Foster parents that have been parenting the foster children while they have be in care in most cases will get the first option to adopt the children. In a lot of cases, the foster parents do not necessarily start fostering a child thinking that they will adopt, but as time goes on the child becomes a part of their family.

In foster care, some children just capture your heart from the beginning and we have to wait to see how things play out with the biological parents. When young foster children are placed into a foster family in most cases people get attached pretty quickly.

When we started our "foster to adopt" journey we were looking for school age children to adopt but we were blessed with a baby and toddler that we fell in love with. This is not something we had planned at all; it just happened that way for us. We have stayed open to adopting while we have continued fostering.

This is why some people are encouraged to consider "foster to adopt" when they want younger children. You can also choose to take what some agencies call a “legal risk placement”.

Another thing about infants and toddlers is that you may want to be willing to parent a biracial and child of a different ethnicity. A lot of foster babies and toddlers are in foster care because of drugs which means that they can be drug exposed babies. Drug exposure is different in each child, and he or she will be affected in different ways.

Another added bonus to fostering the children that you may adopt is that you can have a chance to find out how they fit into your family. Without the added stress of making it an adoptive placement and then if you see that things would not work then the child does not have the trauma of a failed placement.

More reading:

Infants In Foster Care

“Meth” The Number One Problem of Child Welfare Services

Drug Exposure