Foster Parent Training

In two weeks, I begin foster parent training. Again. I was a foster parent for ten years, took a sabbatical and now am going to re-open my home. The funny thing is, my daughter is going with me, to open her own. I have missed being a foster parent. Obviously, my daughter has missed it, also. I cannot express how proud of her I am.

Back-track. Way back. I’m a little girl, watching an info-mercial (though I don’t think they were called that back then.) As the youngest of ten children, and the only one still home, I am lonely. I beg my mother to have another baby (that is never going to happen). I hear a kitten crying in the woods and I think it is a baby, I want to take it home and have my mother adopt it (things don’t work that way). So, there I sit, watching a plea from “The Foster Parents Plan.” I must have some idea what “foster care” means, but the commercial confuses me. I beg my mother to do what they ask. After all, we now have four empty bedrooms and these poor little children are sitting in the dirt with flies landing in their eyes. I want her to become a “foster parent” to these children. After all “for less than a cup of coffee a day” we can save one (or more) of these poor little waifs. I am not quite sure how they will get to us… the commercial says something about the mail…Do they send them in a box? Does the box have holes in it? Do they at least put bubble wrap inside? No matter, my mother won’t do it anyway. She has her cup of coffee a day, and the commercials continue….

Obviously, I am quite a silly child, or very young, or have “Attention Deficit Disorder” (which I also don’t think was named back then, either) because I don’t understand the concept of the commercial, even after seeing it multiple times. So fine, my mother won’t do it. Then I will, when I grow up.