Last updated on November 26, 2023
Podcast 043; Season 4, Episode 7; October 13, 2020
Parenthood isn’t easy for anyone. Being foster parents and adoptive parents includes some extra challenges. In this podcast episode, I reflect on our five years as a family.
Five Years as Daddy Scott
Welcome to The Autistic Me Podcast. I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
“You must have been diagnosed after you became parents,” I have been told.
No. My wife and I choose to be parents well after my diagnosis — after a long and difficult journey towards some understanding of why I was different.
Becoming parents was one of the best choices we’ve made. It was also a long and difficult journey, another winding road that tested us.
For five years, I’ve been called “Daddy Scott” by two wonderful little girls. I love them with all my heart.
Starting a family was something we carefully considered. We have always doubted our abilities to be good, nurturing parents. We’re not “warm and cuddly” people.
Still, we assumed we might be decent parents. The home we purchased in 2012 had four bedrooms, with the thought one room might be for a child. We had a plan. We’d raise our child in this new home, in Pennsylvania, and life would be good.
Then came the miscarriages. We consulted with doctors and considered various options, none of which seemed ideal.
On November 22, 2014, we attended a local presentation on adoption. We eventually began the training to become foster parents, with the hope we might be able to adopt a child if there was a good match.
It was five years ago this week, my wife and I accepted our first — and only — foster placement.
The night of October 13, 2015, three siblings in need of emergency placement arrived.
Despite all the training we had received, the books we had read, and the videos we had watched, nothing could prepare us for being foster parents. There’s no way to prepare for the ups-and-downs of the foster system.
Children in foster care are within the system for many reasons. Every one of the reasons reflects traumatic experiences.
We were informed there were four children in the family, but we would only be caring for three. The oldest had a special placement, where he had already been for a time. That meant the children arrived already having experienced separation from their oldest sibling.
The placement was supposed to last a few days. Those days turned into weeks.
In early December, the second oldest sibling was relocated from our house. That was difficult for me, although I understood that this was for the benefit of all the children.
There was some hope the children could be reunited within a single household, but that proved to be impossible. They met during supervised visitations, a way to maintain the sibling bonds.
Because they were foster children, the goal was permanent reunification of all the children with one or both of their parents. There was also consideration of placing the children with relatives. That’s called a kinship placement and quite common when grandparents, aunts, or uncles are willing and able to provide a home for the children.
By that first Christmas, our oldest daughter was calling me Daddy Scott. The caseworkers all said that was a good sign. Even today, the girls will call me Daddy Scott from time to time.
Then, in April of 2016, my wife had surgery for thyroid cancer.
We worried if we could still be foster parents. Could we do this and deal with the existing stress in our lives?
We were told the cancer treatment had a high success rate. I was working at a good university, and the job seemed secure. Yes, we decided, we could do this.
Plus, just being with the girls made us feel better. The little one is an outgoing, sensitive, affectionate bundle of joy. The older girl wants to be loved. She needed security, and we could be that stable, loving place she needed.
Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years.
There were home visits by the adoption agency. Visits by family services. Home-based therapy. The schedule for those years was difficult.
When someone wasn’t scheduled to visit the house, we had to take the girls to various appointments. We were either rushing home to meet someone or rushing from home to an appointment. The adoption case worker managed supervised visits for the siblings and with their parents.
Then, there were court hearings. A lot of court hearings.
It felt like we were never able to pause and relax. Not us, and certainly not the children.
Not knowing how long you will be a family, how temporary the arrangement will be, is difficult.
As their childhood firsts happened, we felt more and more like a “normal” family. The girls were only two and three years old when they arrived. We experienced the first words of the youngest. Their first lost teeth. Their first reading and writing. Their first soccer games. One first after another. Today, they are seven and eight. We experienced many of their major milestones.
I was constantly torn by the emotions common to foster parents. You want the birth parents to succeed, and certainly the children want that. But, after the first year as a family — and we certainly felt like a family — you also worry about this new family being torn apart. In the end, you can only hope that whatever happens is best for the children.
The stress takes a toll. Adoption agency caseworkers moved on to other jobs. State agencies had high turnover, too. I cannot imagine the stress of caring about dozens of children, hoping the system and their families don’t fail them.
Giving the girls the best possible home life was our top priority, despite all the interruptions to their routines. Our time with them was all we could control.
We went to zoos. To museums. To the Great Lakes. We went to several fairs and carnivals. They loved visiting Kennywood and Waldameer, to classic Pennsylvania theme parks. We wanted them to have fun, and we enjoyed making those memories with them.
On May 10, 2019, we finally had the security of becoming a legal family. That same day, one of their siblings was also adopted.
Our daughters spent adoption day (a very, very long day) with their birth mother, their siblings, and the forever families of their siblings. A lot of people were there for the official moment.
Today, the two oldest siblings have separate families. They live near each other and see each other on a regular basis.
The girls have been to parties with their older siblings. They’ve chatted via webcam, too. In the future, all four siblings will be able to decide what their relationships should be. We aren’t pushing the girls to make any choices now. They are young and need time to process and understand everything that happened in the past.
The years ahead won’t be easy for our daughters, or us. The preteen and teen years are naturally challenging. Our daughters will have some additional challenges.
We choose to be their parents. We will navigate whatever lies ahead as a family.
When someone suggests we must have been parents before my diagnosis, that implies that disabled individuals shouldn’t be parents or cannot be the best parents. Regardless of the intention, it is a disturbing statement.
The Autistic Me existed before I became Daddy Scott.
I am aware of all my challenges. I know my shortcomings, and they are numerous. But, there are no perfect parents. My wife and I will keep learning and trying to be what our daughters need us to be. The best parents always want to be better parents.
I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, also known as Daddy Scott, speaking as The Autistic Me.
Remember that we are on Facebook, @AutisticMe on Twitter, and, of course, we have The Autistic Me blog, which is easy to find using Google or Bing.
Thank you for listening.
- Blog: https://www.tameri.com/autisticme/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/autisticme/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/autisticme
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSWyatt
- Podcast: https://autisticme.libsyn.com/