Billy and I had been married nearly 20 years, both of us focused on each other and careers so we never really thought about starting a family. When we did, we thought there must be a child in Texas that needed us as parents. It seemed the perfect solution for us, not the least of which was I didn't want to give birth. We'd get a child a little older so we wouldn't be so far behind our peers and hopefully help a boy that needed helping. It took us nearly 3 years to get it done, but we overcame the system and successfully adopted Albert & Andres who were both 9 when the entered our home in 2009.
One of the things we discovered adopting kids that had been in care for years was that foster families, understandably, just get these kids to the end of each day. It's clear that the child's future is secondary to just getting by. That leaves things like high expectations for school and eating "right" way behind just staying clean and getting to doctors appointments.
When the boys arrived in our home they were both healthy and amazingly have stayed that way. In fact, these boys have the most resilient health, they haven't been sick in two years! As healthy as they were, they were still on some pretty heavy psycho-tropic meds for everything from ADHD to "explosive anger disorder".
I want to be VERY clear here, I'm not criticizing the kind people who took care of my boys until I found them. There is an ugly viscous circle for these kids. The state determines subsidy amounts for foster families by "level of care", the more diagnoses they have the more cash received. Diagnoses come with drugs these days. The level of care is determined from a combination of case worker, doctor and foster parent testimony. The heaviest emphasize is on the foster parents, who again are being compensated based on this information & really are able to control what the Doctor and the Case Worker know. I have to admit that even I, during the year the boys were still "fostered" with us wanted to make sure we didn't have a decrease in the subsidy. I mean, it meant the difference for the boys in camp or no camp, guitar lessons or learn on YouTube. The drugs & level of care are listed on all of the materials that prospective forever families are given to achieve a "match".
So now you've been through hundreds of hours of "parenting" classes where they scare the living daylights out of you about how bad it can be adopting from foster care. They give you a million worst case scenarios of kids killing pets, disrupting lives, stealing and just generally making life a living nightmare. The "matching" system isn't what it could be either. There isn't the emphasis you might think on getting these kids forever homes. Since we were certified for foster to adopt, we thought we'd be called pretty soon after we were approved (that process was a whole 'nother story, I'll tell you some other time, but it was well over 2 years). We never got a call, but did hear about a matching event at OC Schnabel park on June 11, 2009. When we arrived we were given what could only be described as a catalog of kids. There were pictures and descriptions of children available for adoptions (meaning parental rights had been terminated). The worker told us that kids with red name tags were available for adoption. My husband described it as the most awkward thing he'd done since junior cotillion. So we just found some boys throwing a ball and joined in. Even though we really only intended to adopt a single child we knew that these two boys could fit in our family. After we spent a few hours with them, we snuck to the car and read their catalog entry. It was shocking! Really, if you had read it there was no way you would consider adopting these kids. So real moral of the story is that prospective forever families must go meet kids, do not depend on the TARE listings.
It was only after we had the boys for a few months that I took a class on psychotropic meds. That was an eye opener! When I found out what they were actually on I started to understand why one couldn't sleep and the other couldn't get through a day at school. I immediately started to reduce the meds, one at a time, little by little with the help of their Doctor. By summer they were completely de-medicated. Both boys had struggled in school, were the smallest & youngest in their classes so we elected to hold them back. Results? Boys who had essentially flunked & spent last year in the principals office now had all As/Bs this year, participated in any number of extra curricular activities (football, baseball, basketball, choir, guitar, judo...) and even were commended on TAKS results. Now that they were no longer medicated to zombie status they were doing great!
Our kids are so normal, I can't even blame any of my rookie parenting mistakes on my poorly adjusted kids from foster care. So we have tackled education, they now understand the importance of learning to be good students, they know that the great state of Texas will provide them with a college education as long as they have grades to get in. Of course, that's not done, but on it's way! We've tackled looking people in the eye, swimming, wake boarding and golf. All of which are coming along nicely, thank you.
Now, on to the learning to cook part of the blog...
One of the most frustrating things has been feeding these kids! During their lives in care, they were fed whatever they would eat. I know many parents have issues getting the kids to eat. But imagine if no one ever encouraged them to try something... never even explained the importance of a good diet. I had no idea how very frustrating that would be, and jeez, eating is a big part of the day. I was never much of a cook myself, I can remember calling my mom to ask how to fry an egg as a newly wed. Billy and I finally just accepted that the domestic gig wasn't for me and I should just start making money so I could hire out what I sucked at. It was a good system until the boys arrived and we realized they needed more than we could give them with me working. I've now been home with them for around a year. I had already been a bit of a food channel fan and pictured myself learning to cook all of these great meals only to find out they won't eat anything but meat Am cheese & white bread.
Andres has always been interested in cooking, always wanting to be in the kitchen with whoever is there. Now that he's old enough to handle the stove & some knives with out burning us down or cutting off my fingers we are going to learn to cook together this summer. Albert will help out, but I don't anticipate it holding his attention for long each time, so I'll try to find some specific things he likes to do. I'm hoping to do a few meals a week together, each time learning something new. Maybe it will help them want to eat new things (a vegetable or something else equally exotic). We'll do our best to blog our kitchen adventures with video, pictures and recipes if we find anything great. Please offer whatever suggestions you have to help and follow along to see how we do.
