Advertisements
This is a slow forum so hopefully you all check in tomorrow before 5 PM EST...when our homevisit is going to begin for LDSFS. We are going to be completing both parts in one visit, the interviews and the home inspection. Anyone want to tell me what to expect? I'm panicking all of the sudden after feeling very confident and hopeing I don't say something stupid, which I do frequently when I am nervous. The other question I have is how clean must my house be? We felt inspired to accept the placement of a 16 month old special needs baby girl and her 5 week old brother just before Thanksgiving. I honestly thought they would be with a relative placement weeks ago but things have taken a differnet turn. I'm enjoying every minute with them but the baby girls medical needs are very serious and I'm fairly certain I was sent into her life to get her medical/emotional needs on the right track. I've spent weeks getting occupationa/physical therapy in order, switching Pediatricians for a 2nd opinion (not easy when you are a foster parent), fighting for her needs with some inept SW's, and she's got more medical issues then originally thought so I'm scheduling all of her appointments with specilalists add to that the normal foster care parent visits/SW appointments...its been nuts. My house is not in its normal state of order, I don't think I can get it spotless and perfect before she arrives and even if I can it won't stay that way. I'm going to get a babysitter for the toddler and hopefully it's okay to have the infant? He's an angel baby so I don't see why not. I've already informed them we have a placement in our home.We have had one homestudy through the county. She knew us and she did not interview us, she quickly walked through our home that was about it. Will this vary depending on the SW? Do they also interview our kids? My 6 year old tends to say the cutest but ummm sometimes the most frank things....so hopefully this lady doesn't have a huge mole, bald spot, incredibly overweight.......panicking again. Our hometeachers asked her what was thne best things that happened to her all year and she said "When I got all my warts frozen off of my arm and then they didn't cover my entire body." they looked at us like we were raising an alien. she was so proud that she was brave enough to have her 'warts' frozen off. I told her if she didn't they would cover her entire body, which was partially true. She's much better then when she was 3 years old and we couldn't go out in public w/o something being said. Now she is just much more subtle like "you shouldn't sit on that you are too big." Lovely ("fat" among other words being a no-no in our house for good reason). She also used to spot any balding person and point it out until she was sure we along with anyone close to us knew that the man had no hair, where did his hair go, why does it fall out, will my hair fall out? You would think her facination with balding men would have waned after the first 20 times but it didnt'....okay rambling.Any suggestions?L
Like
Share
Forever....you will do great! Just be yourself and be honest. I had to chuckle about your 6 year old. My son was 4 during our home interview. It was just after mothers day and he had given me a barbie because he thought I needed a girl toy. But of course he would play with barbie. Our SW shows up and the entire time he is just standing by the chair she is sitting in and he just blurts out...she looks just like you. Thank heavens our SW was very pretty and took the comment in stride. During the home tour he never stopped talking about this and that and took her hand and led her from room to room. Our SW was very nice and didn't mind his being part of the interview. I spent a week on cleaning the house. I don't think it had to be spotless. Infact I had some rooms half painted and that was not an issue. They check for child saftey issues and will ask how will you accomodate certain things like if you have stairs and etc. Since you already have children you are probably already childproof. I know you are nervous...take a deep breath and you will be fine!! Good luck!!! Michelle
Advertisements
just checking to see how your homestudy went. i have had 3 homestudy's and 2 of the sw didnt even want to see the house. it must vary with SW. hope everything went well Denice ps. mom2max - are you LDS too? so am I. I have seen you on the feb, march, april matched and waiting board. good to have you1
Well..........homestudy went fabulous and leaves me wondering yet again why I work myself up for these things so much. This is our 2nd official homestudy and basically our 3rd on paper homestudy. We are foster adopt certified and are finalizing the step-parent adoption of our oldest daughter. We sat around and talked for a good hour. She asked a few more personal questions but mostly kept it light. She was very interested in how our daughters felt about adopting and having a little brother or sister. She was able to see how well they interacted with the baby, we had a babysitter for the toddler because originally she was going to arrive eary an interview me before my dh came home. She ended up not interviewing us individually, I'm not sure why other then she said we answered our questionairs very well and she didnt' have a lot to ask us. She felt we were prepared. When we discussed my desire to send a letter out to friends and family letting them know we are planning to adopt she said normally she tells couples to wait until their background comes back but since we are foster/adopt certified and obviously cleared not to wait and get the letter out. She wanted to see the house but it was a very fast walk through with my daughters proudly showing off the house. Because we are foster/adopt certified we have a lot of things already in place, fire extinquishers, medicine locked up, etc. Because we have an almost 18 month old and 3 month old our home is already baby/toddler safe. This was our first homestudy with a private agency and I worry-I really shouldn't have. I really liked our worker. She is young but confident and does not seem at all burnt out, she seems very enthusiastic. She went over the birth parent letter and had some good suggestions. She seemed very respectful of birth families right to change their minds and choose adoption which is a big deal for me. My girls LOVED her and hope she will come back soon. My 6 year old was showing off for her and was acting a little unusual (doing some wacky gymnastics moves) but it wasn't too obnoxiouse/more flatering to the pretty young sw that she obviously was trying to impress her. It was a very relaxing almost hometeaching/visiting teaching experience which is weird. It is nice (being in NY to deal with an LDS perspective with adoption-not what we are used to.) Actually nice is not the best word it is wonderful releif to have somebody understand. We truly feel that there is a baby meant for our family and we will find him/her through adoption that he is AA or Biracial and a lot of people just don't get that, she did. Loved her perspective on it! Anyway I don't feel it could have gone better. L
Advertisements
I am so glad it all went well! I think our SW probably had a headache after leaving our house. I cleaned it top to bottom and there was a strong smell of cleaner, for sure :)
2manyk's...how funny, I never realized you were LDS! I have sure enjoyed your commments in the feb.march.and waiting!!
Denice,Yes I am LDS. I should have known with 12 kids and wanting more you may be as well :) My mom is the oldest of 13 children 11 girls and 2 boys. My dad comes from a family of 9 children. I love our family reunions and big families. Off topic but with our 2 daughters I often get the attitude of why are you adopting? YOu already have 2 children....(I hate that comment) Do you ever get that? People in NY do not get why you would have children in the first place let alone want to go out of your way to adopt more, okay not all people, but a majority including people in our ward have made comments. Lori
Just rejoined the forum and so we're far too late to tell you what you already know - relax! :-) I'm very confident (to use one of President Hinckley's favorite words) that if the Lord didn't want you to be a foster/ adopt parent something would happen to stop it regardless of what you did or didn't do.
Good luck with the future.
Advertisements
Foster-I had to laugh at your comment. I have 2 bio dd's age 6 and 10 and currently 2 foster children age 16months and 10 weeks. My 16 month old has many special medical needs...I hear your comment often (in NY more then 1 child is considered too much) and I usually reply "I don't know how I do it either....one day at a time and I'm still breathing." That's how I feel most days! I'm just starting to learn how to juggle it all. I still haven't mastered grocery shopping with 2 babies, any hints? It looks like our foster babies will be leaving soon as parents are working hard and doing well. After that we will not accept placements, really we won't this time! I suppose if they call us and say the birth parents have signed off we would, but that is not going to happen in our county. (We've said it before -about no more-but this time we know it is time to move on to LDSFS for a private infant adoption.) We are on the top of the list in our foster/adopt for a baby in our county but we end up with babies who need help reuniting with their families despite placement SW's best intentions. SHe keeps telling me we are too good at helping the birth parents. I've had many calls that simply did not feel right and we've said "no" to several babies, it's so hard to say "no" when all you want is that baby you know is supposed to come to your family. For the 3 long term foster babies we knew that we were there to help them go home. Our first foster son was the heart breaker for me. Sounds so simple but is so hard. It ended up that his mom had ties to the church, who would have guessed!?-not at all common in NY. Didn't happen by chance. We are almost LDSFS homestudy/adoption approved-I think the time line is 3 more weeks! This is about the time we expect our babies to go back to mom and dad if things keep progressing and the court date goes as expected, but really who knows. Her medical needs are under control and they are ready to parent again. So this is it for now. We may foster/adopt for our fourth baby, we feel there are 2 babies (one at at time.) I'm not ready to close that door. I kind of sort of have this feeling oure babies may have special medical needs since we've been very prepared for medically fragile babies-basically thrown into the fire, the best way to learn I guess. I have total respect for those of you who have large families especially more then 3 under the age of 5. One day I had my dd's very well behaved sister friend's (same age as dd's) from church and we all went to McDonalds play place-everyone was well behaved but with 6 children in NY I turned heads. People made comments as if I wasn't there "are those all her's? Oh my she has 6!...." I wish I could sent them all to UT for a few weeks :) Wow this is long, can you tell I spend all day with a 16 month old and an infant :)?L