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Back in 2008 we lost a little boy who had been in our home as a pre-adoptive placement for almost a year, after DCF lost the TPR trial. The little boy was almost two years old and had been in foster care since shortly after birth. He was our first child (the first grandchild in our family) and we were beyond devastated. We always said that if he ever came back into care, we'd take him. But after 3 1/2 years, we had pretty much given up and went on to adopt our son and have another little boy as a pre-adoptive placement (TPR done, just waiting out the appeal).
Well, two nights ago we got the call... our first little boy (now 5 years old) and his brother (4 years old) were being removed on an emergency basis, and would we take them. Of course we said yes. They came with directly from daycare with nothing.
And here we are. It is great to see our little boy, but he's not our little boy anymore. He is a great little kid, albeit tough around the edges, and has no memory of his time with us. Both he and his brother are terribly homesick and we spent 2 1/2 hours last night trying to comfort them. But they don't want to be touched (we're strangers, of course!) and just want to go home. And as much as my heart breaks for what they've been living with (alcoholism, domestic violence, some neglect), I want them to go home. Selfishly, because I don't think we have the space or energy for four preschool boys (age 3, 4, 4 and 5), but also because I couldn't bear to tell them that they're not going home.
I get it now. I really do. Foster care is different. We never signed up to be foster parents -- we signed on to an agency that does adoption and we agreed to take legal risk. When our adopted and STBA boys came to us, they had entered the system as infants and had been in foster care and away from their birthparents for at least 18 months. When we got them, they were ours. But this is different -- these two boys aren't ours -- they are their parents' and I so want for them to go home.
The 72-hour hearing is next week. Please, if you pray, pray that DCF can figure out how to keep them safe at home. But what do we do if they can't go home? I couldn't bear to pass them off to another home, but we don't even have a car big enough for them. And we've already been through a year of birthparent visits with these parents and it was HELL. How could we commit to going through all of that again? But how could we turn our backs on them?? But is it fair to put my other two kids through this? Especially since we haven't even finalized on my 3-year-old?
Of course, I'm also sleep-deprived and overwhelmed so maybe it will get easier in the next few days. But I'd love any advice on how on earth we figure out what to do from here....
Also -- some practical questions: they haven't pooped since they've been here--how do we make that happen? And one of them isn't eating, although we've given him everything he says he likes. We've been telling them that their social worker will let them know when they can go home, but how else do we answer that question? And their teeth are rotting out of their mouths -- until we can get them to a dentist, is there anything we can do about that? Any other advice on managing four preschool boys????