Over the last 7 weeks we’ve spent 27 hours of mandatory training called PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education). Anyone who hopes to adopt from the provincial foster care system must complete their PRIDE training. I’ll be the first to admit I did NOT want to do this training! When we were first approached to complete our PRIDE training, we were excited. We thought it meant we had moved up on the waiting list and we might actually become parents. So when we learned that there were no available children at this time and none in the foreseeable future, but we were encouraged to complete the training anyway, you could say I went begrudgingly. It felt like another roadblock in our path to parenthood. Today we completed our training and I will whole-heartedly admit – I was wrong.
Contrary to popular belief, PRIDE is not a parenting course. It’s a course designed to help you parent a child who has lived through unspeakable trauma. I’ve never kid myself that adopting a child through the foster care system would be easy, or that all they really needed was love, but even I was naïve. I thought that I would always be a better option than their birth parents. Through PRIDE I’ve learned that things just aren’t so black and white. Even though a child has been neglected or abused by their birth parent, they still have a bond with them. They don’t know that life should be better, so they don’t see an adoptive or foster parent as their savior. We are simply a stranger that ripped them away from everything familiar in their world. I’m saddened that I never really thought about the trauma of adoption.
They made as imagine different scenarios to better understand what these children are feeling:
Imagine you are at home watching your favourite television show. You’re all comfy in your PJs when there’s a knock on the door. On the other side, there’s an officer and a social worker. The social worker gives you a paper bag, tells you to put your belongings in it and to come with her. All the while the officer is holding back the person you live with who is screaming “don’t take them away from me” at the top of their lungs. How would you feel? Then the social worker puts you in her car and drives away. She tells you, you are going to a new home and that the people there are excited to meet you and you will be safe. Do you feel safe? When you arrive at this “new home” the couple is smiling and welcoming you. They show you “your room”. Do you feel at home? Why would they make us imagine such an awful scenario? Because this is how a child feels when they are apprehended. They don’t feel like someone has saved them. Whatever horribleness they lived through in their home, it was still their home. Their parents where all they knew. Their parents might have done bad things to them, but they aren’t going to be excited about leaving. They aren’t going to trust these strangers they have been placed with. It was very powerful and heart wrenching.
They also made us watch videos like the Eleventh Commandment and Hope Floats; a child's perspective on Foster Care. You can see both these videos below.
Through the training they made us understand why a child who is 10 might act like a two year old or why foster care and adoption is about losses. And most importantly, why our losses in infertility don’t even begin to compare to the children’s losses… that this shouldn’t be about us, but about the child.
We always knew children in foster care had been neglected or abused, but we tend to forget the trauma of being removed from their home. The developmental delays they might experience because of the neglect, their complete mistrust of adults because their basic needs from infancy were not met. Something as simple as being held as a newborn, just wasn’t part of their life. It wasn’t easy to hear and most sessions left me emotionally and physically drained.
Now that it’s over, I can say I’m happy to have been through it. I feel better prepared to welcome a child from the foster care system into my life. It has also made me understand the importance of open adoptions and how the child’s birthparents will always be a part of them… even if they aren’t physically in their everyday lives. The training has also broadened our views on what constitutes a family. While we thought we were pretty flexible with our requirements for a child (up to the age of 10 and up to 3 siblings), PRIDE has made us revaluate our choices. Could we accept a teenager? So many children are at risk of aging-out of the system without ever having a forever family (at 19 they can no longer be in foster care. If they haven’t been adopted… where do they go?). More than half the children in foster care are teenagers. How exactly did we come up with the age of 10 as our cut-off? Can we expand it to 12, 13 or even 14? Is a family of older children not still a family?
We had always preferred adopting from the foster care system. And, truth be told, if the provincial system could tell us we could have a child within the next 18 months, we would probably abandon our fundraising efforts for an American infant and focus on foster care adoption. The only reason we are working towards an infant adoption is because it felt like our only feasible option to have a family while we’re still in our thirties. It’s not that we don’t want to adopt a newborn from the US, it’s that we know that if we don’t adopt that infant we will one day be matched with, someone else will. The same can’t be said for teenagers in the system. So why haven’t focused more on foster care adoption? The problem is, the provincial system can’t tell us we will be match within a certain time frame. The mandate of the Department of Social Development is reunification between a child and his/her birth parents. Now I understand the importance of this. Only when reunification is not possible… and the child has lived through numerous losses is the child available for adoption. Unfortunately, by the time they are available they are often older than most adoptive parents wish to accept.
So now we stand on a precipice… do we change our requirements? Do we open our hearts to a wider group in the hopes of having, not the family WE always dreamed of, but the family this child always dreamed of? We meet with our social worker tomorrow and we'll see what happens. Life is an adventure, right?
- Danielle
Contrary to popular belief, PRIDE is not a parenting course. It’s a course designed to help you parent a child who has lived through unspeakable trauma. I’ve never kid myself that adopting a child through the foster care system would be easy, or that all they really needed was love, but even I was naïve. I thought that I would always be a better option than their birth parents. Through PRIDE I’ve learned that things just aren’t so black and white. Even though a child has been neglected or abused by their birth parent, they still have a bond with them. They don’t know that life should be better, so they don’t see an adoptive or foster parent as their savior. We are simply a stranger that ripped them away from everything familiar in their world. I’m saddened that I never really thought about the trauma of adoption.
They made as imagine different scenarios to better understand what these children are feeling:
Imagine you are at home watching your favourite television show. You’re all comfy in your PJs when there’s a knock on the door. On the other side, there’s an officer and a social worker. The social worker gives you a paper bag, tells you to put your belongings in it and to come with her. All the while the officer is holding back the person you live with who is screaming “don’t take them away from me” at the top of their lungs. How would you feel? Then the social worker puts you in her car and drives away. She tells you, you are going to a new home and that the people there are excited to meet you and you will be safe. Do you feel safe? When you arrive at this “new home” the couple is smiling and welcoming you. They show you “your room”. Do you feel at home? Why would they make us imagine such an awful scenario? Because this is how a child feels when they are apprehended. They don’t feel like someone has saved them. Whatever horribleness they lived through in their home, it was still their home. Their parents where all they knew. Their parents might have done bad things to them, but they aren’t going to be excited about leaving. They aren’t going to trust these strangers they have been placed with. It was very powerful and heart wrenching.
They also made us watch videos like the Eleventh Commandment and Hope Floats; a child's perspective on Foster Care. You can see both these videos below.
Through the training they made us understand why a child who is 10 might act like a two year old or why foster care and adoption is about losses. And most importantly, why our losses in infertility don’t even begin to compare to the children’s losses… that this shouldn’t be about us, but about the child.
We always knew children in foster care had been neglected or abused, but we tend to forget the trauma of being removed from their home. The developmental delays they might experience because of the neglect, their complete mistrust of adults because their basic needs from infancy were not met. Something as simple as being held as a newborn, just wasn’t part of their life. It wasn’t easy to hear and most sessions left me emotionally and physically drained.
Now that it’s over, I can say I’m happy to have been through it. I feel better prepared to welcome a child from the foster care system into my life. It has also made me understand the importance of open adoptions and how the child’s birthparents will always be a part of them… even if they aren’t physically in their everyday lives. The training has also broadened our views on what constitutes a family. While we thought we were pretty flexible with our requirements for a child (up to the age of 10 and up to 3 siblings), PRIDE has made us revaluate our choices. Could we accept a teenager? So many children are at risk of aging-out of the system without ever having a forever family (at 19 they can no longer be in foster care. If they haven’t been adopted… where do they go?). More than half the children in foster care are teenagers. How exactly did we come up with the age of 10 as our cut-off? Can we expand it to 12, 13 or even 14? Is a family of older children not still a family?
We had always preferred adopting from the foster care system. And, truth be told, if the provincial system could tell us we could have a child within the next 18 months, we would probably abandon our fundraising efforts for an American infant and focus on foster care adoption. The only reason we are working towards an infant adoption is because it felt like our only feasible option to have a family while we’re still in our thirties. It’s not that we don’t want to adopt a newborn from the US, it’s that we know that if we don’t adopt that infant we will one day be matched with, someone else will. The same can’t be said for teenagers in the system. So why haven’t focused more on foster care adoption? The problem is, the provincial system can’t tell us we will be match within a certain time frame. The mandate of the Department of Social Development is reunification between a child and his/her birth parents. Now I understand the importance of this. Only when reunification is not possible… and the child has lived through numerous losses is the child available for adoption. Unfortunately, by the time they are available they are often older than most adoptive parents wish to accept.
So now we stand on a precipice… do we change our requirements? Do we open our hearts to a wider group in the hopes of having, not the family WE always dreamed of, but the family this child always dreamed of? We meet with our social worker tomorrow and we'll see what happens. Life is an adventure, right?
- Danielle
Below are a few of the videos that made us open our eyes to the foster care system: