57. Foster Care, Adoption & The Church - Kids of the State with Darren Freidinger and Ian Minielly

About this episode

In this episode of The Bad Roman, we look at foster care and adoption. This topic comes by request from listener Darren Freidinger, who is a foster parent himself. Since Darren asked us to do an episode on this often discussed topic, we invited him to be the guest! Beyond being a father, Darren is passionate about the church stepping in and fulfilling its role to care for orphans. He shares his experience with foster to adopt, the foster care system, and alternatives to the state-run system.

Joining Craig and Darren in this episode, is a long-time friend of the show and Bad Roman contributor, andIan Minielly. Outside of writing articles on The Bad Roman Blog, Ian is also a foster parent and has experienced the great loss of having his first foster daughter taken from him and his wife. You can read his story in his short book, Emily's Tears, and hear a synopsis on the show.

Darren and Ian share their mutual and different experiences and struggles with the system, and what they see as ways to fix it and best work with it — and Craig compares his cats to children (as normal). This episode touches on every emotion and gives a glimpse into the system that holds the fate of thousands of children who become wards of the state, through no fault of their own.

Christians are called to care for orphans and widows – those who are helpless. We can do that even without fostering any children ourselves. More than anything, these kids need something positive in their lives. They need support. And it’s our job to provide for them. The question is, how?

Episode Timestamps:

5:15 Why Darren’s a foster parent

• His wife was passionate about it

• Unable to have kids

• Got licensed through Catholic Charities

  • Can sign up to do temporary foster care or to adopt

  • Can stipulate at-risk kids or not

• Got 4 and a 6-year-old girls

  • Had them for 9 months before adopting

• There’s a LOT of paperwork

  • Probes into the intimate details of every aspect of your life

    • They want to ensure that parents are adopting for right reasons and will provide kids stability

    • But it’s invasive

• Getting kids older than infants is like being thrown on a treadmill that’s already on full speed

  • It’s your job to keep yourself and those kids upright and healthy

• “It’s a whirlwind… waiting so long to be parents, you get the kid placed with you and you're waiting, and you're just chomping at the bit, but all of a sudden it happens. And you're like, ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute, time out. I wasn't ready for this kind of thing.'” - Darren

9:52 Is there a better way to do this without the state?

• “There's always a better way than going through the state, in my opinion.” - Craig

10:38 Ian’s Story

• Emily's Tears

• His wife was involved in jail ministry

  • One of the pregnant women asked her to take power of attorney over her baby

    • So, they picked her up at the hospital

      • Had no formula or anything

      • Felt like kidnapping

• His wife had wanted to do foster care for 20 years, and he was finally coming around

  • Suddenly, this opportunity fell in their lap

• DHS called them on their long drive home

  • Nurses had called CPS because baby had been taken

  • Power of attorney gave them rights

    • But DHS recommended they register as foster parents for more rights

      • The government wanted her in the system so she would keep the industry running

      • Had to go through all the classes and invasive interviews

• “We can’t do better as long as the government controls it from top to bottom.” -Ian

• There’s billboards everywhere begging for foster parents

  • Because they abuse the good ones

    • They find they are not helping kids and get discouraged

17:09 Does the state want kids to get adopted?

• Once parental rights are terminated, a case worker spends 30 days looking for/evaluating adoptive parents

• But they fight not to terminate rights

  • The goal is always to send kids home to their bio parents

  • Sometimes, this is the best idea; sometimes, it’s the worst

    • The problem is the one-size-fits-all mentality

• The system runs on there being kids in the system

  • Parents have classes

  • Kids have classes

  • Entire industry run off foster kids

• Ian didn’t get licensed when they moved states

  • “I said, ‘I'm not ready to deal with the state again’… You opened up your entire life to the last people in the world that should have access to it so that you can get a child and help. And it’s painful.” - Ian

20:36 Emotions and Turmoil

• Instant Family movie

  • Eventually, the government takes the kids back

    • Hard on the kids, the foster parents, the bio parents

    • Gotta really screw kids up

• “The state coming in and taking kids from families is abhorrent to me. It just sets my teeth on edge to think about it.” - Darren

  • But this is the norm

23:23 How can we fix this? It is not working

• The state pulls kids after abuse happens

  • How could we prevent the abuse?

    • Has to be a community-based intervention

    • Cannot push blanket solutions

      • Individualized help

• If a kid’s being adopted, the state is always involved

  • It’s a legal matter

  • Nonprofits cannot handle it on their own

  • BUT

    • Organizations like Safe Families exist

      • Provide temporary support to families in crisis

        • Families take in kids for a time

      • The state is not involved

      • The only issue is that it’s church-based, and many people will not set foot in a church, so they’ll avoid reaching out for help

• Kids don’t wind up in foster care overnight

  • It’s years of bad decisions and struggles

    • That build-up and explode

  • We have to catch them further upstream

    • Even before the child is born or even conceived

  • Generational abuse further complicates things

    • Kids have seen some stuff

    • Move from one type of dysfunction to another

      • “Some of us are a slightly better dysfunction, but we're all dysfunctional.” - Ian

  • In Michigan, almost all foster kids who graduated high school ended up in prison within 3 years

    • “It's not because those kids are failures. They've experienced trauma that they can't recover from in a simple manner.” -Ian

29:28 The Church is not being the Church

• Love widows and orphans (James 1:27)

  • Generally, as a whole, we are ignoring them      

  • Some specific congregations are doing great work

    • Adoption/foster care ministry

      • Give information to parents and help them with paperwork

      • Support groups

      • Network

30:52 What it takes to become a foster parent [in Illinois]

• 9-week course plus online training

• Gives you things to think about

  • Prepares you for trauma responses from your kids

    • Even if the kid was not yet born when the trauma occurred, it affected their development

• Support and supplies

  • When Ian picked up the baby, a church filled a room with diapers, formula, and other supplies

    • They didn’t have to buy a diaper for 6 months

    • And that was not even in the town where they lived! It was where the baby was from, several hours away

• “If you're not capable- if you're not able to adopt or foster- you can help in other ways.” -Craig

  • It seems daunting, but a pack of diapers really makes a difference

  • More people might adopt if they knew the church would support them

  • Babysit for a couple of hours

• “Even if the state's going to be involved with it, these kids need homes.” - Craig

• The government vets respite providers (in some states)

  • You can’t just let someone babysit your foster kids

  • DHS must do a background check

    • Makes people not want to be involved

• There are so many hurdles!

  • Urchins bleeding the system for money

    • Monthly court dates

      • Focused on budget, not the child’s needs

    • Once there was an opportunity to send Ian’s child to a different state so Michigan didn't have to pay any more, she was gone

    • “They're more worried about what it looks like on the books than about doing what's right for the kids.” - Darren

  • If you don’t have a respite provider approved and get caught letting them stay there, you would likely lose your kid(s)

• So many horror stories with the same plot

  • Given a child

  • Told they could adopt

  • Had them taken away

40:00 Ian’s story continued

• Had a baby from birth to 17 months

• Jumped through all the hoops

• One night, they told Ian and his wife that the baby was going to Oregon the next day

• They appealed the decision to take her

  • Took out a loan and sold a bunch of stuff to afford the lawyer

• Turns out, that someone wrote a bunch of lies in their file to get the girl sent away, like

  • They weren’t socializing her

  • They were withholding food

  • So, the person who made the decision to remove her could not be blamed 

• Even though they had the same judge they’d had for 17 months who knew them, he would not overturn the decision because he had never done that, and he was about to retire

  • He acknowledged that the decision was wrong

  • And their baby is still in Oregon 

• They lived down the street from more than one person involved, so they moved to Kentucky

49:12 Older kids

• “The bottom line for me is there are kids that need help. If it means some discomfort for me to help kids that need help, that's okay.” - Darren

• If you can’t take an infant, take a 10-year-old

• Bring in 16 or 17 year-olds and just give them the normalcy of having Thanksgiving

  • Let them come back for holidays when they’ve aged out

• Older kids are rarely adopted

• Most foster kids get kicked out at 18 and become homeless

  • Some places have a transition program

    • Job training, rent money, other support…

  • Some states continue paying foster parents to support their kids as adults

51:54 Doing it just for the paycheck

• People take in kids because the state gives them money to care for them

• Right now, the state can’t even find people to take in babies

  • “If you don't have enough families to be in foster care, you're willing to take anybody. And so that's a system that's ripe for abuse.” - Darren

• Farming foster children for money

• Disabilities bring more cash

  • You might only get $300/month for a kid

    • But if you label them with a bunch of conditions, you get an added $75 for each problem

  • Of course, foster kids legitimately do have a lot of issues, but people take advantage of this for the money even when kids don’t need the extra support

  • Labeling them falsely

    • Changes their social status

    • Holds them back from taking more advanced classes

  • Labeling an infant

    • Brings them services

      • But many services are not useful until they’re older

      • Therapists and parents waste their time

    • Sticks them with the label forever

      • Before they’ve even shown what they’re capable of

      • Even when they show what they can do, the label stays

57:36 Final thoughts

• Help with fostering in any way you can

  • If you don’t know anyone who’s doing it, maybe it’s you who should

• Let’s work on helping people not get to the point of having their kids taken

• “As much as I am down on fostering because of having to be involved with the state, that's the system we have. … They need whatever kind of stability they can get, whatever positive experiences they can get… Get involved.” - Ian

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47. Home School: 2021 Year End Round Table

For this year’s year-end roundtable (YERT), we have six guests and friends of the podcast, each with a different view on education to have a discussion on homeschooling in 2021.

Our guests are Abby Cleckner, Kerry Baldwin, Jordan, Nathan Moon, and Chris and Karin Polk, most of who grew up attending public schools. A few of the pannel are, or have been, teachers both within and outside of the public school system. A couple of them currently offer training or courses to adults about how to think for themselves, skills they feel they see as lacking in current public curriculums.

In this episode, we ask questions like, are schools are a training ground for compliant citizens who will pull whatever lever they are told without question? Does the system set teachers and students up to struggle?

Most of the panel currently homeschool their children and view it as the only real way to protect their family values and provide an education tailored to their specific childs’ interests.

They also discuss how formal education influences people’s understandings and perspectives on how the world works, in terms of politics and social structures in society. If our public school system was created to make a compliant labor force, with no desire to question the system or learn on their own, then we must encourage our children to pursue their personal interests, to learn how to think and enable them to with the tools to do it themselves.

Control of our children’s education starts at home. Homeschooling might seem like an impossible dream but, especially in the last couple of years, families of every background have found a way, and there are endless resources for innumerable methods to teach the next generation.

Timestamps:

00:49 Announcements for 2022

• New Bad Roman sponsorship program

  • The first 10 people who sponsor the show for 4 episodes will get a 5th episode free 

  • Advertise your podcast, product, or blog

  • Tell us what you want to say: thebadromanpodcast@gmail.com

• New co-host

  • Abby Cleckner!!

    • She’s written for the blog, been on the podcast, gone on other podcasts for the bad Roman, and just been an essential part of the work we're doing

4:08 Guest introductions

• Jordan 

  • Grew up at public school in West Texas

  • Has a teaching certificate in Texas

    •  Left public schools for so many reasons

    •  Now teaches at a university model homeschool group

•  Kerry Baldwin

  • Teacher of the Socratic Method

  • Homeschool Parent

    • Three kids

    • Divorced mom 

    • Works from home

  •  Homeschooled as a kid 

    • Before it was legal in New Mexico

      • “I like to say that my education was born from civil disobedience.”

  • Socratic method

    •  AKA inquiry-based learning

    •  Courses available for middle school on up

      • For both students and teachers leading students through the method

      • Register for summer here

• Karin Polk

  • Grew up in public school

  • Stay-at-home parent

  • Homeschooling all three kids starting 11 years ago

• Chris Polk

  • Grew up in public school

  • Claims homeschooled status for himself now because he’s learning so much with his kids

    • It’s like doing school over again, but actually learning something  

• Nathan Moon

  • Had a good experience in public school

  • Most families at their church homeschooled, so they did too

  • Taught in a public school

    • Only lasted a year

• Abby Cleckner

  • Went to public school

    • K-college

    • Moved a lot

  • Had a terrible experience when she put her kids in

    • Switched to a magnet, but then moved to rural area without one 

  • Lets her older kids decide where to go to school

    • Homeschools the younger ones

    • Older ones have chosen to stay in public

    • “Homeschooling is teaching them to be self-directed and make their own decisions and use their own logic to figure things out. And so, in that vein, I feel like it's not my place to force them into what kind of schooling.”

13:28 Why are people ignorant in 2021?

• Why don't they understand how our governmental system works?

  • Didn't we learn that in public school?

    • They actually cut civics classes out of school in the 90’s

      • But it's not only young people who don't understand

  • Perhaps people are just so focused on their favorite news anchor that they don't remember facts

    • Like that an executive order from the president can't override state law, thanks to the 10th Amendment

  • Homeschool Community has grown dramatically since COVID

  • New truckers come to Chris because they want freedom, but they've never learned to think for themselves

    • They never really learned to comprehend what they're reading or do basic math for themselves

    • If they previously worked for a big corporation, all they know is how to do what they're told 

    • His students get so frustrated when he won't just give them the answer

  • It's the same at school as in corporations

    • Sit down. Shut up. And do (or learn) what I tell you.

    • Prussian model of “Just pull the lever”. You don't have to know why

  • Schools don't care if you're learning

    • You cannot be held back when you fail; you will still graduate to the next level “for social reasons”

      • So many kids wind up graduating from high school with maybe a fifth-grade-level education because they were not required to pass their classes

        • What can they be successful at?

          •  Pulling a lever

    • Teachers are likely to care, but they're held back by the administration

      • That is why so many teachers are also leaving public schools

    • Schools don't communicate with parents

      • There was a kid who had passed a total of 3 classes in all of high school, and his parents didn't find out until the school informed them that he wasn't graduating at the end of his senior year

24:24 Why are teachers leaving public schools?

• From a behavioral standpoint, if you take an underpaid overworked position and pile more work on it, people are going to want to escape that position

  • Teachers do many hours of extra work outside the classroom during the summer and at home during the school year

  • The average secondary school teacher has about 120 students they are solely responsible for teaching in their subject

    •  No support from parents

    •  Lots of red tape from admin

  • That's why teachers are always so excited for summer

  • COVID brought very different expectations to the position

    • Tons of extra work

  • So, we have a teacher shortage

• If a student is willing to take advanced classes, they might get a decent education

• Schools often hire people who don't have a teaching degree as long as they are in school to finish that degree

  • “Almost anyone can be a teacher. All you have to do is just find the Craigslist ad and dust off your transcripts. But that doesn't mean that you're a good teacher.” -Nathan

• “A lot of parents are pulling their kids from public education because they're realizing they're not receiving systematic instruction, they're receiving systematic indoctrination.” -Nathan

  • Teachers are also realizing this and are unwilling to participate

• Teachers almost never quit because they don't like teaching or because of the children

  • It’s the policies they have to follow

• This disaster started in the 1800's when we changed our education system

  • Suddenly, professionals/the state were responsible for teaching our children rather than their parents

  • It contributes to the breakdown of the family

  • Parents don't know how their kids are doing in school

    • Teachers watch the children failing, and are tied down by policies that prevent them from intervening

32:18 The roles of students and teachers

• “When we talk about education, we are talking about what the adults are doing for the kids, but. We're not talking about what the kids are doing in order to learn. And this is, I think, a mistake.” -Kerry

  • Students’ interest is essential

    • Even the greatest teacher cannot teach students who don't care about the subject

• Teachers: architects or gardeners?

  • Architects build a very specific product

    • This is what public schools want teachers to be

  • Gardners feed and tend to their plants, which will not come out looking identical 

    • Provide the environment; it's up to the plants to grow

• Whose responsibility is it to make the school look good?

  • “Administrators and bureaucrats put a ton of pressure on teachers, teachers, in turn, put a ton of pressure on kids and parents, parents put a ton of pressure on kids and kids are carrying the education systems on their backs.” -Kerry

• “Education is learning how to learn so that you can teach yourself whatever it is that you want to teach yourself.” -Kerry 

  • It isn’t learning a bunch of facts

    • It's learning why those facts are important

  • Parents aren't going to know everything, so it's important the kids know how to learn on their own or alongside their parent

41:13 Curriculum

• A curriculum that worked well for one kid is not likely to work well for all of them

  • Don't expect to use the same one for all of your children

  • We cannot recommend a curriculum that will work well for every child

• Many new homeschool parents seek to replicate public school at home

  • Everyone gets burned out

  • The parents feel like failures

  • Breathe and just go with what they're interested in.

    • They will learn naturally

    • “Keep it simple, Stupid.” -Chris 

43:35 How has education influenced what we've seen happening these last couple years?

• Public schools don't teach how to analyze a text

  • People have not been critically reading the articles they consume

    • They don't know how to tell what information is important and how to apply it to their life

• Even a lot of homeschool curriculum is just filling in bubbles with the right information

• Instead of bullet points and boring charts, information should be narrative

  • That's what humans naturally are; that's how we've always learned 

• When kids are learning about their personal interests, they learn a lot more quickly and in-depth than when a tired teacher is trying to reach 30 students who don't want to be there every day

• Kids also need more time to play and learn that way

  • Developmentally, they simply cannot be expected to sit still for 8 hours every day with only two 15-minute breaks

    • Actually, adults shouldn't be expected to do that either!

•  Homeschoolers can go as in-depth on a topic if they want

  •  They’ll learn more than just the public school propaganda:

    • This bad thing happened in history, but America swooped in and saved the day. The end.

• If a student wants to learn more about a topic or keep reading, that's seen as a problem, and they “need to learn to work on their transitions”; to comply with the system better 

  • Kids aren't allowed to enjoy learning, so they quit trying

  • They're rewarded for pulling the lever, not for exploring why the lever is there

  • Learning is not encouraged; compliance is

• MAGA makes sense when you think of the public school history propaganda

  • We all learned that, especially back in the 40s and 50s, America solved all the world's problems and was a prosperous nation

    • “They're too dumb to know they're dumb” -Jordan

  • But now schools have swung away from this teaching

    •  Changed to: America is the worst. White people are the worst. 

  • The only way you'll have control over what your children learn and the values instilled in their brains is to home-school them

    • A lot of people think there's no way they can homeschool their kids

      • They are losing free babysitting

      • There’s the pressure to succeed that comes from government requirements for teachers, schools, and students

      • But the lesson time takes half as long

      • All types of parents have found a way to succeed

    • If you know the Socratic method, you can learn even from the most terrible, one-sided curriculum

      • Because you’ll know how to ask the right questions

• Media represented by talking heads who were taught what to think

• But there are exciting technologies coming

  • Like blockchain

  • We can get ourselves and our kids ahead of the game by learning about it while most students are busy being indoctrinated

1:10:07 Options for homeschooling

• University Model

  •  Kids go into a small school 2 or 3 days a week

  •  The other days, they are at home doing their homework 

• Or at least find a co-op of other parents who can support your journey

• YOU ARE QUALIFIED TO TEACH YOUR CHILD

• There are so many tools available for all different styles of learning

• We don't need the Department of Education

  • They were only established in the 70s

  • Our education system would probably improve if they went under because everyone would be homeschooling 

  • It's actually unconstitutional and should never have existed 

1:14:03 Final Thoughts & Where to Connect with our Guest

• Nathan

  • Homeschooling is possible for your family. You can find a way

    • Even if you don't do it, do take a greater interest in your child's education

    • Take the initiative

  • Theology Writings 

  • Fiction Writing and Poetry 

    • Children can send submissions here, and I’ll post them

• Chris

  •  We should get disgruntled teachers to open little schools

  • Trucking company, Blue Ribbon Logistics

  • Podcast

•  Jordan

  • You can't do it wrong

    • If you're considering changing your child's schooling, you clearly love them and want what's best for them

    • Follow your gut

    • They are your child, given to you because you would know how to care for them

• Kerry

  • Socratic Method Courses

  • Email

• Abby

  • The homeschool community continues to grow exponentially

  • Even people who are fans of the public school system have criticisms

  • COVID regulations have made schools into literal prisons

  • Find me on the Bad Roman podcast!

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