Adopting Six Kids: Buckle Up with Bonnie Johnston Butler

God has impeccable timing. Before I wrote the letter to take my name off the list, like two days before, it was on my schedule to do because we had been traveling.We got home and I'm cleaning and then I got a phone call about 9 o' clock in the morning asking me if Joe and I would be willing to adopt a sibling group of six. I did not have a mirror on the wall by my phone, but I have no doubt there was a look of total shock and my jaw was dropping and.You want me to do what?

It's the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. I'm your host, Rachel Fulgenetti. Our guest today today is Bonnie Butler.She's an emotional intelligence coach and she helps foster parents manage their emotional lives. Tell me about your businesses, what you do, and how you got where you are.

So my business is being a life coach and helping foster and adoptive parents navigate the challenges that they face when they take traumatized children into their home. And I ended up here through my own journey, becoming a foster parent and unexpectedly adopting a sibling group of six kids.My husband and I had actually talked a little bit before we got married during our engagement about foster and adoption because he grew up with that. His parents were foster parents. And during our engagement we had discussed that.He had talked about possibly wanting to adopt children at some point, point. But he was very clear that he did not want to do foster care. He just didn't cope well with the kids coming and going all the time.And he has a very tender heart and he loves, loves, loves kids. So for him to have kids come in and leave and come in and leave, he just felt like he would not be able to do that.We got married, we had four children of our own. We were living in Wyoming at the time. That's where I was born and raised. He got really tired of Wyoming winters and wanted to go home to California.So we went back to the Santa Barbara area where he was born and raised and went about our lives.And when our youngest son I think was about two, maybe three, we started talking about possibly adopting a baby because we knew we were done having our own.And when we looked into that, we were actually told that because we had our own children, we would not be able to adopt an infant through a stated option agency. We would have to go private if we wanted to do that, but that we could definitely adopt an older child.

Was that a law? Excuse, I don't want to interrupt, but was that a law in Your state.

I think that it was a policy in the area we lived in.

Okay.

And with the agencies that we were kind of talking to at the time. So at that point, we decided we were going to just shelf that and just wait for a while until our kids were older.And then we just literally went on with our lives and didn't really look back. And we ended up on the central coast of California, and we became really good friends with a guy who. He and his wife.He was a family therapist, and he worked with a foster care agency.And after being around us a lot, in and out of our homes, and we did a lot of things together with their family, he asked Joe and I if we would consider becoming foster parents. And we said no. We had already discussed this. That was not on our plan.

Right. And how old were your biological children at that time?

I think at that point, our youngest would have been 11. Oldest would have been probably 15, almost 16, I think.And so he very wisely said to us, well, if you want to find out, can you really raise someone else's child, then you should foster first, because you're going to get the kinds of issues and challenges and things happening with foster children that you will get with adopted children.But if you find out that you really cannot handle these issues and these challenges, you can discontinue being a foster parent pretty easily, where a failed adoption is really, really a painful experience for everyone involved in that situation. And so we decided to go ahead and get licensed to do foster care at the same time as we were becoming licensed to adopt.And they kind of pushed when they came to do the home study, and we said, two kids? And she said, well, what if we had a sibling group of three? Would you make us separate them?And I thought, we all have quirky little things about our personality. Right. And for me, that's having an odd number of children. I am the fourth of seven children, and I was always that middle child.And there were so many things that I disliked about being the middle child. I wanted an even number of children, so there was no middle child.But I was like, well, I would not make you separate them, just to address my quirkiness. And so she moved on and said, well, what about a sibling group of four? Would you take four? And I was like, okay, timeout. That's.Now you're really pushing my limit. We already have four. You're doubling the size of our family.And I was very, very blunt with her and just said, I would have to be very prayerful about that. And I would really have to feel that that was what God wanted me to do, to take on four children.So she stopped at that point and we let it go and we got our foster license. And our friend called us and said, okay, your license is here. Do you want the kids tomorrow or Thursday?

Whoa, what?

What kids? What are you talking about?

Yes.

And it turned out that he had a sibling group of three. Three kids age 3, 5 and 7 that were in need of a stable home. They needed to be moved out of the home they were in.He had those children in mind already when he asked us about becoming foster parents.

Got it.

I had at least the presence of mind to say Thursday to give myself a couple of days preparation.

Yeah.

And yeah, we became foster parents pretty quickly.

How do you prepare the home even for that situation? Did you have a big home? Were your kids. I mean, your kids are still in the house. How did you manage that? Like, just logistically.

So we did have. Our home wasn't massive by any means, but our bedroom space, we had three bedrooms for the kids. Our.Each of our daughters had their own room and our two sons were sharing a room. But the room sizes were large. Their bedrooms were. The largest bedroom that the boys were sharing, I want to say, was 18 by 20ft.I mean, it was a pretty massive space. And the girls bedrooms were like 13 by 14 somewhere in that range. So these three little kids, two of them were girls and one was a boy.So we put one girl in with each of our daughters and put the little boy in with our two sons. And okay, things worked out really. I mean, they worked out well as far as space wise. We did face some challenging issues. The.The three year old every night at bedtime would just sob and cry, and she was just hysterical at bedtime every night I would have to sit in with her and hold her until she could fall asleep. And over time, as she became a little bit more comfortable with us, she finally told me that she was afraid of the window.And what happened is, in their home, when they were with their biological parents, when the police were knocking on the front door because things were happening in the house that shouldn't be, someone would race outside, out the back door, and somebody would toss the kids out the window to whoever was waiting to keep them from being taken by the police or by child protective services. So for her, a window was a very frightening thing.

Yeah.

So we ended up moving her bed across the room and putting my oldest daughter's bed by the window.So she had someone between her and the window and that was the end of our nighttime crying because she was no longer next to the window and wasn't quite so afraid that somebody was going to take her.

That's amazing that a 3 year old was able to like even share that with you. A traumatized three year old was able to share that with you. That's really great.

That is the hard thing. When these kids come, you just have no idea what their experience with life has been and you just wing it as it comes up sometimes.

That's right.How did your children, your biological children adjust to all of a sudden not only having children in the home but also sharing a room with these children.

So this was definitely something we discussed with our children before we did it. We brought them into that conversation about were we willing to do it.And I had done daycare when my kids were little, I had done daycare and we had kids in and out of the house and they didn't spend the night, but they did play with the kids toys. And we had specific. Each of our kids had toys were theirs alone that the daycare kids could not play with.But then things that they were willing to share. So I think.And they have a lot of cousins so they were used to having other kids around a lot and sometimes sharing rooms when cousins were visiting and. But I will give such credit to my children for having open hearts because they took these kids in and just loved them.Yeah, the seven year old had some real anxiety and struggles. She had basically been used as a maid during her previous home and it took us a while to get her to calm down.When we would finish a meal, she would jump up and start racing around to get the table cleared, getting things in the dishwasher, get things cleaned up, trying to get her to stop doing that and to just be a child. Each of our kids had a one chore room a day that they were responsible to clean.And so to get her to calm down, we finally assigned her a chore buddy. And so you only clean the room that your buddy is cleaning. And then the little we want chore buddies, we want tour buddies.So they each had little things that they would do, but that was the only way to calm her down. She struggled with school and she would come home and her homework was just so at times overwhelming for her.And as I would sit and try to help her, there were times when a couple hours in I am feeling some frustration. My oldest daughter would come and say, here mom, let me help her.And she would just sit down and had the patience of Job with Angel as she worked through her homework with her. Our oldest son was 15 or 16. David was 5. And David thought that Brian was his best friend.Brian had a CJ5 Jeep that he and his buddies were always working on and tinkering. And they would let David go stand on the bumper and help him, and they'd run him. If they were going on errands, they would take David with them.And they just loved these kids. And when we got the call that they had found an adoptive home farm across the state, which they needed to be out of, our.They just were not safe in our area.And when we helped with that transition and with that move and when they were gone, my oldest son at 16, looked at me and said, mom, what are we going to do with our lives now that they're gone?

Oh, how long had they been with you?

Four months. Four and a half months? Yeah, from July to November.

And how did your husband cope? I know he had in his past, you know, how did that go for him?

Yeah, he had a hard time with it. But at the same time, this family that was adopting them was just so perfect for their situation.They already had two adopted sons who had special needs, and they were so well versed in all of the services available in their county that these kids were going to need access to. It just could not have been a more ideal family to place these kids into as far as meeting their needs and what they were going to need, so.

And were you able to keep in touch with them or not?

You know, we did for a little while. And in general, they want to keep as many connections as they can because that helps them kids.But it became really difficult for the kids to adjust into the new home when they kept calling us. And so we ended up having to stop that contact, mostly because the oldest one was really having a hard time.We had been the first stable home that she had been in and the home that treated her with kindness, and she was really struggling to leave our home and feel okay in the other home. So it got to be too much for the other parents to have her calling us constantly and crying and wanting to come back.And as much as we tried to help her adjust and reassure her that everything was okay, we did reach a point where we felt like it was unhealthy for her to keep calling, so.

I can see that. Yeah. Okay, so the. The children have moved on. And what did you do next?

We pretty quickly got a call to take in another child, and it ended up he was one of the Older siblings of these three younger ones. So he was placed with us at 13 with the intent that he would stay with us until he was 18.And over the next two and a half years, we fostered 11 other children. Louie stayed with us through most of that and then we had been approved for adoption.And over the three years we had been fostering, they continued to call us about adoption situations.And every time it went to court and either friend of the family that already knew the kids, a family member mom got things together and worked her plan and things did not ever pan out for us to adopt any of those sets. And after six of those calls, the seventh one we said no to because we knew the children.We in our community was kind of small, so foster parents knew each other and I knew the previous foster mom and I knew the issues that these kids were struggling with, and I knew that I could not handle those issues in my house. And so we made a decision at that point that we were done trying to adopt.We had our oldest son had graduated high school and was leaving for a mission for our church. And then we still had two 14 year old foster boys in the house.And we just thought, you know, we're just moving into this new phase and our kids are going to be graduating over the next five, six years.And all of the kids they were calling us to adopt were little 2 and 3 year olds, 4 year olds, and we just decided we're kind of done, you know, we gave it a shot and nothing panned out. So. So we're just gonna take our name off the list and, and move forward. And, you know, God has impeccable timing.And before I wrote the letter to take my name off the list, like two days before, it was on my schedule to do because we had been traveling.We got home and I'm cleaning and getting everything cleaned up and I got a phone call about 9 o' clock in the morning asking me if Joe and I would be willing to adopt a sibling group of six.I did not have a mirror on the wall by my phone, but I have no doubt there was a look of total shock and my jaw was dropping and you want me to do what? Right?And over the next few weeks, as we gathered more information about their circumstances, why this was happening and what was going on, and kind of wrapped our brains around, could we actually take on six children? And there were five girls and a boy, and the boy was the youngest, and they were age 4 to 10 at the time.And there was a set of twins that were eight wow. And we.Lots of prayer went into that and finally really felt impressed that they were supposed to be our children, that we were to add them to our family. So we did. And thus began the wildest roller coaster ride of my life.

Well, I have so many different questions about that. So how do you adjust mentally to all of a sudden, I mean. Okay, I want to preface this by saying living in limbo for so long, it's so difficult.I fostered to adopted both of my children, my husband and I did.And the most difficult part of it for us was that limbo of, you know, it was two and a half years for my daughter and two years for my son of just not knowing what was going to happen with our lives. We're so used to as people making plans and, you know, thinking about the future and like, all of that stuff.And when you're doing this, you just can't do that because you don't know what the future is going to look like. So can you speak for a moment about that?And then going into this, you were about to give it up and now you're going back into this, and now the children are younger. I'm assuming you were like a little bit older.

Yeah.

Just like address all of that or any of it.

Yeah, I think we knew going in the parental rights had been terminated before the children were coming to us.

Okay, that's huge.

So we knew definitively that, that at the end of 12 months, barring any outrageous issues coming up, the adoption would finalize. So they were placed foster to adopt.

That's huge.

Yes.

What about the not knowing? Like, did you ask questions like, have you already looked for. For family?And, you know, because it's like that, that fear of like somebody popping up at the last minute, you know, an aunt or an uncle or something, and that would derail your situation.

So in, in this situation, we were told that there was a biological aunt and a biological uncle that wanted to keep in contact with the children, but they both felt that they could not take the children because they were siblings to the biological mother. And the biological mother had so many mental health issues going on that they felt they. The kids would always be at risk in their homes.And then their sister would always be, I guess, interfering. I'm trying to think of a kind word. But she would be constantly interjecting herself into their life, creating chaos in their homes.

Right. Yeah.

And so I get that they wanted to stay in contact with the children, but felt very strongly that they could not be the primary caregivers. To the kids. Right. So they were very supportive of us taking the kids and adopting them and grateful that we took all six of them. We were concerned.Mom and dad both had drug and alcohol problems. The children were all exposed to drugs and alcohol during pregnancy and dad had been in and out of prison a couple of times.There were a lot of violent tendencies with dad.And when the knowledge that we had when they first came to us was that dad had been violent with mom but never with the kids, that turned out not to be true. The kids were. They were abused in every way that you can imagine and not all by their biological parents.They were abused in foster homes they had been in. And they were not always together in the same home. The last 15 months before they came to us, they were all six together in the same home.And part of the complication for us was that the home that they had just spent the last 15 months in together had very different rules and guidelines and ways of being than we have. So for them it was anything goes. The kids can do anything they want.There are no consequences for anything the kids do because anything they do is ultimately the parents responsibility for not keeping them away from whatever it was or setting them up to get in that situation. And they were pretty much sent to their room after dinner at 6:30, 30 at night and just told, just don't come out of your room.And they didn't care what chaos reigned in the room. Next day they would go to school and mom would clean the room up. And we run very differently.

Let's talk about that structure. Yeah. Did you set rules up right away? Like how did you handle it when they first.

We did, yeah. We were very clear. So we took them over the weekends. The parental rights were terminated in April and the adoption was finalizing.But they were going to stay where they were for six weeks because we were at the end of the school year and they were in a different school district. So we didn't want to pull them out of the district they were in for the last six weeks. Right. So we took them as respite care for six weeks.We would pick them up on Friday afternoons and take them back to the foster home on Sunday afternoon. That in and of itself was total chaos. And our youngest biological child actually came and said, would you and dad please reconsider and not do this?It's just too much. And that was hard. That was very hard because we felt like we had been very prayerful and we had an answer from God that we were supposed to do this.And So I encouraged him to try to find his own answer with that. And he told me that he had been praying and that he was not getting that and that confirmation that things were going to be okay.

And that's hard to hear from a biological child.

Yeah.

How do you.

Yes, because he's used to. I mean, by this point, we had fostered 11 children, the majority of whom had been boys.And he had shared rooms with all these boys and interacted with these boys. And now we have these six younger kids that are just wreaking havoc over the weekends.

And they were all girls except for one boy?

Yeah, the boy was the youngest and then the other five were all girls. And that. I think that in and of itself was hard for him because he's used to just having two sisters and now he's gonna have seven.

That's a lot.

It's a lot for anybody. And I think also, you know, the.The kids and I gave them a lot of grace because they would come into our home behaving like they behaved in the home that they were in. And at that time, we were not 100% certain about what was happening in that home.But when they moved in with us at the end of the school year, and that was the placement, the. They moved in in June and the adoption finalized the following April. But it was a chaotic summer and it was really, really chaotic. And the.One of the 14 year old Foster sons reunited with his mom and went home.And Louie, who was supposed to stay with us, asked to be moved because he just could not handle the turn of events and the chaos and everything in our home had run on teenage energy for so long, and now all of a sudden the dynamics had completely shifted.

Really big change.

It was massive.

To go back to that level of care that you have to give, like really young children, and discipline and consistency, like all of this stuff. Yeah, that is challenging.

And it was. I think. And you know this, right? As a parent, most of the discipline is with ourselves.

Yeah.

We have to be disciplined enough to follow through, and we have to be disciplined enough to. To keep the boundaries in place. And we have to fluctuate boundaries based on what their needs are.But once we start to figure that out, those boundaries have to be tight. And sometimes it's so exhausting to try to maintain those boundaries all the time.There were many times when I wanted to just throw in the towel, go do whatever you want.

I know, Especially with special needs, which I don't know if they had special needs, quote, unquote. However, I Know now through my work, I've been doing, interviewing people that trauma in and of itself is a special need.

Yes. Yeah.So they didn't have physical special needs as far as physical handicaps, but they did have a lot of just straight up behavioral issues, emotional issues. They had post traumatic stress. We had varying degrees of attachment issues going on, food issues up to the ceiling going on.When school finally started, we started recognizing we had learning disabilities happening, and we had issues because they just had not always been taken to school. So they were so far behind academically that it was really a challenge. And honestly, the first.I mean, when we took them, I had all the confidence in the world. Right, Right. My biological kids were doing okay. I mean, we are not a perfect family by any means.And I am not claiming that or saying that we had normal issues. We had four teenagers in the house that were biological and two that were foster. We had family struggle, sure. But nothing that was off the charts.Right.

Right.

And we had had these 11 foster kids come through our home, and they were all doing reasonably well. We were able to handle the things that came up with them.And so I had this level of confidence in myself that I thought, okay, well, our kids are doing okay. The foster kids have done okay. I've been very prayerful. I feel like this is the right. Of course I can do this. Right.

Yep.

One year later, I had zero confidence. None. It was gone. I just felt like I was drowning because there were so many issues. And back then, no one talked about trauma.It wasn't a recognized issue. And so we didn't have. We had taken parenting abused children effectively classes.They did not repair us or in any way for what was coming our direction.

Yeah.

It was. It was tough. And I am sure, I often say, you know, I'm.I'm sure that because I was not trained in trauma, and I struggled so much because there were six of them dealing with all of their issues. But I also had my own kids.

Right.

That felt abandoned by me because all of a sudden, these six kids needed so, so much.

Yes.

That my kids often felt I was not available to them.

Yeah.

And by the end of it, I felt like I had probably added to their trauma, and I felt somewhat traumatized.

Right. Yeah.

It was. You know, we were in constant therapy with all of them at one point or another, and we were moving with my husband's job. And so.So we were not just stable in one place. Right. And so it was a crazy, wild ride. And the oldest of the adopted kids, as soon as she was turning 18. She told us, I'm leaving.You can't do anything about it. I'll be 18 and I'm out of here. And she didn't talk to us for about two years.We, I would text her off and on, and occasionally she'd respond, but most of the time she didn't.And then the youngest, when he was 16, a little over 16, we ended up having to place him in a facility because he had just emotionally blown out and he wasn't doing drugs or alcohol or anything else like that. But his emotional dysregulation had become so intense that he was now a danger to us and, and to himself.And he had been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, with disassociative disorder, with attention deficit disorder. He had fetal alcohol syndrome. And that was probably, for me, the hardest thing ever is having to find a place to put him and, you know, in your head.And I'm.And I don't know what your experience with your kids has been, but you kind of know your child and you know the struggles and the challenges and the things that you're facing and you know that you're not parenting the way, quote, unquote, normal parenting. And I had to parent these kids very different than my biological kids.And having to put down all of the things on paper and see it in black and white is almost crushing because it's one thing to know it, it's another to see it and to have to do that five times before we found a facility that could handle his issues.And I remember I'll end up emotional the day that we took him to the facility and signed him in and we had to do it in another state because we were living in California and California is an at will state. So at any point he said, I don't want to be here. They couldn't get keep him well.He wouldn't have lasted five minutes with authority, so we had to find a facility that would lock down and that he wouldn't have the option to leave. And so walking out that day, I was devastated.I felt like I had failed at the most important job I'd ever been given and failing him, failing his siblings, failing myself, failing God, failing my husband. So that was a long journey out of that place to. I think it took about 18 months and a lot of personal development work therapy or what.

What kind of personal.

You know, I didn't, I didn't go to a therapist. I feel like I had, I didn't go to therapy for me, but I sat in so many therapy sessions with my children.And at one point, my husband had had a complete mental break due to the stress with his job and the kids at home. And sitting through all of that with him, I felt like I had learned so much.But for me, my own journey was research and reading everything I could about where I was at and finding my way through that.One of the most important things that I did is start to understand how our brains work and the power of positivity, plus the importance, the critical, critical importance of self care, which I had not done. I had not taken care of myself at any level.And as my doctor said to me, you are actually experiencing health issues that you shouldn't be experiencing, experiencing until you're in your 70s and 80s due to the unrelenting stress that you have been under during this process. Because I didn't learn how to manage stress well.

Right.

So learning all of those things and understanding the importance of nutrition and the importance of thought management. Right.And learning how to manage my thoughts and the connection with my emotions and actions and the results, that journey really was so healing for me.I still struggled with lots of things, but I finally personally felt like I might be okay, that I was going to survive this and I was going to come out on the other side. And I was a much better parent after that journey.

Right.

Yeah. And now, I mean, I think that I was coaching other parents unofficially just because I had been through so much.Other adoptive parents would come and talk to me and ask me, how did you handle this or that? You know?And I had an experience on a Monday night when one of my daughters explained to me, for I don't know how many times I'd heard, that I was, in fact, the world's worst mother, and that she would much rather be homeless, living under a bridge than living with me. And even though I had heard that countless times over the years, it still hurts. You know, you just.No matter how much you think you're prepared for that or it's just normal, we hear it all the time. It hurts, you know? And two days later, on Wednesday of that week, she had an experience with some friends that changed her.And she called me that night and just sobbing and said, I'm so sorry. I am so sorry for everything I've said and done, for all the issues that I have created, because she was. She was a challenging child.And she just said how much she loved my husband and I and how grateful she was that we had taken her.

Wow.

And she said that she had kind of had this experience where her eyes had been open to what her life might had been like had she not been with us. And you know, it. We just had this sweet healing moment. Now, I wish I could tell you that it was a permanent change.

Right, Right.

She went right back to being herself. But for me, what it taught me and my life motto became, Wednesday will come.We have these Mondays in our life that are complicated and painful and hard. And then we have this Wednesday that's beautiful and healing and compensating. And every Monday has a Wednesday. Right.They don't come in the same week, month, year, decade, but Mondays are followed by Wednesdays at some point. And I. And I believe that. And I've seen that compensation over the years for all the hard things.There are joys and there are rewards and there are moments that make up for that.And probably one of my most precious moments, I mean, my oldest are after two years, she reached out to us and got back in contact, and we slowly built a good relationship with her again. We have a beautiful relationship with her and her husband now, and she's got two kids and our son. At one point, after 18, he left the facility.He had chosen not to participate in the therapeutic part of the facility. So he has struggled. He's 29 now. He's doing better. But he still. He still struggles with some of these things.But at one point he had called me and he was asking me all these strange questions. Why are you asking me all this? And he said, well, I'm going to sue the facility. And I said, I will not help you do that. I can't help you do that.And he again, you know, there was a break. And he just said, you're not my real mom and I don't want anything to do with you. I will never speak to you again.And he hung up the phone and I just sent him a text.And I said, you know I love you and I understand you're struggling right now, and I want you to know that regardless of everything you have ever done for the years, and he done some hard things. I said, I have never shut the door on you. I have never left you behind. I have never cut you off and I never will.That whatever you need to do for you is okay, but the door will always be open on my side. So that's. Just know that the door's always open on this end.And I don't actually remember how long it was, but there was a day when he reached out to me and asked if we could talk. Talk and he called and we probably were on the phone for three hours.I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot and, you know, we had probably the most raw, vulnerable, honest conversation with each other that we had ever had. And both of us just tears streaming and it was just this healing moment that, you know, we were going to be okay together again.It didn't provide long term change for him, but it connected us and he knew that we were there.And over the years, there have been a lot of ups and downs and this one's not talking to me, and that one's not talking to me or they're not talking to Dad. A lot of burnt bridges between siblings and our biological siblings and the adopted siblings.And, you know, there were times when some of my older kids would say, I can't, cannot have them in my life. They're just creating total chaos.And I said, I, I understand that, and you do what you need to do for you, but you need to understand that I can't cut them off. As a parent, you're a sibling, you can. You go take care of yourself.

Right.

But I have to keep the door open and I have to do the best I can to stay connected. And, you know, there were times when I thought if this was not my child, this is not a person I would have in my life.

Right.

Just wouldn't associate with someone who treats me this way, who behaves this way. But they're my child.And, you know, having to work through those things and turning to God continually to find help and strength and peace and understanding and give them grace. And last July, we had a family reunion. And for the first time in ten and a half years, all ten children were there.

Wow.

And we had seven of their eight spouses, 24 of our 27 grandchildren.

Wow.

All in the same place at the same time for three days. Love, laughter, healing, hope, building new bridges. Everybody just coming together and seeing we can be together as a family and we can be okay.So for me, that's my reward for not closing the door, for not throwing in the towel, going through the really hard things with them and letting them know that I'm here with you in this hard thing. And sometimes the hard thing was our relationship, you know, and. But not, not giving up. And did you ever feel like you.

Wanted to give up?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Countless times.

Did you ever say to yourself, like, I shouldn't have done this, like, this was we, we shouldn't have done this. And I know that's a hard question because they're your children. It's an honestly. Yeah.

Yeah. So I will share with you one of my turning point experiences.

Okay.

A year into this, I had zero confidence left that I could do this, that I help these children. The adoption had finalized. Word, we're on the road. This is, this is it. Right. And my, both of my girls had graduated high school.So I had three that were out of high school, one that was still in high school. He had gone to a scout camp for 10 days. My girls were doing community college. My one daughter was becoming an EMT.And I don't remember at the time when Amanda was, I think she was in Estonia school. My sister in law was getting married down in the San Diego area and packing that day. We were going to leave to go down. My daughters weren't going.We were going to go right past where the scout camp was. So we were just going to pick my son up at camp.And for me, my kids, when they see suitcases, it's sets off all kinds of fear because for foster kids seeing cases, their clothes being packed is often a, you're out of here, you're not going to be with us anymore. So the behavior was escalating all day long.No matter how many times I reassured them that they were coming with us, we were all going on this trip together. It didn't calm the fear and the anxiety they were feeling.And their behavior just kept getting more and more and I just kept telling myself, Joe will be home at 3:30, everything will be fine. I will have a reinforcement, he can help me. This will all be okay when Joe gets home. So sure enough, Joe walks in the door at 3:30.He goes to start cleaning up. There's a knock on the door and it's a friend, Sam. And he said, I'm here for Joe. And I'm like, okay. So I went to tell Joe, Sam's here.And he goes, yeah, I know. Sam and I are going to go down to scout camp because they worked with these boys all the time.And we're going to check in and see how things went during the week. And you can pick me up on your way past with the kids. He had not told me that was his plan. And I just. Silent tears.

Yeah.

Pouring down my face. I felt like this little thread that had been unraveling all day snapped. And I wasn't hysterical. I wasn't. I had no words, I couldn't even talk.Just tears. And he looked at me and said, don't do that. And he left with him. And I, wow. I took a deep breath And I could not stop the tears. They were.There was no plug for that at that point. Yep. And I went back out of my room and just went back to getting food together for snacks in the car, getting suitcases together.My daughters had come home. They saw I was a mess. They're like, mom, what? You know. And they said, we will call our bosses.We'll tell them we have a family emergency, we can't work this weekend. Well. And I just said that isn't what created this and that's going to solve this.But they did step in and help me finish getting things ready to go and getting the car loaded. And we had a 12 passenger van. We had an entertainment system put in it.I was so mad at my husband for spending the money to put a VCR and a big screen in there. I have blessed him so many times for doing that.

Yeah, I bet.

Did not take me long to understand the benefit and blessing of having that distraction in the car. But this day I did not let any of the kids sit up front with me because I didn't want them to see what a mess I was. Right.And I got in the car with the justification that we drive in the rain. When it's pouring rain, it doesn't stop us from driving.So why would water in my eyes stop me from driving right outside the car, inside the car, whatever. I'm driving through the water. And I thought, I'm going down the freeway. As long as I stay in one lane behind another car, I'm fine.But I realized about 4, 40 minutes into the drive that I had to turn off onto a windy mountain road that was two way traffic. And I didn't feel like I could be safe on that road in the condition I was in. So I just started asking God to help me.I'm like, okay, I gotta get it together. I do not want to be a danger to my own kids in this car or to anyone else on the road. So help me get myself together. Just help me pull it together.And in that moment I just heard these words in my mind that said, you have to stop focusing on what might have been. That door closed when you took these kids. You need to focus on what can be. And what can be can be really good.But you're going to have to let it be good. And I just was so struck in that moment that I had been caught in a negative thought cycle for I do not know how long.But I had at some point given up on hope and started thinking, if only I hadn't Done this. And here I am in the car with total chaos, raining all day long, and I was exhausted.And I'm caught in this thought cycle that if I had not taken these kids, my life would be so easy. I would have one child left in the house in high school. I would be this close to being an empty nester.I would have so much time to do whatever I wanted. My life would be perfect. It would be easy. I would have no problems. I would have all these fantasies. Right?

Right. Yeah.

If only I hadn't done this, my life would be this fantastical, perfect life, which isn't true, but that's where I was.

Sure.

And in the moment of that answer from God, recognizing that's where my thoughts were. And I was like, holy cow, how long have I been here? How long have these negative thoughts been swirling in my mind?When did I give up on hope that things would be okay? And then I turned to the answer that things could be good, but I would have to let them be good. How the heck do you let things be good?

How do you do that? You. How did you do that?

Yeah. Little by little, one step at a time, learning to take myself out of the chaos. For instance, bedtime. Total chaos. Put the kids to bed.Turn my back, they're not in bed. They're screaming, they're yelling. They're tearing drawers out of their dressers, dumping them, pulling the mattresses off of the beds.And I would turn around, I would go back in the room and try to calm things down, try to solve things. And I would end up anxious and yelling at the kids. And I'm like, this is so not. This is not who I want to be as a mom.And night after night after night, this would repeat itself. And I got to the point where by dinner, I was already anxious because that time was going to come, of course.And I, you know, I would try to rationalize and reason with them and, you know, and. And I wasn't. The previous mom would go in and clean the whole room up the next day. That is not me.You made this mess and you're going to help clean it up. But that even that didn't stop them. Right? And I finally one day thought, I can't. I just can't. I can't keep doing this.So I made the decision that I wasn't going to their room anymore, that I was going to tuck them in, just like we did every night. We would have prayer or we check them in, close the door, and I'm done.

Huh?

And I'M out. Whatever happens, happens, right? I'm out.

Right?

And the first night, I went up to our loft area where the TV was and just relax, and I could hear the chaos, but I was just turned on a show, and. And pretty soon one of the girls came up and crying and this and that and the other, explaining what was happening.And I looked over at her and I said, you know, I'm not gonna come and solve that tonight for you. And she looked at me and said, you're not going to help me. And I said, I'm not. I'm. I'm not helping you.

Right.

It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what I do. Nothing changes. And I end up just yelling at you. And I don't want to do that. I don't like that.And I don't want to be a screaming mom. And it's. I just can't. Nothing I say or do makes a difference for you guys. So you need to go solve this. You just need to go figure it out.And she stood there for a couple of minutes, and I looked over at her, I said, you can go back to your room. So I'm not coming. I'm not. And about 10 minutes later, the oldest came and she said. She said, you're not coming to the room. And I said, I'm not.Are you seriously just going to let this happen? You're not going to protect us? You're not going to help us? And I said, I. I don't help you. Nothing I say helps, and nothing I do helps.And you guys just continue. No matter what I say or do, it doesn't make a difference. And I can't keep doing that.I, for my own peace and my own sanity, need to not do that anymore. I don't want to be that mom. Are you serious? I said, I. I am totally serious.You guys have to figure this out, because you're not willing to let me help you figure it out. And she very angrily stomped off back to her room.And I just breathed a sigh of relief and went back to my show and tried to cut out the noise I was hearing. But you know what? It took weeks, but over those weeks, it started calming down.And probably three months, four months into this, the chaos at bedtime stopped.

Wow.

And one of the things that I learned and learned through one of the therapists is the behavior that gets the attention is the behavior that gets repeated. So by me going to their room and giving them attention every night for that behavior, it was constantly repeated.And when I took myself out and stopped giving them the attention, they slowly stopped the behavior. Yeah, that again, that discipline. Right. For us as parents, we have to be disciplined. It was hard for me to sit in the other room.

Oh, yeah.

And listen to the chaos and not go.

Yep.

But I knew that I couldn't continue the pattern for myself. I just. I just couldn't continue doing that. Um, I did find. I needed to find ways to say yes instead of saying no. One of the things that I did.My husband thought I was insane, but it worked really well for me. I made a step by, step by step list of what they needed to do when they were cleaning a chore room. So the living room is clean. When.And they had to check those things off because it was a constant. Come and check the room. And they hadn't done anything. Oh, I'm done. But they hadn't done this. Right, Right.

Yes, yes, yes.

And it was exhausting. And so I. Those lists were not anywhere where anyone would see them. They were inside cabinet doors or, you know, wherever.And because my husband worked an hour away from home and he was very busy with church responsibilities, he wasn't often in the house.And he later acknowledged that he intentionally set meetings up in the evening so he didn't have to be in the house because it was so chaotic that he struggled with that chaos. So for me, finding my sanity was lists. This is how we do this.And I would check the list and see, okay, you've done these three, but you haven't done these two.

Tell people where they can find you if they want to work with you and get some support for their journey.

They can find me@bonniebutlercoaching.com I have a Facebook page, Bonnie Butler coaching and an Instagram Bonnie Butler coaching. You can email me@bonnieanniebutlercoaching.com you can also join my Facebook group, which is Foster and Adoptive Parent Success Stories.Because I want to help these parents focus on hope. And there are so many success stories out there. When we lose hope, we need to know it's possible to succeed.

This has been the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. Produced by Aquarius Rising.Original music composed by Joe Fulginetti for more information or to stay in touch, visit from foster to forever.com that's from foster the number2forever.com and stay connected with us on Instagram at foster2forever podcast. That's foster the number two forever podcast. We'll see you next time.