A Teenager? Really? Yes! A Teenager! Really!

The following is the story of one of Hope Cottage’s adoptive family’s journey to adopt a teenager through our Foster Care Services department. Their names and some details have been modified to protect their privacy.

Being a gay couple in Texas has its challenges. Some parts of the state are not the most welcoming to the idea; some parts are even more unwelcoming to the idea of a gay couple having a child. When we started our process of becoming Dads we began at an orientation meeting with Child Protective Services. We were handed the informational packet and sent on our way. In our informational packet they explained that using an adoption agency was an option and that other resources were available.

Over dinner, we were looking through the packet and there were only fifteen agencies in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that were willing to work with a gay couple. We researched and narrowed it down to a few. The first agency able to get us in for an informational session was Hope Cottage.

Any parent that goes on the journey of having a child is so full of fear, concerns, and doubts. We were about to walk into an office that was full of people that were going to potentially judge us, and held the power to license us as foster parents and place a child in our home. We were scared of the next step. The moment that we walked into Hope Cottage, all of our fears went away. We were met with the warmth you feel when you smell your granny’s apple pie cooking: nothing but safety.

The journey to become a licensed foster parent is not quick or easy. In fact, it is very hard. It takes months of studying and being vulnerable. There are what feels like endless questionnaires and background checks. When we made it to the home studies I remember being so afraid that I would answer wrong, or say something that would set us back, or even worse; take us out of the program all together. After we started the process we cried, and we were not met with judgement, but with the most kind and professional interviewer. By this point we were feeling so safe with Hope Cottage there was no way that we were going to leave them.

In August, eight months after we started our journey to become parents we were sent a picture and a brief description of a girl: a blonde, beautiful girl. When my husband and I saw the picture we both gasped in excitement. We had had other opportunities to apply for kids to come to our home, but with each one there had been that little voice in our head that something wasn’t right. The picture of this girl did not make us feel that way. We knew this was our daughter. Hope Cottage went to work within minutes, we didn’t know what was next. What we did know is that we had to trust that H.C. had our best interest at heart and would keep us in the loop the whole way.

Our daughter’s case manager wanted to make sure that she choose the right family for her, so she was taking more families until October. We were a little defeated, but overall not in a bad place. In late October we had a staffing, or a meeting with her entire team. A meeting in which we were the topic of conversation, which seemed more like a really intense job interview. Before we even got there, we were in constant communication with our Hope Cottage case manager about what to expect. We had several phone calls up until the meeting, and every time we felt safe with Hope Cottage. Many times we were told that there was nothing that we could do other than be ourselves, and that was all they needed to see.

After we were selected for placement, we learned that our soon-to-be daughter, Daisy, was now in foster care for the second time. She had been placed into foster care as a young child. CPS had been called because she was found wandering the streets of her town asking strangers for food. Shortly thereafter she was adopted by a woman here in Texas. Daisy was again the subject of abuse. As she got older and had her own power she realized the abuse she was living with. Daisy was sent to a slew of therapists, hospitals, foster placements, and group homes, before she was considered legally free for adoption. Daisy did not believe in the process of the system. She sure had no trust in a family that said they wanted to keep her forever. She wanted to want a forever family but just could not trust that it would happen for her. She did not believe that she had anyone on her side, she felt broken.

As we started our journey with Daisy, we lived in the honeymoon period.  Our Hope Cottage case manager had taught us about it, and she had told us it was going to end. After the first month or so we thought that we didn’t have a honeymoon period, we thought that this was it, this was how it was going to be forever. Welp…the honeymoon ended. One day it changed and she started pushing. She has since told us that she was doing everything that she could to push us away. Being that she was sixteen and had been in the system for so long, Daisy knew exactly what to do and say to shut down a conversation, or how not to be held accountable. She knew with just a few words that she could shut down a situation and we would go into safety mode. She knew how to do it and she did it……a lot. Luckily we had Hope Cottage to hold our hands, we knew that we had a team in our corner and thank goodness they were only a text or phone call away. They listened to us cry and gave us all the direction they knew we could handle. Just when we thought that things were leveling off and we could start the work of healing, Daisy started showing common trauma behaviors of foster kiddos: poor hygiene, food hoarding, and dishonesty. We gave her basic rules of the home, but one that was most important was for her to trust that she could be honest with us. That we would trust her until we couldn’t. We gave the goal that in school she just had to show up and have at least passing grades. She didn’t have to have straight A’s, but she did have to have passing grades.

One of my favorite stories from that time when we were starting to heal is when she decided that it would be a good idea to skip her French class. I happened to be just around the corner when the school called. So because I was right there, I went to the school. The teacher told me that she had left her backpack in her class so she would have to come back. So, I just waited. If you could have seen the look on her face when she turned the corner and saw me standing there waiting for her, her eyes were the size of dinner plates. My opening line to her? “Hey girl! What’s up?”

Disciplining a teen that is in foster care is very tricky. Finding how to decode what is trauma behavior, what is teen behavior, and what is trauma triggered teen behavior is something that you have to be very in tune with. They know that you have limits set forth by the state and your agency, so they know how to “work the system”. Of course social media is a big thing for teens. For us, Daisy turned it into a distraction at school and a way to self-isolate. We knew that just telling her she couldn’t do that or that it was unacceptable was not the way to go. We wanted to provide normalcy, but we needed some structure and intention to help her see that she had some unhealthy coping behaviors. So, we decided to introduce yoga as a way that Daisy could relax, take time to herself to process her emotions, and exercise. It turned out in the end that she loved yoga and found the time to be centering for her.

At her adoption Daisy decided to change her name to something that better fits the new self she found along the way. Amelia Elise is the name she found to be the most suiting for her. Our experience fostering a teen through Hope Cottage has been wonderful. We would not have changed a thing along the way. Our team has been amazing! In our eyes, teens are the way to go!- Dad and Papa