June 28, 2018
Okay, I was a complete naive idiot. I am horrified and even a little embarrassed by the confident smugness in some of my earlier posts. We had no idea what we were really doing. Or what we were really in for.
If we think that we are bringing these kids into our world to custom-tailor them to our life, if we think we are rescuing them to do a quick tidy-up and fix them using only our love and ingenious forms of discipline, we are in for huge disappointment! Oh, and failure.
Wake -up call! There has to be adaptation, yielding, reshaping, and often even forfeiting in this new world! There are shocks and impossible hurdles at every turn! We are here in this new world just trying to SURVIVE and keep this child alive! Forget being super-parents who wow the world with their powers of rehabilitation! You are now only a parent that will be revered for making it through!
During the training process, when we still had no idea who was about to become our new child, I remember telling myself:
My job is to protect him. Provide for him. Nurture his physical and emotional health. And help him enter adulthood with as many tools to succeed as possible. That is it. Even if he hates me, I will still do these things. Even if he has damage so severe in some ways that it will never go away, I will do these things. Even if he causes me pain, rejects me, does terrible things to my life, I will still do these things. Even if he does not have the ability to bond with me, I am committing to this child that once he enters my home, he will not ever be sent away from another home again until he leaves into the world as an adult. I don’t care what it takes, I will succeed!
But once thrown into the thick of it, when you feel your entire world turned upside-down… you forget these promises and goals and you start scrambling to gain the power back, to have your normal back, to please please please with any kind of force or manipulation or threats make this child just give you your wonderful peaceful like back!
No matter how much we plan ahead, when our stasis is thrashed about like a boat on the stormy sea we become viciously determined micro-managing lunatics.
Yet, we keep trying to adapt. We keep having to pull back and say, Okay, what do we need to change to make this work. And we must be succeeding enough at least, because our social worker said to us, Most of the parents who do this do not adapt their lives and their parenting styles to fit the child the way you two have. Normally, what we see is, if the child doesn’t adapt then they send them away.
So, even though I feel like a crazy micro-managing lunatic some days, at least we are making it. This encouragement gave me even more resolve to make sure I never forget, never become too rigid and unyielding, remain flexible and adaptable and always always learning.
We don’t always need a peaceful perfect home right this second. The goal is: how to build the family in a way that we all get to have that one day. That’s my new normal. And it is okay. Because we are making it.
He is laying his head on my shoulder now, asking me when I am coming downstairs. He asks me what I am writing. I tell him, I am writing about foster parenting to help other foster parents and other kids like you find their forever homes. He smiles and says, soon you can put a picture of me on there. I say, I can’t wait.
And he is right. It is very soon. Because the adoption day is set.
On July 23, our amazing new son will be made a permanent part of our family. He will officially be removed from the foster care system for good. He will be Jackson Joseph Whitson. A son and heir of his father, Jesse Ray Whitson, and mother, Melissa Lyn Whitson. His new birth certificate will say all of this.
It will not always be smooth or happy or peaceful or normal. But no matter what comes, the promise we made and that we intend to keep is that he will never have to lose another family again.
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