No good deed goes unpunished – being a foster parent

The yearly committee meeting for the twins was held at the beginning of this week, and once again, it left me frustrated.

I’ve only once been asked to share my experience at one of these meetings and even then wasn’t allowed to be present for the rest of the discussion, but anyone else even peripherally involved with the children is. There is a deep incongruity when the people who know the children better than anyone else, and who care for them 24/7, are not part of the conversation about decisions regarding their well-being.

Our social worker called me about two complaints the father made this time.

The first is that the children told him that I said they’re never going back to live with him. When my social worker asked me about this, I asked her, “Does that sound like anything I would ever say?” No, definitely not, she said. While I wish that I could assure them of a safe harbor in our home until they are grown, that’s not in my power. Though when they came to us I was assured that they would never be returned due to the specifics of their situation, after seeing the system from the inside I’m very skeptical of that. I won’t lie to them, and I’ve never said anything to commit to where they will or won’t live long term.

The second thing is he claimed I exchange all the clothes he buys them. Only twice in over three years have I exchanged any part of what he bought for them. Most recently, he bought them clothing before Shavuos, and I kept all of the clothing except for one of the two dresses. Since it was too small, I went to the store to exchange it for a larger size; when they didn’t have anything bigger, I exchanged it for a top for the holiday and told dd it was a gift from her father.

My intention was to allay dd’s disappointment about not being able to wear the dress her father gave her, and I went out of my way to do this for her at a time that it was difficult for me. At this point I’m thinking in the future I’ll let her experience the constraints of what he buys, and it will be whatever it is. It’s easier for me to let the items sit in their closet, unworn, and then eventually give them away, than try to help and have to deal with this kind of fallout.

The social worker told me that in the above situation I should have contacted her and let her know that the dress was too small, before going to exchange it for a larger size of the same item. She wants to avoid being surprised about the things he complains about at the meetings, but I can’t predict what he’ll say since he either says outright falsehoods (like complaining that I shaved dd’s hair) or takes a small thing and makes a big issue out of it. I understand her desire to not be caught off guard, but being told to second guess and report anything I do that he might not like is impossible for me. If I thought something I was doing was wrong, I wouldn’t be doing it.

I don’t know if their father has cognitive limitations and misunderstands things, or if he lies on purpose. But I wish he understood that every time he attacks me, he harms his children. There’s not one single time that this has happened, that I haven’t had a thought about not wanting to continue to foster. No matter how quickly this passes, each time it creates emotional distance.

I chose to say ‘yes’ to fostering from a place of love and genuine desire to make a difference in the lives of children who had experienced great harm. When I’m treated – at best – as a cog in the wheel of social services and criticized and taken to task for things I haven’t even done wrong, it decreases my desire to extend myself. I treat the twins as I do my biological children in every way, and I extend myself for them in ways that are unusual. I find myself regularly questioning if I should continue to do all that I do.

While I do what I do because I believe every child deserves to be loved and be part of a family, and the twins’ emotional development since they came to us reflects that, no one else cares if I do it or not – they’re more focused on things that can be checked off on a list.

Avivah