The Classes to Talk You Out of This

Roughly two months after our initial meeting we were sitting in a classroom for our first class. We were fortunate enough to get in on weekend classes, when DHS was still offering them. These classes ran three hours on Friday, eight hours on Saturday, and eight hours on Sunday. They were carried out for two consecutive weekends. On the first day of our class we were asked to state our names, birth order, and what our end-goal was for taking these classes. You see, our instructor believed in (and so do I) the fact that your rank in your family, or your birth-order, helps shape who you are as an adult. She also wanted to get a feel for our class, what we hoped to get out of this. There were really four options as far as goals go, Foster, Foster-Adopt, Adopt, or Relative Care. My husband and I were half-way around the room, and really didn't know if we were there to adopt or foster-adopt, we had kicked both options around, but hadn't come to a conclusion. By the time that she made it to us, we had decided, Foster-Adopt.

She also shared a lot of her history. Our instructor was a former-foster child, she had a degree in psychology, and was also an adoptive mother. If you ask me, she is a rare person to have in Child-Welfare, but the perfect person to be there. She shared her own story of abuse, healing, and parenting. She was able to use her own life as an example of what foster kids endure. I won't go into details, as I don't have her permission, but to say my heart was broken for her and these children would be an understatement. 

These classes, essentially prepared us for "worse-case scenarios". They covered physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. They also covered neglect, which is hard to identify on its own, but is just as damaging. The classes themselves seemed to be designed to prepare you for horrible things to see, hear, and experience through these kids. In the end we weren't scared off, we wanted to fight for these kids.