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I'm not a foster parent. I work with abused and neglected children through my occupation. Some of these are foster kids, but most live within their biological homes.
What Dianna described is consistent both with my experience with professionals in the foster system, and with a county orientation I attended as my husband and I looked into fostering and adoption options.
What Happy Mom Anna described is consistent with the behavior of some of the foster kids I know. The majority of these kids are in a group home that my organization partners with. These are kids who have had multiple home placements, and the group home is their last stop. They are some of the most heart-breakingly violent, unstable children in our program. I don't know what came first for some: did their anti-social behavioral problems cause them to be moved from home to home, or were they moved from home to home which resulted in their anti-social behavior? I suspect the latter in the majority of cases.
Basically, while we do not like our group home kids' behavior at times, we love them. Sometimes that's played out in emotions, sometimes actions--I am not clear from anything I've read in this thread that you can cleanly separate those out. The point is, they know through our *commitment,* by the sheer fact that we celebrate their victories and we don't give up on them when they fail like everyone else has, the true definition of love.
While I find this thread interesting, I find Happy Mom Anna's post humbling. Precisely because I know exactly how our agency's kids (and not just the foster ones) typically are, I am a gutless wonder, and I am seeking to adopt an infant who I hope won't have oppositional defiant disorder, reactive attachment disorder, and all of the other labels I see played out in the lives of kids in our program. If s/he does have those issues, we'll deal with them but unlike Anna, I'm not continually putting myself in a position where that will likely be the case.
I'm guessing that the reason why Happy Mom Anna asked if she was welcome on this thread is because she wondered if she would be judged for expressing her thoughts on this topic. I have not been watching the forum closely enough to see what instances make her feel so tentative, but I welcome her thoughts and hope that she continues to educate us on this topic. I'm amazed and inspired. I have no room to judge anyone who's not only fostering, but adopting troubled youth--hanging in there and showing kids the deepest measure of love: unconditional commitment.
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