Kelly Tyson, M.Ed., Family Training Specialist
In June we celebrate Father’s Day. And while I, of course, am partial to Mother’s Day, our foster and adoptive dads truly deserve more credit for all they are for our children.
I could weep buckets when I stop and consider the years of sacrifice that my husband has given to our children. Already a daddy to 3, we adopted 3 more out of foster care in 2020. During the stage of life when our bio kids were preteens and teens, my husband watched his peers rediscovering their own interests, receiving some “me time” back into their schedules, and even moving bit by bit toward some semblance of financial freedom. Yet this man – he came home from work to change diapers and hold crying littles with big trauma emotions. And still today, he is the old-ish man with a head full of gray and white hair attending the elementary school functions, playing kickball with our children and the neighborhood kids, and laying in bed next to kids with sensitive nervous systems who struggle to fall asleep without him.
This is not written to negate what our dads of bio kids do for their children. That also takes a strong man who is willing to surrender parts of himself for his kids. But these men who fully embrace children that were not originally theirs, and choose to show them how worthy they are of attention and time and love (especially when it’s not always reciprocated) – that is just so profound.
Author Tori Hope Peterson, a former foster youth who aged out of the system and was later adopted into her family as a young adult, writes this of the man who welcomed her into his home and heart:
“Scott rewrote my identity. Other coaches, teachers and community members told him to wash his hands of me… but he never saw a troublemaker. He said he saw a girl with very little hope, and a lot of determination, who needed help. He saw me for who I was and where I was at.
He spoke over me a different narrative of truth and victory. His encouragement made the voices of my abusers and neglecters quieter and quieter.”
To all of you adoptive and foster Daddies – I SEE YOU. I see you doing these hard things that no one else sees. I see you sacrificing the things you want to be doing in the moment for the things that are of lifetime significance. I see you recognizing that every step forward is success, no matter how small, because you are focused on rewriting your children’s narratives to truth and victory. Happy Father’s Day to all of you, you are truly the heroes in our world.