One other thing that we were very proud of during our first visit with our social worker was that we got Steve fully potty trained. Look two kids in diapers was a lot for us and I really did not understand why Steve was not potty trained. When we asked his foster mom the day we met him she said not to bother trying to potty train him that he was too “Stupid” (her word not mine) to train.
Steve had lived in that foster home for a full year and this is what she thought of him. How sad you could tell by that comment and the fact that when she was asked what he likes to eat and does not like she said well I know he likes fried chicken, soda and pizza. Then she handed us a picture of him asleep in a high chair with a boned fried chicken breast in one hand a big gulp cup on the tray. Not really good food choices for a two or three year old. The picture was the only picture she had of him from the last year and she wrote he was 2 and a half and she fed him chicken on a bone?
When we first got home we stopped at the store and got a potty chair for him so if he wanted to try he could. We were very surprised with how great he did, he started telling us on the way home when he had to go potty and within three days after he was in our care he was in pull ups and within a week he was fully potty trained.
As I mentioned in a previous entry some foster parents see the children in their care as a paycheck, I guess all Steve needed was a foster home that saw him as a wonderful child who was going to love him unconditionally. He needed a foster family that included his brother George, and most importantly one that was going to be a forever home.
We never introduced our boys as our foster children we always introduced them as our sons who we were adopting.