Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Unclear Pronunciation of 3-year-olds

Thanks to therapy, we have people in our home more often, which I think leads to more awkward moments.  This week's:

Crocodile: Daddy give me spankin.
*silence*
Me: What did you say?
Crocodile: He give me spankin.
Me: I don't think... I don't think that's what he means...
Crocodile: He give me spankin.  *holds up play food piece of bacon*
Therapist and Me: He gives you BACON!

And yes, B did give Crocodile a small piece of his bacon this morning.  And now I'm doing my post-game analysis: did I clarify why I was horrified?  Because I wasn't horrified because we spank him but because after signing at least twelve forms that we swear we will not spank I know a looming investigation when I see one.  But I didn't SAY any of that...

Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Toys that need explaining

We're a few sessions into therapy for Crocodile.  He's in turbo gear when the therapist is at our house, kind of like he is when a caseworker comes by.  (When he's not asleep, he's usually just in high gear.)  So, he's running here and there and everywhere, playing with everything for two seconds, and he brings over something that makes circles on the microsuede couch.

Of course, that something is a shot glass he pulled from the dish drying rack.

Doesn't matter how moderately you drink or how understanding you think the professional is, that's worth at least a few nervous chuckles.

Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Come on in!

We were expecting an unannounced caseworker visit this month.  The doorbell rang, and I opened the door to someone who introduced herself to me.  So, I introduce myself back and welcomed her in, thinking that our caseworker must not be able to make it for some reason, and this is a supervisor I've never met.

"Um, actually, I'll just pick up the t-shirts.  Are these the t-shirts?"

I suddenly remember that someone I hadn't met before was picking up t-shirts from me, totally not foster-related.  I tried to explain my confusion, but as she said goodbye I could tell she didn't quite get it.  "Nice meeting you!  Good luck on your interview!"

B pulled in and his first words were, "I think a caseworker is at the door."

Foster care: at least 50% of the people at our door are caseworkers.

Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Minus one kid

Sometimes it's not unusual to be out and about with less than your total number of children.  Some are in school.  Sometimes it's a weekend and we just send one along with a parent on an errand to divide and conquer.  People get that.  What I have found throws people off is being without the youngest child, and since our foster children have always been the youngest children in our family, this happens regularly when foster children are at visits.

At a play group, the foster child is with me one week because a visit was canceled, then gone the next because the visit is happening.  It's the middle of the day, so it's not common in many families that he or she would be at home for some reason with the other parent.

Or there's an overnight visit and suddenly we have fewer children at church.  Did he move?  Where is she?  A bit hard to explain without prompting more questions about the case.  I usually explain anyway, and just try to avoid the other questions the best I can.

I need a t-shirt that says "Number of Kids May Vary, No Biggie."

Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Courtroom Silence

I generally try to initiate conversations with birth parents.  Our relationship is inherently awkward, and I tend to be more awkward than the set-everyone-at-ease personality type, but I try.  At court, though, everything is even more weighty, even more awkward.  So, I've generally said hello politely but not started a conversation.  It's a tense day.  I don't know how they're feeling and if I start small talk, if they'll be silently wishing I would just leave them alone.  But one time I went to court it was extra silent and uncomfortable, though, so I've found it better to just bring along a new picture or something to have something brief and polite to say, then if the parents just want to say "thank you" and not talk, that's fine.  If they want to talk more, then we can.


But this one time, I didn't have a picture.  The mom was in the hallway and I asked if I could go in the court room.  She said yes.  I went in and sat silently.  A few others filtered in and discussed court business briefly.  The mom came and sat in her designated spot.  Someone said the judge needed to see everyone in his chambers (besides the mom and myself).  So, there we sat.  Deafening silence, not even sitting near each other so trying to talk then would be even more awkward.  Then something started happening on a screen in the courtroom, as the dad was attending remotely.  An employee at his location was trying to get it to work and she asked, "Is anyone in there?"


I knew I was supposed to say something, but I so prefer to slip through court silently as an observer.  Did I really have to speak up?


"...Yes." I called out.  "But not many.  They're mostly with the judge."


"Can you see us?"


"Yes."


"Okay, we can hear you, but we can't see you."


She fiddled around with it and suddenly it switched to an 80s geometric "technical difficulties" screen while blaring distorted elevator music.  Neon blue and purple rectangles slowly covering the image on the screen.  Eventually it switched back, and the deafening silence continued.


Eventually the hearing began and it wasn't silent, though the poor caseworker's testimony was interrupted in mid-sentence by the spectacularly awful blue and purple rectangles with accompanying music.  It was one of the first things I had to talk to B about when I got home from court.  His reply:


"Oh yeah, that happened the last time, and everyone looked at each other with weary, knowing glances."


Court: never boring, and so weird.

Confidentiality

I think honesty is some weird involuntary part of my brain.  Sometimes I overshare and don't realize it until the words have escaped my mouth.  Sometimes I give vague answers and then realize later that I trust that person and could have been more open. 

This makes foster parenting interesting, as we are not supposed to share case details and identifying information.  So sometimes I've not wanted to say a specific birthday and say the month instead and get a weird look.  Sometimes I start the answer the "how long is he/she staying with you" with a short answer that I realize makes no sense without a longer answer.  Or I should smile and nod when someone says something about "such an interesting name" but I end up explaining the origin of the name, which usually leads to more information or questions.  I'm a name nerd; it's hard to hold back!  And every person I have to weigh in my mind: what level of information should I give to this particular person?

A commenter said it must be hard to have a blog I don't share with local people.  It's true, only B knows it exists.  I've considered sharing it with a close foster mom friend, but then I know with that door open I'll have trouble not sharing with others, like those in our informal foster mom support group, who are a part of larger Facebook groups that often link to blogs and have agency employees as a part of the groups... I just decided to make tight boundaries and then my involuntary honesty won't kick in at the wrong time.  At least it hasn't so far.

And Tadpole is a teeny, tiny guy, so he has attracted attention everywhere we've gone.  I got some questions with Cricket (as it's clear she's not my biological child), but I've definitely gotten the most with the babies, especially newborns.  He also looks like I could have given birth to him, so I start answering basic questions and then get stuck needing to explain when I can't answer something like "What was his birth weight?"

It's all a little messy.  I'll keep doing my best.  Maybe I need to do puppet role-play like with my kids with polite short answers like, "I'm not comfortable sharing that, sorry."

Awkward Moments in Foster Care: Visit house

When we brought Cricket for her visit today (yep, she's still here), the visit house was a madhouse.  It was nice outside so one mother and daughter were playing outside, and the mom had brought outside toys for her daughter.  We're supposed to cut through the back yard to go into the house, so my kids all ran at the outside toys to play, not realizing they weren't brought for them.  Some bubble fluid might have been dumped and I felt awful. My kids also have a tough time understanding that the visit house has a lobby they should stay in while they wait, and they tend to roam like they're at a friend's house to play, and I lose track of someone with everyone coming and going.


So, amidst that chaos, a girl says, "Hi, Dinosaur."  He says hi back.  I realize she's a classmate of his, there for a family visit.  I tried to focus on my little kids so I wouldn't make eye contact or even look like I was trying to glance at the parent(s) she was visiting with.  I've been trying really hard to connect with other families at Dinosaur's school, but this was so not what I was hoping for.  No awkward conversations ensued, but still awkward vibes in the air.

Awkward moments in foster care - Religion question

Cricket recently had a medical procedure that involved getting her pre-registered over the phone with background information.  I was doing pretty well and shrugging off the questions that I didn't have answer to until we got to this one:


Person on phone: What is her religion?  It says Muslim.


Me: Oh!  Well, I think her dad is.  I mean Islam is the main religion in his country of origin.  But her mom talks about her Christian faith and wants me to teach her the Lord's Prayer, so...  And we pray with her a lot.  And we take her to a Christian church regularly, and her mom likes that we give her papers she's colored from there.  And-


Person on phone: Um, okay, I'm going to just write Christian.

Awkward moments in foster care: Sibling visits

I sent B with Cricket for her sibling visit yesterday.  Part of me wanted to go out of curiosity of how it would go and to have more time to talk to another foster mom, but by the time he got home, I was ready to just stay home and have some time with the boys.  The weather was lousy, so unfortunately they had to go with Plan B of dinner at a restaurant instead of a picnic at a park.

Cricket and her sister both had to go to the bathroom, so the other foster mom that was there took them to the ladies' room while B hung out with Cricket's baby brother.  While they were gone, the server came to the table for something and started commenting on baby brother.

Server: What's his name?
B: Um... I don't know.
Server: How old is he?
B: 7 months?  Sorry, we're foster parents and this is a visit for the siblings to see each other.
Server: (not quite understanding) Oh, that's so great they can still live together!
B: ...

For the record, B has been told baby brother's name several times, as I'd looked up his namesake (a minor celebrity) and showed B.  But at the time, all B could remember was that he had a crazy name.  So here he was, sitting in a restaurant at a table by himself with this baby, not knowing his name or age.  Only in foster care?

Awkward moments in foster care: Secret pregnancy

Our church is large enough that we have many acquaintances or old college friends that we only bump into occasionally.  Not all of them know we're foster parents.  So, one guy saw me holding a foster baby that has our same skin color and I could see his face immediately flood with confusion.  "Oh hey!  Wow, I didn't know... I mean, I must not be paying attention.  I don't even remember you being pregnant..."  More awkward for him than us, but I feel bad causing panic moments for people, because I've totally had those moments when I worry I've forgotten some major life change of someone I only see occasionally.

Awkward moments in foster care: Waiting room surprise

I'm realizing that at least 90% of my awkward moments posts will probably take place in waiting rooms, like the last awkward moment I posted.  Maybe this is actually part three, as one of my post about Pterodactyl's first doctor's appointment was one big awkward moment.  I thought of renaming the series, but I'll just add an extra label "waiting rooms."  I'm confident I'll be using that label again, as so much goes down in waiting rooms in foster care.

I brought Caterpillar in to a specialist appointment.  His mom was already there, and we got right into talking about the paperwork and general chit-chat, as she is always very chatty with me.  This continued for maybe ten minutes before we were called back.  She stood up with Caterpillar, I stood up, and... some guy who had been sitting on the other side of the waiting room stood up, too.

Caterpillar's mom: "Oh, this is Stephen.*"

She later clarified (though I didn't really need her to) that this was Caterpillar's father.  He had left the state before Caterpillar was removed.  I don't think anyone involved in the case had met him.  What did I say?  "I'm glad you could come"?  Did I not say anything because we headed back to the exam room?  I was in too much shock for me to remember now.  He definitely didn't know what to say either, though eventually he did say a "nice to meet you."

Crazy times, crazy times.

*not his real name

Awkward Moments in Foster Care - "Are you talking to me?"

Now that this blog post type has occurred to me, I'm sure I've got lots more to share from the past year.  But here is today's awkward moment in foster care:
 
I was sitting in the waiting room before an appointment for Caterpillar.  His mom was planning to come but hadn't shown up yet.  The receptionist had to ask the doctor a question about an insurance issue and come back to talk to me, so when a woman came in, there was no one at the desk, so she sat down across from me, made some small talk as Caterpillar charmed her.  The receptionist comes back and starts to tell me about what we're going to do, but the problem is, she makes eye contact with me and tells me something, then looks directly at the other woman in the waiting room and continues our conversation.  The woman looks startled and says, "Are you talking to me?"  The receptionist thought that she was Caterpillar's mom (they are a similar body type and skin tone, but nope).  I didn't have to tell her she was wrong, but neither of us knew how to explain it to the woman without confidentiality issues.  So the receptionist just finished the conversation with me, and I got out of there hastily.

Only in foster care.