Ten Things You Can Do to Help - Foster Parent edition

Has your heart has longed to minister to the hearts of hurting people? Mine has. I've particularly desired to be a mama to hurting, abused and neglected children. This passion is a little odd and contradictory personally as I also desire much quiet time and order in the home. 

Yeah, quiet, solitude and order. Caring for hurting children. This doesn't sync together too well. 

Allow me to expand a bit. I began my mothering journey at 19, single and alone. As a result, I've felt that I missed out on the adult single years and longed for them since this birth occurred 22 years ago.  Yet, as much as I had these desires, I also felt that God might lead our blended family to fostering or adopting some day.  If we did, I knew it would require a lot of work and it definitely wouldn't be orderly and quiet! So, I confronted my desire for comfort and faced that God may lead me to something much more challenging, which I also wanted.  I also wanted to love a hurting child, or two. Contradictory desires. My heart and mind wrestled internally and with God.

Ultimately, the desire to serve Christ no matter what and the passion to love others for the sake of the gospel led us to a life altering and life shaking move far beyond what I had imagined. Now my heart is forever changed.

Our journey as foster parents began and ended much differently than I anticipated. We moved our family to do so. That was huge. Then, it wasn't one or two children we would care for, but 13 foster children in a span of 15 months in addition to another teenage boy.  DEFINITELY, not quiet and orderly! Once we took the step, we thought we might stay in this role for several years. But, due to a number of circumstances we moved back and now have two children in the home. By now, I had already borne the greatest pain involved in the initial stages of caring for our hurt children. Now, I wanted to make these children a part of our home forever, but God had other plans for them and for us. Moving back and releasing the children was another God led, life altering move that required great trust.

 (Our 2012 family at Christmas minus a few)

I could look back at our season as a failure, or I could look to it as an amazing opportunity to learn to trust God at an immensely deeper level and as a stepping-stone to the next area of service. I tend to drift towards the former thoughts, but with my eyes lifted to Christ, I choose the latter.  

Now, after an intense season of busyness and an incredible number of trials and obstacles, we are in a much needed season of rest.  It will not be forever. Soon, God will bring us into a new season of serving and it will look much different than the last year and a half.   

As I reflect on our journey, I recall numerous ways that we received help that was such a blessing. I also think of ways that I wish others might have helped, but when people offered, we didn't know what we needed and we really didn't want to ask.

Perhaps you have a friend who is fostering and/or adopting? Perhaps you desire to do so yourself but aren't ready to commit just yet. If so, consider some of the following ways to help and bless others who have made the commitment.  You can still be a blessing in so many ways! Who knows what journey the Lord may have for you!

Ten Things You Can Do to Help - Foster Parent Edition:
(Maybe these are the Top Ten, maybe not. Maybe I'm missing some GREAT ideas that YOU have...if so...please share below in the comments section!)

Lyrical Living - "Kings & Queens" by Audio Adrenaline

Lyrical Living - When words and/or music flow beautifully and speak to or from my heart.

The beautiful lyrics of several songs have resonated deeply with me.  Over the last year one shared with me by my brother-in-law spoke of our journey to care for many children in foster care. The song was "Kings and Queens" by the new Audio Adrenaline.  How deeply it connected with me. To this tune I have cried and sung out loudly in praises and pleas.

Got Lice? To RID or Not To RID..that may be your question...

When we received our first foster children, five in one night, we received a whirlwind. The phrase "trial by fire" really doesn't even come close to the multitude of things we dealt with and the obstacles that seemed to continually come up.  It seemed more like "trial by fire...and hurricane...and earthquake."  One of the crazy things we dealt with was lice. Very bad cases of lice in four of the five children. Oy! In addition, we found this out at about 9:30 at night and it kept us up until after 1:00 in the morning after being exhausted from moving and settling in to our new home over the previous few days. I knew I should have stopped unpacking and taken a good nap that day!

When I heard the word "lice", my brain raced for data to comprehend the situation. The most I knew about lice was that in my elementary school years there was an annual check for this and someone stared at your scalp while using a comb to move your hair around. Sometimes, one or two kids went home that day and everyone wondered if they would get "cooties" from them when they returned. Maybe they lived in nasty dirty homes, I thought. Oh, and let's not forget that while growing up I was frequently reminded not to pick up dirty bird feathers because they might carry "lice" the ever elusive bugs I didn't quite understand. But rest assured, they were nasty and no one wanted anyone near them!  

My knowledge of lice today has grown significantly as we had to get rid of these nasty critters in what ended up being six children and three adults, and more than one time. Unfortunately, I became much more familiar with them than I wanted; it even became personal. The first time I had them felt so awfully itchy but the bugs hadn't been found. Then one day I scratched my own head to find one. Later when my husband helped comb my hair and found...too many...I almost fell to the floor sobbing tears of disgust and weariness. For weeks we washed everyone's bed sheets, clothes, towels, pillow cases, mattress covers and anything else they may have come in contact with; we washed in the Sanitary cycle of the washer. My two large tables were stacked over a foot high with laundry to fold on a daily basis.  I didn't know what I was doing and wore myself out doing what I could.  One thing I knew; I did not and would not use RID, or any other chemical treatment.  Despite the fact that I had no medical directive allowing it's use on the children from a physician, I didn't want to use the harsh chemicals directly on the scalp for anyone, let alone these children whose bodies had already been dealing with too many chemicals and malnutrition.  Your skin is your largest organ and putting these chemicals on the scalp of these children was not something I was willing to compromise on!

What to do? The first night we tried apple cider vinegar wash, we combed with a comb borrowed from a neighbor who had dealt with lice, we tried hot ironing and we blow dried hair and we used mayonnaise and olive oil.  Lice was removed from two boys (from the combing), but the two girls still had it...bad. 

We kept combing and combing and combing and finding new tips that seemed to help in the overall crusade against these jumpy critters (yes, they DO jump! I watched them on jump on a pile of JUST CLEANED clothes and almost fell over, again, crying). 

Then, we took in another girl who had been dealing with lice for months and we were told that she had undergone her THIRD chemical treatment, at least.  This last one supposedly started the scurrying escape of over a hundred creepy crawlies.  Hmmm... that's really, really...not good.

So, finally we took steps that eradicated lice from a home with 15 people living in it!  Maybe you are dealing with it now or maybe you know of someone who is.  I'm going to share the steps that we took that I believe contributed to the final HURRAH moment of feeling lice free!  These are all natural methods that we used and I never spent a penny on lice medications or shampoos.

1   COMB, COMB, COMB! We bought lice combs and quite a few of them!

• Not Recommended:
• The cheap plastic ones? Don't bother, they break and they don't work.  
• Robi Electric Comb? Personally, I don't think it's worth the money. Sure it's fun to know that the little critters get zapped when hit by the electricity. But, it kept stopping because of dandruff or other things that got in the way.  Plus, we found the tines to be too short.  It was OK for the boys short hair, but a pain for the girls long hair.
• Recommended:
•  A good lice egg and nit comb with metal tines. We have the Nit-Comb which is the gray-blue comb with a long handle. They sold these with shorter tines (shown) and longer tines at a local pharmacy. I haven't seen them at any major retailers.  We also used a kit of two combs and a little brush from Walgreens or Wal-Mart. This was a kit of combs only and no RID. One had smaller tines than the other so we alternated usage to get big bugs and to get tiny sticky eggs.  I've checked online briefly and found one that looks promising called Nit Free Terminator.

 

2. All the females began pulling hair back tightly into ponytails and/or braids if possible, and then hid the hair under a secured handkerchief head covering.  The reason for this was two-fold. One, keeping our own hair tight and covered prevented new bugs from getting onto our scalp. The tight hair makes it hard for them to hold on, from what I understand. But hey, if there is a handkerchief in the way...all the better right?  The second reason was to keep whatever was still on our heads from getting on anyone, or anything, else.  

3. Wash all towels, clothes and bedding in your Sanitary cycle at home. The hotter the better. 

Initially, we washed all bedding, towels and clothes every day on the hottest cycles.  I also bagged up dirty clothes and linen to drop straight into the washer. Not everything because kids helped here also. 

Anything I couldn't wash sat in the hot Texas summer sun. However, after a few weeks of this being too much laundry for so many people (abnormal day was already 4 loads), I loosened up. I had two large dining tables covered with 1-2 foot high piles of dried, cleaned laundry. It was also ALL bagged out of the dryer and brought to the table. That was...a lot. Anyway, after awhile I would work on everyone's hair at bedtime. Their heads had conditioner with tea tree oil in it and the girl's hair was pulled tight into a bun overnight. Their heads laid on towels that I would wash instead of all the bedding. This ended up being fine. 

4.  COMB again!

5.  Natural Hair Spray Bug Killer. 

      Recently, I made my own mix of apple cider vinegar with several drops of tea tree oil and a little water in a spray bottle.  I sprayed this onto our hair to kill what wasn't caught by the combs.  My ritual became to spray this prior to combing because the apple cider vinegar is supposed to help loosen eggs and the tea tree oil is supposed to help kill the bugs and growing eggs.   

     You may want to do this outside, if you can, because the cider vinegar is strong smelling. Also, you may want a more watered down option for young children especially if they have had bugs for awhile and have open wounds.  If there are open wounds from the lice eating scalp, or any other reason, the vinegar will burn.   

     Personally, at nighttime I sprayed my hair, combed it through, then pulled it back into a tight bun and sprayed all over again.  With my hair pulled tight I could spray more onto the scalp itself where the bugs would be. Then I used a towel over my pillow to protect the bedding from the oil.

6.  COMB again!

7. Tea Tree oil in shampoo.  I also added tea tree oil in condition and combed this into our hair overnight but it was hard to really work into the scalp for those of us with longer hair.  Recently lice showed up again out of the blue for two of us. We hadn't had it here for months and suddenly it showed up. I switched to the spray at night instead of tea oil conditioner.  If you have a sensitive head, you may want to use the tea tree oil in conditioner option instead of spraying.  Once the hair is pulled back tightly it is easier to work it onto the scalp itself.  I'm not convinced that it is foolproof in killing the bugs, but it does seem to be a very effective part of the solution.  Many people swear by it for prevention as well. I prefer it mixed in a carrier like the spray or shampoo or conditioner.

8. COMB again!

Seriously, we combed as often as we could.  Combing meant having a bowl of water nearby to drown the critters and remove the eggs off the combs.  Sometimes it's hard to identify whether or not you have combed out an egg or if it's dandruff. However, the eggs, which look white on the hair, look like round dark spots between the tines when you hold it up to the light. Grown bugs will be on the comb and you'll want to drown them quickly!

Everyone has different ideas of how to get rid of the bug.  Some may say that I did too much and others too little. This is what I chose to do and it worked.  So, "to RID or not to RID?" For me, I don't believe RID works. More importantly, I believe the chemicals are highly dangerous neurotoxins and don't belong on the scalp or anywhere near me, let alone the children.  

If you should start to feel itchy often at the base of your head or on the crown...have someone check you!

I chose to NOT RID and still eradicated these nasty things!