Foster Care Parenting is a world of its own and is rewarding but has many challenges. I was first licensed in 2009 as a foster group home allowing up to 12 children in my home. I had 5 of my own birth children and 2 stepchildren at the time. We went through the licensing process because my (then husband) and I were interested in adopting a sibling group of 3 who needed a home. The kids were able to be adopted before we got licensed and the agency convinced us to do foster care. Our goal was not to ‘collect’ more kids as we already had 7 between us. We decided to go ahead and provide foster care so we could provide a stable and loving family and home for the kids until they can return home. Our goal was not to adopt; however, we were not totally against it either. Foster Care parenting is rewarding in that you can impact the children with unconditional love, acceptance, belonging, life lessons and personal goals, family time, insight, teach self-care, give opportunities that they never had before, and on and on. The children in foster care need people like my family to love them through the hard times that they are currently facing. With all of this comes initial challenges like an overwhelming number of appointments, registering them for school, buying many essential items as they usually only come with their school backpack, and helping them adjust to their new reality of being in our home for an unknown amount of time, etc. The biggest challenges I faced were keeping up with my own self-care, dealing with the adolescent's attitudes and some extreme behaviors while keeping my own emotions in check, agency paperwork due monthly (Ugh), taking them to weekly visitations, having case workers from DFPS and from our foster care agency in our home monthly, inspections, trainings, trainings, trainings, and so much more. Again, I will emphasize that it is rewarding and challenging and if you are not careful you can go into exhaustion and burnout. I closed my home February 2025 after having a total of 21 children in my care throughout the years. I have experience and I would love to help you through the challenges you may be facing.