An update on our lives since Baby Kay entered our family. A new baby in our life has brought many new trials and taught us a thing or two about who we are.
December has not turned out the way we expected. First, we had a car accident and totaled our family vehicle. Then, today, we accepted placement of a 9-month-old baby girl.
The car accident brought up a discussion about grief and loss. We also touch on the triggers brought on by the holidays for foster children. Finally, 9-month-old Kay teaches us something central to the Christmas story.
Here’s the link to the documentary listener Krysta told us about. Watch it! Where Children Find Hope
Andrea’s drawing
Linda’s Drawing
Listener Laura asks us to name all of the things we’ve tried to help Linda to go to sleep. This episode went a little longer than even we expected.
We mentioned the Sleep Lady. You can find more information about her here.
We were recently interviewed by Hugh Duncan for his podcast Nuclearity. You can listen to our interview here.
A general update on where our family is at and some recent stories that tell us we are making progress.
These are 40 of our own personal reasons to adopt through foster care. They’re not necessarily for you or anyone else, but they are what compels us. Celebrate National Adoption Month with us!
Wendy takes time to interview our friend Ramona, who grew up in foster care.
Coming soon: stay tuned for our National Adoption Month plans. Email with any of your adoption specific questions.
So you want to be a foster parent, but not yet. What can you do with all that energy you’ve got? We give some practical advice for how to prepare yourself.
Engagement Checklist:
http://marriage.about.com/od/engagement/ss/engagedissues.htm
A book on grief and loss we recommend:
Changes That Heal
Can you “un-adopt” a child? It sounds terrible, but we’ve known children whose adoption was dissolved by their adoptive parents AFTER the adoption was finalized. In this episode, we discuss adoption dissolution: why adoptions fail and how to ensure a successful adoption.
Some links we found helpful during our research:
Preventing dissolution of an adoption
http://adoption.families.com/blog/parental-claiming-of-an-older-adopted-child
Statistics on adoption disruption and dissolution
http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/s_disrup.cfm
Who pays for foster care when an adoption is dissolved?
http://www.nacac.org/adoptionsubsidy/factsheets/childsupportenforcement.html
The game “Uno” has a strange effect on our girls. We discuss it as well as what kind of questions Andrea and Linda have about their biological family and what answers we provide to them.
Why we teach our kids to apologize and why we apologize to them. Also, we announce the winner of our trivia contest and reveal the answer.
Wendy mentions these Bible references if you want to see what they say:
Colossians 1:19-20
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
We just celebrated our first full year with Andrea and Linda, or as we like to call it, our Familiversary. We offer the ten biggest surprises over the last year.
Also, something for our listeners, a trivia contest! Win a prize.
We’ve started a new therapy program called Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). We’ve only been to two sessions with the girls but have found that this “proven” program really works. If you’d like to start using some of the skills we’re learning try using this acronym
Praise appropriate behavior
Reflect appropriate talk
Imitate appropriate play
Describe appropriate behavior
Enthusiasm
We also mention a daily ritual that we use in our marriage. The “5 A’s”
Appreciation
Affection
Apologize
Ask (what can I do for you tomorrow?)
Amen (how can I pray for you?)
Can you foster kids while both parents work? Yes you can but it has some extra challenges. We discuss how we do it.
Also an update on our chance encounter discussed in our last episode and a shout out to some strangers we met through our show.
Our 4th of July (err Independence Day) celebration brought about a chance encounter that we had hoped to avoid. It’s a foster parent nightmare come to pass.
What’s a disruption? We give our thoughts on a fost-adopt placement that ends up getting reunified. This is not something we have experienced ourselves so we’d love to hear listener feedback.
