ages, the children will act out if they have been in the foster home for more than a few weeks. The way they act out will depend on their maturity level. Younger children may start throwing temper tantrums and have difficulty sleeping at night that may include nightmares. If the child was recently potty trained, it could be undone by the transitioning process. All children tend to treat their foster parents with increasing disrespect, as their return... more

The post of “Colorado Pass Bill - Helping Siblings in Foster Care” has brought up a few questions that I would like to address.

Is this a trend? Are other states following suit with laws about the rights of foster siblings to see each other?

Some states are trying to assure that foster children are able to see their siblings. Colorado is the only state that I am aware that has passed any kind of law or legislation to assure that foster... more

House Bill 1006 has passed in Colorado that will help foster children that have siblings in different foster homes and also when a sibling ages out of foster care. It is not uncommon for foster children to be separated in foster care. In some areas, foster siblings can find themselves separated by a number of miles making visits difficult and more likely not to happen.

In these situations, siblings are the only family that these foster children may have. A lot... more

There are children in this country that do not have the opportunity for a childhood. Most children coming into foster care have not had the luxury of a childhood. They do not know how to be a child. Sadly these children are left with adult responsibilities.

Children as young as 5 years old are left to care for their younger siblings. The older child becomes the caregiver and the provider. I fostered one child that would care of his mother when she was shooting up drugs. He was left to take the needle out of his mother’s arm, wipe off the blood and remove the tourniquet.... more