When we disrupted our adoption with the girls, we set it as a goal to support other parents and hang out with kids as much as possible.  We understand how valuable it is to give parents a break from their kids and we seek to better understand child development and “normal” child behavior at different [...]

When I looked at my own expectations for our family. I honestly thought that I didn’t really have them.  I thought that I could take what came and roll with it.  Our agency and therapist didn’t really push us to do the work to paint any picture that we did have.  In the end, I [...]

At the end of May, I put out a call to my friends asking about cheap vacation rentals. M-, who we had met through our agencies trainings hooked us up with two people that were willing to loan us their vacation houses(!). So last week, we spent up in Groveland with the dogs on retreat. [...]

My friend K- has been doing some intensive Nonviolent Communication (NVC) work and invited me to this workshop.  Not knowing anything about NVC, but knowing that I need all the tools that I can get to improve my parenting skills, I decided to go for it.  The workshop consisted mostly of introducing participants to the [...]

One of our big lessons from our experience as foster parents is that reading book after book, using imagination and planning how to handle different circumstances did very little to prepare us for the reality of parenting or foster parenting.  We continued to experience the reality of “the system,” which is not truly set up [...]

By J-
Imagine a child, 4 or 7 years old, who has moved over a dozen times in her short life, often without any prior notice or explanation (such as once, after living in a home for 9 months, going on a “respite” visit for two weeks and, a week into the stay, having a social [...]

Another guest blog by J-

After giving notice, I felt as bad as I can remember.  D- and I had talked about the feeling of betrayal we would experience (which had been one of the reasons we had not pursued disruption before, along with the inability to be sure that the girls’ difficulties weren’t [...]

A guest blog by J-
 
In early May, our agency worker and her supervisor arranged a conference call with the S-County caseworker and HER supervisor.  This was just a few days after our most recent birth-parent visit.  Now, this visit had been preceded by a bit of a “crisis” (that word gets used so [...]

I do not make decisions impulsively. Actually, I think I do the opposite. I look at situations and try to consider all options and almost compulsively research them and play them out. I do like to talk about the things that come up, even if they do seem a little far out. [...]

I’ve finally caught up on my writing (and J- has helped!) We have 5 lengthy entries written and will be posting them over the next week of so (rather than backdating).
The last week of April, we’d had it.  We realized that everything we were doing at that point was out of desperation. Trying to [...]