[luvmykids4]

I am new to this site, but so glad that I found it.

We are almost approved as foster parents. I am just waiting for FBI fingerprint clearance. It was not clear enough, and has to be re-done. We have 4 bio kids, and are open to fostering 0-2. Since we are open to siblings, our CW said they will probably call with 2 kids at once. My concern is that we mentioned not asking for a child with FAS. Our CW said that they cannot guarantee that the child/children won't have this, as they don't always have a lot of info. I understand this, but I was wondering what kinds of questions I should ask when we get a placement call.

I already have four kids at home, and don't have a lot of experience with children having these kinds of problems. I understand that we have no guarantees, but I still would appreciate any help. I don't expect "perfect" children, but I want to feel comfortable with what I accept and take on. We would love to adopt if the foster situation became permanent. Thanks for everyone's comments.

[Kansas Girl]

with fostering, it may be harder to ask a lot of questions right away.....a lot of times the workers don't know, or they may not have interviewed the bio parents yet. Even when they do interview them a lot of times they don't get a lot of info from them anyway.

We asked the question when we adopted our son.....the answer was that the bmom swore up and down that she didn't use or drink during pregnancy. The caseworker told us to count on it. Even if they say they only did drugs most of the time there is alcohol consumption along with the drug use. She ultimately died of liver disease at age 35, so figure the odds.

R is actually a fraternal twin - the second birth. His twin has a lot of developmental delays (global and severe). Pretty tragic. I don't know much about twins and alcohol exposure, but it almost seems like J definitely got the raw end of the deal. R is very bright. For my untrained eye, no physical characteristics for R. R has come pretty far on conscience formation and cause and effect thinking, but what still bothers me is:
1) he has no idea of the concept of money - if he gets it for a birthday or holiday he just wants to give it away to someone.
2) for all his progress he is still emotionally immature, very naive. Tends to trust anyone - still no "stranger danger" instinct at almost 16 yrs. old. He's gotten better, but still a long way to go.

As a number of posters have said here, don't let it scare you. Just be really prepared - I know with our son the two things above are what we are going to have to continue to help him on, if he is to be able to live independently.

If you want a list of questions, I have a long list that is good for adoption.....pm me and I will send it to you.

good luck!
Fran

[Gili]

Thanks to everyone for writing... From time to time I think I have things figured out, and then it all just seems to collapse. So many people have said different things about my DS's prognosis. I wasn't surprised that the school system Special Start evaluators have been acting like I'm neurotic, since he's testing well cognitively. They are not taking at all seriously my information (gleaned from various FASD sources) that no matter how a pre-schooler tests, this is an extremely high-risk group and many serious problems can show up much later. I know the school system has very limited resources, so I'm not surprised that they don't particularly want to allocate services to someone who seems average. What really surprised me was when we went to the Tufts/NE Medical Center Adoption Clinic. While they said his features aren't the most obvious, they took one look at him and assumed that he has FAS (he has at least six signs of it on his face alone). Then they tested him and said that he's doing so well that they don't necessarily want to give him the FAS "label" officially, because it could hurt him in the future. They thought he should get various services, but ALSO didn't seem to think we should push for them very hard.

Anyway, my impression was that these people are supposed to be the FASD experts, and they've certainly seen plenty of kids on that spectrum. But they acted contrary to many of the things I've read about FASD, e.g., they only did a very limited general kind of testing, and they seemed to think I'm crazy for worrying that DS's academic and functional ability might get worse over time. I tried to take all this in a positive light - maybe her really WILL be okay, graduate high school no problem, hold down a job, maybe even go to college (not that we'll pressure him!). And the school people have been testing him, oh look how many pictures he can name and how he stacked these blocks. So I'm trying to take that as a positive thing, too - that he's supposedly average... But then we see him in preschool and other places with other kids his age, and he just seems so lost. He can't keep up with many of the cognitive things they're doing (games, remembering things, answering questions, etc.) and he's starting to play by himself more and more. This really could be paranoid, but we're both worried that he's already starting to see himself as different. And that hurts. So I'm back to thinking about the parents who say their child with FASD was "diagnosed" as "developmentally fine" during the toddler and/or preschool years, but then things really started to fall apart in school. Even the adoption clinic people said that he very well could start struggling in third grade. SO WHY ARE PEOPLE ACTING LIKE THEY WANT TO HOLD BACK SERVICES FROM HIM???? Our early intervention therapists told us, before I was even willing to consider FASD, that if he got the diagnosis he'd have a much easier time getting services. But so far, all I'm seeing is ignorance. One (and only one) of the five special start evaluators admitted that they see roughly TWO kids with FASD per YEAR. But of course they're acting like they know more about it than I do just because they're the ones with the tests. Clearly, they haven't read any of the literature.

Sorry for the rant!! I just really feel like either I'm crazy here, or everyone else is...