Featured Family
The Miller Family
We decided, before we were even married, that adoption was something we wanted to do when it was time to start our family. After taking some adoption classes at Social Services, we decided to also take the foster parenting classes. We wanted to become foster parents because of the example set by Angie’s grandparents who were foster parents back in the 50’s and 60’s. Angie’s grandfather was the doctor of their small town. He provided treatment to foster children and one day complained to a social worker about the poor quality of the foster parents. The social workers response to him was that people like him (presumably middle class) wouldn’t take the kids. This prompted Angie’s grandparents to then become the foster parents of many children.
There was a time when we were foster parents to 5 children from two separate sibling groups. These two sibling groups demonstrated a range of behaviors and backgrounds which made it difficult for the two groups to bond or be cohesive. It wasn’t an easy fit. After experiencing this, we decided the one thing that we would never recommend to other foster parents is to take two sets of sibling groups at the same time. We also decided that from then on we would only work with one sibling group at a time. We wanted to specialize in sibling groups so that we could help to keep kids together as a family.
One afternoon we received a call about a sibling group of 5. We picked the kids up from Social Services within three hours of the call, so they were living in our home that same day. These children were placed into our care straight from their biological home. When our kids first moved in with us, we really didn’t think they would be in care for very long. However, over the first year and a half, we began to see that the likelihood of them staying in our care was very real.
We are very blessed now to have quite an extended family. Our kids have complete access to their biological family, except their parents. So, they get to see their sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great grandma and great-great grandma. We are hoping that by helping the kids to know their biological family, they will have a better understanding of their background. Hopefully this will help them get through their teenage years and their 20’s much more smoothly than many adopted children who feel lost or disconnected. We are open to questions about their biological parents and have discussed what went wrong, as well as what they did right in raising them. We are pretty open about it all. We hope that by implementing some of skills and insight we have learned, we can better prepare the kids for their life experiences that are to come.