“Was she in your tummy too?” The words came out of Tammy Johnson’s then-four-year-old daughter as she pointed at a pregnant woman’s toddler inside of Walgreens.
“Well, of course, she was in my tummy,” replied the pregnant woman. “Just like you were in your mom’s tummy.”
But the four-year-old shook her head. “Oh, no. We were not in our mom’s tummy,” she said, referring to her sister who sat in the shopping cart with her.
The pregnant woman turned to Tammy and tilted her head.
“And I said,” relayed Tammy, recalling the event. “‘We do adoption.’ It was the first time that I just really understood that my kids thought of us as their parents even though we’re not their birth parents.”
But knowing that the Johnsons’ six younger children were adopted only tells part of their story — a story that includes great sacrifice, generosity, and patience.
“I often say it’s so extremely hard, but I can’t imagine doing anything different,” said Tammy. “I can’t think of anything more important that I could be doing now.”
A long hard journey
When Tammy and her husband Bill, who live rural Baraboo, first started considering adoption, they weren’t new to parenting. They had three biological children already and had little hope of being able to conceive again.
“Some friends of ours had recently adopted from overseas,” said Tammy, 52. “So we checked into that. That was very costly.”
In the meantime, a new friend who had adopted foster children entered the Johnsons’ life and introduced them to the concept of treatment foster care.
Treatment foster care serves children who have experienced significant trauma, abuse, neglect, or medical challenges.
“The need is so great,” said Tammy. “There are little children that I’m not sure what they would do if they didn’t have a home they could go into.”
The Johnsons’ new friend explained that this wasn’t a program to directly adopt foster children, nor was it technically a foster to adopt program. It was simply a road that would allow them to foster needy children while being open to the possibility of adoption.
“There is no guarantee that the children placed in your care will stay with you or that you’ll be able to adopt them,” explained Tammy. “There could be a grandparent or a relative or somebody who could pop up.”
“Reunification is always the number one goal when (children) are in foster care,” explained Bill.
But Tammy added that social workers have a pretty good idea of when they need “to start seeking a home that could possibly adopt.”
Nervous but moving forward
Tammy admitted she was a little nervous about the idea. It would be a tough journey involving lots of sacrifices, but overall the Johnsons felt that God was leading them to serve children in this way.
“There are so many kids in the system,” said Bill. “And we believe that all life is precious. There are these kids that need homes, and it’s a way to put our faith into action.”
Getting licensed to do foster care took around six months.
“You need to have a home study and rightly so,” said Tammy. “They need to be sure that children will be safe in your care.”
In addition to the home study, Tammy talked about the hours of education needed to become a treatment foster parent and the hours of ongoing education to keep your license.
“We had a lot of education on reactive attachment disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome,” she said.
“You know, different things that often can be in play.”
The first child placed with them was a baby from Milwaukee.
“It was very temporary,” said Tammy.
“He stayed with us for one week until they found a foster home in Milwaukee that could care for him. And even that was hard and disappointing.”
One of their children lived with them for five years before he was officially adopted. He had been in the system since birth and had been placed in another foster home before he entered the Johnsons’ home.
“I have never seen an agency work so hard with the parents, trying absolutely everything to reunite from birth,” Tammy said. “They don’t take terminating parental rights lightly.”
“Nor should they,” added Bill.
Tammy continued, “So you are in it for a long time, and you just hope and pray that it’ll be finalized, but you know it might not be. It’s not like overseas adoption. It’s not like you go and bring your child home and complete the adoption. You have to deal with social workers and their parents and, like I said, many, many issues that the children have from past trauma.”
Out of their six adopted children, only two of the children had birth parents whose parental rights were taken away.
In many cases, the birth parents relinquished their rights during the trial.
“We have seen jury trials, bench trials with a judge,” said Tammy. “Some parents just relinquish. I imagine it’s a very hard thing for a birth parent to go through, to stand before a judge or to stand before a jury and have all this evidence presented.”
One birth father relinquished his parental rights after a phone conversation with Bill.
“(He) just wanted to know what kind of home we had and how she was doing,” said Bill. “Once he talked to me, he signed off on his daughter.”
Divine providence
As hard as the journey has been, the Johnsons sincerely feel that God had led them to do this work and that he has been providing.
Tammy spoke about the purchase of their eight-bedroom country home on the outskirts of Baraboo as a part of God’s divine providence.
“When we adopted our first sibling group of three, we weren’t even looking for a different house,” she said.
“It seemed like a long shot that we’d be able to move out here . . . but it all fell into place.”
At the time of the purchase, they did not know that they would go on to foster and adopt three more children.
Their home and all the acreage it is on has turned into a blessing for their large family.
“When it is hard, I just remind myself this is where God led us,” Tammy said.
“This is where he put us. He put these children into our home, and we can do it. We can do it because it’s God’s plan, and he is helping us.”