In my last post, I shared an update about the foster care placement we were approached about. I mentioned it here when I did because after a month of being involved in this situation, the placement seemed highly likely and I wanted to share about the process we were going through. It was a question of ‘when’ more than ‘if’.

Today the social worker called to update me that they’re in a situation they’ve never been in before: they’re unable so late in the school year to find any school within an hour’s travel time from our home able to accept him, even with legal pressure brought to bear on the schools. (After telling me he can’t travel, they went back to looking at schools further away.) While it seems obvious that the easiest and best thing would be to leave him in school where he is, which is less than an hour away, there’s a funding issue that precludes that possibility.

Since they can’t find a school until the coming school year, they’ve cancelled the home visit that was supposed to take place a couple of days from now. Instead, they are going back to court to overturn the injunction that the child needed to be removed from this foster home, and request he be allowed to stay there. If that fails, they are talking about beginning a country-wide search to find a different foster home (close enough to a suitable school, presumably), since their search in the northern part of the country only found us.

To my mind, this is all upside down and doesn’t put the child and what is good for him at the center at all. It doesn’t seem efficient, logical, economical or prudent. But my opinions have no bearing on anything.

What this means is that now, the placement with our family is being placed very far on the back burner and as far as I’m concerned, it’s off the table. While I continue to be in touch with our social worker discussing potential solutions, there’s too much that can change between now and September for me to assume it will happen.

My take on this is, if something is supposed to happen, Hashem will make it happen. And if it’s not meant to happen, it doesn’t matter how much it looks like it should happen – it’s not going to happen.

I learned this lesson very clearly when we were involved with Baby M, when it seemed obvious to everyone involved we were the perfect family for her. Then that didn’t happen. When we got the call about ds6, it seemed highly unlikely it could work out; time and time again, rules were bent and changes to official procedure that had never been made were made to faciliate his joining our family.

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There were some very nice comments to my last post about me being a very generous person, and I want to respond with a bit of perspective.

A few months ago, I commented to my kids that I’m not a generous person. My children didn’t agree with me, and thought I was being overly critical of myself. What I meant, and explained to them, is that there are areas that I’m more easily able to give, and there are ways that are difficult for me. I’m very generous in some ways. And in others I’m not.

Some people can have people in and out of their houses all the time. I can’t. Some people have no expectations of guests, and willingly host regardless of if they like the person. I won’t. Some people don’t care if people show appreciation for what they do. I do. Some people generously share all of their possessions and time with others. I don’t. I could go on an on with examples.

I have a soft spot for children whose homes aren’t nurturing places. Part of the motivation for my work as a parenting educator comes from that. It hasn’t found expression in mentoring troubled teens or starting a halfway house, but mostly by trying to make my home a positive place where I hope our children feel loved, and helping others to do the same.

When I was asked about this foster placement, I was quick to say no.
My two youngest sons are moving out of the very intensive stage of supervision that I’ve been at for a very long time. After almost thirty years of being there for my children around the clock, I’m now able to enjoy some quiet, kid-free time in the mornings, time I can use as I want. That’s very precious to me.

The idea of adding another child who needs constant supervision really didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t have readiness to give up that long awaited quiet and space in my life. I certainly had no interest in becoming more involved with social services.

Having made it clear I wasn’t interested, I began to think about it without any outside expectation or pressure. I thought very much about what would be necessary to parent this child, what it would require of me physically and emotionally.

Here’s a very important detail that I haven’t shared. I mentioned he has a sibling for whom a possible placement was found in Yavneel and that’s how we were originally contacted, as a potential home in the same area. The sibling is actually a twin. It deeply, deeply pained me to think of two siblings who had so much taken away from them, now being separated from one another.

Though the social worker didn’t ask us to consider taking them both – they don’t expect to find any family willing to do that – the question I asked myself was if we could bring them both into our home. Though you might think that would have been so overwhelming that it would make it even less likely a possibility, somehow the sense of mission it created in me was significant enough for me to be willing to give up my long awaited quiet.

When I looked at what would be involved, I could see that our lives had prepared my husband and I for this. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be very challenging. We were both very realistic about this. But we felt it was something that we were being called to do. So the placement that we have actually been discussing has been for both of the children, though I’ve referred in my writing here to only the child we were initially asked about.

There are lots of other things we could have been asked to do that wouldn’t have felt like a fit for our strengths, and we wouldn’t have been willing to extend ourselves to do it. As I said, there are ways I’m able to give and ways I’m not.

That’s the back story about what motivates me and activated my generosity in this situation.

Avivah