finding the limits

So we received an email asking us if we can take 3 bonus kids for another day. The same bonus kids we had had for a week. Another respite stay, which again, if you remember from my last post, is a fancy foster care word for 'babysitting.' Mr. Hall wrote back, 'my wife is emotionally drained and I'm behind on work'. We officially found our limit of giving.




Which was ok. Because it was the truth. Doubling my kid population for an extended period of time is not healthy for me. This is what I'm discovering. The whole thing is really sad because there is a reason they are here but wow. I just can't. With those kids.




It was our second time saying no. We are saying that a lot more lately. I dreamed of being a foster mom for 20 years, a lifer. Seems my life span is about 5. Maybe.




I tend to dive down so deep with my thoughts. Getting to the silt level of even basic things. Making Himalayas out of molehills. I'm working on it though. For the three kids I am doing enough and I am enough. And we are done.




My thoughts about the foster care  system are more difficult to manage.  I'm trying not to be bitter. The goal is the help out, take the kids until birth mom heals up and then they go back. These birth moms (she says as she's stereotyping a whole group of women) are catered to. I think it's the highly educated, white thinking that says, "If we just get mom to counseling, it'll stop intergenerational patterns of ugly behavioral patterns towards one another. And then they get jobs and be real providing type parents. "


I'm not finding that to be true. I'm finding the birth moms are minimally functional and even then it requires a lot of taxpayer support with housing, food and childcare which includes the foster parent side of things. They will never be independent and at that same time, never stop producing more kids in the process. Those three kids we helped out with? They are from a group of seven.


Which brings us to Melody. The foster daughter we had for three years, then she went to live with an auntie and now she's coming back to us. Mom is still in the picture and screwing up predictably. The system is still dumb. And at the center of it is her, Melody. One of twenty five by the way. Lots of baby mamas from the same dad. Her mom only had her. Which is a nice change.


It seems when she comes back she'll bring a system I don't entirely agree with. Court hearings, giving mom more time to get her act together despite it being almost five years she's been in foster care. So my job will be to love her. Hug her and just deal with the rest. And so it shall be.