25. Working with the Parents

Mama S here. There has been a lot of discussion about the bio parents of our newest family member and I thought we could take a moment to share what we can, explain why we can’t share more than that, and let you know how we plan on going forward.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlu8jwrHy8I%5D

The first part is easy. What can we share? Well, we can share that we have a lovely little lady that we are falling more and more in love with every day. Her personality continues to open up more and more every day and we feel privileged to be able to be a support for her for however long she needs it. What can we share about the bios? That one is super easy… nothing. That is not our story to share. How would you feel if people were sharing your most private and intimate details of your life that you may not be the most proud of? Horrible right? Exactly. It isn’t our story to share, so we can’t. We know you are curious. To be honest, we are curious for more details ourselves. That being said, please respect our answering that we can’t share anything other than the fact that we have a new little lady in our lives and we can’t share any more than that. Of course we will be more than happy to drone on and on about all the exciting parts of what is happening as we get to know her. Feel free to cut us off if we go on too long J

How do we plan on moving forward? Well, we got into foster care to help kiddos in their time of need and to support and foster the relationship between the kiddos and bio parents in whatever way was safe for the kiddo. Keeping that in mind, our plan is to help P communicate with her mom and dad, support the love that she holds for both of them, be there to hold her tight when things don’t go according to plan, and let her know that she doesn’t have to “pick” them or us, that she just now has more people in her life that love and support her and that we are a team. Mama A and I respect the fact that “P” has a mom and dad that love her in the best way they can and know how to and we want to help all parties, if possible, learn more effective ways to convey that love.  I can say that in the (many) interactions we have had with bio-mom, we have learned that she is funny, open to listening to her little lady read, and has good suggestions on books we should get for reading time going forward. We are going to focus on these things and leave the other stuff to the county workers to sort out.

No matter what happens we want to be able to go to bed knowing that we have done everything in our power to support this family in their time of need and that things will work out as they need to. We won’t know what long term is going to look like for quite a while, so please be patient with us when we say we don’t know, please meet us for coffee to allow us to vent about the process when things are not going the way we want them to (or the speed we want them too), keep us informed about your lives (because we truly care about what is going on in your lives and we don’t want to miss out on celebrating with you or hugging you when things are not going well), and always remember… please don’t ask questions in front of P- that can be hard for her to process and we are working very hard on helping her to focus on being kiddo!

All the love,

Mama S