6 Months Into Parenting

Yesterday, my husband and I were arguing via text over which one of us was actually the worst. He was apologizing for forgetting a key ingredient from the store for the dinner I was going to make, I was apologizing for not being the one to go to the store and not being able to go then (because I have to get there between work and getting the kid off the bus because she won't go), and we were both apologizing for the house being a mess.I feel bad because when I'm home, I'm either attached at the hip to our foster daughter or trying to get a moment to do something I want to do, and even if I do get something done, I always feel like I could have or should have done more. He feels bad for getting home late recently, and for sometimes feeling like he doesn't want to go home, because it's hard to know what kind of mood our foster daughter will be in or what she will want or need to do and it can be exhausting. Sometimes she acts 11 years old, sometimes 5, sometimes 20.Back before April, our daily lives were so much more predictable. We didn't always eat super healthy or keep the house spotless, but it at least wasn't a disaster and we didn't eat as much takeout or frozen food. We always knew that we would have time to relax with each other after work.Then, they expedited our foster care license to move in a beautiful, kind, hilarious, wise, empathetic, and intelligent 10 year old girl with nowhere else to go. After 5 months, her last foster placement had given their 30 days' notice and labeled her as "verbally abusive" while keeping her biological brother.We were her ninth foster placement. She had been in the system for over three years. Her family's case could easily be a case study on the failures of the foster system. None of her previous placements would take her back--except for a week of respite care, which they needed, because her previous foster family wouldn't wait an extra few days for us to be licensed before moving her out.Since then, life at home has been chaos, from walking on eggshells to talking to laughing to playing to screaming to crying to sleepless nights to being slapped across the face for the first time in my life to finally getting her to let me help her with math homework after 6 MONTHS when I TEACH MATH.She has made so much progress. We love her so much.The 6 month mark in mid-October made us her second longest placement in foster care. Our house is a mess and life is crazy and sometimes we get lazy and selfish and sometimes she lies about getting her homework done and I really wish my parents (or any family) lived right down the street even though they're only an hour away and I sometimes get to work with no lesson plans and half an hour to figure something out.But maybe we shouldn't beat ourselves up so much. Maybe I should stop comparing my messy house to my parents' spotless house when my mom was a stay-at-home mom and their house may have been just as bad at times when they were six months into parenting; I wasn't there to see it.Maybe I shouldn't take it so hard when my foster daughter gives me a hard time about living in a messy little condo instead of a "real house" because she doesn't understand that her other foster parents have been at least 10 years older than us.Maybe (ok, definitely) we're completely insane for doing this in the first place.We're so far from perfect. But we're still here, and we're not going anywhere.So, to all of you parents of any age kid(s) in any life situation:Maybe we're not the worst.Maybe this is just really hard. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3267Qw1