Apart from choosing to maintain relationships with biological family, there was one other extremely important choice we made. It is definitely the most courageous choice we made in our journey. It was the choice to be completely truthful with our children.
There is a lot at play in foster care situations. There are lots of people involved: case workers, investigators, counselors, judges, agents of the court, biological family, foster family, and children. There are probably more than that but those are the key groups I could think of. Each group has their own part. Each group has their own biases, ways of operating, personalities and set of experiences. On top of that there are policies, contracts, etc.
The system was designed to help children, but in our experience the needs of the children get lost in the battle for control. The system is complicated and broken. I think they know it too. I believe that is why getting information was so hard. Who wants to be honest about the mess? No one! I think if more people were honest and forthcoming about their experience, maybe some positive change could happen. We walked into it knowing it may well be extremely difficult. At the same time, we were so naive and trusting. We had to experience it ourselves. We were compelled to rise up and fight for our children.
Over and over again in training, seemingly in every topic, they advocated for lying to the children. They trained evasive tactics to pull conversation away from the truth of what was happening. They trained us to keep them comfortably unknowing. They trained us to tell them things like “Mommy and Daddy are working hard to get you back” and “You’ll be back together as soon as possible”. They advocated for eternally painting a pretty picture of the future. On one hand I understand. That just doesn’t work for older children. They see things. They know. All that lying just sets them up for a huge let down. We decided against it. We didn’t paint any kind of picture for them. We told them the truth, when they asked questions, from the very beginning. They woke up one morning and never went home again. The LAST thing we were going to do is start lying to them.
In the first few weeks with our girls, on the way into the DSS building for a parent visit, our oldest as she was climbing stairs as only a kid will do, hanging from the handrail being a general goomba, asked us off the cuff if we were going to adopt her. It blew our minds that so early those types of thoughts were rolling around in her brain. It validated for us that we wanted to be from the very beginning a trustworthy pair for her. If we became her parents one day, we wanted that to happen on a foundation of trustworthiness.
One thing we had going for us was our relationships with the extended family. We encountered a good bit of information. Family members weren’t hesitant to share what they knew. I am certain that, had we been at the mercy of the agency for all of our information, we would have been kept very much in the dark. The only information we got from the agency was what showed up in court records. There was plenty of pretty terrible information there but we heard the whole truth of what was going on because we had done the work to maintain relationships.
When the children asked questions, we didn’t sugar coat anything. We didn’t sit them down and “dish”. They weren’t old enough to fully understand. We were just truthful and I’ll leave it at that. We also told them from the very beginning that if they didn’t end up going back home that our intention was for them to stay with us forever and be adopted.