Bringing Home Charlie Brown

Food Hoarding. Ever heard of it? Ever seen it? Two words. Heart Breaking. It's a learned survivor skill. It gets messy quickly. Basically a child has learned that food will be in short supply and not consistent. To prevent hunger that child takes food and hides it in various "secret" placed to be consumed at a later "hungry" date.  Another side of the food hoarding is the obsessive eating. Because children aren't sure when their next meal will come they STUFF themselves, to the point of sickness, to make sure that they won't be as hungry later. When a child is in survival mode these are "helpful" behaviors. They allow a child to literally SURVIVE. When a child isn't in that situation it becomes more complicated.  Because food is always available in our house the eating until you are sick becomes a daily problem. Eventually the mass amounts of over eating will lead to some pretty serious weight gain and health problems. Obviously the goa...

We've been in the whirlwind of foster care for about 2 years now. Foster care never ceases to amaze me. The laws don't make sense, the policies are out dated, the kids are stuck in limbo, the agencies are over booked and under staffed. It truly is a nightmare. Yet we press on. We do it for the kids. And everyday we pray that our children find permanency.  I've realized over the last 3 months that this time around in foster care is very different from our first experience. I feel like we are in the "traditional throws" of care. You hear a lot in the foster care community about push back behaviors from kids in care. Obviously with having a new born we never had to worry about that the first time through. This time we have classic "foster kid" behavior response. Our number one pushback behavior...LYING!  All was going well for the first month, great manners, great behaviors, following directions, perfection. And then... the COMFORT came. Let's be hon...