[peetred]

Hello everyone, I am new to the boards.
Recently, me and my husband have felt drawn to becoming foster parents. We will be celebrating out 2nd anniversary in April, and our son is 7 months old. We have discussed foster parenting off and on for a few years now, and after having our taste of parenting finally with our son (whom we are completely in love with, who wouldn't be? hehe), we feel we would be ready to become foster parents. I am not sure how long it will take us to get our lisence, but I figure it will be a couple months or more here in Nebraska.

I was wondering if anyone here decided to foster parent while they had an infant???

Also, we are probably only going to be open to foster younger children at the time (I am thinking birth-6 years of age or somewhere in that range). We have one room, so the child and our son will share a room.

Any else that would help us, as we are just getting started, would help. Thanx so much.

[spitzlvr]

I am not a foster parent (tho I am sure many of them will answer you), but I have read alot of this board that you should avoid fostering children older then your youngest at home. I sure others can elaborate on that.

[sudeetoo]

I began my foster parenting when my youngest daughter was 1 1/2 and my son was 11. I always stuck to the age ranges of 3 to 10. That way, my son still felt like he was top dog and my daughter just worshipped the other children we fostered. Being that you have an infant almost toddler, CPS "should not" (I say that kind-of loosely) place any children in your home which could pose a risk to your infant as your infant can not speak for himself yet. That's how it was when my daughter was a toddler - no placements with aggression problems, sexual abuse, etc. Although here in Texas (I come from Calif.) the intake and placement of children sucks. So little, if anything is known of these children and you may not "discover" the true problems until many months later. I don't regret for a moment taking in the foster children I did while my baby was young - I was always very, very careful and watchful over all the kids.

[chevyjewel]

We have a son who is two and a daughter who will be four in March. Our first placement was twin infant premie girls, they came to us in July of 2006. Our worker ended up finding a family member willing to take them so they left us in December. We all did great with the arrangement. We started putting in inquiries after the twins left for early elemetary school aged children with the go ahead from our adoption worker. Now that's all on hold because we got a call about a newborn (born yesterday morning) and she's coming to our home on Monday.

I think it's all in what your worker thinks you can handle. Every child is different and has different needs. I think the major concern is younger children need more attention and they want to make sure the foster childs needs are met just as well as your other children. I don't think age should matter as much as how much time you have to offer compared to the needs of the individual child. Good luck!