Foster parents operate with a worry that something will go wrong. The state puts children in their home who have serious problems. Frequently, the foster parents do not know most of what the state knows. Yet, if something should go wrong, guess who will quickly get the blame?
I have previously given examples in regard to receiving our now adopted boys as foster children. Tommy came to us with no medical records, two prescription medications, and a telltale scar down the middle of his chest. Foster parents are required to have a child checked by a doctor within a few days of receiving him. As we were to find out, even a doctor is in the dark if the only clue is a scar down the sternum. The state had taken Tommy to the doctor two weeks before he came to us, but they chose not to tell us.
Foster parents are required to take a course which supposedly prepares them for the kinds of problems that foster children may bring with them. I can personally tell you that there was no way that we were prepared for the fits, rages, tantrums, and hysterics that immediately ensued when we had all four boys. Our eighteen month old boy was swinging lamps. If someone had been hurt, we would have been held responsible.
We were constantly worried that they would harm one another or that Tommy would have a heart attack or seizure when he was having his very wild rages. Nancy and I even received bites. We will never look back with anything but consternation. We are both glad that we made it through those days.
We did have one really close call where we were entirely innocent but the circumstances would have looked very bad. It happened several months after we had received Isaiah as a ten day old baby. We were loading our twelve passenger van after going to church. We had picked up the other boys in their various Sunday school classes and talked to several people, so we were the last vehicle out of a remote part of the parking lot.
I was carrying Isaiah in a carrier that fit into and became a part of the car seat. Nancy was standing in the side doorway of the van dealing with several of the boys. Because she was blocking the door, I put Isaiah down on the pavement directly behind her, assuming that she would put him in the van when she had finished. She somehow backed out of the doorway without seeing him.
We both got in our seats, I started the van and we had proceeded about fifty feet when Nancy suddenly screamed. She somehow noticed, even though his seat was directly behind her, that he was not in the van. It is hard to describe how that little baby looked sitting there all by himself in the parking lot. Consider this newspaper headline, “Foster Parents Leave Baby in Parking Lot”.
That was our near miss. The Lord was watching over us that day. I am glad the whole thing is over and they are ours.
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