[helpmemom]

Help!! I am new to this forum. Today I agreed to become the foster mother to a 16 year old girl. In February of last year, my husband and I adopted 3 siblings. We had picked them out from the internet before we had even met them. Now we have a 16 year old girl from Northern KY whom we have had for 2 weeks for respite care. She is a sweet girl and we have had no problems with her. She is in denial that she will be reunited with her mother before she is 18. Dave (my husband) and I have been married for 15 years (4/9/88) and were not able to have children of our own. We adopted 3 siblings I found on Indiana's SNAP website in 2/2003. We thought we would try respite care to help out other foster parents in this area. The first respite care foster child we got just happens to need a new foster home. Being a fairly new parent, is there anyone out there who I can talk to who is in the same situation, or close to it, who I can talk to? We got our children and our foster daughter through "The Villages" here in Louisville.

One of our adopted sons has ADHD and ODD, one has been evaluated as being mild to molderately mentally handicapped and our 13 (almost 14) year old adopted daugher is very normal.

Everyone in our immediate and extended family seems excited to have a foster family member. I have no doubt that she will fit in and be a member of our family.

What I'm looking for is someone who is remotely similar to my situation that I can communicate with. If there is anyone out there, please contact me through this forum.

Everyone I know has had biological children. I know my situation is different and there has got to be someone out there who understands what we are going through. I'm not sure what to expect.

Stacey