Stability

CJ & Daddy

Big Mike, Little Mason, Chuck & CJ (By the way, Chuck is six feet tall and Mike makes him look like a shrimp! Mason and CJ are only four months apart)

Mason and CJ
Checking each other out

Mike and Chuck have been best friends since 1st grade. They couldn't be more different and yet so alike. Mike often walks around in a Confederate Flag t-shirt with a dead dear in the back of his truck. Chuck needless to say doesn't fly the Confederate flag and hates hunting. Both, though, have big hearts full of acceptance and love for each other. When they get together, they can spend hours just talking, laughing and usually cooking out. Their friendship if inspiring to me. I often just sit back and watch them, because I simply cannot imagine having someone in my life that I have known since 1st grade. I've often said that Chuck and I had opposite childhoods. He lived in the same home for nearly twenty years, I hopped from home to home and bed to bed until I was eleven. He knows all about stability while it took me years to accept that I was going to get to keep my new mother. I think that that's one of the hardest things for new adoptive parents to remember. While they are stable and set in their ways, kids coming into their homes from the foster care system simply have no concept of stability. That's why stealing food and being destructive is okay with the kids. In their head it's "you'd better go ahead and get this food because it probably won't be here in the morning." A child out of the foster care system expects to move again, regardless of all the reassurance the adoptive parents give. It takes trust to begin to believe that you may not lose it all again, and trust is hard to earn from a kid whose been lied to and abandoned over and over again. Ultimately, it takes giving them stability. Showing, through actions not words, that you are the real deal...saying what you mean and meaning what you say, not backing down when you've set rules and always being where you say you're going to be. Stability is the key. Kids who are in a new adoptive placement need structure and schedule. We've spent our whole lives up until then wondering what comes next. If the adoptive parent takes that wonder out then that's one less thing that child has to worry about. I can't say I've got a friend I've known since 1st grade, but I can say that I've had my best friend since I was eleven...my mama.