Having to make plans for our future children in case anything happens to us really highlights the fact that we do not know them. Isn’t it weird that we are going to be committing our lives to children that we don’t know? Not only that, but we are asking our friends to commit to them, as well. I guess that for anyone, choosing godparents is a difficult decision. But, in our case, we will be entering the lives of children that are already somewhat developed. They will be capable of liking and disliking things, as well as being liked or disliked, more so than an infant.
Once we have matched with children, there are approximately 1 month of visits, with increasing amounts of intimacy with the kids. Many people have asked if this is a trial period, which is a really logical question, but it is not. The social workers ask that we be pretty sure that we can commit to the children once we get to the point of meeting them, since it would be no good for them to be rejected. The visits actually provide the healthiest emotional situation for the children to begin properly detaching from their current care situation and begin their attachment to our family. While these children may have been rashly pulled from place to place previously, for this placement, they try to be as careful as possible.
Our friends that have gone through the adoption process, describe it as a leap of faith. No one can ever be 100% sure that they are making the “right” decision. That concept is even a bit irrelevant, just as one will never know whether they’ve birthed the “right” kid. Of course, we go into this knowing that we will be dealing with the emotional fallout of their difficult pasts from the very beginning and we do need to assess the level of behavioral issues that we are able to handle. I suppose that most parents are able to handle this more organically and slowly as the child develops. But, within establishing this criteria, we are just going to trust in the fact that we will be able to work it out.
As my nieces and nephews get older and I see the relationship with their parents change, I see that blood is thick, but not always thick enough. Kids are often not going to choose to be close to their parents, but the reverse is also true, a parent may not like some of the choices their kid is making as they grow and become independent.
If it weren’t for the support of the people that are closest to us, I don’t think I could enter this process at all. My biggest fear is having a migraine, which basically incapacitate me, and having full responsibility of my kids. Luckily, I do have many friends and neighbhors that I can call. Of course, this is really no different than if we were to birth our own child.
We were first required to have a respite parent, who is a secondary emergency contact to us. That is the only person that the children will legally be able to spend the night with while they are our foster children. N- had his background checked, was fingerprinted and took CPR. It wasn’t a great leap from there to figure than N- and his partner would also be great godparents, since they will be two of the primary caretakers in these kids lives with us.
We picked them as godparents for a number of reasons. They live near us, we trust their judgment and they are two of our best friends. R- has a teenage son that we adore and we are looking forward to him being a part of the kids lives, too.
They also have some qualities that are different than us, which we hope will help enrich and balance our children’s lives. N- is a Christian, which many children in the foster system are. We plan to support our children in any interests that they want to pursue, but if Christianity is one of them, it will be much easier with N- involved.
Finally, they are a trans-racial couple. It is very possible that our children will be of a different race than us. We feel so lucky that we have people of many colors in our primary support network and we decided that this was an ideal quality in our godparents, as well.
