A Different Kind of Love

Hello, friends.

As my daughter keeps reminding me, we're coming up on our second anniversary. She came to live with me on April 18th, 2016. She's much more of a planner than I am. "What are we going to do to celebrate?" Um, I don't know, that's still several months away, child...

Anyway, it's been about a year and a half since I first met my foster daughter. She's a joy and a terror, like I imagine most daughters are. (Pretty sure my parents would attest to that fact.) She's grown and matured an incredible amount since we met, but she's still, well, herself. And herself is enough to drive me mad at times.

Case in point: today, I asked her to clean her room. I managed to clean almost the entire rest of the house while she managed to clean almost nothing in her room. At about seven o'clock, I gave her two options: she could take the next hour and do some more work in her room, or she could have free time until it was time to shower, with the caveat that she would finish cleaning her room tomorrow AND help me clean the garage, thus having almost no free time at all tomorrow. She chose the latter, for reasons that I still don't really understand. Except I do, because I understand her. She can't see past the immediate future. She's just not ready for that kind of thinking yet.

Recently, a parent at church has been pushing me to discipline my daughter more. He's someone I know pretty well and have a lot of respect for, but it still irritates me, because he doesn't know our situation like I do. I feel like I discipline my daughter too much, that all I do is yell and give orders. She knows that I love her, but sometimes I feel like I don't show it very well. She requires a different kind of discipline and a different kind of love than this other parents' kids do. He means well, but he's irritating just the same.

At Midweek School this past Wednesday, I had three kids behave so badly in class that their teachers sent them to my office, saying they weren't allowed to come back that day. All three kids are related to one another. It's easy to get annoyed with them - this isn't the first time I've had them in my office, and no matter what we do or say to them, they just keep acting up. They're disrespectful. They don't listen. They think it's funny when their teachers send them out.

They drive me nuts, but my experience with my own daughter tells me that there's more to this story, and it's worth my time to learn it. These kids require a different kind of discipline and a different kind of love than the other Midweek kids do - and that's okay. It's my job as the DCE to work with their parents and figure out how to help these kids succeed. Despite everything, they're just kids. I won't give up on them just because they talk back to me. And I won't judge them without knowing them.