About a month after toddler siblings “Minnie” and “Ryan” came into the care of Angels foster parents, Alyssa and Steven, “Ryan” announced, “You are Mommy and you’re Daddy and we’re a family!”
Six months later, he still likes to remind everyone of that. He asks to go to the zoo as a family, watch movies as a family – pretty much everything “as a family.”
Those words are music to the ears of Alyssa and Steven. When the siblings first arrived, Ryan didn’t engage with others. He sat by himself and made noises rather than speaking. When he did interact, it was to kick, hit, or play “shoot and kill.” Minnie didn’t speak or express emotion.
“They are both completely different children than the ones we first met,” says Alyssa, who is a speech and language therapist. Steven is a computer technician. It wasn’t their professional expertise that made the transformation possible, though. The couple leads from the heart, knowing that consistent love and stability is the key to fostering.
The couple noticed a few things about the children right away. Minnie and Ryan were both terrified of men. And they were afraid to go to sleep. Alyssa and Steven decided to put together a bedtime routine that put Steve in the center of the fun. Their “blast off to bed” includes a cuddle, teeth brushing, going to the bathroom, hearing a story, and saying a prayer before Steven picks up Ryan and pretends he’s a rocket blasting into space. This moonshot, however, lands straight into bed.
Minnie and Ryan are the Alyssa and Steven's first foster placement. They say they always wanted a family, but medical issues made it difficult to conceive. The couple began exploring adoption, but Alyssa remembered how many of her students were in the foster care system, and what a great need there was for stable, loving caregivers. She recalled one kindergartener who had already been in eight different foster homes and had social anxiety and behavior problems. “I saw firsthand the effects of being shuffled around and felt called to provide a steady home,” she says.
Steven, on the other hand, was not interested in fostering at first. “I’d heard stories about fostering, like children being abused, or foster parents having too many children in-home," he explains. "Alyssa told me that she had researched Angels Foster Family Network and they were a good organization, and I thought, yeah, we'll see about that." He reluctantly agreed to attend the information session, and by the end of it, he was fully on board. Both Alyssa and Steven appreciate that Angels asks foster parents to commit to a foster child or sibling set for the entire duration of their stay in the foster care system. They also like that the organization only allows people to foster a single child or sibling set so parents can provide focused attention.
The toughest part of fostering for Alyssa and Steven has been the biological mother's mistrust of them. They knew that this was a possibility because, during the certification process, Angels explained that biological parents can be suspicious of foster parents’ motives. Alyssa and Steven continue to try to build trust and hope to develop a stronger relationship moving forward. “She has told us that we don’t know what she went through when she was a child herself in foster care, so I suspect she’s been through a lot,” says Alyssa.
The couple says that life is a roller coaster ride, and fostering just makes the drops steeper. They have both participated in Angels support groups, which especially helped Steven when he heard that other men had faced similar treatment from biological parents. “Angels prepared us very well for everything that would be difficult,” he says.
Fostering is worth it, though. “Fostering isn’t for people who are looking for a stress-free life, but if you’re looking to make a difference in someone’s life, you can stop a cycle.” Alyssa adds, “You know, people always tell me that the kids are so lucky to have us, but really, we’re the lucky ones.”
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