Mike and Carolyn Hattaway took their first foster child in February 2003.<\/p>\n
They decided to become foster parents because they wanted to have a dozen children but stopped at five.\u00a0 \u201cHaving a dozen kids was not really practical for us, so the next best thing would be to open our home to kids who might need a little help.\u201d\u00a0 The family states they love having children around and taking care of foster children helps with our desire to always have \u201ckids in the house\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mike and Carolyn explain that the best part of being a foster parent is when you see a child succeed, start an adult chapter in his life, or just find peace with himself, you get the feeling of how life should be.\u00a0 This is what keeps them doing what they do.\u00a0 The reality that these kids, like all family members, are just looking to be able to get thru life and enjoy being kids and adults.\u00a0 As foster parents, we get to watch children grow up daily and make changes daily.\u00a0 It is a wonderful experience.<\/p>\n
The biggest challenge in being a foster parent is it is hard to have a child in your home who can\u2019t figure out how to succeed and continues to fight everyone who is trying to help him.\u00a0 Finding the right tools to help a child sometimes is overwhelming and frustrating.<\/p>\n
Mike and Carolyn describe their fondest story of being a foster parent when they had a 16 year old teen boy whose parent\u2019s rights had been terminated approximately eight years prior to him coming to our home.\u00a0 The father changed his life.\u00a0 He got out of jail, got a job, got married, basically grew up.\u00a0 He contacted the proper people to try to stay aware of what happened to his son.\u00a0 He asked to talk with his son and the Judge made the decision to allow it.\u00a0 The teen was allowed to talk to his dad.\u00a0 He was then allow supervised visitation, then unsupervised visitation, then an overnight visit, then a month long visit and was then reunited with his dad.\u00a0 What a wonderful experience it was to watch a young teen boy become a son again and a man become a dad.\u00a0 Makes it all worth it.<\/p>\n
Mike and Carolyn would give the following advice to those interested in foster parenting: \u201cThere are a lot of negatives that come with being a foster parent but there are far more positives.\u00a0 If you have made the decision to become a foster parent, remember, a parent is there through the good and the bad times.\u00a0 Enjoy the good times and hold everyone close during the bad times.\u00a0 Take care of your foster children like they are your own.\u00a0 Love them no matter what and love them enough to do what it takes to teach them how to make it through the day.\u00a0 Be consistent.\u201d<\/em> Mike and Carolyn Hattaway took their first foster child in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-articles","wpautop"],"yoast_head":"\n
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