Instant Family from a Foster Parent’s Perspective

I had the opportunity to watch Instant Family in theaters this week.  If you haven’t had the chance to see it yet, it follows the journey of one couple’s experience with adopting children from foster care and is based on true events.  I’ve been perusing various adoption, anti-adoption, and blended family groups and reading their take on early showings of this movie for weeks, so I didn’t know what to expect going in.  Was this going to be a gentrified Hollywood, feel-good movie?  Was it going to perpetuate the idea that fostering and adoption is all rainbows, butterflies, and sweet, smiling families without any problems?  Or would Hollywood throw us a curveball and actually do it justice?  I teamed up with a friend to go over the accuracy of the movie, share our thoughts on whether it was a bust or a hit, and who, if anyone, should see this movie.

I’ll start off by saying I left my kids at home with my parents while we enjoyed a night out.  I was looking forward to a grown-up movie and not having someone beg me for outrageously marked up concessions to take a few bites and decide they aren’t hungry.  I was looking for an escape, but for the most part, it felt like I had traded in my night’s out to watch my daily life on the big screen for two hours.  While the movie didn’t go as dark as it could have gone, it was honest in its portrayal of life as a foster parent.

There were a few particularly poignant scenes that got to me.  The first was a depiction of the awkwardness of that first night: desperately trying to get to know a child over teeth brushing, following the kids around from room to room in an attempt to settle on a routine, the overthinking of the goodnight kiss.  That first night is the realization a complete stranger is living with you now.  You are solely responsible for that stranger.  It’s terrifying, and Instant Family nailed that awkward merging of two worlds in the characters’ first night alone with their 3 new foster kids.

The next scene that stood out to me as being very indicative of the fostering experience is the moment the couple met their foster children’s mom for the first time.  In the movie, the couple had just established a routine with the children when visitation with their biological mother started.  After meeting her, the wife, Ellie, remarked about how the mother looked good and confessed the guilt she felt in keeping the children separated from their mother.  Ellie’s husband, Pete, had to remind her of the reasons why they were removed and that it wasn’t their decision to break apart the family.

There are very few truly evil people in this world.  Most of us are a mixture of some good, a sprinkling of flaws and poor decisions, and experiences that mold us.  It’d be a cut and dry process if all the parents with children in the system were clearly horrible people.  9 times of 10, that’s just not the case.  There are redeeming qualities to each of our flaws, and sometimes it’s hard to stave off the guilt of parenting someone else’s child.  It’s in those moments that I do remind myself there’s a reason why the kids are with me right now.  I didn’t make the decision to remove them, but I can support reunification from where I’m at.

The last scene that I want to mention is when Ellie and Pete showed up at the home of a foster family whom they met a recruitment meeting when the adult foster daughter gave an inspirational speech.  Ellie and Pete were looking for another inspirational pep talk after a tough week with the kids, but to their surprise, the young woman who made motivated them at the beginning of their journey was currently in rehab.  At first, they assumed the person who had inspired them to become foster parents failed at being a role model until the other couple knocked some sense into them.  This scene sends a clear message that success can’t be defined the same way with children from traumatic pasts.  I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but my successes with my foster kids look completely different from their peers or my biological son.  We’re not looking for the untapped potential of an underprivileged football star in the making.  We’re just taking kids.  As they are- some good, a sprinkling of flaws and poor decisions, and experiences that mold them.

That brings me to my final thoughts about this movie.  This movie is definitely geared towards interested and current foster parents.  One excellent question this movie raises is why are we doing this?  Why are we fostering or interested in becoming a foster parent?  Instant Family did a good job hitting on the common stereotypes: the inbred couple with a dozen kids doing it for the paycheck, the infertile couple hoping to add to their family, and the ones who were missionary dating… except with kids.  Let’s be honest, not all motives are pure.  Potential foster parents would be wise to consider their true motivations and whether or not they are truly ready, and current foster parents might want to take a minute and reflect on what it was that first sparked that desire and what kept it ablaze.

Now that I’ve monopolized this post, let’s get another perspective on the movie:

First of all, I bawled through the whole movie. And laughed while I cried. 

One of the biggest things to me was the scene involving the hairbrush.  It wasn’t specifically the hairbrush, even though hair is very personal.  But a child’s major response to anything may always be deeper than what it looks like on the surface.  For any child who has faced trauma, whether they come from hard places or not, a major response may not even seem related to the issue at hand.  For instance, a big brother sobs uncontrollably every time a balloon has popped.  On the surface, you might say, “Well, balloons pop. There are bags with hundreds of balloons.  There are hundreds of stores with hundreds of bags.”  But if you learned that on the day right after he found out his baby sister had a terminal illness, a balloon popped, you would understand it was never about the balloon. 

It really wasn’t about the brush either, but how the brush connected her to a memory about her mom.

The other moment for me was at the end of the movie when she ran and hid under somebody else’s porch.  When they found her, they did not leave her even though she asked to be left alone.  In a moment like that, in our home, we never leave our child’s side.  Sure, we may give them space, but they need help processing. They need help regulating.  They need to know that when it’s time, you’ll be there.  In our home, with our biological and nonbiological children, we have a practice of not sending our children away when they are upset.  We give them space, but we walk them through regulating themselves, and if they need space we give them some space but just enough for them to know we are near.  Sending a child away when they are upset, or leaving them when they are upset, can give way to thoughts of abandonment.  We never want a child to feel abandoned.

The takeaway from the movie is that you might receive criticism, or even just scowls, for taking in someone under your care. The reality is, no parent is perfect.  But however long they are in your care, you give them a house and you make it their home.

My fear is too many people watched this movie for entertainment purposes only and identified more with the people who didn’t open up their homes.  It’s a tough decision to make, but to give a child a safe place when they don’t get a say in the decisions that happen in their lives, it’s definitely worth the risk of disrupting your life. Every. Time.