Alex's Home

Yesterday afternoon, CJ asked me when Alex was going back to his home. It was a sincere question; not a hint of malice or ill will. I'll be honest, it caught me off-guard a bit. Up until today, CJ had not really acknowledged that Alex had previously lived somewhere else. He knew that Alex had lived in a different house because we had visited his previous foster family a few times. Actually, I found it a bit surprising that it took seven weeks for him to realize that this was not a temporary situation.

I answered that this was Alex's home now because we are adopting him, so he wasn't going back to the house he lived in before. He was now a part of our family. While this seemed to be an acceptable answer, CJ didn't quite understand why Alex would start in one house and move to another. How do you explain foster care to a 3-year old? I simply told him that the other family needed to take care of Alex until we were ready to bring him to our house; adding that it was very special that Alex got to live with us since he is CJ's brother. After a few more follow up questions, I think CJ was happy with the answers that I had provided.

I don't know how much he got from the conversation, but I hope he always feels comfortable asking questions like that. We knew, going into adoption, that there would be questions that were hard to answer. Maybe this was an easy introduction to what we'll get down the road.