Interesting Conversation

I met a woman whom I barely know at the grocery store the other day. I know her because her daughter and mine took dance classes at about the same time at the same place for a period of time.

During this time, she started fostering. She fostered a little girl who was something like 8 years old. At the time, Davan was 6. The foster child (who's name I do not remember) signed up for the same dance class Davan was in.

Anyway, we met at the store. She recognized me and said hi. Then we figured out where we knew each other from. We chatted a while and then I asked if she was still doing foster care. She said no, that it was taking too much from their family to be foster parents. She said the needs of the foster child was just too much. There are too many things outside of the norm that they need (therapists, social worker visits, parental visits, ect.), which caused her to be just too busy.

I said that we were in the process of adopting. She was somewhat alarmed by this and thought that we should really only consider babies and toddlers. This was somewhat distressing to me because she's actually had experience with a foster child! Of course, I feel like we'd be okay with some amount of running around. I figure that happens with any child. And there's a lot less in the way of social worker visits and parental visits when adopting. After the adoption is finalized, there are no more social worker visits, in fact.

So, I said that I felt like adoption was a different deal and that was part of why we weren't going the foster route. Also, we felt like the child would really be ours, so we'd feel it was worth it to put the time in. She said, "Yeah, when you adopt, you're hands aren't tied in regards to discipline like with fostering. I mean, you can't do anything!"

This is where I started to feel like I didn't need to worry about anything this lady told me. Anthony and I looked at the long list of things that you were not allowed to do to foster children (in the name of discipline) and thought, "Well, yeah, that's abuse. Of course you wouldn't hit them. put them in the yard and turn the hose on them. use showers as punishment. withhold food. speak nastily about their biological family."

Apparently, though, this lady looked at the list and thought, "Well, there goes all of my discipline options." I imagine she did have a hard time with a foster child.