Foster Mom Adventures

Life as a dog walker is grand. Especially when pay day rolls around and you find out that you have earned more money than you receive for your allowance each week. But then, things aren’t so grand when the dog you are caring for runs away. Unless Lassie comes home, it would appear that Samuel is once again unemployed.

My weekend also included lots of work—but not the kind I am paid for. We’re talking yardwork and housework. I’m exhausted. But the one thing I didn’t have to do this weekend (that I have been responsible for every other weekend) is foster parent notes.

Previously, I have spent most weekends catching up on my foster parent notes (or feeling guilty that I wasn’t). But recently, the agency changed their rules that required foster parent notes once per week. Now I only have to write them every 14 days. This was, thankfully, an off weekend. Hallelujah!

I’m trying to focus on being grateful–both for myself and lots of other over burdened foster parents–rather than resentful that they waited until NOW to make this change, giving me only three weeks to enjoy it.

Before I had an active 11-year-old boy come live with me, I scarcely knew my neighbors at all. I pretty much waved and smiled enough so that if something ever happened to me (ranging from tragedy to winning the lottery) and the news cameras showed up to interview my neighbors they would all nod their heads and say how nice I always seemed.

Samuel on the other hand, he knows the neighbors. He knows all the neighbors with kids and he knows all the neighbors with dogs. He especially knows the neighbors with kids and dogs. I love that through Samuel, I have gotten to know quite a few of these neighbors too (though not nearly as well as Samuel in the relatively short time he has been here).

When the girls lived with me, they were too young to roam the neighborhood without constant supervision. Samuel, however, is old enough and has proven himself responsible and trustworthy enough to have the privilege of taking to the neighborhood on his own (within certain boundaries).

The wonderful thing I have learned about my neighborhood over the past five months is how many boys there are approximately Samuel’s age. There is a whole pack of them and they roam the woods like wolves having all kinds of wonderful adventures building forts, catching frogs, and gallantly fencing with nerf swords. From the moment that Samuel arrives home from school until I force him to come in, he wants to be outside playing with his friends.

Speaking of Samuel’s friends, Hosea has become a constant fixture at our dinner table. While Samuel may not like the meals I prepare, Hosea never seems to mind. He always cleans his plate and says thank you. I usually plan meals to make sure there is enough to feed all of us. Samuel enjoys his company, and so do I.

Tonight Samuel carried an injured friend home so I could properly bandage his knees. Good thing I have first aid training as a foster parent! We drove our little wounded friend back to his home, after throwing his bike and his dog into the back of the car to take them with us. This is why moms need big cars.

Samuel opted to stay with his friend until it was time for dinner, so I drove back home and he walked a little while later. Somewhere along the way home, Samuel managed to talk one of the neighbors with a dog and no kids into hiring him to walk his dog in the afternoons when he gets home from school while the neighbor is still at work. So apparently, now he has a job. How very industrious of him. Samuel doesn’t know what he will be paid, and he doesn’t care. He mainly just wants to walk the dog.

Life with Samuel is never boring. He’s my very own well-intentioned Dennis the Menace.

When Hope lived with me, bedtime was the most helpless time I faced as a parent. She was three, so there was nothing I could promise or threaten her with for the following day that would cause her to behave at that time. The only thing I wanted was the last thing she would do—go to bed without screaming. Tonight, bedtime was equally frustrating with Samuel.

Our neighbor’s home caught on fire across the street about 10 minutes after Samuel went to bed tonight. No less than seven fire trucks showed up, and made quite a racket. The fire was quickly contained, and no one was hurt. In fact, my neighbor wasn’t home when it started.

Now of course an 11-year-old boy found this terribly exciting. I let him get a good look at all the fire trucks, assured him that no one was hurt, and sent him back to bed. You and I both know that he did NOT go straight to sleep.

As a former youth ministries volunteer, I know the trick to get kids to fall asleep though. I used to be the cool chaperone on the retreat because I would tell the girls they could stay up “however late they wanted.” My only rule was that they had to be lying down in their beds with all the lights off. Typically, if you can get a kid completely horizontal and free from the distractions of books, toys, etc., they will fall asleep—even a bunch of giggling girls.

That’s my rule at home too. I may not be able to force Samuel to go to sleep, but I can require him to lie in bed with the lights off. Unfortunately, that rule wasn’t followed tonight. Every time I checked on Samuel, he was out of bed peering out the window, out of bed drawing a picture, or even eventually in bed, but playing with toys. Because of the fire trucks, I was a little more lenient than I otherwise might have been.  Every time I found him like that, I would explain the rule again, assure him the excitement was over, and firmly tell him that it was time to go to sleep. After the third time, I stated the consequence of losing money from his allowance would be enforced the next time the rule wasn’t followed.

The fifth time I entered his room and found him drawing again (and already $1 poorer), I took the tablet and pencil away and started my speech again. That’s when Samuel flew into a fit of rage and started screaming and cursing. He told me, in a way that let me know he meant it, “I don’t want to live here anymore because of your stupid butt!”

I wish I could say that I kept my cool a little better than I did. If only. I raised my voice as well and told him that while he was entitled to his opinion, he was not allowed to speak to me that way. When he continued yelling, I called his grandmother. I made this phone call for three reasons. First, she has a knack for calming him down more than anyone else, and by 10:00 p.m., I needed him to calm down and go to sleep. Second, I know from the transition I went through with the girls, it is time to begin transferring authority back to his grandmother and away from me (although apparently, I don’t have any). And finally, I was at my own boiling point and didn’t have it in me to say all the right things that he needed to hear.

Needless to say, I know that Samuel doesn’t want to be here. I know that he wants to be back with his family. I get all of that. But he is here with me for two and a half more weeks, so we are going to have to find a way to survive this. Unfortunately, the next 17 days are the “bedtime” of his stay here. He knows he is going back to his family no matter what he does or how he acts. There is nothing that I can promise or threaten that will matter to him, and I really don’t want to make these last few days miserable for us both.

Time for some bedtime prayers.

One of the requirements of foster care (at least with my agency) is to give foster children an age appropriate allowance. For Samuel, I decided that means $10 per week. Half of his allowance is spending money that burns a hole in his pocket, and half of his allowance is put into “savings”, meaning a box in my room for safekeeping for use on bigger purchases.

Samuel can also face reductions in his spending money, based on failure to do his chores and pick up his stuff around the house. The biggest deductions lately have been due to the shoe toll. After weeks of being sick and tired of the multiple pairs of shoes left strewn all over the living room, I instituted the shoe toll of 25 cents for every shoe left out overnight. Last week, I raked in a whopping $1.50 in fines, but I have a feeling that fine collections are on the decline.

Samuel is paid on Friday, and his spending money rarely ever sees Monday. Want to know how Samuel typically spends ALL of his money? Buying Hot Fries (which are actually chips), Skittles, and bubble gum at our local convenience store. It’s really pretty ridiculous, but those are the choices he always makes. I’m too mean to buy those items for him, so he has to spend his own money on those purchases.

The $27 remaining in his savings since his last big purchase were spent to purchase a video game. He’s been planning the expenditure for some time, but not necessarily which game, just that he wanted a hunting game so he could shoot things. Since it was his money, I let him pick out the game at the store, and made him do the math on the tax to make sure he stayed within his budget. He looked through the covers of each game and ultimately selected OutdoorLife Sportsman’s Challenge. The total cost was $27.04, which he supplemented with four pennies from his pocket. What could be better?

Once we returned home and he attempted to play the game, Samuel immediately became frustrated because the game wouldn’t allow him to shoot any of the animals. It only gave him information about the animal and its population. That’s when I read the back of the box aloud to him. It included statements like “Create the ultimate sportsman’s paradise with over 30 buildings” and “Find the balance between keeping your guests happy and maintaining a thriving ecosystem to ensure the success of your park!” Now that’s what I call a Sportsman’s Challenge.

Never judge a book (or a video game) by its cover.

The sermon at church on Sunday was pretty powerful, asking the congregation what it is that each of us is doing to serve children. It was based on the passage from Mark 9, and one particular verse really spoke to me. Mark 9:37 says “Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

While I have probably read this passage 100 times before, it fell afresh on me this Sunday. It made me look at Samuel in a whole new way, and ask myself if I would parent him differently if I realized that he was Jesus sleeping in my extra bedroom every night.

Admittedly, one of my first thoughts was that Jesus would never behave the way that Samuel does. However, then I thought of what Mark tells us just two chapters later when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. Jesus acted out in anger too, when it was justified.

Now that’s not to say that Jesus would take a snake to church. Or maybe he would. It really doesn’t matter, because I think it is clear that by welcoming Samuel, I welcome Jesus. The question is how that knowledge changes my behavior and reactions toward him.

So I am trying to be a little more Mary and a little less Martha. I’m trying to spend more time with him, rather than worrying that all the laundry is not done. I’m trying (I said trying) to be a little slower to anger.

And I evaluated my parenting techniques against the Jesus standard. Would I have Jesus go to bed on time each night and make his bed each morning? Yes. I think that is what is best for a child. I would have Jesus read a book for at least 30 minutes each day and eat the meals that have been prepared too.

For the last two nights, Samuel has asked me to iron the blue jeans he plans to wear to school the next day. I have refused. I don’t even iron my own clothes. I am not going to iron his blue jeans that aren’t even wrinkled. And then I stopped and applied my test. Yep, you guessed it. I wouldn’t iron Jesus’ blue jeans either.

Serving as a parent makes me appreciate parents, and mothers in particular today. Well, actually every day. This is hard, but rewarding work.

Make no mistake about it; Samuel was not celebrating his foster mother for Mother’s Day. I am not his mother. And it’s OK. I get that. He did select a purple card and envelope for me from the collection available in Sunday School. And even though all that he wrote on the inside of the card was his name, it was still enough for me, and honestly, more than I expected.

Mother’s Day is a wonderful excuse to celebrate those who care for us and love us no matter what. Sure, we should do that every day, but we don’t. So even if the holiday was invented by Hallmark cards and promoted by all the restaurants and flower shops that turned a nice profit for the occasion, I say it is still a worthwhile event.

But while we’re celebrating mothers, it is important to be sensitive to those who don’t have a mother to celebrate. I know this holiday was especially painful for those who lost their mothers over the course of the past year. They celebrated the first Mother’s Day in their entire life without their mothers. For foster children, there is not only the pain of separation from their mothers, but often the hurt of not being wanted or loved enough by their mothers. That’s compounded by the awkward and mixed up feelings of having someone like me fill that role, while never taking the place of the mother they feel love and loyalty toward that is unexplainable, yet natural.

I worried that Samuel would act out more today, in order to mask the mixed-up feelings that I am sure where inside him. But I am pleased to report that wasn’t the case. All things considered, we had a somewhat enjoyable day. He even paid me a compliment at dinner by saying “this doesn’t look as disgusting as what you usually make.” Oh well. I will take compliments any way I can get them.

Samuel and I spent the day with his 16-year-old sister, who is in another foster home nearby. I will call Samuel’s sister Hannah. We had so much fun. Samuel seems different when he is around Hannah—almost happy in a way that he otherwise is not. They are very close, and it is great to see them together.

I enjoy Hannah’s company as well, and I love the positive effect she has on her brother. Hannah sees through all of her brother’s antics. Hannah calls Samuel out on things and keeps him in line far more effectively than I do. She and I could correct him on exactly the same thing, and while his response to me is to commit the act all the more, when Hannah corrects him, he stops.

Hannah and I also love to swap stories about Samuel. He pretends to hate to have stories told on him, but we know he secretly loves the attention. She flipped when she heard that he brought a snake to church!

There are plenty of moments during this looong transition when I stop and wonder “what was all this for?”

Samuel is going to return to the same home, same family, same everything that he was in before he was put in foster care last year. I wish I could see some reason why God put Samuel and me together for almost six months. For the most part, it seems that Samuel is the exact same kid he was when I met him four and half months ago. I haven’t had a profound impact on his life, and there isn’t the happily ever after ending that I got to witness for the girls.

But then there are those small breakthroughs like the one Samuel experienced today that lead me to believe that maybe he has grown and learned as much from the experience as I have.

Samuel loves to “work” on his bicycle. That usually involves taking parts off and putting them back on and telling me that it “rides much better now.” Today, however, once he took it apart, he couldn’t get it to go back together again. Caught in the typical cycle, he became frustrated and starting throwing bicycle parts around the yard and yelling.

I wasn’t home when this happened, but rather learned about it via text messages from his afterschool caretaker while I was driving home in traffic. After Samuel yelled at her and said not to talk to him, he actually calmed himself down and apologized for speaking to her in that way (without being asked to do so). Then he even voluntarily told me about it all when I arrived home! This was HUGE progress in my book, and certainly not something Samuel would have been capable of four months ago.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not writing this to give myself some kind of pat on the back or ask you to do so. In fact, please don’t. Samuel’s progress isn’t something I did or can take credit for. My purpose in writing is to give credit where credit is due and to say that I am beginning to see some of God’s purpose in this. I’m beginning to see the reason why I do this whole crazy foster parent thing. And that’s sun breaking through the clouds and shining down on me encouraging.

I am a person who likes to sleep in. I’m the child who when her parents woke her up on Christmas morning groaned and begged for “just five more minutes, please.” This morning I got the feeling that Samuel and I are more alike than I ever imagined.

Samuel is in the children’s choir at church. Tomorrow morning the children’s choir will perform their annual musical, which this year is “100% Chance of Rain” (the story of Noah and the ark). This morning Samuel had choir practice at 9:00 a.m. and he wasn’t all that excited about waking up early on a Saturday to make it to rehearsal on time.

I, on the other hand, have been looking forward to the three hours of choir practice on Saturday morning. That three hour period allowed me the time to go grocery shopping all by myself. Woo hoo!

While I was ready to wake up this morning, Samuel was not. I tried to help the process by singing the Baylor Fight Song at the top of my lungs, thinking that even getting out of bed would be better than listening to me sing—especially given Samuel’s extreme loyalty to the Texas Longhorns. Sadly, my singing didn’t do the trick.

Instead, Samuel threw a pillow at me and yelled “I don’t want to be in the musical anymore!” before he flounced back down on his bed and drew the covers up over his head. Eventually, Samuel grudgingly dragged himself out of bed and into the shower, but it was a bonding moment for the two of us. For once, I knew exactly how he felt and could truly empathize.