By Shawna Sjaarda –

I sit at the kitchen table next to a little girl I first met five hours ago. The clock reads 10:30 P.M. Huge tears collect on her long black eyelashes. Her Happy Meal, which the social worker picked up for her on the way to our house, has long grown cold. She has been tucked in twice already. She picks at her chicken nuggets as her bottom lip quivers. “I miss my daddy and mommy.”

“I’m sure you do, sweetheart. Hopefully you will be able to go back home soon. You get to stay here for a little while so your dad and mom can figure some things out. You are safe here. You just need to try to be brave.”

“But I don’t know how to be brave.” She starts crying. And I do, too.

Foster care: “a situation in which for a period of time a child lives with and is cared for by people who are not the child’s parents.” That straightforward dictionary definition barely scratches the surface of what foster care actually means and the definition differs depending on who defines it.

To a child being placed in a foster home, it means anxiety, distrust, fear, grief, anger, and for some, hope. They have just been taken out of their “normal” and no matter what bad choices their parents have made, they remain fiercely loyal to their parents.

To the biological children of foster parents it means anxiety, distrust, joy, anger, jealousy, frustration, and love. A stranger has just moved into their house. He/she plays with their toys, takes away their parents’ attention, and might even sleep in their room!

To foster parents it means love, anxiety, grief, frustration, mourning, hope, patience, perseverance, and joy. Will this child harm their bio children? Will he/she sleep at night? Will he/she allow him-self/herself to be loved? What a tangled web of emotions a child can spin when he/she is placed in a foster home. What an incredible opportunity to provide a stable home for a child in desperate need.

Children are removed from a home for a variety of reasons. Some of these include: neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, parental drug use, unsanitary living conditions, incarcerated parents, and the list goes on. Sometimes children stay in a foster home because they need a place to stay in an emergency until a family member is able to care for them. Other times, a child may stay for a length of time while a parent receives treatment for an addiction. Still other times, a child may never re-turn to their biological parents.

There are six counties in southwest Minnesota that work together under the umbrella name of Southwest Health and Human Services. Currently, there are 47 licensed foster homes in these respective counties: Lincoln- 3, Lyon- 19, Murray- 4, Rock- 4, Pipestone- 7, Redwood- 10. There are around 175 children in out-of-home placement, which means they are not currently living in their biological home. This includes children in regular foster homes, with family, residential facilities, independent living, etc.

When a child first enters a foster home, foster parents often know little more than the child’s name. (And sometimes foster parents don’t even know that! We had an emergency placement that lasted for about 12 hours. We didn’t know the two children’s names and they were too little to tell us!) Social workers try to tell foster parents as much as they can, but they are not able to tell what they, themselves, do not know.

There is a pretty sharp learning curve for the foster child AND the foster parents the first week. Many foster children are not accustomed to structure, predictability, unconditional love, or regular meals. Some thrive on a “new normal;” others buck everything that’s different from their “old normal.” It can be stressful, but over the years we have found that most children slide right into our family and call it “home” rather quickly.

Foster parents featured in this article:

Nick and Shawna Sjaarda

The Jason and Shanna Snyder Family

The Greg and Caty Arp Family

Dan and Amy Full