Foster Care: What I Wish I Knew

30 May

Several years have slipped by since I first penned a letter to my younger self concerning foster care. (Read here.) During that six year period, I have had many people in the process of foster care certification ask me what I wish I had known when embarking on this journey.

What do I wish I had known?

I wish that I viewed behavior not as defiance, but as a means to communicate hurt and reactions to trauma that words would not allow. Our experience in both foster care and adoption has been with children three and under thus far. These little people cannot process or communicate the feelings that are ripping their hearts apart or causing them anger and anxiety. In truth, I cannot always put words or awareness to the many emotions and reactions that I have or have had in this process. In fact, I attended a Q & A foster care panel last evening and found myself with tears streaming down my cheeks as the panel approached their seats. They hadn’t even spoken a word! These last six years of foster care and adoption have been emotionally draining; not only the process, but the relearning how to parent children that have faced loss so early in life. Behaviors convey more than defiance.

I wish I read books not required by our foster licensing, but recommended by fellow foster and adoptive parents. Our foster training was a three hour course once a week over 10 weeks. Each week we met and were lectured on the expectations of foster parents as well as some scenarios that we could expect. We completed homework assignments and filled out heaps of paperwork. Sadly, we were not equipped to deal with practical everyday behaviors, only instructed in what not to do. I am sure that some insight was given, but overall we were poorly furnished with processes to ensure meeting our children’s behavioral challenges with meaningful measures. For instance, time outs, punishments, and taking away of toys or favored items does not work with children going through such trauma. Here are a few resources that I am currently finishing up, revisiting, or reading for the first time. (The last book I have not read yet, but comes recommended by fellow foster/adoptive parents.) A little warning, The Connected Child has wonderful step by step guides, however, this book frequently presents the worst case scenario. Please don’t be put off by this as I was! I have attempted to read this book on three occasions because of this, but have recently come to the final chapters and will reference it again as needed. It is a valuable resource!

I wish I paced for a marathon…or two…or three. In fostering a child you are opening the doors of your home and the pages of your calendar for an indefinite amount of time. This process frequently takes longer than you or the state anticipates and much longer than case management projects. Foster care is a commitment to a child or a group of children to love, protect, and advocate for them until reunification or a forever family, even if that is your own, is warranted. There are seldom quick fixes and even when those do arise, your heart has been forever changed and expanded in loving and caring for a fellow image-bearer of God. Foster care is a marathon.

I wish I embraced foster community earlier on. Foster care and adoption waters can feel like uncharted territory and lonely shores if we don’t embrace and seek out fellowship with other foster families and prayer from our friends in the faith. Seek prayer and shoulders to lean on. I know we could not have made it in this journey, nor continue to fight the good fight as well as our fervent attempts, apart from the prayers of our fellow foster/adoptive parents and faithful friends and family. Only the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit know every hurt and hurdle we and our families face, but the Body of Christ provides prayer and provisions when we most need them and often when we least expect them. Don’t go this journey alone. We were made for community.

I wish I knew this was a family affair. When you as a married couple, or a single adult, step out in obedience to welcome a child or teen into your home, you are making this decision for the other children in your home, your extended family, your church body, and your friends. I’ve stated this in a previous post, but our two oldest children have fully embraced the foster and adoptive lifestyle and they are richer for it! It has been painful and confusing at times as they abruptly said good bye to their foster brother of 13 months, or as they watched and waited for our youngest son to transition into our home and then months later be legally adopted. Additionally, as they have watched us endure different trials or legal setbacks in our adoption of our youngest daughter. With each child they have had a front row seat as their mother and father, although I credit Ron handling his emotions far better than myself, strain under the stress of advocating for what is best and patiently trusting the system and the sovereignty of God to work the slow wheels of justice in our court system. We knew this was a family decision, but we could never have anticipated what a great impact our decision would make on the children already given to us by God, our extended family, and our church family.

Finally, I leave you with several fictional, middle grade to young adult books that adequately and artfully portray what may be on inside the hearts and minds of children in foster care while simultaneously providing a picture of outward behaviors. These books will help you step into the shoes of children that may look like a child whose heart and face you have not encountered yet, but who is waiting for you on the other side of your family’s obedience.

*Parent warning: The next two books contain a character (the foster mom) which alludes to a previous homosexual lifestyle. I am not recommending you read these to your children, but rather you read them for your own understanding of how your foster child is processing their feelings and the road to establishing a healthy connection.

This last book contains a foster (pre-adoptive) daughter who has autism. I am a licensed speech-language pathologist who previously specialized in treating children on the Autism Spectrum. I was amazed in reading this fictional account at how accurately the author described the character with autism. At the end of the book, I read that the author is an adoptive dad of a child with autism. If you are considering opening your home to a child with autism, this may be a good read for you. Remember this is a fictional account! Children with autism are as different as children without this condition. Just an interesting book and a fascinating read.

Do you have books to add to this list? What do you wish you had known as a first time foster parent?

Faithfully walk where God leads,

 

 

Purchase my book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale, on Amazon.

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Remembering Our First Foster Care Experience

2 May

This week we celebrate the one year anniversary of our youngest son’s adoption day. What an unbelievably arduous and adventurous process that adoption has been for our family…and we are not done yet! But nearly, praise the Lord, we are nearly made one in name, number, and wholeness as this coming Monday we will receive the adoption case manager for our youngest daughter.

However, today I am reminded of where our adoption journey began as we received our first foster son six years ago. I think back on how naïve we were. How ready we felt to change the world little knowing how very much our world would change. To celebrate National Foster Care Awareness Month I have rounded up all my previous posts, posts dating back to 2012 when we were first foster licensed, and conveniently placed them here for you.

I can scarcely remember the family of four we were prior to this grand journey our family embarked on half a dozen years ago. Our two oldest children’s lives have been forever impacted in both good and challenging, but primarily positive ways, due to our choice to foster and adopt. They have known a mom and dad under more stress than they would have had we not invited beautiful children and the state into our home to share it as our own. As you will see in these posts, they were babies themselves, four and two years of age, when we began. Our children came to know Christ in these years. They converted from not only our son and daughter but moreover to our sister and brother in Christ, and they have indeed born their crosses beside us and brandished shield and sword to fight on behalf of the fatherless turned family. I am so grateful for their stance beside their father and me. I can’t wait for you to walk down memory lane with us. May it be a hall of calling for some to join us as you pass our pictures and posts here.

Would you do me a favor? If you know someone or a community of people embarking on their foster journey, would you share this post with them? I think they will find a friend and a familiar narrative to the ones playing out in their minds as they begin journeys of their own.

So take a trip down memory lane with me as you read these posts and follow a mom’s raw and authentic heart’s cry of can we do this, give me eyes to see as you see Lord, and concluding thoughts that changing the world for one child is worth everything. 

Tomorrow’s Race (here)

Pour Another Cup (here)

Simple Addition (here)

Lessons for Everyday (here)

Lord Give Me Eyes to See (here)

I Must Remember This (here)

Confessions of  A First-Time Foster Mom (here)

Seven Books That Encouraged Me Along Our Journey (here)

 

 

You can now purchase my book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale, on Amazon.

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Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale is Published!

11 Apr

Emily and I, along with our entire family, are proud to announce that our book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale, is now available on Amazon and for purchase through our local church’s bookstore. Yippee! This has been a wonderful family project for us and a goal realized personally. Thanks to over 70 backers of our Kickstarter campaign, we were able to see our dream to fruition.

All along it has been our ambition that in telling our son’s adoption story we will encourage and promote adoption to a broader audience as well as provide a means for adoptees to discuss their adoption stories around the shared experience of reading aloud.

Two of our sweet friends with their copy of Thirty Balloons. Share your pictures using #ThirtyBalloonsBook

I think this book is best suited to read aloud to children eight years of age and up. However, our youngest two children, ages three and eighteen months, request the book be “read aloud” by telling a shorter synopsis as they look at the pictures. With their shorter attention spans, even discussing the pictures in a book and retelling in our own words builds interest in books, exposes them to new vocabulary, and helps accumulate time spent together. In fact, if your child will sit for a bit longer, you might consider reading the book over several settings.

Three backers from our Kickstarter Campaign purchased Kindergarten Kits. These kits are bundles of twelve copies of Thirty Balloons and a bundle of 30, Thirty Balloons balloons! These are being hand delivered to three local schools this week along with our list of Ten Ways to Get Involved in Foster Care and my top selections of picture books highlighting orphans and celebrating adoption. I am so excited! I know that many children in the public school system either are, or have been, in the foster care system and it is my hope that they can relate to this story in a positive way, or that our story will open doors to talk about the emotions that it stirs up. Moreover, I hope that our story will encourage students of all ages to consider how they might work, even now, to help children in need of forever homes.

Have you ordered your copy of Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale yet? If so, would you leave a review on Amazon here? If not, I have a special offer for you if you order before May 2nd. Order your copy of Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale and I will send you the pdf downloads of my top picture book recommendations and ten ways to get involved in foster care for free! That way you can share these with your family and community.

I look forward to more writing projects in the future that increase adoption awareness. Thirty Balloons turned into an incredible family project and we are extremely honored to share it with you. Thank you for praying for us and supporting us throughout this journey.

Keep holding onto hope,

 

 

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Will More Over Meager Make for Better?

9 Mar

Many people desire and pray for rapid growth, for example when launching a new church, starting a new business, publishing a book, or starting an Etsy shop. Few people know how to manage rapid growth well. We pray for it, and may even anticipate rapid growth, but how do you really prepare for the unknown?

I’ve read of pastors who didn’t know how to handle rapid growth in their church. We’ve all seen the downward spiral of professional performers or athletes because they couldn’t handle the responsibility that comes with wealth and acclaim. Few people can handle affluence of power, prestige, or their pocketbook well.

I’m wrestling with some questions right now that arise after a period of rapid growth in our family. Three years in the process of adoption, not to mention transitioning from parenting two children to four children in a span of three months, rapid growth occurred unexpected, all be it, blessedly. One side effect of rapid growth in our family is the rapid decrease of space in our home. For months now we have wrestled with the idea of purchasing a home with a bit more space: garage, fenced in backyard, maybe an extra room. We already live minimally because we own a 1200 square foot villa with no garage. There just isn’t room for storing extra material possessions. I am constantly, out of both desire and necessity, paring down our toys, wardrobes, and household items.

As we have wrestled and prayed over purchasing a home with more living space. I have asked myself whether I really need more space to live a more fulfilled life; to function optimally as a home educating mom. I know I can make our space work, but do I need to? Wouldn’t I save myself sanity and effort with the addition of a fenced in backyard? Or would I find that in acquiring more, would it even make a postive difference in the long term?

For my husband and I, we know and have witnessed how the rest of the world’s poorest people live. We know that there are people in South America who spend their entire lives living on a trash dump in Honduras. We know that many people in African villages live in huts and serve what they have with a smile and immense hospitality towards those who enter their home. They make much of their meager offerings.  

Even this week in reading, Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful, I am reminded that much doesn’t mean abundance of life, rather gratefully receiving all that God offers of Himself means life lived abundantly. Did you catch that? More doesn’t mean fullness. We can find fullness of joy in the small and incomplete often better than the full and overflowing portions of life.

As a side note, and this will be an entire post someday, read this quote from Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful: (the girls) seemed oblivious to the idea that some people might weigh the joy of loving someone against the pain of potential loss. In regard to foster care I hear this all the time as an excuse not to foster children. Read this book if you are prayerfully considering foster care or adoption.

So I guess what I would love to know is this, have you found that getting what you think you want makes you happier in the long run? Has a larger space, bigger office, promotion or fresh start met the needs you thought they would? I know that we can be content in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. I know that. But how do we know when bigger becomes better and moving on leads to the more God wants for us? How do we know when we have a holy discontent that needs our attention and not the Land of Plenty’s (and plenty of people in the church) constant messaging that more is what we need and should go after?

These are the questions I am wrestling with today. Because when I look at people who have bigger and more I don’t see an overabundance of evidence that it makes a difference in their daily lives for the better. There are always things we as parents and individuals will be anxious over that goes beyond square feet and wide-open spaces for our children to play in.

It’s your turn. Tell me your experiences with making much of more or meager. When you felt freedom to go after the more did it lead to the better? I truly need to hear them.

 

 

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Side Effects of Chasing Our Dreams

9 Feb

Chasing our dreams can be a thrilling, and frightening, experience. Months and years of preparation go into a product and then we put it on display for any and all who will partake. It’s a little misleading actually, because our daily lives aren’t finished products–only portions of our work are. So when people see or hear your product, they only see a portion of you; it is so easy for us all to fail to see people’s work as only a part of a whole and not a whole itself.

After launching Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale on Kickstarter and being a guest on the Read Aloud Revival Podcast (listen here), I can most certainly attest that finished products are one thing, daily life is another. The last two weeks have been thrilling and exhausting. As my husband and I seek to encourage others to add to their family through adoption and consider the orphan and children in foster care, it is a great time for spiritual warfare. For one example, without elaborating, the last two weeks have been extremely difficult in the parenting category for one of our children. Another example, we have had one case of the flu and one of strep throat the past week as well. You may also be pleased to know that laundry and home education didn’t take a vacation either.

However, one amazing side effect of launching a Kickstarter Campaign and putting myself out there so to speak, has been the effect on our two oldest children. When our children watch us attempt something that scares us, it encourages them to do the same. 

I recently read, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. One take away from this book was J.D.’s feeling of not having the inside information afforded to higher income families. Even after completing law school at an Ivy League School, he still felt like somewhat of a poser. He knew the hillbilly culture from which he hailed, but didn’t know what he didn’t know until embarrassment or experience taught him. For example, he didn’t know to wear nice shoes and a jacket to an interview instead of army boots and a tucked in shirt.

Sometimes, it can seem that way even if you don’t share J.D.’s cultural history nor broken family background. It may feel as if everyone else has an instruction manual that somehow you missed out on. Like there is a world-wide memo system that wasn’t afforded to you.

However, when our kids see us reaching for goals and dreams that make us uncomfortable, and for which we are on a significant learning curve, it’s like we are handing them that memo, that instruction manual—and they don’t even realize it. Our experiences while our children are in our homes becomes a continual testament to them about how life works. How trial and error, efforts and failures, all come together. Our pursuits, in ways we cannot see, inform them as to what is possible for them to attempt.

Last week, my two oldest children were working, by their own endeavors, to write books of their own. When my oldest son tells me, “I am going to publish my book. Remember how I was going to have you just type it out on the computer and print two copies off? Well now I want to publish it like your book mom.”  My oldest daughter turns to him and says, “How are you going to do that?” “Kickstarter!” he replies.

Kickstarter! That’s a word that I didn’t even know until January of this year. Now my 8-year-old son is plotting to publish his first book on Kickstarter.

Your dreams and current goals very likely look different from mine. That’s not important. The point is, that in reaching for your God-given dreams and goals, your are influencing and informing your children and your community. You are exemplifying what is possible when you push past comfort zones and fear, and that is a beautiful side effect.

 

 

Pre-Order My New Children’s Book on Kickstarter

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Welcome Read Aloud Revival Listeners!

5 Feb

 

Hello and welcome! My name is Brooke and I am so grateful that you are visiting This Temporary Home. I imagine that many of you may be new here from the Read Aloud Revival Podcast. If so, thanks for stopping by! It was an honor and a dream come true to chat with Sarah about books in general and those highlighting orphans and celebrating adoption specifically. In case you are a regular reader of the blog, but haven’t had the chance to listen to the podcast, head here to listen to Episode 87. You’ll love Sarah!

In order for you to become better acquainted, I am going to give you a few quick links that will hopefully take you where you want to go.

First, check out the Welcome Page. There you will find a brief introduction and a little more about the why behind this blog.

Next, visit the Community Page. There you will find links to my favorite posts by topic. A bit down the page will be all the posts I have written on foster care and adoption over the years.

Third, I am sure that if you listened to the podcast, you may want to get your hands on the orphan adoption book list. I am linking to all the booklist posts here, but you can also join the mailing list to receive your beautiful free pdf download designed by my friend Kasia.

Seven Books That Encouraged Me Along Our Journey (here)

Fifteen Picture Books To Celebrate Your Adopted Child (here)

Twenty Chapter Books that Highlight Orphans and Celebrate Finding Home(here)

Ten Books for Teens to Highlight Orphans and Celebrate Finding Home (here)

Over 50 Books To Highlight Orphans and Celebrate Adoption (here)

Christmas Books that Highlight Orphans and Celebrate Adoption (here)

Finally, I mentioned on the podcast that you could download a free copy of my book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale. You can do that by popping your email in the text box below. It is a separate sign up from the booklist, so you will want to sign up for both. Or you can order a physical copy of Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale on Amazon.

Well, that should be it for now. I am so very glad you stopped by! Please take a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the site, the book posts, and anything else that interests you. Then feel free to introduce yourself or leave any questions you might have either in the comments or by emailing me at Brooke@ThisTemporaryHome.com. I can’t wait to get to know you!

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Kickstarter Update: We Did It!

5 Feb

The entire Cooney Family would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the overwhelming support and encouragement that we received on our Thirty Balloons Kickstarter Campaign. In less than four days you enabled us to meet our goal! Way to go!

We will share news with you later this week about our stretch goals, but, for today, we celebrate! If you haven’t had a chance to preorder your physical copy of the book there is still time left. Our campaign runs until March 3rd, so please keep spreading the word. We want to share the message of adoption, hope, family, and reading aloud to children with as many people as possible. You can do that by sharing this link.

Thanks so much again,


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Building Strong Families

29 Jan

Shared experiences. This is perhaps the number one way to build strong families. These shared experiences can be over service opportunities, spiritual disciplines, sports, nature walks, hiking, hobbies, and, one of our favorite ways, that of sharing great books.

In making the list of over 50 books highlighting orphans and celebrating adoption, I may have mistakenly thought that I was building a list of books dealing with broken families. While that is true on the one hand, it is an inaccurate assumption on the other. Families involved in orphan and foster care are typically looking to share strong family values with the children they foster or adopt.

Many of the books I recommend indeed celebrate family. In championing adoption, we are ultimately championing family. Nearly all of the picture books celebrate finding home and a place of safety and acceptance. A few of the chapter books that immediately come to mind which celebrate strong families encountered within the story, even while beginning in brokenness are:

I recently read The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, and it is such a beautiful story, for one reason among many, in that it esteems a strong family relationship. Sometimes we read books and see ourselves in them, sometimes we read them and see relationships as we wish they were. For children in the foster system, this book would fall into the later category.

That is another reason why I am so excited about my new book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale. (Did you download your free copy yet?) It is a story about adoption, but it is simultaneously a story about a family wanting to add to their number, share the blessing of family that they have, and champion not only the cause of the orphan, but the power of family. How like God that he would join passions of my husband, to build strong families through counseling and biblical teaching, with our desire to adopt, and mine to write. This is the first time that I have looked at these three life goals and see them colliding as one.

The Kickstarter Campaign for Thirty Balloons is live! Click here to back our campaign and watch our video to learn more about the project. I can’t wait for you to preorder your copy, or copies, to share.

What are some of your favorite books that have strong families threaded within? I would love to read them too.

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A New Book to Carry With You

26 Jan

Sometimes I marvel which childhood bents will carry over to adulthood. For me, the love of a good book is probably foremost. So much so, that I remember on one occasion alphabetizing my home library. I must have been in third or fourth grade. Perhaps I also instituted a check-out operation, though for whom I cannot say.

The first book that clicked with me I checked out from my school library in the third grade. The name of the text has long eluded me. For years I looked in the same corner of the little school library for the book with the girl and the wagon wheel on the front only to be evaded. It is of little importance what the book was, or even its content. What matters is that the love of reading and learning was unlocked.

From that point on,  I was found digging through treasure troves of books. The hardcover, yellow-paged volumes were my favorite. Black Beauty (Dover Children’s Evergreen Classics), Little Women (Puffin in Bloom), The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew, Book 1), and Old Yeller (Perennial Classics) soon became reading companions which still hold honored places on my shelves.

Then there are those books, purchased brand new especially for, or by, me. Books like Charlotte’s Web, Where the Red Fern Grows, A Little Princess (Puffin in Bloom), Matilda, and The Little House (9 Volumes Set). What memories I have of transforming new books into old friends! The sight, smell, and touch of them take me back to the age and place I was when I first read them and they became a forever part of me.

Today, our home library exceeds the shelf space allotted. Now, as then, I continue to find searching for classic and modern volumes therapeutic.

Many childish ways I left behind, but the books I carried with me.

The books we read to our children and the books they find as faithful friends, read and reread as yearly rhythms, they will carry with them long after they themselves can be carried.

Today, I want to encourage you to add a new volume to your shelf.  A new book to turn into worn pages, and its contents into an old friend.

I have written a children’s picture book, illustrated by my oldest daughter, Emily, about our adoption journey of our youngest son. From our first meeting, through the months and months of holding onto hope and seeking his adoption, this story will encourage and inspire you as you wait on the happy endings in your own life.

Many of you have read posts over the years concerning our adoption and foster care journey. Now, you can read our adoption tale to the children in your life that will leave them inspired, asking questions, and perhaps ready to slay a few dragons of their own that stand in the way of them attaining their God-given dream. I hope you will!

I believe that real books read on the laps of parents and with loved ones are the best tools to introduce and reaffirm the magic of story and strengthen family bonds. That’s why I am excited that you can purchase your own copy of Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale on Amazon. I am also offering a free pdf download for those who pop their email into the box below! I pray it is a book you will want to carry with you. Go ahead and download your copy now! Then head over to Amazon to order a copy of Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale to read with your family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Special Features Included in Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale

24 Jan

My family is greatly encouraged by all the comments and interest everyone has shown in Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale. I wanted to highlight a few features that you will notice in the pdf downloadable copy that will be available on Friday afternoon. Can’t wait to share that with you!

The first portion I would like to highlight, is a section of the book where you record your own adoption journey. When you preorder your copies of Thirty Balloons via our Kickstarter Campaign, you will be able to buy one to keep and one to share with a friend. This book makes a great gift for adoptive and foster families! What a neat way for someone to honor their child’s journey in their own words for them to revisit as often as they like.

The next is a glossary of terms. As a speech-language pathologist and a home educator, vocabulary is very important to me. The rich vocabulary in this book is great to discuss and begin to use in your family’s everyday conversations, as well as your child’s writing assignments! The reading level of this book makes it perfect for reading aloud and not simply passing it on to your child to read alone. I would say it is best suited for children ages 6 and up. Certainly younger children who already sit through more lengthy picture books will enjoy the bright colors and rich text as well. Reading Thirty Balloons aloud, as well as expanding on some of the vocabulary naturally in conversation after reading the book, can be an added bonus of this shared reading experience..

Lastly, the final page of the book is a thank you to our Kickstarter backers. If you want to support our campaign and have your name in the book, be sure and invest in the campaign starting February 1st at 11:00AM Eastern. We would love for your name, your family’s name, or that of a loved one to be honored in our book. You could even buy a kit to donate to your local elementary school and put their name, or your child’s teacher’s name!

I am so excited about this project and the excellent work of the team behind it. Please, if you haven’t already subscribed to the blog, take a moment and do that today at the link on the right of your screen.

Until Friday,


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