Since my last post we have completed three of the eight required trauma parenting classes as well as our CCL (Community Care Licensing) pre-licensing inspection. The inspection went surprisingly well. Although the analyst was here for two hours, he did not find anything that needed to be modified or fixed! Yay! Meaning, after we complete the required 24 hours of training, we will be a licensed facility and will be one step closer to welcoming our sweet baby into our home!
The trauma parenting classes consist of 8 weeks of training on how to best care for a child who has experienced trauma. These classes have been surprisingly enlightening and convicting, the horrors that some of these children endure are too terrible to describe or recount. These classes help equip potential adoptive/foster parents to respond in love to these, neglected, abandoned, abused, and weary children. Even though our plan is to adopt an infant, I am surprisingly grateful for these classes, if anything, we have been affirmed that we are on the correct path, a path that will (hopefully) allow our sweet baby to be spared from these tortures.
And the people you meet in these classes! They are amazing. At our table is one couple that has no children of there own and is wanting to adopt a sibling group of up to three children! Another lady in our class has been fostering for over 10 years. Last night she was telling us about one of her boys that was deemed a bad kid (at 2 years old) and was known to repeatedly throw violent tantrums and had already gone through two prior foster homes. After 2 months in her home, she realized that this poor boy was not trantruming, rather he was banging his head on the ground because he was in pain. After seeking medical attention it was discovered he had a large tumor in his head and was also diagnosed with cerebral-palsy. The boy is now 4 years old and thriving under her care.
Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him.
Job 29:12
