By Paula Day

They don’t live in a shoe, but like the woman in the nursery rhyme, Ann and John Bolster have lost count of the children under their roof.

In the past 10 years they’ve cared for over 90 children, Mrs. Bolster estimates. Kay Anderson of the Cobb County Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFACS) believes the number is more than 100.

But keeping accurate count is not a concern for the Marietta couple. With their two daughters and son they have welcomed foster children into their home because they “like feel (we’re) helping and get satisfaction out of it,” said John Bolster. Giving his wife credit, he added somewhat ruefully, “It’s more than a fulltime job. Sometimes I wonder why she does it.”

“It has meant a lot being able to help these children. It’s helped our children too. They’ve grown, learned more about life and how to share with those less fortunate. It’s been a broadening, enriching experience for me and the whole family,” he said.

Staunchly anti-abortion, Mrs. Bolster said the connection between being pro-life and foster parenting is indirect. A regard for life, no matter how diminished, undergirds the Bolsters’ care.

“It’s obviously a tremendous response to grace,” and an inspiration to others, commented Father Gene Barrette, MS. The priest is parochial vicar at St. Ann’s parish where the Bolsters are members. “They’re an example of people who have taken the pro-life message and focused on doing something for the young people who are already here and are very needy.”

The original reason the family decided to care for foster children is a dim memory. Their two girls, Laurabeth and Erica, ages 11 and nine at the time, had taken to hear what they had heard in church and school about needy children. Mrs. Bolster didn’t want them to grow up thinking everyone lived like Cobb Count’s upper middle-class residents. The family’s question was “What do we do about it?” and the answer was foster parenting.

The two sisters, now in college, took an active role being foster siblings over the years. Laurabeth, 21, is a psychology major at Oglethrope University. Presently a part-time intern with Dekalb Retardation Service Center, she is considering a career working with the mentally retarded. Erica, 19, also at Oglethorpe, wants to effect change in the judicial system that handles adoptive and foster-care children. The Bolsters’ 18-year-old son, Keith, takes great interest in those with handicaps, according to his mother, and presently shares his room with a child with cerebral palsy.

The family’s ranch-style home is situated on a gradually descending slope in an east Cobb subdivision. Five children were home on a recent January morning because it was teachers’ workday, Rain made it impossible to play outdoors so Karenlynn, who is adopted, and two foster children, half-sisters Violet and Sarah, played upstairs.

Seated on a sofa in the living room, Mrs. Bolster deftly managed the activity of 11-year-old Nick and two- and a-half-year-old Tigger as she talked about foster parenting. Nick has been with the Bolsters two years, Tigger 22 months. The girls, ages seven and 10, have been in and out of the family’s care for over a year.

Nick, who has cerebral palsy, lay on the floor occasionally grasping a plastic ball and reaching toward nearby toy box. Mrs. Bolster expressed concern about his increasing inactivity. Nick is the first child with CP she has cared for and so she planned to research the prognosis.

“He enjoys church so much,” she commented. “(He) loves holding hands during the ‘Our Father’ and the kiss of peace. The ushers always give him a lot of attention.”

The child weighs 45 pounds and is over four feet tall. Mrs. Bolster is uncertain how much longer she can carry him. The disability is a form of paralysis characterized by involuntary motions and difficulty in controlling the voluntary muscles.

The two interact, Ann talking as one would to a toddler as she changes his diapers. He responds with non-verbal, contented sounds. She notes how he moves his head back and forth on the carpet, matting the hair on the back of his head.

“I used to wonder why the parent doesn’t take care of that when I saw a disabled child with disheveled hair. I didn’t know how much care it took.”

In the meantime, Tigger is a perpetual ball of energy. Muscular and athletic for his age, he can pull himself up onto an end table using only his arms and shoulders. He stumbles unfocused about the room, sometimes stepping on Nick, grabbing whatever attracts his attention. Pausing a moment, he stares intently at the lit lamp and then reaches for it. Ann Bolster’s ever ready hand removes the lamp from his grasp.

Tigger is brain damaged and possibly autistic although a definitive diagnosis has not been made. Medication has done little to slow his restlessness. Every once in a while he will approach Ann, come into her arms, and lift his face to hers for a kiss, something he only recently has learned to do.

The room is child-proofed with gates at the doorways. At one point Ann moves to tie venetian blind cords up out of Tigger’s reach. Age-appropriate toys lay scattered about. Whereas Nick will sit in his high chair in the kitchen with a contented grin on his face, Tigger manages to rock his across the room until he can reach something.

Meals at the Bolster table are free form. “I break all the child-rearing rules,” Ann Bolster concedes. Nick has a few favorite things: M&Ms, chocolate cake, spaghetti sauce. Her goal is to get the calories into him and hope for the best. She does manage to disguise some vegetables using spaghetti sauce.

Tigger, on the other hand, “eats everything – fish, asparagus. It’s easy to feed him, but not very reassuring,” she admits. Not being able to distinguish among flavors and textures can be a symptom of a brain disorder.

“I’m a great recycler,” she said in answer to how the family manages financially. Friends give her toys and clothes their own children have outgrown. The Bolsters receive a stipend from the county, but $10 per diem hardly covers expenses.

Foster parents volunteer to care for children as if they were their own, said Kay Anderson, supervisor of placement at Cobb County DFACS.

On one level for the Bolsters this care means making frequent trips to the doctor, keeping track of medications, filling out lengthy forms for testing. On another level it means giving up living space to create additional bedrooms, sharing toys, and especially, as in the case of at-risk children, losing sleep when their care requires it. All done, in Father Barrette’s words, “as if it were nothing.”

A child may be placed under the protective custody of the court when police become aware he or she has been abused, neglected or abandoned, according to Ms. Anderson. Or DFACS may be the agency to seek the court’s protection for a child, placing him or her in a foster home. Some remain in foster care briefly, maybe only overnight. Others may stay for a period of years. Statistics indicate children in Georgia remain in foster care an average of 24 months, according to Ms. Anderson.

Children with special needs, like Nick and Tigger, may be transferred to a residential facility that can provide long term treatment or adopted by a family willing to care for their lifetime needs.

An energetic, youthful 50-year-old with three grown children, Ann Bolster would seem to have earned a rest. But the couple recently adopted a child. They have been foster parents for the five-and-a-half-year-old since she was an infant. At one time the child was returned to her natural parents for 12 weeks and the Bolsters were devastated. They were convinced she would not thrive in that environment.

“But we have no input into the children’s placements,” Mrs. Bolster pointed out. “We’re just caretakers.”

After two years the court terminated all parental rights. The Bolsters completed the paperwork and waited seven months before Karenlynn’s adoption became final Jan. 4.

With alert brown eyes and a ponytail bobbing continuously the child shows the precociousness of one who has spent most of her life in the company of adults. When asked by her kindergarten teacher what she planned to be on Halloween, she replied, “A mendicant and a ballerina.” She had heard an older sister speak of beggars as mendicants. At the breakfast table one morning she urged another to “quaff that orange juice.”

“We didn’t get into caring for foster children with adoption in mind,” Mrs. Bolster said, “but she was with us so long, it was the natural thing to do. We already had three grown children. I’m reminded of the saying, ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.’”

On the other hand, Mrs. Bolster becomes very annoyed when people say, “I could never be a foster parent. I could never give them up.” To her the comment implies only those who lack the capacity to form deep relationships can be foster parents. There is pain when a child leaves, she admits. But “don’t ever have a friend, don’t even have one child” if you want to avoid the pain of loss, she advises.

Mrs. Bolster is constantly aware she is only a foster parent and she works to keep open communication with parents of the children.

“Once you remove a child from their care, there’s a chance the parents will lose interest,” she pointed out. “You have to be careful and must allow for frequent visits if there’s the slightest chance for the child and parents to be reunited.

For the first time in a long time Ann Bolster now has three child-free mornings when Tigger attends play-therapy school which includes children without disabilities. The interaction with other preschoolers seems to be good for him, Mrs. Bolster says, for he comes home more content. The older children attend public school, Nick in a program for children with special needs.

Kay Anderson has known the Bolster family for 10 years. “The entire family is very loving and totally involved with the children,” the supervisor said, “the girls and Keith as well as Ann and John. They extend that care to the adoptive family. They’re one of the families willing to take care of children on an everyday basis and they will accept a wide range of children, those with medical needs, developmental disabilities, teens, healthy children, black as well as white. It makes no difference to them. Children are children.”

Cobb County has a great need for foster parents according to Ms. Anderson, particularly parents who are willing to work with children with disabilities and behavioral problems. At the present time the county has 130 foster homes and 275 children in foster care. Doris Walker, Unit chief of Foster Care in Georgia’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, estimates 3,400 families providing home for 9,000 family-placed children. Another 7,000 children are placed with relatives, in institutions, group homes or hospitals.

The Bolsters have been nominated by Cobb County to be state Foster Parents of the Year. They have already been selected from among the seven families representing metropolitan-area counties as this year’s Metropolitan Foster Parents. At a Georgia conference Feb. 26 and 27 the state award winner will be announced.

(The names of the children in foster care have been changed to shield their identities.)