Usually I am about four weeks behind in reading the local newspapers so periodically I have marathon reading sessions. These marathon sessions involve skimming the headlines, reading the obituaries, legal publications, and I always glance at the help wanted ads. You never know when a great job might become available in the area, especially for one of my children. I happened to read the Sunday paper just two days late this week and saw a help wanted ad for a job that I thought might interest Shea.

I decided to type up a resume for him just in case he was interested in applying. I opened one of the resumes that I had prepared for one of my older children thinking that it would only need slight modifications. As I was changing the data to reflect Shea’s work history, education, and interest, it occurred to me how lucky I am to have such successful, industrious children.

Each of my four adult children had been employed for at least 18 months at a single establishment when they graduated from high school. This gave them an advantage when applying for other jobs. It showed future employers that they were dependable, which isn’t always a teenage characteristic. This is especially true for children who have come from the foster care system.

Two of my adult children are products of that broken foster care system. If you looked at statistics, they were probably even more at risk because they were adopted as older children. Our oldest daughter was 15 when we adopted her nearly 10 years ago and her younger sister was nine. The girls had been in our care as foster children for two years prior to their adoption and they had been in the care of their grandparents for two years prior to that.

We beat some other statistics that are also common in foster care. None of my children became pregnant before the age of twenty. Each earned a high school diploma by the age of 18 and all have attended some college. While we are by no means perfect parents, some days my children would say far from it, we helped them beat the odds. For them, I am very thankful this Christmas.

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Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007