When Christina was in nursing school, the doctors and medical staff called her Mary Poppins because she was their children’s favorite babysitter. When she cared for little ones, Christina set the babysitting bar high. Very high.
Even when she was called last-minute because another babysitter or nanny cancelled, Christina arrived with a big bag of tricks filled with age-appropriate activities and games. “I researched special activities that stimulate a child’s mind,” she says. “I wasn’t there to turn on the television and use my phone. I was there to entertain and engage their children’s curiosity.” She created homemade snow globes with glitter and brought along toys like plastic dinosaurs and marbles. Christina and her charges often took imaginary vacations and built fantasy tents for reading. “With older children we would bake so they could learn to follow recipes, measure ingredients, and be creative with presentation,” she explains. “Sometimes I was the head chef and other times they ran the restaurant and I was a diner.”
Naturally, Christina was a popular babysitter. The new foster mother brings the same level of enthusiasm to caring for six-month-old “Baby J,” who came into the foster care system when he was ten days old. She saw that the baby loves music, so Christina purchased an old record player from Goodwill. Now Baby J is captivated as he watches vinyl discs rotate under the record player needle as music comes from the small speaker. “The one thing all children have in common is that they are curious, and they need constant mental stimulation.”
Christina learned this at nursing school, which she attended after serving as a medic for the U.S. Army. Christina also worked at the Polinsky Center Children’s Auxiliary, supervising visits for foster children and birth parents. She is able to earn children’s trust by allowing them the emotional space to self-reflect while also letting them know she is there to support them.
If Christina sounds perfect, she’s very quick to point out that is not the case. “I’ve done things I wasn’t proud of and made mistakes when I was younger,” Christina says. She was a teen mother and asked her parents to play a major role in raising her son. Her son is now grown and has a successful career in construction, but Christina looks back and says she made some fumbles along the way. Ironically, this is one of her strengths as a foster parent. “I have a really good connection with Baby J’s birth parents,” she says. “Whenever his mom gets down on herself, I ask her if she wants to hear about some of my mistakes. Just because you’ve made mistakes doesn’t mean you’re stuck there. With me, she can see that you don’t have to have had a picture-perfect life. I finished high school, joined the Army, went to nursing school, and am working on my master’s degree now. I learned to be a good mother and so will she.”
Christina says she believes wholeheartedly in fostering children until their birth families are able to reunify with them. She is grateful to her mother for supporting her as a teen mom and is excited to share the fostering journey with her too, since they now live together. Her mother has retired from owning her bakery business and can support her daughter when there are schedule changes, medical appointments, or family visits. “We are at the stage of our lives where we can give a child attention twenty-four seven,” she says. “My mother and I can provide a secure and loving environment for the children and hope to help families rebuild.”
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