Robin LaVonne Hunt's Blog, page 4

Sibling Visit

“..the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Luke 6:45

Our foster children’s siblings spent the night last night. Today I am tired. I think most parents would agree. It really is part of parenting, being tired. Exercise has become a necessity right up there with reading my Bible every morning to get me going and keep me focused on what is important each day. Letting our foster children spend time with their siblings is important.

The more I get to know the siblings, the harder it is not to notice that they are struggling in school because they are depressed. I can’t NOT be influenced by the fact that they are afraid of being separated from their siblings as situations and foster placements shift. I cannot miss the longing and sadness that washes over their faces when the siblings that live with us bubble over with excitement, sharing plans we have for Christmas, oblivious to the effect their innocent excitement causes. While the kids play together, I cannot help notice a stark difference between the siblings’ somberness and the exuberance and smiles on the faces of the children who live in our home.

All the children who live with us are a part of our family. In light of being a part of a larger birth family, our girls have continued to call my husband and me by our first names. Just yesterday, when I was putting in a load of laundry, one of our foster daughters ran into the room and asked, “Mom, can I have some spaghetti?”

“Sure,” I replied.

She ran back up the stairs just as I did a double-take. I looked to one of my other daughters standing next to me and asked, “Did she just call me, Mom?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure she did it one other time before too.”

A sweet joy filled my heart. Maybe it was unintentional, but I believe what Jesus said in Luke 6:45

“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

I know I cannot fix everything. But I firmly believe we can all do something. Last night that “something” was to get the siblings together so they could see each other, talk without adults listening, and love each other the way no one else can.

God positions us uniquely in our relationships to influence and encourage. Many times we are the only one who can do that particular little “something.”

What is the “something” that you can do where you are right now?

RESPECTFUL TENACITY

You are a force to be reckoned with…

While I mostly feel like an overcommitted mom, a new friend recently told me, 

“You’re a force to be reckoned with.” 

Ah, I don’t think so, I thought, as I laughed in response. 
In the following days, her comment resurfaced in the back of my mind and began to grow. Then I got the call that a judge approved the purchase of plane tickets to move three of our foster children’s siblings across the state to live in three separate homes with people who weren’t relatives or even in their home village. Ordinarily, I would have thought it wasn’t my place or that I don’t have any grounds or the weight of position to have an opinion. A fierce protectiveness arose in my chest, giving me the courage to advocate with tenacity for our foster children’s family. 

These siblings have clung to each other like a small floating iceberg. Bobbing under trauma inflicted on them and buried within them that we cannot see. Through the transiency of their lives, they have clung fiercely to each other. While they do not all live in our home, we do what we can to allow them to come together. The kids can email each other or have a zoom call when they get done with their school work. We gather to celebrate birthdays or to just play at the park, where one of the kids inevitably asks if they can have a sleepover. :)

I didn’t know how to advocate for the kids to stay together. I asked for help from the school social worker, who knew of resources and guidelines unknown to me. I sent and resent emails of documentation and support to officials higher up the chain of command until someone took the time to listen to our children’s needs.

The children’s attorney listened to the foster moms many concerns, and she wrote eight pages of documentation to present in court to keep the sibling group together! How do you say thank you to an attorney who represents over 100 foster children, who takes the time to reply to phone calls after 5 p.m., and texts after 10 p.m.? She has come to the house to listen to concerns from us as foster parents and our foster children. I don’t even pay her for her time! 

I do not share stories to impress anyone, but so that others can understand the hidden struggles and victories in and around the lives of children affected by trauma. Maybe you don’t even know of anyone who is a foster parent or child, but I guarantee you know people who have experienced trauma or are still affected by trauma, even if they never tell you. 

Whatever the challenges are today. You can do hard things. Maybe you don’t know where to start, but we can all do something.

When you don’t have the answer, ask for help until you find the hidden fighters in the sea of weary workers just doing their best each day. There are people filled with passion for your cause and willing to put in the extra effort to do what is right for children in need. I am SO blessed to have passionate, respectful listeners and fighters who understand that quick decisions passed in court change the trajectory of children’s lives forever. 

Children don’t just deserve to be safe. They deserve to feel safe and loved.

If a busy mom can be heard over the throng of pressures and deadlines on caseworkers, attorneys, and judges’ minds, you can be heard too. 

YOU are a force to be reckoned with! 

Be brave & love well

A Tribute to All the Fighters

I have a little girl in my home right now that is all heart! She missed a lot of school due to the instability of her family life. She was not made to go to school, but she attended more than all her siblings when she was able to get there. They are all significantly behind in school.

When she moved in, I made small talk with this shy untrusting preteen by asking if she knows what she wants to be when she grows up.

She flicked her eyes up at me as she sat at the kitchen island. “A doctor.”

“When I was seven, I decided to be a teacher. My high school counselor asked me to consider becoming an architect or a doctor, but I wanted to be a teacher, and now I am.” I acknowledged the possibility of her dream.

“I wanted to become a doctor since I was in kindergarten,” she confessed.

“You will be a doctor someday if that is what you choose, but you will have to work hard when you feel like quitting.” I confided as she looked at me quietly, absorbing the truth.

I often see her open her computer to start remote learning before the school day begins without ever being asked. I encourage her to play outside, but she always finds her way back to the kitchen table, where she continues to plug along on assignments until bedtime many days. She is smart but has missed so much content over the years. She has been asking for help to write paragraphs, and I have been explaining what an introduction and conclusion are in essays. She steadily works on, without complaining. As we work together, she is learning to trust me, and her belief in herself is growing.

This little girl came to us with an inner fire. A small but fiercely stubborn flame, no one beat out of her. Her resolve to live and fight on grows. I am so glad that I get to help fan the flames of her passion for making a difference in the world. How many other future doctors (who may save our lives one day) are little sparks of unnoticed or neglected hope right now? Many children do not have parents who help with homework and some refuse to allow their children to engage in school. These children are invisible to most of us.

How can we see them? We must look. Look for them!

A teacher friend I know makes sure she feeds the little friend down the street any time she comes over because this child doesn’t always have food at her house.

Growing up, one of my best friends was very quiet. I never knew until I was an adult that she often didn’t have food at her house. She wished she was popular like her sister so she could spend the night at people’s homes and get to eat. I never knew until she shared with me as adults that when she spent the night and saw that my parents got along and that we were happy, she thought we were fake like a TV show. She honestly didn’t know people could live like that in real life.

The children in the most need will never reveal their situation. So feed the kids that come to your house. Go out of your way to offer words of hope and encouragement to the people you encounter each day. See the invisible. If everyone in the car is having a banana, roll down the window and share one with the man holding the cardboard, “Help,” sign at the corner while you wait for the light to turn green. He is someone’s son. Acknowledge the value of each life. Don’t let the flickering flames of hope go out.

Be Brave & Love Well

A Quiet Understanding

Falling in love with a hurting child

For our Iñupiaq Princesses

Loving you makes me come alive with feeling.

Smiles slide across my face at your giggles and bubbling belly laughs

My heart swells with love for you.

Deep, quiet words run through you

Hidden like an underground river

Visible on your face and the words penned by your grateful hand

Love is a calm stillness in the room.

A contentment to snuggle into

Words are not necessary.

Expressed through your humble smile and shy hugs.

My heart swells with love for you.

I'm Not Done Loving You

When a foster child leaves, loss touches friends and family too.

For Babycakes - A foster baby that we have come to love. Even though she did not live with us, she was a significant part of our lives while living with close family friends.

Gray clouds are drifting in front of my glorious blue sky.

I found out today that you will be moving on.

I’m SAD.

I wasn’t done loving you!

I’m not done loving you.

As you move to places I won’t see, you take a sliver of my sunset with you.

My love rains a crashing thunderstorm inside my heart.

Snuggles and kisses ooxx Hopes and dreams!

Hope. I send you with hope.

May you rise high like the glorious glowing clouds that reflect the sun’s rays.

May you come to know how much your creator loves you.

May you become all he imagined when he thought you into being.

To bless this world that just keeps spinning around the same distrust, fear, and violence.

You are a reflection of God’s love.

A good and perfect gift from above.

You are a treasure.

The smile on your face pricks love buried in the tightest heart.

Rise high little one, a beacon of hope and love to all who come to know you.

Even if you don’t remember my love.

May you always be safe and know that you are loved.

Three Things you Need to Make Working & Learning from Home Work

As a mom and a teacher I’ve discovered a few things that work. Every year teachers spend the beginning of the year teaching students routines, expectations, and where things belong. If I want to avoid a lot of wasted time and behavior problems to get to my goal of learning, these three things need to be mastered as quickly as possible.

When COVID hit, I floundered at home to figure out new routines, expectations, and where school and work things should belong. I shifted around our main level working in different spots, and I spent a lot of time looking for things and making a million decisions about who I should help next through distance learning or at home. I worked hard and felt guilty the whole time about not spending enough time helping everyone. When we started this year all working from home I decided I needed to implement what I know from years of teaching. I want all of us to make progress academically this year. And I don’t want to kill myself doing it.

To be successful at home you need three things

1. A place to work and keep your things

2. A routine

3. Realistic Expectations

A Place to work and a specific place for your things.

I realized I needed a home base. Like at school, I move around the room all day, but I have a table that I work at with my cup of important things (pencil, pen, scissors, highlighter and sticky notes). I went and got a $46 desk at Wal-mart and have a decorative tote next to it with my current work projects (AKA kids books for writing lessons and my school binder for teaching online).

Don’t waste time looking for papers or supplies. Have a special spot for each person's things. While I use a decorative tote, my kids at home chose plastic containers that belong at the end of the couch. I gave my students a binder with their name on the front and a zippered pocket (one of my team teacher’s ideas).

Routines - There is enough change to bury any of us alive. Free up mental space by going on autopilot where you can, by following a schedule. You and or your children can set alarms on your phone or the timer on the oven to keep everyone on track.

This especially helps with things you or your children do not like doing. If a dreaded task always happens at a set time then it doesn’t have to hang over your head the rest of the time because you know it will get done at the designated time and then you can mentally prepare to do it when that time comes. Challenging tasks are best when you are alert and not hungry. Writing seems to be a subject that some students struggle with, so I always have it after an outside recess (trampoline time at home). This way they have a lot of oxygen flowing to their brain and they are more alert. I like to record lessons online first thing in the morning before my kids are up.

Following a routine makes for less complaining when they get used to writing right after being outside. It becomes automatic after a week or two or reminders. Initially my first graders need to write for ten minutes every day. If they are working they are done when the timer goes off. When school is done. Let it be done. If my kids aren’t done right at the time school is out (1:10 pm for elementary, 3 pm for my big kids) I let them take a 10 minute recess then come back and work for another half hour and then they are done.

I work best in my room with the door open to the living room, where my kids are working. I set alarms on my phone when I need to check in with my children during the day. I spend about 3-10 minutes checking in with each child every day and ask them to make corrections or have them explain their work to me. This is similar to what I do in the classroom when I check in with students. On occasion they will come to me and ask how to get into an activity or to tell me a quiz won’t work for example. I do not check all their work or check in with all of them at the same time. I can see the work my younger children submitted to their teacher on the Seesaw app later in the day with teacher comments and I have my older children show me their grades once a week online. This is how I monitor if there is anyone I need to spend more time helping.

Realistic Expectations

We are working during working hours. This is not a problem for me because I often have a problem with stopping when I need to. We are all dressed and have breakfast before we start school.

The biggest elephant in the room is technology. I am honestly trying to figure out that beast. We are in an angry wrestling match at the moment. Ultimately, I have to go back to what I know.

I need routines and to set expectations. It is not realistic or healthy to spend my evenings and my whole weekend figuring out technology, but I do need to make sure lessons get out to my students. For now, I figure out the technology for the next day of online lessons and when another teacher’s voice is on a template for directions and I can’t delete the voice recording that says, “Turn it into Mrs. Allen (obviously NOT my name), it isn’t the end of the world. It will still work with a note to parents on the screen. I am learning to call it done and let it go (even though this is really hard). I have delegated checking in with my younger kids to my older kids on days when I have to go into school. I know I am the parent, but there are days I cannot do it all and I need their help. If there is one thing that COVID is teaching us, albeit against our will, it is to be flexible.

Parenting & Teaching Right Now is HARD

My Classroom

Online with my first graders at home in my bedroom/office, while five of my children 3rd-11th grade are online with their teachers in the living room.

I know we need to have grace for ourselves, but there is a reason I didn’t go to school to do web design or computer technology. Some people like to do everything on technology because they find it easier. Others prefer to do everything in person to have the ongoing feedback of facial expressions to gauge others’ reactions and correct misinterpretations right away. I kind of see tech people and in-person or real-time communicators like introverts and extroverts, opposites. Of course, we’re all on a different place on the spectrum with our abilities and personalities.

Technology is not my passion, and it does not come easily for me. I’m always saying, “Can you show me?” Learning to manipulate technology from home is hard because you have to learn the technology to show someone what you’re stuck on from home, and you have to know what to ask. 

As a teacher, I’m having to figure out new platforms and how to make clickable pages and assignments so that it is approachable and easy for my student and their parents. I have a bazillion emails as I’m collaborating and sharing work between my first-grade teachers more than ever and receiving updates from our school district. As my own children’s teachers are figuring out new platforms and delivery, I’m getting a million emails and directions from them too. It is dizzying. 

As I figure out how to use Seesaw for giving and receiving work as a teacher, my own children actually missed THREE individual meetings with their teachers online this week because I didn’t know that in Seesaw, you have to click the SMS box in settings if you want the messages to come as texts. The messages about the meetings were buried in my email that I have not been able to keep up with. I have five children in 3rd-11th grade with 13 teachers right now. They are all sending emails and trying to make sure my kids know what to do and are accessing their assignments. If you are a parent doing remote learning at home, you know what I’m talking about! On behalf of teachers, I’m sorry. We’re just trying to figure out what we’re doing.

While I am teaching from home I go into school twice a week to collaborate with the other teachers and get weekly packets ready to send home for my students. This week my foster girls missed their online counseling sessions while I was at school when they forgot how to get on zoom. My life is usually busy, but before COVID, my kids went to school and their teachers taught them and I went to school and taught in the style and system that I had developed over the course of my 15 year career. I feel like all the little parts of my children’s and my work life have all been shaken loose from their organized place and thrown at me to fall where they may and it’s my job to figure out a way to organize them. Thursday, I hit the wall. It was too much.

Long ago, I used to like scrapbooking and making family videos, so at some point, I’m hoping for a tipping point where a new routine will be established and all this technology will get more comfortable. It should become more intuitive to me at some point. Maybe then it will become fun like lesson planning and preparing for teaching used to be. 

While staring at the screen on zoom in one-on-one sessions all day is exhausting, it’s the closest thing I have to normal right now with my job. I love getting to see my students and have them read to me. When they tell stories about their cat and what they did yesterday, it is a slice of familiar. It feels like the times students came into the classroom each morning, eager to share their stories with me. They are so animated! The upside of everyone being home is that I’m getting to actually see the cat and the other things in my students’ stories. It feels good to get to know my students’ parents again. I used to know all of the parents when I taught in a mile long isolated village. Those are stories for another day.

Parenting and teaching right now is so different.

And, so HARD!

But it will get easier. 

We will adjust.

Thank you to the teachers and parents who choose to be positive even when we are frustrated with all these uncomfortable changes. 

Our children need to see that we are resilient and that we can all learn new things, just like we expect them to do each day at school. We can do it without complaining and arguing just like we are teaching them to do. 

As a foster mom, I’ve learned the importance of allowing children to take a break to run hard or bounce on the trampoline to release a little of that anger and frustration. I’ve also learned the importance of allowing children to have an angry cry, a frustrated cry, or a cry to release their loss. Maybe as adults, we might need to allow ourselves one of these releases too. When the time comes, a hard run or cry is a lot healthier than many other bandaids. As I once told a child, “Just let all those yucky feelings out, you don’t want to keep them inside. They’ll make you sick.”

An Evolving Yes

When we first started fostering, the thought of adopting an older child was frightening. But we did it, and we survived and grew in love.

When we returned to fostering after I returned to teaching full time, it was overwhelming at times. But my husband stepped up and helped take care of all the necessary drop-offs and pickups for counseling, daycare, and school events at five different schools around town. We learned to communicate and work together as parents.

Changing our license to foster three children at the same time was not something I ever thought I’d do. But when I saw eight frightened siblings huddled together in the corner of a frozen entryway at forty degrees below zero while a caseworker divided them up among five strangers, I wanted to take more than the two I was licensed to protect. We were surprised that these three precious girls are the easiest placement we’ve ever had.

With each new step, I wondered how I’d be able to do it all. Yet with each new step, we adjusted, and God blessed us. I learned to listen to his direction when I came to the end of my own wisdom and emotional resources. Little by little, I am still learning to trust him. He never asks me to do more than he gives me the ability to do with his help.

Not Ashamed!

When I lost my first baby, and then I began to care for children who have been hurt by the parents who were meant to love them, I learned to feel. I learned to cry. I learned to see difficult things and hear difficult things. Not because I want to see and hear the pain, but because people need to be seen, and they need to be heard. We all need to be able to cry and not be ashamed.

I believe in the changing power of pain and the power of hope. And I believe in the release of crying. If you need to cry, cry.

I am not ashamed to cry anymore.

Just being REAL! A foster moment.