Extra Reading Diary Post: Saints and Animals

In the unit Saints and Animals unit, my absolute favorite story was The Wolf-Mother of Saint Ailbe.  It was a wonderful story about a wolf foster mother who took in a human baby to raise as one of her own.  This story made me think about my own life and how similar it is to this story.  I was engrossed in this story from the minute I started reading it and couldn't wait to find out how it ended.  It was like I was reading the story of my own life, but written from a foster child's perspective.

In the beginning, the parents abandon the child and this is an unfortunate commonality with fostering in present day.  The children are found in horrible conditions or without parental supervision at all, and then they are given to foster parents to raise.  As in this story, the wolf foster mother loved the child as if he was her own pup.  She did not treat the human child any differently then her biological pups.  This is the same way that good foster parents feel about their foster children.  We love them, even when they don't look or act like us, and we raise them as a member of our family until they are reunified with their parents (or other family members) or become a permanent, legal part of our own family.  When the human baby was taken from the wolf mother, her heart broke for the loss of that child.  As foster parents, we do mourn the loss of a child when they are returned to their biological family, but we also know that is the goal from the beginning of our journey with the child.  After many years Saint Ailbe grew up in the castle with his new family, but also longed and thought about his wolf family too.  This is also a normal part of a foster child's journey.  We've had children who have grown up after leaving our home and have looked us up so that they could see us again.  I loved how Saint Ailbe saved his wolf mother and took care of her and her family after the hunters had captured her.  Often times when we see kids after they've left our home, they are extremely excited to see us and talk to us again.  As in this story, the wolf mother has fears and reservations about the child's new family, but they all became a happy family in the end.  We have also had many similar happy ending with our former foster children and their biological families. 

Saint Ailbe