We quickly discovered that we needed help because we were not able to handle all the problems that jumped out during the living out our dream to love and work with children. I began to read. I checked many books on diagnoses of children and what they meant, parenting techniques, and I also joined a foster parent group.
I went back to college and got a degree in psychology. During that time I learned a more professional way to meet with psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as the social workers and probation officers I worked with on a daily basis.
None of these things gave us the courage to stand up to kids who were yelling, "You're not my real mother," or made fun of our birth children, or made accusations in public that we didn't treat them as well as our birth children, and on and on (never ending).
What made the difference for us was to allow ourselves to be trained and to use that training, even when it was hard to make that choice. Choice Theory gave us that ability. We learned that blame doesn't matter; the fact that there was unhappiness in our family is what mattered. We learned that the only way to make a difference is to teach and model good relationships.
For those children who were interested, we showed them a way to have a relationship with God, and this combination has stayed with many, many children through their adult life and into parenthood of their own.