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Raising Other People's Children | Step-Parenting, Foster Parenting, & Grandparenting | Debbie Ausburn | MomCave LIVE

• Jennifer Weedon MomCave

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Parenting is a challenge. But parenting someone ELSE's child... is a task unto itself. Meet Debbie Ausburn, author of the book, "Raising Other People's Children: What Foster Parenting Taught Me About Bringing Together A Blended Family" as she talks about step-parenting, foster parenting, and grandparenting.
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Jen:Welcome to MomCave LIVE, where we may have lost our minds, but we haven’t lost our senses of humor. I’m Jen and we have a really fun guest today. More than fun, she’s going to be really helpful too. Hi, this is Debbie Osbourne. Hi, Debbie.

Debbie Ausburn:    
Hi, how are you?

Jen:   
Good. Great to see you. The title of your book is exactly what we want to talk about here. And it’s “Raising Other People’s Children: What Foster Parenting Taught Me about Bringing Together a Blended Family.” So we have a lot of blended families that are around here on MomCave. And we’ve got their foster families, their step-parenting families, grandparenting families. Every kind of family imaginable, and we need to know how to make it work.


Debbie’s background and how she got started in this field.

Debbie Ausburn: 
I’ve done all of it, except biological families. I’ve never had any biological kids. But I’ve collected seven kids and 10 grandkids.

Jen: 
Wow. Okay, so you’re the stepmom to seven kids?...


Read the episode transcript at our blog: www.momcavetv.com/raising-other-peoples-children--step-parenting-foster-parenting-and-grandparenting--momcave-live
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Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Welcome to Mom Cave live, where we may have lost our minds, but we haven't lost our senses of humor. I'm Jen and we have a really fun guest today. More than fun, she's going to be really helpful too. Hi, this is Debbie Osbourne. Hi, Debbie.

Debbie Ausburn:

Hi, how are you?

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Good. You know, we've got the two cameras going. So it's like you're a movie star. You have your side view and your front view. But yeah. Great, great to see you. Um, so the title of your book is exactly what we want to talk about here. And it's raising other people's children. There it is. What foster parenting taught me about bringing together a blended family. So we have a lot of blended families that are around here on Mom Cave. And we've got their foster families, their step parenting families, grandparenting families. Every kind of family imaginable, and we need to know how to make it work.

Debbie Ausburn:

Okay. Well, I, I've done, I've done all of it, except biological families. I've never had any biological kids. But I I've collected seven kids and 10 grandkids.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Wow. Okay, so you're the stepmom to seven kids?

Debbie Ausburn:

Well, I have, um, stepmom to five kids. And then there's two of my foster daughters. That became part of the family.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Oh, wow. Okay. So you've kind of run the gamut. Um, you you also in your in your other life? You are an attorney? Correct?

Debbie Ausburn:

Right. Yes. That's how I pay my bills.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Well, we all need to pay our bills, for sure. But I was reading that you also, as an attorney have a lot of experience and like family law and these kinds of

Debbie Ausburn:

I well, I don't work with domestic issues like family law, which is I don't do divorce and that kind of stuff. But what I do is I represent organizations that work with kids. So I do a lot of work with camps, schools, childcare centers, mentoring organizations, right? Service providers, protecting kids. Protecting kids. Yes,

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

wonderful thing. Yeah. Well, okay, could anybody who has any questions for Debbie, go ahead and pop them in the comments? And of course, we're gonna give away a copy of her book to someone who comments. So kind of start me in the beginning of your story, if you would.

Debbie Ausburn:

Okay. Well, I started out my parents were always very involved in youth ministries at our church and working with at risk kids. And so when I graduated from college, it was sort of a natural to go into working in that field. I worked as a probation officer with juvenile court in metro Atlanta. A lot of it involves social work, although I wasn't, I was never a licensed social worker. But I was essentially a social worker in the job. I burned out, I got tired of dipping out the ocean with a teaspoon and retreated to law school. But even as a lawyer, I stayed involved with organizations and volunteering with kids. And eventually, found myself as a foster parent. And I did different kinds of started out as an emergency placement and then did respite care, and then eventually had a couple of long term placements. And so then I left that job, I came back to home to Georgia. My mom had had a stroke. My brother and sister were raising children without my advice.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

With out your advice they needed? They needed me. You must be the oldest sibling?

Debbie Ausburn:

I am. Is it obvious?

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Yes. I'm an older sibling as well. So you know, they never listen to you, if only they did.

Debbie Ausburn:

But you know, my siblings and my kids, their wife would just be so much easier.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

So, so you went back to help with all that?

Debbie Ausburn:

That's right there. So I moved back home and then met and fell in love with a man with five kids. Now, it's not as bad as it sounds. Three of the kids were adults. So the two of them were still at home

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

needed parenting parenting at that point.

Debbie Ausburn:

You know, they keep coming back. So I joke right now our middle son and his teenage daughter. They've moved into our basement temporarily 11 years ago, so we still

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

it's all relative 11 years old, it's very in the scheme of the whole lifetime.

Debbie Ausburn:

That's right. It's still temporary. But we have a good relationship and you know that it's they have their space. And we have our space and, and it works out. But we we still, we have good relationships with most of the kids, one of the foster kids one of the stepkids, you know, they make decisions, and they pull away, and you just kind of wait for him to come back. But that's, that's part of parenting other people's kids. It's one of the things I've discovered is that with foster kids and step kids, we're not the people who are supposed to be in their lives, from their perspective. And so we have to give them space to work through that. And some it takes longer than others.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Yeah. I mean, and there's a similar phenomenon, I guess you'd say, even with biological children, and that they have, they have to pull away and become independent. And sometimes that part is pretty painful. There's sort of a rejection of where you come came from. I think everyone goes through that a little bit in adolescence. And then hopefully, ideally, at least I did, you come back and think to wow, like, these are the people that I love, and you come back to it, you appreciate things later, but you have to grow. Before you can do that.

Debbie Ausburn:

The way I phrase it was teenagers is the aliens will return their brains eventually.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Well, thank God thank god great. So anyone who's watching drop a comment if you are a foster parent, or a step parent, or you are helping raise someone else's child, um, Debbie, like, let's let's go with the step parenting aspect. When when you first meet someone, and they have children, or you have children, or both. What do you think is the most important thing to think about with regard to the kids,

Debbie Ausburn:

with regards with the kids, you have to, you have to decide early on what your lane is. And like I said, from the kids perspective, you're not supposed to be in their lives, they're supposed to have biological, intact family. That's the way that kids are hardwired. And when things don't work that way they're at there's always all sorts of good reasons that the intact family falls apart. But it still leaves the kids feeling something's off kilter. If we step parents come in, and start trying to do too much too soon, then we're going to copito the relationship. I, I have a great relationship with my stepkids and started out on a good relationship. But, but I understood that having been a foster parent, that my role was not to replace their model. They have a mom, she, she's very involved, and she loves them very much. And my role was as more of a mentor. So if you think of it in terms of fairy tales, I actually used to joke with my boys, that I had read all the manuals for being stepmother, Hansel and Gretel, and why even all of those I knew, but, but this stereotype is there. And I think it's because we as a, as a species, we're storytelling species, we tell ourselves, stories. It's how we pass on information. It's how we make sense of our world, and kids tells them they have a narrative for their lives. And, of course, they're always the hero in their story. And the role for us is either the villain or the mentor. And those are really the only two options for us, we're not going to be the parents, we're only going to be either the mentor or the villain. And that's where we have to understand that our lane is being a mentor, not a parent. And, or if we're not careful, it's just very easy to slot us into being the villain. Right.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Right. And and how when you have a kid who isn't isn't feeling it is thinking that you're more the villain. How do you push them towards that idea of that you can be a mentor to them what hadn't show them that?

Debbie Ausburn:

Well, you don't push them you show them. And so, you you have To give them space, you have to let them you know, give them permission to feel whatever they feel. Now, you still have to set boundaries. Every, every healthy relationship has boundaries. And so that doesn't mean that we just put up with all sorts of crap from them, right. But but but we presented in a very calm way of, for example, one of my personal boundaries is I just don't let people curse at me. And when somebody starts, I just withdraw from the conversation, just let's talk about this later. Right, and I don't respond I don't yell back, if it's any of the kids, you know, if it happens on the phone, I hang up. It happens in person, I just say we'll discuss this later. And I go somewhere else. Yeah. And it's a way of drawing a boundary in a very calm manner. And if they want to talk to me, this is how you talk to me. So you do have to balance that line between expecting respect. But giving them space to build to be whatever feel whatever else they want to feel and have, have room for the relationship to grow organically. So I would say that if you've got a kid who's who's rejecting you, which I've had, you just you just you understand you say, I'm sorry, I, I'm sorry that your parents are not together? Or was I would say, with my foster kids, and I'm sorry, Your mom's not here. I'm here. I love you. And these are the house rules.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Yeah. Right. Well, it's hard to set boundaries with kids when Yeah, and when they don't respect you as much even harder, I'm sure. Yeah. Can you think of something that is surprising your most people would find surprising possibly about being foster parent.

Debbie Ausburn:

I would say in many ways, being a single foster parent was easier than being a married foster parent. And people tend to not not realize that. And it's because when I was definitely there's downsides to being a single foster parent, any kind of single parent because I was the only pair of hands, right. And I had to build a safety net of people to pick up my kids at school and that sort of stuff. When I was married, I had a built in backstop to do those sorts of things. But the part that made it hard is this wonderful, generous, reasonable man that I married, had different opinions. He didn't take didn't agree with me,

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

again, like an infant children, if only the spouse would agree with us and listen to us Things would be so much easier.

Debbie Ausburn:

I had been doing this I knew what I was doing. Right, right. So it the the part that surprised me, was having to get on the same page as my spouse, or at the very least, agree to disagree, but decide who's who's lane this was in. And, and generally it's it. If you're disagreeing with your spouse, the biological parent gets the they're the ones who make the final decision, because they're the ones that the kids are connected to.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Right. That's fair, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Are there resources for for dealing with those sorts of the spousal disagreements? Are there is there anyone who can help you? Is there anywhere you can turn when you're having that problem, while parenting?

Debbie Ausburn:

Well, I would get, you know, counseling, or in our case, we had the trusted adults that we both respected, and were willing to listen to people who had been who had been experienced would say one of the things that we had to work through was is not so much with the stepkids. But we ended up one of my former one of my foster former foster kids. He had a really, really bad patch. And so we inherited a grandchild for five years, who had been through a lot of trauma. And the trauma was unexpected for my husband and even I, as experienced as I was with kids who had suffered trauma. I didn't recognize a lot of it because the child was so good at hiding it from us and I think that's one of the things that we have to realize is that you know, even divorced with kids is traumatic. Yeah, so if we're a step parent, we we know, with foster kids, obviously we know they've had trauma. But even with step kids, they've, they've lost their biological family, either through death or divorce. And even though kids are resilient, even though they can be fine on the surface, there is still some level of trauma there that they've suffered. So I think that one of the resources that I always encourage people to go to is not only counseling and not only trusted adults, but learn about the effects of trauma. There's trauma focused counseling. And if you look on Google, you'll find all sorts of things about dealing with kids who've suffered trauma.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

That's good. That's a very good thing to remember. We have a comment from Jessica asking, besides cursing, what other boundaries have you said,

Debbie Ausburn:

a lot of the boundaries were, like I said, the interpersonal relationships were just some basic level of respect. You don't have to love me, but you have to be we have to be respectful to each other. So there's, there's sort of Contra mishmash of things that are in that. The other things were the boundaries, were just house rules. And I've learned to present them as house rules rather than our rules or my rules. Because when you depersonalized somehow

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

right to blame it on something else.

Debbie Ausburn:

That's right, they understand it better. And that also helps with the disconnect I have living in our house and the parents are there. Other rival parents house. And I learned to I learned to just say those are the rules there. These are the rules here. So the rules here, for example, at curfew, those kinds of things are very rare. But being a lawyer, I have a very busy schedule. And it's kind of clear, my husband had custody of his two boys. So I was able to say, I will stay out of your room. I'm not going to tell you how to clean it up. I don't want it to be a health hazard. Hazard.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

We don't need to be condemned.

Debbie Ausburn:

That's right. That's right, exactly. But you're responsible for doing your own laundry. And and as the kids grew up, I shifted more and more responsibility to them. And but you know, some of the boundaries I had were public space has to be clean. If you carry your stuff into the public space, you gotta carry it out. They had chores and again, I I learned that let's take for example, one of my kids was supposed to take trash out. He would never remember take the trash out.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Oh I have one of those too.

Debbie Ausburn:

And and you can you could fuss at him you can yell at him. I remember actually saying to my son. So when do you plan to take the trash out? And this this kid, delightful kid because he didn't have a filter until he got a little older. When do you, whats your plan for taking the trash out? He said when I got tired of you're nagging me about it all right, so we have to do something besides nagging. So So I went back with a technique my mom used which was when the trash started you know building up in the kitchen getting close to overflowing. I just bagged it up and put it in his room. And I kept kept leaving the trash in

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

That is totally my style. I love it. Yeah. Well, it's your knock. I don't want in my kitchen anymore. I'm you're supposed to take it out in a row.

Debbie Ausburn:

That's it. That's right. So I learned to look for logical consequences and those sorts of areas and try to replicate life as much as possible. And that's what happens if you don't take the trash out. it piles up. I just needed it to pile up in his space instead of my space.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

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Debbie Ausburn:

Relax, take a deep breath. Take things one day at a time. And understand that if you're raising a grandchild, it's because they have trauma in their lives is you may not see it or may not understand it. You may not even know how bad it is. But so one of the things again, it goes kind of goes back to, again boundries. But understand sometimes that trauma response looks a lot like bad attitudes, abnoxious being disrespectful and those things. And so you have to learn how to say no, this is a boundary. You have to be respectful, but I understand where you're coming from. And we need to work on this together. And you need to walk alongside them. And you need to give them the structure and you need to you need to help them with learning how to adjust to the new situation. But you need to give them a lot of grace and a lot of room to find their way. And I guess the top thing I'd say is pick your battles. Don't don't argue over everything. Make sure that make sure that if you have a rule it is worth going to the mat for that rule because because they will push you they will push the boundaries, they will test you and you don't want to you don't want to do that for everything.

Jennifer Weedon Palazzo:

Again, that brings us full circle. Pick your battles also applies to siblings, children, spouses, all of it. Pick your battles. Know what's important to you. Thank you so much. I feel like there's so much that you could share and there are a million questions people must have you can put them in the comments and we you can find Debbie at Debbie Ausburn on Instagram and your website is DebbieAusburn.com Thank you guys so much for watching, and thank you Debbie for talking with me.

Debbie Ausburn:

Thank you I've thoroughly enjoyed it.