Special Ed Teacher & Foster Parent Patty Speaks About Adoption
Episode Summary
In this episode, we meet Patty Braendel, a special education teacher who is an adoptive mom, a birth mom, and also a foster mom. We hear about her journey to parenthood with all its ups and downs and learn how her experiences as a parent have helped her work in special education.
For the visually-minded who prefer to listen and read, watch the transcript video here: https://youtu.be/6gINmxyiQ5o
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The Wisdom Shared Team
Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
Co-Producer and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson
Production Assistant: Becki Leigh
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[00:00:00] Patty Braendel: With adoption, there’s brokenness. And with foster care, there’s brokenness. But out of that can come a beautiful putting together of lives in a way that wasn’t expected. I couldn’t think of anything other than having the kids that I have. So, I don’t look back and go, ugh, I just wish I had four biological children. We don’t think like that. Like we have who we have, and they were meant to be in our family.
[00:00:31] Carole Blueweiss: That was Patty Braendel.
[00:00:34] Patty Braendel: I am short, sort of blonde hair. I have two different colored eyes, brown and blue.
[00:00:39] Carole Blueweiss: You heard that right. Patty has one blue eye and one brown eye. I saw those eyes for myself. Eric and Patty are both white and they have four children.
[00:00:52] Patty Braendel: Emily is same height as me. When you look at her, you can tell she’s Thai. Basically the same size in clothes and everything. It’s funny. And then Luke, five-seven, super curly hair, brown eyes. Luke is brown. Then we have Gunther, who is six-one, is a carbon copy of his father. Looks just like him. Which I say is so not fair because I gave birth to one child, and he does not look like me at all.
[00:01:18] Then Hannah is not even five feet, and I think she’s done growing. She has super straight brown hair and has the very traditional Chinese-shaped face, her eyes and everything. Hannah has had a hard time with that growing up, looking different than her sister. We’ve had plenty of math jokes and people assuming that our Asian daughters are very good in math.
[00:01:42] Hannah does not like it. It is not her thing. When they were two, three, and four, we spent our summers at the pool. Cuz that’s what you do. You get the kids tired, you go to the pool. And so Gunther would get really tan. I’d have people asking me if they were triplets. No, no. They’re all very different in their own ways.
[00:02:01] Do I need to show you Gunther’s bottom to show you that he’s white? Because one time someone asked me if he was biracial, and I’m like, no. People say the craziest things. So, we all definitely look very different from one another. We’re proud of that. We like that. We keep people guessing, I guess you could say.
[00:02:19] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents and the children are the experts, and where connection inspires change. My name is Carole Blueweiss, and yes, I have two blue eyes. Today, Patty Braendel is my special guest. One warm night, we were watching our two sons play baseball, and I couldn’t help but notice that on Patty’s lap sat this beautiful little Black girl with pigtails. She looked like she was about two years old. Yeah, she had me guessing all right. I admit it.
[00:02:55] Welcome to Wisdom Shared, Patty.
[00:02:58] Patty Braendel: Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
[00:03:01] Carole Blueweiss: Who is Patty?
[00:03:02] Patty Braendel: Who is Patty? Let’s start with I’m a wife, I’m a mother, and I’m a special education teacher. Been married for 25 years. I have four children. I’m an adoptive mom, a biological mom, and then I’m also a foster mom, so I have one foster baby with me now.
[00:03:20] And then I am in the special education field, and I teach at an elementary school close by home. When we had unexplained infertility, it was Eric who said, well, we will adopt then. And I was like, I don’t know if that’s the answer. It took me a while. With Emily, it happened really fast. We got a call and two weeks later she was in our home.
[00:03:40] She was so easy and so wonderful and so loving that it wasn’t scary at all. Like I know my mom was super concerned about it. Cuz you always will get the questions, what if they take them away from you? And of course, you have to know about how adoption works. We weren’t worried about it past a certain time, but I know my family was worried about that.
[00:04:01] It’s hard for people to open their hearts to a baby that could potentially be taken from them. So brought Emily home. She’s 20 years old now. And then Luke is 10 and a half months younger than Emily. So, we had those two. And then I got pregnant with Gunther. So, when I had Gunther, I had a one and a two-year-old at home. So, I had three under three when I had Gunther.
[00:04:24] Carole Blueweiss: There’s that aspect of adopting a child and that fear of them being taken away.
[00:04:29] Patty Braendel: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:30] Carole Blueweiss: And then what about the fear of getting attached to these kids that are foster kids, that you’re gonna have to give them away.
[00:04:37] Patty Braendel: With the foster children that we have, like we’re here at this time right now to be a safe place for them. They need to be bonded to someone. Humans need that, and so we want to provide that attachment and that bonding that they would otherwise not have. If you think about it, like bounce from home to home or even like in a group home, in a not safe place. We’re willing to put ourselves out there so that those kids have that chance.
[00:05:06] We had to say goodbye to two different sets of long-term placements. Both were hard to say goodbye to, but we know that we did our part in what we could do. And you always accept that you’re not a decision maker in the process. Foster parents do not make any decisions. We can only be an advocate for them.
[00:05:26] And just hope that the people who are in charge of their case, that they’re doing what’s right for them. We can do our part and we know we have a very specific part. And then past that, we know there isn’t anything sometimes we can do. So, my kids have gotten attached to certain kids. I know my oldest daughter, Emily, had a really hard time when one of the little girls left.
[00:05:48] That was also just an opportunity for Emily to learn and to grow, too. So, we’d look at it like that. It’s not easy and you’re sad and you do hurt, but is it okay? It’s okay for me. I’m an adult. I can hurt in order for these children to have a safe place and to have loving people in their lives for that time.
[00:06:09] Carole Blueweiss: At one point, did you have six kids in your house?
[00:06:11] Patty Braendel: I think the most we’ve had is seven. Lots of Costco runs. And I was home full time with them, so I was taking care of all of them. Luke is 19. He is our second child. We adopted him when he was about two and a half months old.
[00:06:30] Carole Blueweiss: Did he start off in foster care?
[00:06:32] Patty Braendel: No, it was a private adoption. So, he was with his birth mother for the first two and a half months of his life. She was working through whether or not she wanted to place him for adoption or parent him. And we had met her shortly after he was born. Acquaintances and friends had connected us, so we were not working with an agency or even working with an adoption lawyer.
[00:06:58] We got a phone call. We know a birth mother who’s looking for a family. She’s thinking about adoption, and would you be willing to write a letter, send pictures, and meet her? So, she read our letter. We met her and her mom. She was in her twenties. She was still trying to figure out what decision she was gonna make.
[00:07:18] We hadn’t heard from her. We had just assumed that she was not going to place him, at least with us. And then one day out of the blue, I got a phone call and she said, I’m ready. I want you to be Luke’s parents. Will you do that? And we said yes, absolutely. So, we drove up to Northern Virginia. It was about 45 minutes away from where we lived, and we went to their home, and we had a little hello and goodbye type ceremony. She read him a book and gave him gifts and stuff, and then off we went down the road with a little guy that we had never met before and he cried the entire way home, and then he pretty much continued to cry for most of the first year of his life. He came to us a very stressed-out little baby.
[00:08:01] We went through everything. Does he have colic, does he have this? He did have a cleft palette, so we thought maybe that’s why he’s so fussy. He’s on special formula, special bottle. He had surgery at nine months old to have that fixed and he was good to go. He could eat and drink and do everything all of the other little babies could do.
[00:08:19] He was just not very happy. I was home full time with him, with our other daughter who was a year older than him, and he cried so much that when Eric came home from work, it was my time to leave the house because I had heard him cry so much. We really had no idea just how stressed out he was at the time. We were just living it like day to day. Like we didn’t know what to do.
[00:08:44] Luke has been a great, great teacher to us unknowingly. He doesn’t know this, but we have shared this with him. We learned so much from being his parents through a lot of really hard situations. He is not attached to our family emotionally, currently, in a way the other three children are. He just really isn’t. And we did everything we could think of to try and form that bond with him. And we just didn’t. We just know that we did the best that we can. We loved him. We still love him.
[00:09:21] We knew we wanted another girl. We decided to adopt from China, and that is Hannah. Although at the time we thought it would take just a year to adopt her, it ended up from the time we put in our paperwork, it took three years to bring her home.
[00:09:37] Carole Blueweiss: Emily is half Thai and half white.
[00:09:40] Patty Braendel: Yes. Luke is biracial, he’s Black and white. Gunther is just plain white. And Hannah is Chinese.
[00:09:50] Carole Blueweiss: It just sounds so extraordinary to live with such a diverse family. It’s hard enough to raise a family.
[00:09:58] Patty Braendel: Right.
[00:09:58] Carole Blueweiss: That everyone’s similar, and then you have all the caveats of the adoption versus the foster versus born. You must have some interesting stories about how their race, each one of them, maybe they had to deal with life differently.
[00:10:13] Patty Braendel: Yes, of course. I’m white and I have children that do not look like me. So, a lot of the times early on the questions would be, are you the nanny? Are you babysitting? Early on, I would take offense to that because it was just like, no, these are my babies.
[00:10:28] We’ve gotten past that. We’ve had the really awful comments. I was definitely more sensitive to it than Eric ever was. Just different references to the kids’ color of their skin. Comments like, your children are already tan? No, they’re just brown. That’s their color. Different things like that, and you can just see sometimes it’s not even the words that they would say, it’s just how they looked at you. And depending on where I was, which if I was down south, it was different. If I was up north, it was different.
[00:10:57] Carole Blueweiss: What was your actual experience up north versus down south?
[00:11:01] Patty Braendel: It wasn’t received really well down south. I was one time in South Carolina at a McDonald’s, and I had all three of the kids with me, and the lady at the McDonald’s was just very mean to me. I know Luke probably would’ve been fussing at that time. But what I felt was she saw me as a white lady who wasn’t being kind to a boy who was not white, which was not at all what was happening. But you can feel that. You can feel how people are offended or how they’re looking at you. And some of the words, I can’t remember all of what she said to me, but it just was so not nice.
[00:11:35] And then up north, we would get comments. So yes, they’re adopted, but people would actually ask, are they adopted? Right in front of them. Often, they would say, do they know they’re adopted? And of course, they know they’re adopted. Our kids knew from day one that they were adopted. They don’t look like us.
[00:11:54] And just things like that they would say, and if I could have written down every comment, I could write a book. I remember sitting at a restaurant with a really good friend. And she had little kids. And I had little kids. And Luke I think was a baby at the time, and she said it would not be okay for her son to marry a Black woman.
[00:12:15] And I’m sitting there thinking, wow, I’m sitting here with children who are of color and you’re saying in front of me that it would not be okay for your son to marry a Black woman. And I was just like, wow. You’re saying that to me, I’m your friend, and I’m sitting right here with babies that are not all white.
[00:12:36] Just different things like that where you’d just be amazed at how people think. And that would’ve been probably 17 years ago, so not that long ago, but just certain people will surprise you sometimes. And then of course, obviously we got lots of wonderful comments and lots of very kind and loving and understanding people that were just like amazed and just really appreciated people who are willing to go outside of the traditional type family.
[00:13:02] A lot of people would say, oh, they’re so lucky to have you. No, it’s, that’s not it at all. We feel very fortunate to have them. Weren’t out to rescue anyone. We just wanted a family. I wanted to be a mom. He wanted to be a dad, and adoption is how we were able to start our family. We obviously have grown and matured and learned from a lot of different experiences with them, which then helps us with being foster parents.
[00:13:28] Carole Blueweiss: That makes me think that there was that stereotypical attitude or that there’s pity or, no, they’re just human beings just like everybody else. They’re just adopted or.
[00:13:38] Patty Braendel: Right, so they didn’t ask for that to be their story. And I would say there’s brokenness as part of their story, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be viewed as that.
[00:13:51] Carole Blueweiss: What is Luke doing now with his life? It sounds like you’re not in touch with him or?
[00:13:54] Patty Braendel: We are definitely not in touch with him daily. We’ve done so many different things. He was always in therapy or in programs or away in a private school. Different things that we were just hopeful that would help him just make better decisions in life and to be a better version of himself.
[00:14:11] So to back up, he was in a therapeutic wilderness program for about two and a half years. It was in Pennsylvania. They’re living outside in cabins. It’s a lot of hands-on learning. It was all boys and they worked through their issues. We are all part of a team. He would be gone for five weeks. He would come home.
[00:14:32] And it was all part of a process to see if he was making progress on the different goals that he had set to go. And he had to agree to go to this program. You don’t send them there kicking and screaming. They need to buy into it. They need to agree that it’d probably be a good decision to make. We did this before high school.
[00:14:52] We knew where it was headed. It was not gonna be a good situation, and he was making bad choices. And we wanted him to be safe and we wanted to be safe. So, we put him in that program and usually it’s about 18 months long and our son took two and a half years to graduate out. And even the graduation is all a team decision, too.
[00:15:12] It’s do the parents feel that he’s making progress at home? Do the counselors, all of the above, does Luke think that he’s making progress? He came home and I will say when we had the meeting right before graduation, my mom was there, Eric’s parents were there, and we were all sitting in a circle with the director and the counselors, and they asked Luke to speak, and he didn’t speak.
[00:15:33] And I knew. Everybody like went up there super excited. Luke’s finally graduating, he’s coming back. And he didn’t speak, and he didn’t have anything to say, and I knew at that point he probably hadn’t changed, but we were hopeful. So, he came back home, and it didn’t go well. Just decisions that are not okay in our home.
[00:15:52] Carole Blueweiss: Can you give an example just so we can understand?
[00:15:54] Patty Braendel: Let’s see. So, he had zero concern for schoolwork or anything. He had a lot of trouble with any authority. So, he was starting to make decisions like where we couldn’t trust anything that he said. And he had a lot of anger. I don’t wanna be in a home with almost an adult who I don’t feel safe with.
[00:16:15] So a lot of explosive anger at the time, slamming doors or different things like that. And it was escalating to the point where we’re like, is it going to get physical? We don’t want that to happen. We just have certain things like, yeah, if you’re gonna leave the house, we need to know where you’re going, what you’re doing.
[00:16:32] To the extent that teenagers will tell their parents, but he was not doing anything in school, and it was living in a house with a kid who never spoke to us whatsoever. He wouldn’t talk to us. He would not talk to us. So, he’d be in his room, which was in the basement. He wouldn’t speak to us.
[00:16:48] Carole Blueweiss: Was that the case when he was younger, too?
[00:16:50] Patty Braendel: Yeah, a lot of it, yes. But he was always very friendly to family members or strangers, like way more friendly to them. And that’s part of what we’ve learned over the years, especially with foster parenting, is attachment. He didn’t have healthy attachments and kids that don’t have healthy attachments tend to be overly comfortable with strangers or people that are not close to them, and that’s how Luke was.
[00:17:18] And we didn’t know at the time that was what he was struggling with. And just like things like with girls that he’d be dating, we didn’t trust him. We didn’t trust him to treat who he was dating in the right way. We knew him and we were just, we’re trying to raise a gentleman, we’re trying to raise a good human being and he fought us on like everything. We, at the time, we knew he hated living with us.
[00:17:41] We knew he didn’t wanna be around us. So, we said, if you, he’s 17 at the time, we said, if you can find somewhere to go, a friend, some other place, if you want to move out, you’re 17. You’re almost an adult. You can do that. Like we’re not forcing you to stay here. And he had off and on throughout the time that he was in the therapeutic wilderness program, talked about his birth mother and had talked about not liking the fact that he was adopted and not liking his story.
[00:18:13] He didn’t really ever share that with us, and he wouldn’t talk to us about it, even if we tried to talk to him about it. We were not parents that, oh, let’s not talk about the adoption thing. We wanted him to talk about it. We would not have been hurt if he said to us, I didn’t want to be adopted. He didn’t ask for that. He didn’t ask for that to be a part of his story.
[00:18:33] We just wanted to help him work through it. And he felt very abandoned. And so, for him, a huge word for him is abandoned. He in his heart felt abandoned by his parents. So even though Eric and Patty Braendel provided a safe place for him, a loving home, brother and sisters, loved him, everything we could think of, in his heart and in his mind, he was an abandoned child. He was abandoned. And so, he lives that.
[00:19:01] So then therefore, he did not form an attachment with us. So, I offered to help him when he was in the program. We did invite his birth mother over to our house. We had always kept in contact with her, and we said, we think it would be really good if you were to sit down with Luke. He was 16 at the time. And can you please tell him your reasons for placing him? Can you tell him your thoughts, your feelings, what you want for him in life? And she was, of course, willing to do that. We knew what type of person she was. She wanted the best for him.
[00:19:33] She did not want to be a mom on welfare. She didn’t want for him to be raised by a single mom who was gonna struggle every step of the way. She wanted him to have two parents, and she wanted him to have opportunities in life. So, she came to the home, and she sat there with both of us, Eric and I, and Luke. And she explained everything and asked him any question you have, I will answer.
[00:19:59] He didn’t have any questions for her. He did sit there the whole time crying. A lot of times he would just have tears rolling down his face, but he wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t say anything. She asked him to forgive her, he said right away, yes. And then she even said, you don’t have to forgive right now, but we don’t want it to just be an automatic yes, you need to work through that.
[00:20:19] After that, I think it started in his mind what life should have been like and I should have been with her all along cuz she’s a lovely person and she’s married, she has little girls. And I think he’s thinking, why wasn’t I good enough? So, I think that just drove more of his anger. And so, I said, we know that your birth mom said it would not be a good idea for him to live with her right now. She would not be willing to do that.
[00:20:48] So I said, do you want me to help you find your birth father? And he said yes. Because it had gotten so bad at our house. He just didn’t wanna be there. And so, I located his birth family on his birth father’s side down in Georgia. And I put him in contact with his grandmother and he got a phone call. And really, we were trying to find the birth father, it turns out he was actually living with the grandmother at the time. And he asked could he come live with them? And they said yes right away. We sent him down there for Thanksgiving just to visit. He talked with them further and he had decided by Christmas time he was gonna go live with them. So, he did. We have to help him pack up his stuff and we sent him down there.
[00:21:36] That lasted not very long. Not even a year. It did not go well. And Luke actually was then going into an all-Black high school, an all-Black neighborhood. Just a very different community than what he was used to. So, it was a very different experience for him. And we also think he was also struggling all this time with being biracial.
[00:21:59] Do I identify with being white or being Black? How does that fit? He didn’t know how to work that out. He, I think, always felt like he didn’t know where he fit in. He was in Georgia, and it was a very different environment than what he grew up in. So that didn’t last a full year, but he had turned 18. So, during that whole time, he kept in contact with his birth mother, and I will say the birth mom and the birth dad do not get along. So, there was that whole aspect of it.
[00:22:28] So she had agreed when he turned 18 that he could go live with her. So, he moved up there to Virginia to live with his birth mother. I don’t know how long it was before it fell apart there, too. It did not work out. Just breaking the rules that she had set. And one of the rules that she had was agreements they made is that if you come live with us, you’re gonna be in therapy.
[00:22:51] And I think he would do that for a little bit and then stop. But he was just drinking too much, threatening to harm himself. Just like some really dramatic stuff that he had never done with us. And she decided it wasn’t safe for him to be at the house. So then, He left, and she helped him get hooked up with a group called Hope Mission or Project Hope, I can’t even remember the name of it.
[00:23:13] What they do is they help teenagers in Luke’s situation where they suddenly find themselves homeless. They help them finish high school, find them a job and a place to live. And so, you have to agree to be working to then be a part of the program. And so, they had it all set up and Luke was working, and he was gonna graduate high school and I guess he didn’t want to work anymore, so he was asked to leave the program and he chose to go live at a homeless shelter.
[00:23:44] So he is now, what we’ve last heard, he’s in a homeless shelter in Virginia. But he, we think he’s gonna finish high school. Before Eric put him on a plane to go to Georgia, he was sitting in our living room and I had said to him, is there anything that you would’ve wanted us to do differently? And he said, no.
[00:24:02] And he said it with tears down his face. He’s a very sensitive kid. Eric just looked at him and he tends to listen to Eric differently than he does to me, and he said, Eric just said, can you please finish high school? We just want you to finish high school. Luke said, yes, that’s my intention. In Georgia, I think you can drop out of high school at 16.
[00:24:22] So we knew there was a chance when he went down there that he could just say, I’m done with school. But he has stayed in school, and I think he’s ready to graduate. I think the last time Eric talked to him was about college money or something like that. But he’s not a part of our family in that way.
[00:24:38] So does he call us on holidays? Does he say happy birthday? Happy Mother’s Day, happy Father’s Day? No. He started referring to us as Eric and Patty. So, it’s very strange. I have cried a lot over this. I have been hurt over and over again. Just our hearts have been like shattered by just wanting, like, just pouring everything we could into helping him and loving him. And it just never, I don’t know if the word is clicked or it just never, he just didn’t want to be with us, but he never spoke badly of us either.
[00:25:17] So in the program he was in, most of the kids had many words to say about their parents, whether it was adoptive or not. But one thing the counselors would always tell us is that Luke always spoke very highly of us and had great respect for us, and so, that just helped us know that we really are loving him and trying to provide the best opportunities in life for him, just to be the best version of himself.
[00:25:43] And he just can’t get himself there. It’s not us. When he actually packed up his bags, friends are saying, how could you let him go? How could you let him go? You don’t even know where he is going. And we’re like, he’s basically an adult. And this is what he needs to do. We’re gonna let him do it. We’re not gonna fight him on it.
[00:26:00] I’m not gonna keep him here under protest. And we’re okay with that cuz there’s no holding on to him. He’s gotta go and figure out what it is in life that he wants. And so, going back to how can I foster kids and then let them go? I’ve had a huge example of that with someone that we raised from two months old to 17.
[00:26:20] We had a lot of people in our lives be really hard on us when it came to Luke’s behavior and what was going on with Luke and why isn’t Luke doing this and this and why are you having so much trouble with Luke? My own father-in-law, lovely man, wonderful. I don’t have anything bad to say about my in-laws. I love them. But even them, he one time wrote us a letter saying, I think you need to hug him more. And we were just like amazed. So many people were trying to figure out why is Luke the way he is, and we can assure everyone. I love babies, so of course he was hugged and held and all of that. I look back, could we have held him more? Could I have done what some people do now? Where you wear babies on you all the time? Probably yes, but we just were parenting the way that we parented Emily and the other kids.
[00:27:14] Eric, he was even still talking about fostering, even in the thick of it with Luke. Eric had this brilliant idea. We have more to give, and we have the ability to love more and we can do this. And I’m looking at him like, you really have lost your mind if you think I can take on another whole situation of unknowns and put myself out there again. I am a very sensitive person. I do love deeply, and Eric does too. If there’s a weaker of the two, it would be me. He just kept bringing it up and I would say, no, not now. You’re really gonna ask me this when Luke is going? So, we started fostering while Luke was still in the home.
[00:27:59] As foster parents, we would sometimes do respite, which is taking care of children that are already with a foster home, but the foster parents need a break or they can’t take them out of town with them, just different reasons. At one point, we had a sibling set of three, two of which were children with special needs. We had them for a couple of weeks, and it’s just a matter of saying yes, just to help another family out. We would do that off and on. Those are really short-term placements. We’d also say yes to long term, so you never know when you say yes, you don’t know how long it’s going to be.
[00:28:33] Carole Blueweiss: The plan for the second long-term placement was for Eric and Patty to speak with the foster parents who were taking care of these two brothers and to ask them some questions.
[00:28:43] Patty Braendel: The foster mom that had them just temporarily, she took them in on an emergency basis until they could find a home. That happens, too. She had four of her own kids, too. She just couldn’t do it. But we were told boys doing really well. Very well adjusted, doing well in school. They told us no major behavior issues. They’re not on medication for anything. And so, you learn as you go to sometimes read between the lines. Eric and I have gotten better at that. Reading between the lines, what they don’t say often speaks louder than what they do say.
[00:29:19] We had a very short honeymoon phase with the boys, and that happens most of the time with any placements that you get, where things go really seemingly smooth. They’re really trying to behave. They’re scared. They don’t know what’s going on, and just trying to keep themselves together.
[00:29:37] Carole Blueweiss: The day before the boys were set to arrive, they got a call from the caseworker. And there was a problem.
[00:29:44] Patty Braendel: They had just been to the doctor and the boys had scabies. I had no idea what it was. They were getting medication for it, and would we still be willing to take them? And of course, we’re all like, Google, what is that? What do we do?
[00:29:58] We didn’t wanna say no. When we got to the office and we brought them home, they met the rest of the family. Everybody was running around playing. And it actually was good to have that many kids at the house. The boys had someone to play with, but that night, as we go to get them ready for their first night at our house, both Eric and I had to help them get cleaned up.
[00:30:19] They were seven and eight at the time, and then we both had to help them take an entire tube of this medicated lotion and put it all over them. And I’m sure the boys were totally horrified. They handled it really well. It was bad, and it is very contagious. So, you put them to bed, they slept in it, and then they wake up and then you have to wash everything that they’ve touched.
[00:30:43] So that was the very first night that we got them with scabies, and we were freaking out for several days after, thinking, oh my goodness, I hope it doesn’t spread to all of the other family members. And I don’t know how many weeks it was, but it quickly started to go downhill with one of them, and then we realized, wow, what have we gotten ourself into? These kids have a lot of trauma and they don’t know how to handle themselves.
[00:31:12] Carole Blueweiss: Their behavior started to change. Tell me a little bit about that.
[00:31:15] Patty Braendel: It usually started around bedtime, and they didn’t want to go to bed. They had a hard time falling asleep. They used to always have a TV on. In our home, our children that we raised never had TVs in their room, and it was just a house rule, and it was our house rule, and we weren’t going to change that for anyone. So, they had to learn to fall asleep in the quiet. We read books with them. They were in the same room, and they had a really hard time falling asleep. So quickly, it turned into out of their room a lot, and then it turned into banging on the walls, banging on the floor, slamming the door. So, it was a lot of that negative attention that they wanted, and the more we tried to get them to stay in the room, the more they wanted to not stay in the room. So, we’d have to stay outside of the room and wait until they fall asleep. And it took hours and hours. Meltdown after meltdown. A lot of screaming, a lot of banging of the door, all just stuff like that. And they can’t explain to you why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re just doing it. Once we get one settled down, the other one would start. So, it was a lot of work for both Eric and I.
[00:32:23] Carole Blueweiss: And what was happening with your other kids at that time?
[00:32:26] Patty Braendel: Emily, Gunther, and Hannah were actually used to that because Luke had gone through some of that same type of stuff growing up, so they were not at all surprised by the tantruming. So actually, they handled it really well.
[00:32:44] Carole Blueweiss: Do you get training on how to deal with that?
[00:32:46] Patty Braendel: We just finished a 16-hour course on trauma-informed parenting, and that would’ve been a class that would’ve been really super helpful for us to have had way back when we started. Just learning about the term behavior is communication, so they’re trying to communicate something to you.
[00:33:06] They don’t always know what they’re trying to communicate, but it is a way of communication. And just how to see children through the trauma lens. You’re not going to see these children in the same way that you look at the children that you’ve raised from day one. So just learning how to see their behaviors and what is going on from a different perspective.
[00:33:29] And to be able to handle that, incredible amount of patience has to be involved. We didn’t always handle it perfectly by any means. A lot of times we had no idea how to handle it, but we did our best. Kids are really only supposed to be in foster care for a year, but you always hear the stories that it goes longer because they can extend, and so we had them for so long.
[00:33:51] They had family members fighting to get them, but they were all denied through the court process. They were all denied. So of course, they were asking us if we would adopt them, and we said we do not feel that this is the right fit for us. We felt that they needed to be in a different area of where we were living, for them to have chance at being able to start a new life, because at the time it must have been, yeah, nine and ten, so they were six and eight when they came with us. They had to be able to start over in a whole new family and where we lived, it would be easy for them to bump into people that knew them or were related to them, and that was really hard for them. So, they found another family that was willing to adopt them, and it was a special education teacher.
[00:34:41] They were super excited. We did the transition of short meetings, then overnights and all of that, and the boys were super excited. They were going to live in a home on five acres. These boys were outdoors boys. They raced four wheelers. But these boys were doing this at a very young age. They were a racing family. That’s where they came from. So, then they were brought to our house and we’re, no, we don’t do any of that. So that was a very hard transition for them. So, we thought they found a really good fit for the boys. And here Eric and I aren’t sitting across the table with the adoptive family trying to tell them everything we could about the boys.
[00:35:21] What do you wanna know? I can tell you this is where they struggle, all of the above, and they were like, we got it. No problem. We got it. Eric picked up on it before I did, that they just had an idea of what they thought they needed to do.
[00:35:37] Carole Blueweiss: When you say they weren’t receptive, you mean that you intuitively felt like they weren’t really listening?
[00:35:42] Patty Braendel: Right. Yep. Yeah, they didn’t want to know what worked and didn’t work for the boys. I think honestly, what ended up happening was they thought we had fixed them and were sending to them two very well-adjusted boys, which at the time with us, they really were. But that was after us going through so much with them, and they had finally settled in.
[00:36:06] They felt that they could handle what they were getting into. I found out that it did not go well, and they gave up on them, so then they were back in the system again. Fast forward to like a year after that, another couple is adopting them, and I’m hopeful, and I think they’re doing really well. We keep in contact with the foster mom who had originally had their other two siblings, and so she adopted their little sister. Their older brother was adopted by another foster mom. So, I think they’ve all been adopted at this point. So that was really hard for us, makes it a lot easier.
[00:36:47] Carole Blueweiss: What do you mean? What do you mean?
[00:36:48] Patty Braendel: So, we have a certain set of standards for how we would raise a child, what would be acceptable to raise them in the environment, what we provide for them, and what is, what the state has to require of a biological parent in order to get their children back. It has to be really low.
[00:37:10] Because, and one lawyer said if the standards were such, not the standards they are currently, he said something to the effect of, let me get my bus out. I could drive around and be picking up busloads of kids right now from their homes. And they’d be in foster care. So, it’s not how my kids’ grandparents are. But do they love those children? Yes. Would they raise them how we would raise them? No. But would they be safe and okay? Yes. They just didn’t win out in court and it’s sad to watch. And as a foster parent, there isn’t anything you could do about that. So, you just sit back and watch it all play out.
[00:37:47] Carole Blueweiss: So, are you saying that it’s not in the children’s best interest to go to that situation or that it is?
[00:37:54] Patty Braendel: Sometimes it is, but state doesn’t agree. Like it’s interesting. So, in this situation with these boys, extenuating circumstances if you have a criminal record from whenever ago, sometimes that can just be something that excludes you from getting the children, and that’s really sad because sometimes people change, and that could have happened years ago.
[00:38:19] Certain things like that, or just education wise. So, the boys had a lot of trauma. They had a lot of triggers. They had a lot of behaviors that were troubling that whoever was going to care for them needed to know how to handle those. But the grandparents didn’t understand that. But it’s not because they didn’t want to understand, it’s because they have not been educated in that way.
[00:38:42] Carole Blueweiss: You’re saying, what do these grandparents have to learn? Let’s teach them.
[00:38:45] Patty Braendel: Yeah. And if they’re willing, why not? And they would be safe with them. I felt so bad because he was so attached to his grandfather. His name was Papi. He loved him and actually he was like a carbon copy of him, and he had this very rare type of condition that he was of lower IQ. He had, what it was is some kind of chromosome issue. He had a bunch of extra little folds in his brain, and it just caused some learning disabilities. When you met him, you would know something’s not quite right with how his, let’s say executive functioning. But when you meet his grandfather, he’s a carbon copy of him.
[00:39:29] So they’re not gonna notice that something’s different about him because he’s very much like him. So, it’s things like that where that could be seen as a negative on the biological family’s part, but they didn’t know. I had to help him get all of the services that he needed in the school system, whereas they were just like, oh, he just has a speech impediment. It was so much more than that. So, things like that can be held against parents, but sometimes the parents don’t know. They just don’t know. And I’m talking about grandparents in this situation.
[00:40:00] Carole Blueweiss: So, when you were telling the story, I was trying to figure out are you saying that the state, the standards are so low that they will let the child go back no matter how terrible the circumstances?
[00:40:12] Patty Braendel: Yes.
[00:40:12] Carole Blueweiss: Which is what we hear in the news.
[00:40:13] Patty Braendel: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:13] Carole Blueweiss: Or are you saying that the circumstances might not be perfect, but they could be good enough. But still, the state is just being so ridiculously nitpicky that they’re not gonna let that child go to where probably they would be better off?
[00:40:27] Patty Braendel: The first case we ever had, absolutely, we were very shocked that they sent a four and a two-year-old back home. We were like, wow, you are really sending them back? Yes, they did. Then you fast forward to the next case that we have. We’re thinking, wow, what’s it gonna take for them to get their kids back? So, it’s amazing how they say there are standards and guidelines and rules, but our eyes have been open to so many different situations. And so, when you go into this, you just honestly never know what’s gonna happen.
[00:40:59] Carole Blueweiss: It isn’t consistent one way or the other. It can go either way.
[00:41:03] Patty Braendel: It can go either way. And just like with the little girl we have right now where we thought that she was gonna reunified, turns out, no, she’s not. They’re changing it to adoption. So here we are again in a situation where they’ve asked us, will you adopt her? And we are not sure that is the right choice. We’re still waiting to see if they have a relative placement. They don’t tell us a lot. A lot of the times they don’t tell us anything, and so we’re still waiting. But meanwhile, we have a sweet little girl in our home that loves us, is very much attached to us, and I will be sad for her to have to transition to a new unknown family member.
[00:41:51] But then if that’s where she’s supposed to be, we would want her to be with her family member. So that’s a situation that we’re with now. Like Mom just did not do what she should do in the timeline that was given to her, and they’ve decided they’re not going to give her any more time. And so, we’re waiting to see if she’ll go to the paternal grandmother.
[00:42:15] We don’t know, and she just loves us. Both Eric and I, we talk about it. We just, we feel bad. She very much thinks that she’s our child. If she does move, she will go through a transition. She’ll be introduced to the family members. She’ll spend time, and so they try to do it slow, but then slow sometimes is hard for them to handle depending on the kids’ age.
[00:42:39] We’re sitting here waiting to see. What are they gonna do? And they don’t always tell us. They definitely don’t ask our opinion. I had a year break of being a foster parent and he signed us up again for training cuz we had to go through the training all over again in Florida cuz it’s different state by state.
[00:42:54] So I’m like, I’ve just started working for the first time in the school system in special education and now you wanna foster again. You’re crazy again. He’s like, we can do it. We can definitely do it. And so, we are. But I understand it’s a whole different world. It’s not easy, but I guess Eric and I go back to, and it’s mostly Eric who would say this, but if not us, then who?
[00:43:22] So if not us, then who’s going to do it? If we take our number off of the do not call list right now, which we’re on a do not call list because we have a placement and we are not accepting any other placements right now. If we were to just take our number, go ahead and call us, our phone would be ringing. The need is so great.
[00:43:41] I was sitting on a Friday night with Eric. We had two placements. Then he’s getting text messages from the emergency number saying we have three kids that need a home for the night. And I’m like, Eric, don’t respond. We cannot take three more children into our home. There’s just no way. Where are they going to sleep? What are we going to do? At first, he goes, okay, fine. All right, I’ll tell them no. Then he looks at me like not even 10 minutes later, and he looks at me and says, are you sure? And so, I’m like, yeah, I’m sure, like you’re crazy. So, he texted them back and within the 10 minutes or however long actually, he said yes, we can do it. We will make it work. We’ll figure out a situation for where people are sleeping. I’m pretty sure he probably volunteered Hannah and Gunther to give up their beds. And within that timeframe, he got a call back from the on-call person and they said they were actually able to put a safety plan in place for the children to stay in the home that they were currently in.
[00:44:43] And that is code for whoever was the abuser or the aggressor in the situation, that person left. And so, they were able to put a safety plan in place where the kids could stay in the home with the other parent or family member, and the one that was causing the issue was removed. So, I was like, phew, okay, good.
[00:45:05] At least they’re staying so I can sleep tonight. You know, you have a hard time saying no, and then you wonder what’s happened to the children. And Eric’s, if they don’t find a home, they’re just gonna be sitting up at Safe Children’s just in the office, just waiting for a home all through the night. And I said, I do know that, but I don’t wanna think about it. Because that is what happens. If they don’t have a home, the kids will go up to the office and sit in there. And they will stay there until they find a place or a shelter or a group home. And it’s super hard to think about but that is what happens. So, we can do our small part.
[00:45:43] Carole Blueweiss: And now back to the beginning. Remember when I said how Patty had me guessing cuz she had this two-year-old Black girl on her lap while we were watching our sons play baseball? Well, I got to ask her to please tell me the story of this child and why she was with Patty and Eric at all the baseball games.
[00:46:00] Patty Braendel: She is going to be two in September. She came to us when she was about nine months old. She’s Black and she is full of energy, full of life. Her sister came with her. She was very much parentified. That means sister was raising baby. So, they take on the role of parent, and you can tell that really very easily when you’re around the two of them. So, imagine a nine, 10-year-old with a baby on her hip and she’s doing everything for that baby. So, she came, we’re told that. And so, our goal was, okay, you’re here with us.
[00:46:39] We can take care of the baby. We got it. We’re the parents. And you just do your thing. That you’ll be fine. But it didn’t work out for her older sister to stay with us. That was a whole other situation, running away several times from us. She has been in the system for a lot of her life and knows how to get removed from a home, so that was new to us for sure. I have never had a kid run away from me like that.
[00:47:03] That little girl sleeps 12 hours a night, and she still does. That’s amazing. But she didn’t hug us, and she was not affectionate to us right away. It took a long time, and we noticed one day she would pat our back and we were like, wow, she’s patting our back as she lays her head on our shoulder. That’s huge. She’s forming a bond with us. She’s showing affection.
[00:47:28] You look for those things as a foster parent. So, she has really settled in with us. She maintains visits with her mom. They were a lot more frequent when she first came to us because the goal was to reunify them. And when kids go to visit their parents and then come back to the foster home, that’s always a hard transition because typically it brings up behaviors or past things or trauma or triggers or all of the above.
[00:47:56] And so if she was visiting with mom and sister, she would come back a different kid, really feisty, super aggressive. I know toddlers will bite. We know that. But like the hitting, the pulling the hair, the pinching, all of those things, she was very aggressive in that way. We had to warn Hannah, okay, if she comes up close and she, you think she’s gonna hug you or just lay her head on your leg, be prepared that she might be trying to bite you.
[00:48:25] She goes to daycare, which is just good for her, for structure. I would love to be home with her. That’s not where I feel like I should be in the sense that I just started working and I think that there’s a need for me to be in the classroom with the kids that I’m with. And she is loved and cared for and happy at daycare. We don’t know how much longer she’ll be here. I don’t know what it’s gonna feel like if she leaves. We ask our kids what they think before we say yes to anything.
[00:48:53] Carole Blueweiss: Are there any issues that come up because she’s Black and you’re white?
[00:48:56] Patty Braendel: Not directly. When we go to church, everyone is, oh my goodness, she’s so cute. And they’re so loving. And so, there’s never anything at church, although we go there and we’re like, we don’t want to be at a church with only white people, if that makes any sense. And it’s not that it’s just only white people, there are other people there, but we’re so conscious of it. It’s important to her to be around people of the same color.
[00:49:23] You’re sitting in a doctor’s office where it’s strictly lower income people. It’s just really eye opening. It just makes you think we’re very fortunate in what we have, so it’s just different. Because I see that in my school too, being in the Title 1 school.
[00:49:39] Carole Blueweiss: You’re a special ed teacher. Tell us about your classroom and how what you’ve learned through fostering and adopting and just being a parent has helped you as a special ed teacher.
[00:49:50] Patty Braendel: I could go on for days, but I won’t. So, Title 1 school and I’m in an L 300 school. So, in Florida that means our school is in the bottom. So that means the amount of kids in the school that are below poverty that need to be provided those meals, if they’re not gonna get those meals at school, they’re not going to be getting enough food at home.
[00:50:11] I just so happened to be subbing and accepted a long-term position in this class, and I had no idea what type of class it was. And I started in the classroom, got to know the kids, got to figure out where I was, get myself situated, and I knew I wanted to be teaching. I didn’t know where and what, but I just landed in the class and Eric was like, I think it’d be a great idea for you to be in special education.
[00:50:38] No day is the same and you can prepare for everything and then not be prepared for anything. It’s just that’s the way it goes. So, I’m in a K-5 class, so I have kids that could be any of those grades. I could have a kid put in my class whenever or pulled out whenever. You just don’t know. They have all different exceptionalities. Autism, I had a kid with Down syndrome last year. I have intellectual disability. One kid last year was visually impaired. He was legally blind. He had to have a one-on-one aid. Other health impaired, which is ADHD to like the extreme. We’re not just talking about kids that struggle with ADHD and may be able to handle it themselves or take a little bit of medication and they’re good with general education curriculum and all that. These are kids that are just like really incapacitated by ADHD, and they just cannot get themselves together. They’re not comfortable in their own skin.
[00:51:32] And because of the homes that they come from; a lot of these kids would end up in foster care because they’re living in such crazy situations. Like show of hands, how many of y’all have your own bed? Maybe one or two of the 15 kids will raise their hand. Some of them don’t have a bed. Some of them share a bed with three of their siblings. All kinds of situations. Some live in trailers. I don’t run from that, and I don’t think differently of the children because I’ve been a foster parent. A lot of times, these kids cannot get to a point to even learn because of all of the stuff going on at home.
[00:52:11] Carole Blueweiss: How do you teach math to a class that’s kindergarten through eighth grade with all different types of disability?
[00:52:17] Patty Braendel: It’s an impossible situation. So, you have to work in groups. So, I have a teacher’s aide, we break ’em up, we go, okay, you four are at kindergarten level, even though you’re like second and first grade and a third grader that’s in kindergarten level. Okay, so we’re gonna work through the kindergarten curriculum with you. I’m gonna do a lesson and work through with you. Meanwhile, my teacher’s aid’s going to be pulling another group working through second grade curriculum with the fourth graders. It just all depends.
[00:52:45] There is never a time where I am standing up in front of an entire class of kids and doing a whole group lesson. It’s impossible. Last year, I had 17 or 18. I have 15 right now. And so, you just are doing the best you can. I do have kids that are doing really well, and they go to the gen ed classes for certain subjects. So, they do that. They’ll push them out.
[00:53:06] Carole Blueweiss: What does VE stand for?
[00:53:08] Patty Braendel: Varying exceptionalities. It’s like a puzzle. How can we get this group over here to be doing this? And I’ve learned that I have to push for things, and I have to be an advocate for these kids, too. So just like I am as a foster parent, as a teacher in this environment, you have to advocate for those kids because these kids are considered the bottom of the ladder for the school as far as abilities.
[00:53:33] A lot of people will say, oh, it’s easy to be a special ed teacher. You’ll always have a job. You’d never get fired. And I’m like, trust me, I’m not here just sitting in a corner doing nothing, because I know I’ll never get fired. I work really hard because they deserve that. They deserve someone to be in there who cares for them.
[00:53:51] And so a lot of it’s like being a parent all day long. And I know teachers in general, especially in elementary school, you’re a parent a lot of the time. You know your kids in that way where you’re trying to just teach them life lessons and how to be a good human and all of that. So, I spend a lot of my day doing that, too.
[00:54:10] Carole Blueweiss: They’re lucky to have you. The danger is burnout. You have a child who has autism, a child who has Down syndrome, a child who can’t see, processing, ADHD.
[00:54:19] Patty Braendel: I just try to make sure that they all know that they’re loved and cared for. And tomorrow we’re gonna have an ice cream party because they were so well behaved for the lesson today. So, we have to do lots of rewards. And did I bribe them? Absolutely. Did I say that they could have ice cream if they were super quiet and raised their hand and were not out of their seats during the lesson? Absolutely. And you know what? For 35 minutes, they really behaved, and I was amazed. So that’s a little small part of my week in teaching.
[00:54:54] Carole Blueweiss: What advice do you have for other parents who are thinking of either adopting or fostering?
[00:55:01] Patty Braendel: Adoption doesn’t have to be like second, plan B, second choice. It could be plan A is what I would say. It doesn’t have to be second best. A lot of people are capable of more than they think they are, but then not everybody has to feel that I need to foster.
[00:55:18] There are so many other ways that you can help a foster family. So, if you can’t be a foster parent, you can help support a foster parent. So, like a meal, anything, any type of help. And with adoption, there’s brokenness. And with foster care, there’s brokenness. But out of that can come a beautiful putting together of lives in a way that wasn’t expected.
[00:55:44] I couldn’t think of anything other than having the kids that I have. So, I don’t look back and go, ugh, I just wish I had four biological children. We don’t think like that. We have who we have and they were meant to be in our family.
[00:55:56] Carole Blueweiss: What have you learned the most from your children?
[00:56:01] Patty Braendel: Patience. I am not by nature a patient person, and I did not grow up in a home that was like full of that, and I still have more to learn when it comes to that, too. Not having to panic and chaos, but to be like, No, we can be calm through this. And we can be patient and we can have peace through this situation. And so, I think that’s what we’ve learned. I can be standing next to a kid in my classroom or in my home that’s flipping out and most people would be like, oh my gosh, I need to make this stop.
[00:56:35] And we can sit there, and we can sit with them. And be beside them. And I’ve learned that from my kids. And it helps us with our foster kids too, just in all kinds of scenarios. I’m not perfect, so it’s not all the time, but more so than I ever would’ve been coming from like the type of family where just like all go from zero to a hundred real fast and let’s say we don’t go from zero to a hundred anymore.
[00:56:59] And Eric’s really good about it. So, I’ve learned through just watching him how he handles it. You can be calm and at peace through that situation, even though they’re not. So, I guess that’s what I’ve learned the most. I’m sure I’ve learned lots of things, but that’s what’s coming to mind right now.
[00:57:18] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you, Patty, for telling your story, and I know that my audience will appreciate just hearing the inside story of what it’s like to foster, to adopt, just to be a mom, to work in special education, all these ways to grow as a person and help others. It’s amazing.
[00:57:35] Patty Braendel: Thank you. I’m happy to share.
[00:57:39] Carole Blueweiss: Now for an update. After one year, the two-year-old Black girl in pigtails who was sitting on Patty’s lap at that baseball game, well, she was placed recently with her paternal grandfather, and though Patty and Eric and their kids can’t see or talk to her ever again, they find comfort that she is now where she’s supposed to be. [sounds of small children playing]
[00:58:02] Eric and Patty’s foster parenting continues. [sounds of kids playing] Patty explained to me that after two children are placed in a home, technically that home is closed to more placements. But the people at the agency know that Patty and Eric will say yes to difficult situations. And so, when they got a call that two boys were sitting at the welfare office at 4:30 on a Friday and that they needed a home, well, off they went. And that is why now [sounds of kids playing] the Braendels have four kids under three in their home. Two for short-term placement and two for long-term placement. That’s three boys and one girl. [sounds of kids playing] The eight-month-old boy was born to a 16-year-old mother who also had a child at age 14. There just aren’t enough homes right now, Patty told me.
[00:59:01] [sounds of kids playing] For more information on fostering or adopting a child, please go to the show notes. [sounds of kids playing]
[00:59:22] Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.
