Ask Maralee: Foster care and your sensitive child

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Hi Maralee,
My husband and I have one daughter who is almost three. We’ve had multiple miscarriages, and aren’t sure if/when we will have more biological children. We are both interested in foster care, but the thing that is holding us back is our daughter. She’s incredibly social and sensitive, and we fear that if we bring another child into our home who later has to return to his/her parents, our daughter will grieve that loss deeply. If we had another “forever child” in our family, we wouldn’t hesitate, but since she’s an only child, we hate the idea of her getting used to having a sibling and then going back to being an only child. I can only imagine how hard that would be for her.
I know that you had only Josh when you became foster parents. I was just wondering how you made the decision to pursue fostering rather than another adoption, if his grief over possibly losing a foster sibling was something you considered and worked through, and if you have any advice for us.
In Christ,
Aubrie

Hi Aubrie,
I’m excited that you guys are considering foster care, but I can totally understand your concerns, especially after the losses you’ve been through.
Josh was a very sensitive three year-old, too. I know there are some unique concerns in those situations. We chose to handle it by talking really openly with him about the goals of foster care. That’s the benefit of the sensitive kid— they intuitively get that kids should be with parents and that they need a safe place to be during that transition time. We never talked about adoption until it was a certainty, so he always understood that we were just helping out while it was needed. I think if you can keep your own emotions and expectations in check, then they will feel okay with the situation. I know Josh would have been really sad if Danny had gone back to his bio family, but I also think he would have wanted to do it again with more kids.

I love that because we’ve been doing this since he was a toddler, it is just normal to him. He wants us to keep taking kids so they can be loved and safe while their parents do the hard work.

Maralee