Abbie: Hello and welcome to the CosmoParenting Podcast brought to you by the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. In this space, we invite you to see yourself as someone who is curious about and actively participating in creating your own meaning around parenting.
This is our ‘Validate’ episode, where in the second episode of each month we hear a parenting story, with the hope that sharing the first hand experiences of others who are parenting can make you feel seen and validated in your own experiences. Let’s begin.
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Abbie: Today, I am joined by James and Jen. Hi, James and Jen.
James: Hey, Abbie.
Jen: Hi, Abbie.
Abbie: Thanks for joining me. And today we are talking about change, as you know. And what we've said about change so far is that change is necessary for growth and that change is inevitable. So with that in mind, would you please share with us your story about change?
Jen: Sure. So we have parented through foster care previously, and change is a huge part of parenting through foster care- for both us and for the kids who are in our care. So starting with the first phone call that you get that, you know, there are children who need somewhere to stay, would you be willing? Right?
Abbie: Mmhmm.
Jen: So that change becomes immediate when our first set of foster children were a brother and sister, a seven-year-old girl and almost two-year-old boy, and we had never parented at all. It felt like we were all in the middle of this humongous learning experience together.
You know, I'm Googling what does a two-year-old boy eat for dinner and things like that. And so not only are we trying to learn, but these kids are essentially dropped off at a stranger's home and told, okay, feel comfortable here and go to sleep, you know. So lots of change there.
James: Yeah, it was definitely a non-traditional way to become parents. Most times for biological parents, if they find out that they're having a child, you know, you get a nine-month head start.
Abbie: Lots of time to prepare.
James: Yes. And for us, we had about six hours. So going from zero kids to two kids in the home was a big adjustment for everyone involved. You know, our kids were adjusting to a new home, a new place to sleep, new foods, new friends at daycare. And then Jen and I were also adjusting to what our marriage looked like now with kids and trying to make sure everyone had what they needed. So it was a big moment of change for us.
We ended up having that first placement for four months and then had a time in between and took on a second placement with two little brothers. They were two and three when they came to us. They stayed with us for close to 18 months. And with them, we really got to experience a couple of different, I guess, age ranges and really got to see the changes in the boys over time. We went through some fun of potty training, but then we also went through some hard times with big emotions. So we witnessed a lot of change.
Jen: Yeah. And I think also just the difference in the two placements too, you know, we went into the second one thinking, okay, we know what to expect. We've done this before. We have done the whole, you know, go to court, figure it out, work with bio parents before, but we obviously had never had a placement that went that long.
And so having to work through change and what we thought our life was going to look like over those 18 months, because initially we were told it was going to be a nine month placement. And so it ended up being longer than that, which gave us the opportunity to celebrate two birthdays and two Christmases and, you know, do all of the fun things that two and three year olds should be doing.
But it also came with once the case was extended, we tried really hard to push for making sure that our boys got to see their mom pretty regularly. But with that came the tension of, okay, now we're co-parenting with someone we've never met before. and trying to keep some semblance of this is how it works at our house. And this is, you know, just making sure that we're all on the same page while just making sure that our boys understood that they have so many people that love them. And so many people, you know, whatever your title is, it doesn't matter that, you know, they have adults that care for them wherever they're sleeping that night.
But yeah, lots of change, like James said, changes in our sleep schedules and changes in , you know, what does it look like to be a working parent when you have sick kids and Also for our families, right? Like our immediate families and our extended families really expanded. And just I think about it sometimes as our families are stretchy. And so they kind of stretch to just make sure that our boys always felt like they were included.
James: And I think for me, just the fact that we haven't been parents before our time in foster care, I learned a lot about myself. I would say going into it, I always thought that there was a right and a wrong way to parent.
And I think you have to step back and say that you got to give yourself a lot more grace than that, because there are people growing up across the world and have a very different home life than, you know, what I experienced as a kid, what Jen experienced as a kid. And just knowing that at the end of the day, we were able to provide a safe space for these kids who really needed it during a time that their parents needed a moment to work on themselves and get back on their feet.
It was a really cool opportunity for Jen and I to learn that. And just looking back on our two placements now, I can say without a doubt that I changed myself because each individual is different, each parent's different, and each kid is different. So what works for your home might not be the same as what works for your neighbor or someone else in your community.
Jen: I think we also had a lot of interesting conversations about our parenting style through foster care, because unfortunately people have opinions about how you parent. And it's a very different approach for children that you don't know what their backstory is, right? You don't know what the first however many years before they came to your house were like and where those habits came from or where those behaviors came from or things like that.
And so, you know, for example, there may have been some things that we let go because they were small potatoes compared to the things that we were actually caring about and actually working on in our home. And so, you know, to James's point, I think just learning that there's not necessarily a right and wrong way that it has to be tailored for your child in that moment. And it changes per child, right, over a period of time. The way that we parented the first two months that the boys were at our house compared to the last two months is very different because they trusted us and we trusted them by that point. Whereas at the beginning, it was kind of this little dance we were all playing of, okay, are you going to be okay? All right, I'm good. Are you good? So I think we changed as people and we changed as parents over time too.
Abbie: Yeah, I think that at this point in CosmoParenting, people having listened through 11 months of this, that'll make a lot of sense to them. Two of the other themes we've already done are Structures and Adaptation. And those two have kind of really emerged of like, you have to talk about those in the same breath because you can put structures in place. And like you talked about, it's so important for children for you to put structures in place: this is how we do it in the home. Here's shared expectations we can all be aware of, and you can't be overly structured. You can't come in holding too tightly onto a plan or an idea of what “right” parenting looks like because you're going to have to adapt. And that's in my experience of like facilitating this podcast, the best skill that I think people who are parenting could develop for themselves is this ability to take in what's going on around them, pay attention to what's happening inside themselves, pay attention to what's happening for children that they're parenting and make a decision based on what works for them.
Because there's a lot, a lot of stories out there. Like you said, people have a lot of opinions about what parenting should or shouldn't look like. But if you can kind of break out of that and, you know, kind of recalibrate your shoulds and shouldn'ts to be about what works for you, not what other people think should work.
Jen: Yes.
Abbie: Then I think that seems really, really important.
Jen: Yeah. And I think with that also comes with, you know, a change that we experienced was how you build your family, right? Like for us, you know, you're always taught growing up, you get married and then you have babies, right? And that's how you build your family. And that was not our path, right?
We had a period of infertility and we went into foster care knowing that, you know, we couldn't have children of our own without science. Right. And so going about parenting in that way, again, is one of those shoulds and shouldn'ts is, are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure that this is the way that you want to parent?
And, you know, now once this podcast comes out, we'll have a six-month-old baby girl through IVF, which is incredible. And I think that our experience through foster care will certainly shape the way that we parent this baby.
James: Absolutely.
Jen: And the way that we approach parenting in general and what a gift it is to get to raise our own biological child with just the experiences that we had through foster care.
Abbie: Oh, well, thank you for sharing about change and wishing you the best as you continue to navigate change. And thank you to everyone for listening.
Don't forget to check out www.cosmoactivities.com for our other resources in the series. And be sure to comment on this podcast episode in the CosmoParenting Substack. We're so grateful to be on this journey with you and we will see you next week to explore some parenting best practices.
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