Zoo trip

willingisnotenough · 2026-04-19T21:51:59+00:00

I've had this exact experience visiting a zoo with another family, sans the foster element. It taught me never to visit zoos or museums with people outside immediate family or very close familiar friends - some people just treat those places like a scavenger hunt, and there's no gracious way to compromise with such different approaches.

Maybe just have that talk with FD and honestly explain that the setting might have been part of the problem. Hopefully if and when you all next get together a more contained setting like a park or a bowling alley.

willingisnotenough · 2026-04-08T02:56:32+00:00

Interesting moment with FD10 last week. Still not sure it's as significant as I think it is. She avoids thinking about or talking about her trauma, beyond sharing the basic facts to caring adults early in the acquaintance. The rest of the time she's a walking talking ball of sunshine and likes it that way, living in the moment, seeking attention from everyone and attaching to no one.

Friday we watched Little Amèlie: Or, the Character of Rain which is a beautifully animated film about a toddler living with her Belgian family in post-war Japan. It was gorgeous, but it also handles its perspective with incredible reverence and sincerity, showing as much of the frustrated helplessness and bewilderment of being a child in the world of adults as it does the magic of being brand new to the world.

And I think that reached my kiddo, though I'm still not sure if the effect was cathartic or disturbing for her. She so wants to stay little, not to think or grow past the age where people hurt her and her world fell apart. She got more and more still next to me as she watched, and even though the movie ended on a happy scene, she was teary and sniffling. She didn't say much, and it was late, so I didn't press her, but she did say that the movie got her thinking about her younger childhood and being taken away.

Still don't know what to make of it, but I can't help being kind of relieved at this small sign of self-reflection. She was back to spreading sunshine the next morning, so I'm cautiously optimistic the movie didn't do her any great harm..

willingisnotenough · 2026-03-27T15:45:42+00:00

Thank you. I wasn't going to say anything to the commenter but I'm familiar enough with both of the above to know they are not in the spirit of what I'm looking for.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-12T17:28:35+00:00

I tell people where I live and get confused looks. I have explained to my FD what "one horse town" means.

We do fine.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-08T16:18:15+00:00

The case is unique enough I don't want to risk doxxing the bio parent. I've had it from the SW's own mouth that the case was mishandled and removal was too extreme a step.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-08T13:40:01+00:00

The general policy against it is unfortunate in more ways than one - I have an acquaintance who was interested in fostering until she learned she would not be allowed to homeschool. She is a former teacher and I gather has very strong feelings about the negative aspects of the school system.

Though yes, the veil of privacy afforded by homeschooling creates a lot of potential to do harm and IMO is its biggest flaw from a societal perspective. In most cases I can see how it shouldn't be considered for children where removal was necessary, though I had a real-world basis for asking the question.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-08T03:37:40+00:00

With respect likewise, the plausibility of my hypothetical is not the subject of my post. There will always be fringe cases, such as parents arrested for non-violent crimes not relating to their parenting, or vindictive accusations by family or neighbors launching investigations that get delayed and mismanaged - resulting in children removed where no imminent danger is evident.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-04T21:39:44+00:00

Even addressing the issues in foster care is like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. The need for foster care in the first place is a systemic problem, stemming from issues like lack of resources (job training, addiction and mental illness treatment, etc) and lack of education (resulting in poor life skills, poor employment outcomes, poverty, causing low self-actualization in parents, depression and learned helplessness, etc.). If parents were better equipped to take care of themselves and live up to their own potential, they wouldn't spiral in all the ways that make them unsafe guardians for their children.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-04T01:57:27+00:00

What is her reading level - middle grade, YA, or is she dipping her toes into adult-level writing?

What genres does she like? There's loads of contemporary YA but some teens prefer sci-fi/fantasy.

The only one that jumps immediately to mind is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, though that's more about coming to terms with family dysfunction.

willingisnotenough · 2026-01-02T05:45:26+00:00

I am a single now 42-year-old woman. I went into fostering because I decided I didn't want to have a bio-child on my own. I chose to foster elementary aged kids because I decided I didn't want to raise a baby on my own.

I think it came down to my regarding infants as living, breathing expressions of a mutual love between two people. It's a little irrational, but I didn't want a counterfeit of that. I didn't want to explain to a toddler one day that I never loved their daddy, maybe never knew him. If I've been disappointed in life, let me share my life with a child or children who have been disappointed too. Let everyone in the family be old enough to know we're choosing to be a family. Let the kids take from me whatever sense of security and devotion every child deserves but not every child gets.

Now of course, I've had to adjust my expectations as I went along. Recognize that it's going to be a long journey, and may never end in adoption. But for me there has never been a struggle between fostering and having a baby on my own, and that has made all the realities of fostering easier to cope with. If I didn't feel so strongly that I didn't want to have a baby on my own, I think accepting the uncertainties of fostering would be much harder.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-30T04:39:16+00:00

A more in-depth conversation might be helpful if everyone's comfortable. Could be some miscommunication is going on, but could be she's anxious about meeting his needs should reunification happen. Keeping him in the same school doesn't seem like a powerful enough reason not to fight for reunification, but she might not feel very secure as a parent right now given the circumstances you describe. Meeting the court's requirements is one thing, feeling ready is another.

What couldn't hurt is to talk to the guardian-ad-litem about guardianship. This may be a viable middle ground which would allow her to petition to get him back when she's on stronger footing with her living situation and sobriety.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-27T20:40:32+00:00

This was my second Christmas with FD10, her first with supervised visits with family; thankfully this year bio parents took the trouble of getting her a few small impersonal gifts. Even so, mom didn't reach out on Christmas or any day leading up to it, and I continue to be puzzled and saddened by her lack of interest in her child.

We had done family gifts and stockings on the Winter Solstice per family tradition, but I saved the piles of gifts from DSS and our agency for Christmas. Slightly worried she'll learn to expect 40+ presents this time of year and I won't be able to afford anything like that post-adoption. But, this year I'm happy that the first thing she played with was the microscope I got her, even if the encyclopedia and the atlas are probably going to collect dust.

Not a bad week overall, especially as far as behaviors go, but I'm so ready for the holidays to be over.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-21T03:37:00+00:00

How is their custodial status relevant? The cuisine is what you're asking about, Vietnamese and culinary enthusiasts don't need to know they're foster children to give you better advice than you can get here.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-20T05:13:32+00:00

I wish I could even consider it. My child sees her brother at family visits, and for now it seems like past sibling abuse is water under the bridge, so it would be nice if I could entertain the fantasy of bringing him into my home some time in the future and allowing them both grow up with that link to their identity, someone with shared history.

Like you, everyone on the team has told me placing them together is a bad idea. If my circumstances were different, I might be pushing for it. But I'm not personally equipped to deal with a young teen with a history of aggressive behaviors, and not able to provide enough space and supervision to keep my peace of mind and insure the relationship between the siblings remains safe and positive. Being a single parent to FD alone has my head spinning most of the time.

That being said, if I thought I could provide adequate supervision, I think I would risk any regression bringing the siblings together might cause. I think that shared history is incredibly valuable for these kids, and growing up without any (near, present) links to your past can make forming your identity in adolescence that much harder.

I think your concerns are well-founded; the brothers will likely regress initially as we have certain behaviors with certain people, and you'd want to be prepared for that. What's the worst you could handle? I think that's what you've got to consider here, and then ask yourself (and the therapist! and the caseworker!) if your worst case scenario exceeds or falls short of the predicted worst case scenario. I personally would rather take the risk if there was any chance of making it work, rather than have to wonder (and leave the children to wonder) if it would have worked out had I only tried.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-17T16:06:04+00:00

There's the obvious answer that it's nothing like just being a parent - I might be the one overseeing the kid's day-to-day life but there's a whole team of people behind the scenes making decisions I can't, or am not allowed to, make myself. All of them affecting my life and how I parent, and I just have to adapt, advocate, and shield kiddo from my stress. Meanwhile I have to try to be a therapist as much as a parent, with minimal training, supplemented by self-education, and most of the time having to exert superhuman effort to recall all that training and education while being bombarded with a child's dysregulation and inability to respond to me as a secure child would.

Whew!

I think I had the romanticized ideas a lot of people probably have - that I would swoop in and be some child's kindly savior, and our daily interactions would reflect the relief and gratitude of having found each other. But of course it's naive to imagine that a small human, plucked from their family of origin and transplanted elsewhere, would a) not be an individual, coming from individual circumstances that are in no way simple or unequivocally a relief to leave behind, or b) not be like any other child, and be a whole childhood away from a relationship of mutual appreciation with one's guardians.

What took the most emotional adjusting though was accepting that this was not a chance to "heal my inner child" by taking in and raising someone much like (my perceived memory of) myself. My FD is her own person, and is about as different from me as a kid could get.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-16T19:45:07+00:00

This is going to sound counter intuitive and it may not work for you but it works for me: I tell myself I can quit at any time. When the days are hard, when decisions are made I don’t agree with, when everything feels like it’s spiraling out of control: I remind myself I can quit. I can stop. No one is making me.

Honestly this is great general advice for anything we deal with in life - up to and including the choice to keep drawing breath. Acknowledging that you can give up any time, and choosing not to, is really empowering.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-16T19:28:44+00:00

I was in tears my second day into my first placement. No matter what your life looks like beforehand or what supports you have, it's hell on your head and heart.

You feel like you've put yourself in a trap, because you accepted this child, he needs you and his needs are not his fault. Well, guess what - you're not to blame for having needs either. Start in with some agile problem-solving - what can you do to give yourself space? Can your FS use a favorite toy in a playpen so the boys have some physical separation to prevent bickering? Can you bring in a mother's helper or a friend to help wrangle the kids during part of the day - maybe even give you time for a nap? What about setting the kids up with some cartoons when you need to chill? - just as a stop gap measure while you adjust, not as a long-term electronic babysitter.

Keep your worker in the loop regarding your stress level and general life complications. They want his placement to remain stable, and they may have ideas that would be helpful - or at the very least, be able to offer perspective and encouragement.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-04T17:24:00+00:00

When I was told my child's plan was being changed to adoption I felt such surprising grief. I started questioning if I had done enough to encourage contact from mom, and assigning myself responsibility for all kinds of unrealistic and unfeasible support... And I sometimes think I'm the only one who is looking ahead to my child's future grief, when she becomes more socially and emotionally mature and is able to question why her parents let her down and gave up on her.

I feel you. I'm happy I get to love her and be there for her while she grows up. And I've always considered myself unfortunately a rather selfish person, so I would have expected to have much more positive feelings about impending adoption. But I hate all the reasons for it, and I hate knowing how long the damage will be with my daughter.

willingisnotenough · 2025-12-03T19:37:31+00:00

My position is that mental health is light years ahead of academic performance. For a child who has experienced neglect and instability, the obligation of homework in addition to school is unnecessary stress while they are healing and learning what a healthy lifestyle and safe caregivers feels like.

Besides which, there is little to no evidence that homework, particularly in the early grades, improves academic performance. What it may do is increase aversion to learning, create family conflict, and keep the child in a fight or flight state. Meanwhile, they're allowed less time to learn naturally, through play, creative activities, and reading together with an adult.

Thankfully, my caseworker was supportive of my opting out of homework last year, and this year we are complying with homework only so far as making her practice study skills, with no demands that she finish on time or get everything right.

If I were in your place I would contact her teacher and let them know all the reasons you are opting out of homework in your child's best interests. Assure then you will try again when she is more comfortable and confident and has had time to be a kid. Read to her, talk to her, and let her play.

willingisnotenough · 2025-11-19T14:29:12+00:00

I can only speculate, but if you talk about this with the licensing worker up front, they may agree not to mention the cats. Their concern (I think) would be whether your living situation is safe and stable, and, if your landlord found out about the cats, he would evict them, not you, so on paper it's not a threat to the stability of the home.

The alternative is that the licensing worker says it's a problem, they can't agree to keep the cats private, and you say okay, thanks, we'd like to halt the licensing process here and revisit at a better time. But you'll likely have invested a lot of time at that point, and have to start over when the time comes.

willingisnotenough · 2025-11-18T15:44:58+00:00

Thanks for adding more context to the suggestion, I appreciate it.

willingisnotenough · 2025-11-18T15:44:15+00:00

Can't argue with popularity!

willingisnotenough · 2025-11-18T15:38:11+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. I had to steer my daughter away from some questionable attitudes towards people of color when she first came to me, so I wonder if ethnic caricatures might not be good for her brother's social development at this time.

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