What's It Like When Your Parents Decide to Foster

Are you considering fostering but are concerned about how it impacts the kids already living in your home? Join us for a conversation with Michelle Snyder, a foster, adoptive, and bio mom, and her son, Ben, to hear their stories of fostering and how it impacted their family. They are co-authors of Beyond Blood: How Being a Foster Brother Shattered My World and Rebuilt It.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Ben - How old were you when your parents sat you down to talk about fostering?
  • Do you remember how it felt to consider that a child could not safely live with his or her family?
  • What do you remember about the time when your family was preparing, taking classes, getting licensed, etc.?
• Michelle - When you and your husband felt the desire to begin fostering, what were your biggest concerns?
  • What considerations about fostering gave you pause, considering you had two young kids already in your home?
  • How did you and your husband handle those concerns or issues?
• Ben - Can you briefly share the story of your family’s first placement? We’d love to also hear how you think it impacted you and what you took from that experience for the coming placements. 
• Ben - What are some of the benefits or advantages you have seen in your development to young adulthood that you can directly trace to being part of this fostering and adoption journey?
• Character traits your family developed as you faced those challenges. Can you share a short example for a couple of them?
  • Compassion 
  • Perseverance
  • Ability to Adapt/Change
  • Perspective
• Ben’s diagnoses (“twice exceptional”):
  • What did you learn about yourself in that process?
  • How do you feel your unique combination of diagnoses equipped you well for being a foster brother? 
• Saying no to a placement
  • Learning how to say no when you know it’s not the right time or circumstance to say yes to a foster placement? How did you develop that skill?
  • Ben, what did you learn from your parents over the years about the value of knowing when to say yes, and when it’s okay to say no?
• The value of respite for your family and offering it to other foster families
• What practical tips can families implement to prepare for a new placement of a foster, newly adopted, or relative child in their home?

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Dawn Davenport  0:00  
Welcome everyone to Creating a Family. I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host and the director of Creating a Family. The nonprofit creating a family.org. I want to let everybody know that we are on YouTube, believe it or not, YouTube is the fastest growing medium or venue for people to access podcasts, so we would love for you to join us on YouTube. When you do so, you will get to see that Tracy has a extensive collection of ticker coffee cups, although she may be drinking tea, I'm not sure, and you will see that I am extremely boring with my one solid thermal cup. You will also see us smiling or holding up fingers. You will just get to see the behind the scenes works, and you will get to see our wonderful guests. And speaking of wonderful guests, today, we're going to be talking about what it's like when your parents decide to foster a topic that creating a family has come back to over and over again, because we think that it is an overlooked topic, and that is the kids who are already in the family, when parents decide to foster what is that experience like for them? And one of the reasons it's such an important topic is that when those kids are struggling, that is the greatest reason that parents give for discontinuing fostering are for having a placement disruption. So we are particularly excited to be talking today with Michelle and Ben Snyder. Michelle is a foster, adoptive and bio mom and her son, Ben, was a kid in the family when his parents decided to begin fostering. You're going to hear stories of their fostering journey, as well as Ben's experience as one of the two kids while their family started fostering and then adopted other children through the foster care system. And they have authored a book together called Beyond blood, how being a foster brother shattered my world and rebuilt it. Welcome so much, Michelle and Ben, and by the way, I love the title of the book.

Speaker 1  2:07  
Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having us on hope you're having a good morning, yeah, well, it

Dawn Davenport  2:13  
certainly is getting ready to be better, because we're getting ready to learn more about your experience, and we have joining us today, Tracy Whitney, and there's a special reason that Tracy is joining us one she is both a friend and a colleague, and she is terrific, so that alone should be a good enough reason for her to join us. However, as some of you probably know, I am retiring, and Tracy will become the sole host of this podcast, as well as the weekend wisdom podcast. And this is our transition period, which has been so fun because now Tracy and I are doing this podcast together. Tracy, you want to share a little bit about yourself, just so for the audience to get to know you

Speaker 2  2:56  
Sure. Thanks for your kind words. I am a mom of six kids, three in law kids and now two grandsons. In our ever growing family, I have two adopted children and four bio children. I've been a user of the creating a family resources since 2007 when we were waiting for our first adoption to progress, and I came on board as a first as a social media manager in 2016 and then eventually became a Content Manager, which means that I'm writing the articles that you're reading from our website. I'm creating tip sheets for several of our different learning platforms, and I'm also the admin of our very large, very active online support group at Facebook. If you are not on that Facebook group, we would love to have you. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/creating, a family. We have fantastic representation from all members of the adoption and foster constellations, and we really I love hanging out there. I do too. We have a really great community that's all focused on learning and supporting and encouraging each other, so that's a little bit about me. All

Dawn Davenport  4:12  
right, why don't you take it away? Then? All

Speaker 2  4:15  
right, so Ben, we're going to start with you, since the book is primarily your viewpoint of what happened in those years when your family started fostering. I'd like to hear from you, first of all, how old you were when your parents sat you down to talk about fostering. And then could you tell me a little bit about what it felt like when you realized why your family was fostering, what it was like for maybe a child who couldn't live safely with their family at that point.

Speaker 1  4:43  
Yeah, it's been a long time looking back. It was about 10 years ago. I was about five years old. I remember just when we started looking at it, then it was so eye opening to see that there were kids that didn't have a full, complete family, because I. Just I never had really thought about something like that. I hadn't been really exposed to a lot of those types of struggles. And it made me sad to see that there were kids out there that needed a home and didn't have one, and parents that weren't able to provide for one reason or another. And I had to learn that the parents might have gone through a lot of these struggles themselves, and so just that whole system, for a kid that young, it was really interesting to learn about something like that, because usually you're not exposed to that many difficulties as much.

Speaker 2  5:33  
Yeah, at five, you aren't necessarily aware that parents can't do what your parents were already doing successfully, and your family was thriving at that time. Do you remember some of the emotions and awarenesses that you had as your parents were going through the process of getting licensed and taking the classes and educating themselves and how maybe they were educating you?

Speaker 1  5:56  
I was really excited and nervous. I mean, at that time, I always tried to understand everything around me and, like, analyze it, make sure I knew and was prepared for everything. But this was something completely original and new. So trying to prepare for this, I was like, I have no idea. So I just kind of had to lean on God and pray about it and but mainly just excited because it was more siblings, more people to learn and grow with and help expand our world view. And it was also pretty scary, because you never knew what was going to walk through the door. And obviously everything unknown is scary, but having another human that you don't know just made me really nervous, like, what if I wasn't a good enough Brother, what if they didn't like me? What if this that having to share the parents was something that I had to consciously think about all these things, yeah,

Dawn Davenport  6:50  
yeah, that makes sense. And the having to share, Were there times when some of the behaviors of the kids coming into the home were worrisome for you. Are were they unsettling for you, or were they just annoying? Well, I mean, at

Speaker 1  7:07  
that time, yeah, you never really knew what kids were going to do or what their struggles were until it happened. So we wrote in the book about some kids who had a really violent streak, and of course, like that had never been tolerated in my biological family at all, and so seeing that type of violence come in was something new that we had to adapt to, and my parents had to explain to me that he wasn't a bad kid. He just was raised in a bad situation, and so he might have acted out on things that his parents had done to him, or any of that type of stuff. So oftentimes, there were things that were scary and confused me. It was confusing a lot of times, whenever I would see the actions of kids, I would be like, but that's obvious, you wouldn't do that, or you would do that, but I had to remember they weren't raised in a regular home, so they have to relearn stuff that we already knew. But a lot of times it just opens your eyes to all the different types of people out there and the different struggles they're going through.

Dawn Davenport  8:09  
Michelle, when you and your husband were beginning to think about fostering did you think and worry at all about how this experience might negatively or positively influence your children that were already you were already raising.

Speaker 3  8:26  
I can honestly say that that was the number one concern when we went into this and we several times, began the conversation and believe it, and circle back to it, because we did have concerns, and we felt like we had a primary responsibility to the children that were already living in our home, and so it was something that that created a lot of hesitation. And to be honest with you, we had some criticism there from the outside too, because, you know, at times you may have family or just people who are around you who hear about it and say, of course not, or I heard this story, so we had to sit down and and have all those conversations leading up to it. Of course, we also had concerns with splitting time with everybody, because time is a precious commodity, too, and so that's gonna, you know, that's another resource that would be used if we did that. And we were concerned about, would we be able to take care of them, right? Are we good enough? Is this the right time in our life,

Dawn Davenport  9:21  
those kind of that's a big one. That's such a big one. Yeah,

Speaker 3  9:24  
and honestly, the answer that we came up with after several conversations was, there's never going to be the perfect time to start it. We're not going to have all of the answers, and our kids are going to go through struggles. And it's absolutely worth it to step out into that place and do it. On the other side of that, I can say that at the time, we took a leap of faith is really what it comes down to, but it was absolutely worth it. And just the growth that I saw, you know, in Ben, for example, through the experience, it's not something you ever want to see. You know, a child go through having to be removed from their home, but because those things exist, being able to participate in. That and see the actual growth that happened once we once we stepped out, it was pretty incredible thing.

Dawn Davenport  10:07  
I'm so glad you raised the issue of outside pressure. I think that foster parents often experience that others in the family who say things like, what are you doing? You know this is not going to be good for your kids. You're going to be exposing them to a lot of bad habits. They're going to pick up these things. They're going to start using foul language, or whatever, you know, or acting out. How did you handle that, the outside pressures that that what you were doing was going to harm your children, that you already had, you

Speaker 3  10:37  
know, and that's something that, I think, going in, that we had to the the most important thing was to just acknowledge it was going to happen from the very beginning, and getting around a support system of people who got it, who understood why you would step out into a situation that's difficult, you know, and that that would you know is going to cause difficulty and challenge and allow your children to go through pain and that kind of thing. Just being surrounded by people who knew it going into and having that support system set up was huge. And then really from there, what I saw happen time and again was the people who were originally our critics down the road, they would start, they were like, oh, okay, and they would fall in love with the kids, and they were kind of aligning with it down the road, but it was something I was something I was never going to convince them from the beginning, and they weren't going to understand it. So listening and saying thank you for your input, and then moving forward surrounded by your network and support system is really the way that we got that ball rolling. And

Dawn Davenport  11:36  
let me throw a shout out to foster parent associations. Every state has one, and it is a huge resource to connect with others who get why you're doing what you're doing. And I just want to reiterate that what you say is that very often people who are giving advice don't have the information you're going through, the training, you're going through all of this stuff. And it's easy to think these are bad kids, but once they get to know the kids, they go, these are just kids. These are just kids. And it's like, okay, we can Yeah, this is not a bad thing. So anyway, I'm I just supporting what you're saying, yeah.

Speaker 3  12:15  
And to your point, and I can personally say, from my experience, in almost every single instance, of people who came in in a more critical way were people who actually had never fostered or adopted, right? And the people who became our support system and advocates and network were the people who were actually engaged in it and doing it and understood that in a real way, right? So let's go

Speaker 2  12:39  
back to that very beginning part you talked about at the beginning, you know, not having that network around you. Ben, I'm curious what your remembrance is, what your memories are of that very first placement, the first time your family, you know, jumped into this with both feet. Particularly, I'd like to hear how you think it impacted you now, looking back and what you took from that experience to prepare you for future placements,

Speaker 1  13:06  
I feel like the first placement was kind of like the basis for everything. So my first thought was, oh my gosh, it's just a baby, because we had an infant as our first placement. So I was like, these are kids. Like we were all there at one point. We were all their age. These aren't some other type of person. They're just like misunderstood kids that had been placed in a bad situation. And so I was really nervous, but holding that baby for the first time made me just a lot more comforted. And I was like, wow, this is my brother. Now you just really It was eye opening a lot. Just made you realize these are just kids, and made me realize why we're doing what we're doing. When the baby stops crying in your arms and starts to, like, melt into you and go to sleep, and you're like, oh my gosh, this baby's at like, peace and rest for the first time in a while, and he has a home that's safe now. Made you realize like, this is why we do it. Oh, that's

Speaker 2  14:08  
awesome. There's nothing like the feeling of a baby melting into you is there. I noticed throughout the book that you very easily referred to all of these children as your brothers and sisters, and it doesn't sound like it was a big leap for you to kind of get over that label Foster and just call them brothers and sisters. Yeah,

Speaker 1  14:29  
it was really easy because, I mean, they were exactly like my my bio sister, Annabelle, and, like, a lot of aspects, I mean, we would stay up late at night, like doing shenanigans, or like, we would all get in trouble the same. We would all get, like, rewarded the same. We all had the same, like routine. We went through a lot of the same struggles, like, oh, Mom's so annoying, or whatever, like kids are doing. But yeah, I feel like it was really easy because they were just part. Part of your life. You got up, did life with them. I was probably with them some more than Annabelle. And just like, you were able to bond with them so quickly, and since they didn't have anybody else to cling on to, and then you were able to, just like, bond with them, because both of you were able to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable with them really was the first stepping stone to being able to just like be brothers and sisters with them, and like we're brothers and sisters in Christ with everybody, but it felt like even closer with these kids, as they just came through our home and we were able to like, learn from them and they learn from us and experience life together.

Speaker 2  15:42  
What are some of the benefits or advantages that you've seen kind of flowing from there in your own life as you've come into young adulthood?

Speaker 1  15:50  
I feel like I was really well socialized and also being able to, like, go through hard things and not like give up. I feel like it taught me a lot of perseverance and made me like a confident leader. I had to be able to adapt and take charge me and my sister a lot of times. I had to lead her through this journey sometimes, and it also just changed the way I saw the world. I feel like it made me more almost grown up than other five and six and seven year olds would have been at that time, because you had to understand the gravity of the world and the hardships going on. I also feel like it increased my empathy a lot, because I was able to, just, like, understand these kids, and it helped me take less for granted as well. I was like, these kids are arriving with nothing but what's on their backs, like, if I have to do dishes once or twice a week or whatever, then I should be grateful that I'm able to eat and like going shopping for new clothes. Went from, oh, why do we have to go school shopping to we get to go school shopping. I get new clothes. These kids had never really experienced that, so it was just like a whole new world.

Speaker 2  17:02  
Michelle, is he missing anything? Did he catch it all?

Speaker 3  17:07  
Yeah, I think you did a great job summing that up. Good.

Dawn Davenport  17:13  
I am so enjoying this interview, and I hate to interrupt but I wanted to ask a favor of you. We really do need your we need your reviews, we need your ratings. We need your support. Podcasting apps recommend podcasts through the number of likes, the number of reviews and the number of written comments that we receive. So please, please. Will you do this for us? If you are listening on Apple, to leave a rating and a review, go to the creating a family podcast page. That's where you see the list of all of our past episodes, and you scroll to the bottom of that page for the review, and you can either tap on the stars to leave a rating, or you could scroll right below that and click on write a review if you're listening on Spotify, to leave a rating, select the highlighted ratings on the podcast page and leave a star rating there to leave a comment or review, you just go into the show notes and you click on the leave Review button there. You know, throughout the book, you talk about character traits, family character traits that you two feel like your family developed through the fostering experience. Can you share some of the traits? And I'll give you the first one, compassion. And Michelle, I'm going to actually allow you to start with this one. How do you think your family became more compassionate? If you want to use that with an example of how specific kids helped your family you and your husband, as well as Annabelle and Ben Yeah.

Speaker 3  18:41  
I mean, there's so many examples come to mind, but I think at the most basic level, the fear and trepidation and things that I experienced and that we all experienced before a placement would come well, but I have this plan this weekend, and I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night, and this is going to cost a lot of money, and we're going to have to move things around, you know, these kind of things that that were going through my head and I was experiencing, and then inevitably, we would open the door and there would be an innocent child, or children, often at the door, who's lost everything, their parents, their home, their school, their structure, everything that they knew of and in a lot of cases, their clothes, toys and everything hadn't been brought with them either. And they're terrified, and it absolutely changes everything, because at that moment, none of those things that you were worried about in your head matter anymore, and you just want to be there for the kid and say, Here, here's clothes, here's shoes, here's safety, here's warmth, here's love. We may not be able to do everything, but we can do something, and just the focus on the bigger picture and the things going on in the world, it just changes everything. So those things that I thought were so important leading up to that don't matter anymore, and you just you understand. Much more intimately what's happening around us and the need for foster parents, and don't even care anymore about those things that you were worried about before,

Dawn Davenport  20:10  
these character family character traits you were talking about, did you actively try to teach them to your family, to the children Annabelle and Ben who were in the family when you began this. Was this an intentional teaching, or was this a byproduct? The one we're talking about right now is compassion. But I really mean this question to refer to all the character traits, compassion, perseverance, adaptability, perspective, and we're going to talk about them more in general. But I'm wondering now if this was intentional or the byproduct.

Speaker 3  20:45  
That's a really great question, and I have to say it was a combination, because while we did do some pre teaching, like we would Ben and Annabelle would go gather some a couple of their favorite toys to put onto the bed of the kids that came in so that they would have that and learning those things and talking ahead of time about that, I need you to move your car seat to the very back so that the other kids can be closer to mom and dad. Those kind of things. But most of the lessons came as we went. It's one thing to talk about compassion, empathy, you know, that kind of thing. It's another thing to walk through it and practice those things. So we had the opportunity every day to practice those character traits as these situations would come up. So we mostly while we did have those conversations ahead of time, and it really hit home, and really the practicing of it and integrating that into their life, to change their life, happened while we were doing it so and that was something we were scared of ahead of time, because even in my relationship with my husband, you know, we had, we still had conflict. We weren't. We didn't have the perfect marriage. I'd

Dawn Davenport  21:47  
say the perfect marriage does have conflict. That's not Yeah, perfect includes conflict and healthy resolution. Yeah, right.

Speaker 3  21:53  
Exactly No, you're exactly right. So we were still trying to figure out how to work out our problems and and that kind of thing too. So yeah, while we were working through all those things, it was once we had the kids that all of those things kind of flushed out, and we got the ability to practice them. And a lot of it happened naturally, because you naturally become empathetic and more selfless in, you know, all of these things, when you're going through these experiences in a way that you you aren't able to as much when you're just talking about it. In theory, absolutely Ben,

Dawn Davenport  22:24  
one of the other character traits, perseverance. How does fostering give you more perseverance and and if you want to use Ava, I think it was used as an example of that. I know what perseverance means. But how does fostering help your family and you develop more perseverance?

Speaker 1  22:40  
Well, in general foster care, I feel like helped with perseverance, because there were new struggles and challenges with every kid that they would bring with them from their past homes, and you had to be able to, just like, go through that with them, and be able to just like, push through all the struggles and persevere with like, even the little things less time, less like, maybe the mom or dad would, like, forget about something, or you'd have to make your own dinner or something. Just those type of things specifically with Ava. I mean, even just learning to drive with her was very interesting. So just going through, like, a lot, like, there's a lot of stress a lot of times. So as a young kid, you had to be able to persevere and adapt to stress and the unknown. What do you think, mom,

Speaker 3  23:26  
yeah, I think that's absolutely right. What I saw, one thing that I saw with you is, at the beginning, you were like, I mean, it could be overwhelming. I don't know how to do this. And then through our third, fourth, fifth placement, you were like, we were like, Oh, this is going to be challenging. Let's go for it. So you got more you had more ability to walk through those difficult things. Know, you could get through it before I

Speaker 1  23:49  
developed resilience. Yeah, you just had to be able to, like, these kids are here to stay, and this is their home, just as much as it's ours. So and also, there's a lot of perspective that comes with it. Think about the challenges that they had to go through. I can make my own dinner or do extra chores or whatever. I'm not losing my entire family. And these kids were able to show up and be happy with just a couple of blocks to play with. So it just put a whole new perspective on resilience. It made me feel like, wow, to even think that I should have been disappointed, or whatever, that I didn't get to do this just felt like almost wrong at that point, because you're like, these kids have lost everything, and they're still happy and pushing.

Dawn Davenport  24:30  
Michelle, I'm curious, how did you, first of all, how long were some of your did you have short term placements? Did you have long term placements? And that varies, by the way, for the audience, that's not something foster parents choose. The goal of foster care is to help families reunify. So it's not the foster parents choice. But in your experience, Michelle, how were your placements short? Were they long or a mixture of both?

Speaker 3  24:57  
That's a great question. So I. I feel like our situation was a little bit unusual, because we ended up having what I think is a higher turnover than what I saw my my friends who foster have, most of them their placements are there a little bit longer term, or they'll have kids that end up being there for years. We had a lot of placements that were there for a few months, or we even had some who they were found here and needed to go back to another state. So they stayed with us, you know, for a short period of time, while travel was arranged back to their primary caregiver, or different things like that. So I mean, to be honest with you, our shortest placement, you know, that we we thought would be a long term placement was that with us one night, and then we had others that were up to two years long. So most, I would say we're in the period of months, like somewhere in the we'd had them for a few months, and a lot of times they were going to, like a relative placement or something like that. So we ended up doing a lot of more turnover, which I think can be a little bit more challenging, because that integrating into the family and kind of getting to know each other is a challenging part, and then the other part that people struggle with so much saying goodbye, I could never say goodbye, right? So that's something also that the grieving process was something that we, you know, we became accustomed to. We understood what it looked like. We understood we'd get through it. So because we had a higher amount of placements, then we experienced a lot more of that as well. But it was really all over the map for us, and because we would take up to three kids at a time, in addition to the two that we had then, like we had one that was with us for a year while we had two others that, you know, we went through two or three placements with the other two while one was with us longer term. How

Dawn Davenport  26:36  
do you prepare your kids for the for the Goodbye? I'm glad you brought it up, because that is something we often hear from. I can't I'd fall in love with these kids, which, quite frankly, is what we want. Children need people who love them, and we so we want families to fall in love with them. But if you love somebody and they leave, it is hard, and you are bringing that into your family. You are bringing that loss, that grief into your into your family, with your kids, then I'm going to start with you. It hurts when you lose somebody that you've come to love. How did you deal with that?

Speaker 1  27:10  
I mean, yeah, it was one of the like, greatest pains that you can really experience is loving somebody like they're your own sibling, which they are, and then having to let them go without, like, a lot of times, without any warning, you would just wake up and they'd be gone. But honestly, you just had to, like, cry sometimes, and there is no right answer. You're never you're almost never going to be ready to say goodbye. But I just prayed, leaned on my family, and you had to be willing to go through the grief and heartache after. It's not like we were perfect, like we were human, for sure, we it was just a sad time after they left. Just lots of sometimes we wouldn't even like talk to each other for a couple days, just everyone was a little bit more quiet, and you just had to be able to get through it and push on, but mainly leaning on each other, leaning on support groups at like churches or friends and praying. I was just

Dawn Davenport  28:09  
going to say, Yeah, Michelle, how did you not well? First, how did you personally handle but more importantly, how did you help your kids that were, are that the kids that were existing in your house? How did you help them? Well,

Speaker 3  28:21  
again, I think that it comes down to two things. One of them, we talk ahead of time about it that when we bring specifically, let's address foster kids. When we bring foster children into our home, that the goal is always for them to reunify with their biological family. We want to partner with their biological families. When it's possible, sometimes it's not, and sometimes it is, and try to have a positive relationship with them. And so we try to have those conversations. So everybody knew all along, eventually the goal was reunification, and that that's what we're moving towards. And in the space that they're not able to be with their biological family, then that's where we are giving them that nuclear family, where they've got mom, dad, siblings home, like the safety and security at that time. So, I mean, honestly, as hard as it was when we would prepare, when we had the opportunity to prepare for kids to leave, because sometimes we knew ahead of time, then we would do things like we would try to turn it into a celebration. We would do a pizza party and go get ice cream. This is a great we've been working towards this, then we're always going to be a part of your life and stay connected. And those kind of things we did, like Ben said, we had several instances. I want to say that this doesn't happen, but occasionally it does happen where kids leave unexpectedly. And sometimes it's kids you've had a long time leave unexpectedly. In those things, I what I tried to do is stay strong in front of the foster kid that they left and hug them and make sure we keep communication with them open. Here's our numbers. You know where we're at. You know anything like that? If anything else happens, you come straight back to us. We're still your family. But you know, in those times, it was just so important to talk the kids through the grieving process. Any. And when, even when we did have the positive transitions, it was still really hard for us. Once we finished our celebration with the foster kids and transitioned them back to their homes, we still went home and cried, and we still would take a few times and we we sat down and explained this is what the grieving process looks like. You might feel angry, you might feel sad, you might, you know, you might want to talk about it, you might not different things like that, but just being willing to go through it and and reminding ourselves how absolutely worth it it was to go through that grieving process, to be able to participate in these stories, that's

Speaker 2  30:34  
great. Ben, did you have any specific coping tools that you relied on when you were going through that grieving process.

Speaker 1  30:41  
I mean, like I said, praying and leaning on my family, and I did talk about it sometimes, but also, we have a small neighborhood, so I would like ride through our neighborhood a couple times, or take walks, like, kind of just be on my own and try and process it, like outside or doing an activity or something, and I'm not trying to distract myself, but rather, like, try and work out the pain. So that was one tool that I used. I definitely got 10 miles on my bike after those

Unknown Speaker  31:13  
I love that. That's great.

Speaker 3  31:14  
I think you getting to continue to communicate with kids was really medicinal for you, relationships, even after transition, yeah, we

Speaker 1  31:24  
still keep up with a lot of the kids, some of the kids, like, I still, we still do birthday parties together. I go to school with a couple of them. I'm going to their graduations later. Like, oh, cool. A lot of these kids, we still do life with, well, like on even Father's Day or something. We meet up with some of our foster kids and like all the different things, yeah, being able to keep up with them is really huge. Yeah, I think the last time I talked to one of our foster siblings was about two days ago, probably, so Okay, yeah, that's

Speaker 2  31:56  
great. That's a great coping tool for both of you, both sides of the conversation.

Dawn Davenport  32:02  
Let me pause here to thank Vista Del Mar. They have been a long time supporter of our nonprofit creating a family and this podcast, Vista Del Mar is a licensed nonprofit adoption agency with over 65 years of experience helping to create families. They offer a home study only service as well as a full service infant adoption program. They can also do international home studies, and they provide post adoption support for all types of adoption. And they have a foster to adopt program in California. You can find them online at Vista Del mar.org/adoption

Speaker 2  32:41  
you Ben, you mentioned in the book that during this whole process of being a foster family, you were diagnosed as twice exceptional. I'd love it if you'd be willing to share what that means and how old you were when it happened, but also what you may have learned about yourself in the process of also being a foster brother through all of that.

Speaker 1  33:08  
So it was really interesting to learn because it made me understand why I learned, like, different I never really did the same thing as any of the kids in the class, and it helped me understand and, like, remember a lot of these stories. I think it helped with the book a lot. But then there were also both weaknesses that came with it too, because I like a harder time concentrating or in school, sometimes I'd like fall asleep or whatever, like a lot of different things. When I try and do the work my own way, the teachers would take it as disrespect and stuff and but I do think it helped me though when other people tried to understand my different way of learning, instead of criticizing it, it helped me to try and understand the foster kids, and it's hard to describe. It just means I like, I have a better memory than most. Like,

Speaker 3  34:03  
yeah, some of you would be considered a gifted learner, right, yeah, but at the same time, then the other side of that coin is the secondary diagnosis with with ADHD and kind of some sensory processing, is, yeah, yeah, okay. It's interesting, because one thing that Ben and I talked about during that time was he was so misunderstood by me and my husband and by his teachers, you know, he wasn't showing his work. He was sleeping through class. He didn't want to do we thought all of this is defiance, and he was in trouble a lot. And once we received the diagnosis, it changed everything, and we started to understand Ben better. And through that experience, when these kids came into the home, then was able to, and we were able to first try to be curious and understand where these behaviors are coming from, instead of looking at it from a they're being defiant and, you know, kind of looking at it from a judgmental way. So that experience that. Then went through, helped him look at things with curiosity, seeing

Speaker 1  35:04  
myself in them, some like they are different, but that doesn't mean they're wrong or whatever, like I have to understand. Go back and see like their life presented a different way of learning and adapting and survival for them. And so instead of being mad at them and trying to get them to conform to what everybody else is doing, got to be able to adapt and say what's best for them, what's their best way of learning and like every little thing. So it

Speaker 2  35:33  
sounds to me like you're saying that when curiosity was offered as a gift to you about how you learn and how you process, it increased your capacity to be curious about the foster siblings that were coming in and out of your home. That's fantastic. What a great outcome for all of you. Michelle, I want to pivot just a little bit on page 85 of the book. You said that you were talking to a case worker who was trying to get you to open your home one more time, one more child. And you said, Yes, we do have two cars, but I only have one body and one heart, and my heart is overwhelmed at the moment, I want to help, but I cannot take in any more kids right now. I'm sorry that struck me as such a first of all, great awareness of your own boundaries and your own needs, but also a skill that not a lot of us who do this work of fostering and adopting and raising relatives kids, we don't always have that skill of saying no, very well developed. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that skill came about in you, like, what are the things that happened that helped you build that skill? And then, how did you know when, when is the right time to employ that skill?

Speaker 3  36:58  
Well, I will say we learned that lesson the hard way ourselves. You know, at the very beginning we did, we also struggled with saying no, because when you get a call about a child without a home, and you have a home, then you then it is very, very difficult to say no, and I I would lose a lot of sleep over it, and experience so much guilt, or say yes at times when I shouldn't. And we saw the consequences of that for everybody involved. And so with time, it's something that that we did learn. One thing that we would do is to change the narrative in our head, like when I would start to get guilty, or when I would start to, you know, feel like I was doing something wrong, but I would remind myself this, you know, right now are focused on these five children that we have at the home, and that best practice for them would be, you know, to maintain these boundaries. And I often was able to help, you know, say, Oh, I have a friend who has a bed opened or something like that. So being able to kind of help, follow that and see if we can help support in other ways, was good, but, yeah, that was always something that was that was really challenging. I think one thing that was really helpful was we had several times when when we were really torn and we really wanted to, but we really knew it might not be in, in the best, you know, best practice for us at that time. And so we actually had mentors that we would keep. And in those situations, a few times where we're just going in circles about what to do, and it's at a critical juncture, right? It's not like, I'll call you back like next week and let you know they want to know right then or within an hour. Yeah. So we would get on a call with our mentors, and we would talk it out with our mentors, and so that support system and network and having people who had done it a long time, and who could see the forest through the trees and kind of take an outside look at it. Objective look was really helpful, because sometimes they would be that voice that would say, this is enough, like you are doing exactly what you need to. It's best for these kids to go to another home or to the hospital, in some case, when they need additional help, that kind of thing. And then, of course, I leaned on my faith a lot too, and kind of prayed those little things.

Dawn Davenport  39:06  
Let me take a moment to say thank you to the jockey being Family Foundation, and to remind you that through their support, we are offering you 15 free courses that you can take to help you be a better parent. The courses are focused really on parenting. So if you're actively parenting, these are the courses that you're going to want. You can find them at Bitly, slash JBf. Support, that's B, I T, dot, l, y, slash, j, b, f. Support. And now back to the show. Michelle, I had a question you were speaking of, how when you as the parent, were making these decisions. Were there times when you had to look at Ben and Annabelle and say, This is not best for them? Did they get a voice? Let's say, after someone, a child left that they had loved and they're grieving, how much of a break, how much of. Of voice did they have in saying, I need to, I need some time to heal. Mm,

Speaker 3  40:05  
hmm, yeah, that's that was something that we had to navigate carefully as well. And we tried to, always before we took a placement, like it was something where we would tell everybody in the family who it was no when they were much younger, like, you know, five, six years old, it was a little more difficult. We still did that, but I don't know how fully they understood it, but we always would sit down and say, This is the kid or kiddos, and make sure everybody was a yes on it. No, granted. I don't know that my kids ever, I don't remember Benjamin Annabelle ever saying no. It's hard

Dawn Davenport  40:40  
to say, but it's hard to say no, and especially hard for a child to say no, because if you say no, there's the Okay, so where's this kid going to go? Are they going to sleep in a case worker's office type of thing? All right, so

Speaker 3  40:51  
to your point, then it comes, you know, now these now the kids they've bonded with have left, and the resident kids need to go through the grieving process, and they need that time, so it is something that we try to stay aware of and and honestly just, I think talking to the kids matter, like having the conversations with them, watching their behaviors. And if the kids were there longer they were especially bonded, then we did try to take that time to reconnect with the kids and give them time to heal and process those things before bringing additional kids. And I think the fact that we did that is what helped us to sustain our home at the foster home for so many years, and we had not had those spaces to allow the resident kids to heal and to process those things and also give them a voice with the kids coming in. Then I we may have gotten burned out a lot faster.

Dawn Davenport  41:40  
The operative word being burned out. Yeah, exactly. That's what. That's what you have to protect. Go ahead, Tracy, I interrupted you. No,

Speaker 2  41:46  
that's fine. I was going to say basically the same thing. So that space that you're talking about between placements sometimes looks like respite care, official respite care, unofficial respite care. You talked several times in the book about the times that your family enjoyed respite care and the break that you needed and took from the routines and the weights of the fostering that you were doing. However, you also talked about times that you guys offered respite for other families. I would love for you to kind of give us just a summary of what you see as the value of respite care, both receiving it as a family who has been fostering and offering it as a family who has that space to do so,

Speaker 3  42:31  
sure. Well, I'll speak first, as far as when we have placement, and we recognize that it's a time that it will be important to take a respite break. One of the things I think that there's this idea some people have that respite is a negative thing, and what we experienced was, because we we made sure we had a network with other foster families we were doing life with when it came time for respite care. And we were going to, you know, let the kids spend some time at somebody else's home so that we could recharge and regroup. Then, you know, it was something that was a positive. The kids were excited about, oh, I'm, I'm going to go with, you know, Tim and Sandra to go fishing for the weekend, and we're going to, they'll plan fun activities with people they already know. And to be honest with you, a lot of times, the kids were kind of welcoming the respite from their parents that were, you know, that were constantly with these routines and structure and, you know, this kind of thing. And so it was something that was a retro for them, too, to go have fun with other adults that that they knew and loved them and cared about them, or that they got got to know, and, you know, plan activities. And so it was something that was good and and I mean, it really would help, even just a couple days, a few days, would really help us to pull through for another year or two. So, I mean, I would say, I mean, vital lifeline, and I think it can prevent family place or placements from breaking down as well. So, you know, it's huge and preventative of placements breaking up. So because everybody gets that time to kind of recharge and regroup, it was really special for us when we were able to provide respite care for other people as well. When we sometimes we already had placements. Sometimes it was when we were between placements, and we looked forward to those times to have the kids over, and whether we're just doing in cooking with them or doing an arts and crafts project or figuring without what they're into, it was a way to stay involved and engaged in the conversation and and engaged with foster care and with the community, without that necessarily, having a long term placement at that time. Yeah? So, yeah, I'd say on both, both parts, I think, I think respite care is just so such an important lifeline. And I think the kids, I mean, my kids, would ask to go back. They wanted to go back to the rest, you know, and have another weekend at the respite placement where we would just call them the people's name, you know, we weren't necessarily referring to it as respite, but they logged in, would want to go do it more. So that's

Speaker 2  44:49  
great. No. Ben, do you have any lessons that you learned in those those seasons about respite that you want to share? Anything to add? Yeah,

Speaker 1  44:57  
I had to learn like even though I Want to Hold on. To these kids as tight as I can, like it's best for us and them if we're able to be at 100% and able to help these kids, so if we're just completely drained, we might not be the best placement for them. So to be able to take a weekend or whatever and recharge was really helpful. And also you gotta think about it like it's almost like summer camp, they weren't like they were having fun and like it was a break from us, and like that, we were able to also get a break, but so were they. So I think they probably had a lot of fun as well, but being able to use that to rest and recharge and make sure that we were the best placement we could be was really important in our journey, great.

Speaker 3  45:41  
It helped us sustain difficult, long term placements.

Speaker 2  45:49  
So at the beginning of the conversation, we talked about that each of our resident children, meaning the children who are already living in our home, bring some strengths and some stability to the process of welcoming a new child, but that each of those children who are already in our home have their own needs and challenges. In addition to those strengths, can you take some time to share some of the practical things that your family did to prepare Ben and Annabelle for we'll start with Michelle, but start with some of the things that you did to prepare Ben and Annabelle for the experience of fostering, for welcoming a child that maybe, you know, has had some really hard life experiences that that they have not

Speaker 3  46:36  
had. Yeah, absolutely, you know, I think one of the things that was important was just to kind of open a dialog with them and try to talk to them at their level. Now, that's going to look really different depending on what age your kids are. It might look like talking about sharing or talking about, you know, what happens? There are some really, really great books that we got that was huge. And I mean, they have them in toddler books and for elementary and for teen years that explain the process of a kid coming into foster care, being in the foster home, what the adults in their life will look like with the foster care workers and the judge and the placement workers and different things like that, and the you know, how we can participate in that, and then they're inevitable, most likely transition out and so, I mean sitting down and, you know, having the opportunity to go through some of those resources and read read books together, and kind of normalize as much as you can this process that would be taking place. I think that was really important, and also connecting them with other families who are already doing it, like we would go into other families, and afterwards we'd be like, by the way, two of the kids were foster kids, one was a biological kid, and one was an adoptive kid. Isn't that interesting? And the kids would say, Who, which one, I had no idea. And we would say, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's just a family, just like, you know, just like we're a family. We'll continue to be a family when we have additional kids, and so that was often normalized through that process at all, through our community, which was really helpful too.

Dawn Davenport  48:09  
You keep coming back to the idea of community, which I'm hearing that the underlying thread is that you established, and you probably did not have this community at the beginning, this has to be intentional, establishing a community of other people who are fostering and again, a shout out to sometimes places of worship have this but oftentimes to find these places connecting with the statewide foster parent association or your agency hopefully can connect you to because there's a huge advantage of having these support groups be local. I mean, the whole idea of respite is because they were local, you were able to more quickly do that right

Speaker 3  48:53  
absolutely. And now with the rise of social media, honestly, like there's some great you know, in person is very important, but you connect. You can connect you can connect in person through that initial contact online, by even just a quick on whatever social media. Use a Google search to find a local foster care meet up or foster care support group. It's another way that you can find and we found other connections that way. And those groups become important because you meet in person, but also once you're home and you realize, oh, I need a I need another crib. I'm getting a placement. I didn't realize that you can just text these friends who are local that you've met, and people inevitably will drop by, but I will say, whoever your community is with that wherever you find them, in my opinion, is an extremely important lifeline for the success of fostering I just can't overstate it, because we all we You're right. We did try to do it on our own, and then we did it surrounded by a community. And it's a completely different experience, whether things are going well or whether you're having challenges, either way,

Speaker 2  49:56  
and I'll give a lot of a plug for online groups if. You can't find an in person group. I mentioned the Facebook group for all members of adoption, foster care and kinship care, but creating family also offers smaller interactive groups for adoptive and foster families, and you can certainly reach out to Tracy at creating a family.org and I'm happy to help you plug into one of those groups if you're interested to our listeners, and I also love that you mentioned books. I love children's books. Our website hosts several pages of suggested books that can help families walk through how to become a foster family, how to talk to your kids about becoming a foster family? What's it like to be a foster sibling? I think children's books are such a unique way of helping kids understand what's going on. Often they use that third party of, you know, a cute little animal, or, you know, a fictitious child, and the kids can see themselves in that and then take it in as they're capable of taking it in without it being maybe too overwhelming or too threatening to have it just be mom and dad face to face talking to you. Well, you

Speaker 3  51:13  
know, I got a chance to look at this site before we did this and go through some of the books that you guys offer. And I was so impressed, because, to your point, whether it was a resource I needed for my child, or whether I was seeking, you know, information about basically, like, understanding our brains and the way they work, and how being a foster kid can impact your brain development and that kind of thing. I mean, it was, it was huge. And so you there's such a diverse array of options. When I come over onto your site and see them, I really appreciate it. And then, of course, we have our book that's really the goal is to just disrupt the idea that a family shouldn't foster because of the, you know, because of the impact it could have on their home and family, the ideas you know, it will be difficult, it will be challenging, and it will be worth it. It's true. And hopefully someday, we'll be out of a job, right? And there won't be foster kids that need placement, and kids will be in their permanent homes. But until that happens, it's it's amazing to have the resources and support you know that creating a family provides. Thank

Dawn Davenport  52:15  
you and Ben, we'll give you the final word here, if, if you're talking to others, other families, who is considering fostering, and they have kids already in the home, and they're worried, and they're worried about the impact. What would you tell the parents, and then what would you tell the kids? To the

Speaker 1  52:33  
parents, I would say all the things you're worried about, it being difficult. It will be difficult. There will be times that you have to just cry, but the kids just come out like I personally, I feel like it just changed my life forever for the better. I would not be where I am today, the person I am today, if it wasn't for these kids, they just help you so much. Learn all about the world and learn about people that may be in more of a need than you, and it's okay to let us go through hard things, because if you never face hard things, you're not going to be ready for the world. I feel like, and it helps us learn growth and perseverance and to put other kids first. I feel like just so many of the most important life lessons that I have came from foster care. So I would say it's a difficult thing, but you definitely come out much stronger on the other side. I mean, diamonds aren't created without pressure, so

Speaker 2  53:28  
and you are a diamond. That's fantastic. What a great summary. So Ben and Michelle Snyder, thank you so much for joining us today. The book is called Beyond blood, how being a foster brothers shattered my world and rebuilt it. We are so grateful for your time with us today, and I know that this is going to be very impactful for a lot of families considering foster care. Thanks so much

Unknown Speaker  53:51  
Absolutely. Thank you. You.