The Bartlett Family Profile
Hello, we would like to introduce ourselves, we are Sharon and Don Bartlett. We are a positive and enthusiastic couple that are well suited to parent a school age child. We are both very patient and care a lot about kids. We love to teach and share with children. We believe either a single girl or sibling group would be the best match for our family. As a very close loving couple who values our family time together and we expect to spend a tremendous amount with our new addition. We are both firm believers that a child's past will always be part of their life, as such we highly value involvement and contact with past foster families and siblings. Grandparents too can have positive links to a child's past where healthy involvement is appropriate. We are dedicated to keeping those ties permanent if it is in our child's best interest.Where to find us...
Sharon and I live an active lifestyle. Our location on the waterfront allows us to access all the Chesapeake Bay has to offer. We love to swim and spend time on the water boating, kayaking, fishing or just playing. During the cooler months we will often be found at the local YMCA, which has many family friendly programs including an indoor splash park in the pool for the kids along with a long list of healthy ways to keep busy when the weather doesn't cooperate. We both love to hike and enjoy the outdoors as much as possible. We love animals and nature. At home we have a dog named Jake and a bird named Joey. On any given day we will receive visits from Geese, Rabbits, Ducks, Osprey and Eagles along with many other creatures that share our neighborhood.
We always take at least one major vacation every year to the Caribbean or other tropical haunt, along with other trips to visit family. We are really looking forward to showing our child different cultures and areas of the world, places that my wife and I only saw in books as children, places that we hope help our child understand the diverse and wonderful world in which we live. I have already called "dibs" on being their personal snorkeling instructor!
I work full-time as a Sales Manager and have a flexible work schedule, normally working from home on Monday and Wednesdays. My wife works at a community mental health clinic in an administrative capacity 4 days per week, and is home on Fridays and the weekend. We believe our very flexible schedule will allow for three major things for our new family.
First, we will be able to minimize the need for outside care, as we believe being home when the kids come home and having dinner together are important values.
Secondly, Sharon and I strongly believe in the personal development and socialization that comes with extra curricular activities, be it dance or gymnastics, sports or academics, children's personal interests are important. This schedule will allow us to be part of that portion of their life.
Lastly both of us being off on weekends will allow this new family to explore the local world and bond as a family.
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Home and Community
Our home is on Turkey Point Peninsula, located at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. In anticipation of our soon to be enlarged family we recently added 2 bedrooms, a bath and a family room. Situated on the waterfront, we have 210 feet of private sandy beach just waiting for kids to build sand castles on. We hope our new child/children like to swim as they will certainly get the opportunity, and they won't be alone as you can barely get Sharon out of the water in the summer time. Our child or children will also enjoy a large and private yard to run and play in. This quiet and safe suburban neighborhood will be an excellent place for a child to grow up. We are about a mile from the best elementary school in our town. Our town benefits from being the largest community in the county and as such has many services including hospitals doctors offices etc. nearby. Elkton is located half way between Baltimore and Philadelphia and we enjoy access to the services and culture offered in both locations. We are about 2 hours from Washington DC with all its museums and historical offering. Almost as importantly we won't forget to bring the kids to the Herr's Potato Chip Factory and the Turkey Hill Ice Cream Factory tours also! Parenting Experience
I have raised a son named Drew who is off on his own, now living in New Hampshire. He has benefited from Sharon's guidance over the past dozen years as have her two nieces who are 7 and 12. The Maryland's Pride foster and adopt training program began our combined training as a licensing requirement. In addition we have spent a lot of time reading and trying to educate ourselves on how to help children who have had less than optimum starts to life. We are both committed to being prepared to help our kids to attach and move through their past trauma as needed. On Monday evening Sharon facilitates a children's clinic, she sees the struggles their kids go through, and sees the sadness that trauma and neglect can bring. She will also tell you she sees the successes that professional treatment and good parenting practices can bring. Sharon and I have a very loving and close relationship and share this desire of adopting a child. For the past several years I have been a child's advocate as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Children (CASA). We have both been attending seminars and training in the hopes of learning better ways to support children and care for these kids. I have also trained, and have experience in creating both behavioral and educational IEP's for foster kids. I have also been involved in learning from our local special education advisory board in support of services to children. So many of the kids coming through the system need help both at school and at home to catch up with their peers. A formal IEP may spell out what services the school must supply to assist a child, and getting the correct services is extremely important. Having an IEP however is not as important as having a family that owns that IEP with the school, and is willing to commit to consistent nightly support of homework and assistance to that child. Most recently we attended classes on Trauma Focused Care that we think will be very valuable. We believe in consistent and clear, rules and boundaries as ways to make a child feel safe, along with a high parental involvement and nurturing style as a way for a child to feel unconditional love.
The real training we have received lately has been our role as foster parents to two girls now 7 and 9. The girls have been part of our family since October 2016. Though they have their challenges, these kido's have thrived and we have thrived as parents. Our role as parents to these girls has cemented our commitment to making permanent additions to our family. |
Support
Both Sharon's and my family are very supportive of our desire to add an addition to our family. Our child's new family have all committed to welcoming our daughter or daughters into the extended family. Her new brother (Drew), her cousins (Sophie and Tess) along with the rest of the Uncles, Aunts and Grandparents are looking forward to vacations and holidays together. An important asset that Sharon and I have is also our church family. We began our paths very differently, and as such we are open to accepting a child of any faith. Sharon being raised in a Jewish family celebrating those traditions and holidays and myself being raised as a Catholic with Christian traditions and holidays. From our beginning together we have celebrated both religions and have embraced the values of both our families heritages. Interestingly we found our church home in neither faith. We have become active members in a Bible based non denominational Christian Church. We are involved in their community support programs and love the sense of family this group brings. We are hoping our daughters will come to learn more about God through us, and if they (she) desires, become involved in the youth groups that this church offers. Sharon and I have also become involved with our local foster adopt support group, supplying respite as needed, the group has shown us a great deal about the path we are taking and the challenges we will be facing so we definitely need to list them as valuable current and future support. From a community stand point our local YMCA is kid focused with many after school and summer camp opportunities. Being on the water and near a state park the kids will also have traditional camps and sailing camp available. As mentioned earlier, our central location ensures we will have multiple programs to service any medical or therapeutic needs our child may need. We intend to be supportive of whatever professional services that may be of benefit to them. Motivation to Adopt
Sharon and I have a wonderful life, we have an affectionate and loving relationship, we have come to a time in our life when we have decided it is time to give back. The paths Sharon took working in human services, and I with CASA have shown us just how much need is out there. It has shown us we can make a difference in a child's life. We have made a huge commitment in learning, putting an addition on the house to accommodate 2 more kids bedrooms etc. When we made this commitment we decided if we were going to do this, we were both going to embrace it wholeheartedly with eyes wide open. We know children who come into foster care have seen and experienced more than their share of fear, anxiety and trauma. My wife and I intend to offer a lifelong commitment of unconditional love. We did not come to the decision to adopt quickly and not without much discussion and debate. We are both patient by nature and we realize a child will not accept or trust us right away, we know our commitment and resolve will be challenged. We believe we can teach appropriate boundaries and most importantly we expect to be a part of everything our new daughter does. We hope that with this abundance of parental involvement in her life, she will come to understand, we are in it for the long hall, for the rest of our lives. Forever family is a nice phrase, and we intend to make her as valued and as inseparable as the rest of our family.
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