Identities

Miss Sass brought home her first piece of artwork from 2nd grade on Thursday. It was a "family portrait." She had carefully drawn, and almost finished coloring, a kid, a grown-up, and two cats (one, most naturally, wearing a T-shirt). I was surprised by her portrait given the conversation I overheard at the pool the previous weekend. Sass and her 5 year old foster friend were debating something. "Go ask your mom." says 5 year old. "She's not my mom." replies Sass. "Yes, she is. She's your foster mom." "That doesn't count."

Sass is uncertain, and I don't blame her, of how to identify herself or me to her friends. Walking down the hallway to her classroom at back to school night, I saw rows of "All About Me" projects. The students had decorated dye-cut paper people with yarn and markers to look like themselves. Below, they had completed some fill-in-the-blank sentences to describe themselves. "I like to eat....pizza." "I am.....seven years old." "I live with......" Most kids had written "my mom and dad." or "my mom." Miss Sass had written "my Tammy."

Surely every child wants to have a mom, but does it feel to them as though they are betraying their biological families if they call their current "placement" a mom? Is it tricky for them to straddle the two lives they have--one with their "real family" and one with their foster family? I think most of the school aged foster kids I have met would agree. Being identified as a foster kid opens up a whole can of worms with their peers. Our 7 year old foster friend put it this way when talking about her foster mom: It's easier to just call her my mom because if I call her by her name, everyone asks questions and then I am talking WAY too long.