[TNfostermom]

We started out with a private agency to do straight adoption of a girl age 0-9. It had been a few months with nothing happening, so we told our cw we would be open to fostering. Still nothing after a few more months (they are a small private agency), so we switched to working directly with DCS doing foster care. To switch from adoption to foster care with the private agency we just told our cw. When we switched to DCS we had to get fingerprinted again, have interviews with our new cw and have another homestudy done. Not sure why but it ended up taking about six months. We were still working with the private agency until DCS placed foster children in our care. Then we were not allowed to be with both.

The hardest part of foster care has been the sibling set of three that we took. A six year old girl, a three year old girl and a two year old boy. Their parents were very difficult to deal with and the children had a LOT of behavior issues, with some suspicion of sexual abuse. We suspected the two girls were sexual with eachother. I have two bio boys ages 11 and 8. It really scared me what might happen between the childern. After three months we asked to have them moved to a foster family that would be better able to handle their problems. I believe the three year old girl also had RAD. They have since gone to live with their grandparents in another state.

We now have two baby girls and are really enjoying being foster parents. Our youngest baby will probably be going up for adoption and we plan on adopting her if that happens. We really want to adopt one girl and then foster for several years. We will be staying with ages 0-3, as I don't feel able to handle girls that have been sexually abused until my boys are out of the house. I just can't expose them to that.