Lynette & Stefanie start off the show talking about the plans they have for Halloween in the week to come. Then, after a quick recap of the LA Podcast Festival and the kids’ behavior Lynette shares a video of a very talented & inspiring special needs girl that she recently saw (embedded below). Then after a bit more Halloween talk Lynette’s friend Tiffany joins the show.
Tiffany Neciosup-Paz came into Lynette’s life as her hairdresser and Lynette was eager to get her onto the show to share her extremely interesting stories about being a foster parent. Aside from adopting their two adorable daughters seen in the pictures below they’ve had 27 foster children in the last 3 years and the stories to go with them, as well as insight into a more temporary form of foster care known as respite care.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:17:27 — 35.5MB)
Katy Perry & Jodi DiPiazza Sing at Night of Too Many Stars
Links
Learn more about the Van Nuys based foster agency that Tiffany works with Inner Circle
Follow Lynette on Twitter @LynetteCarolla and Stefanie @SWilderTaylor and Follow Tiffany on Instagram @HairLuvByTiff
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Show Credits
Producer: Gary Smith
They are truly angels – such a great show – please have her back with her husband and thank her for sharing her photos – the girls are precious!!
I have listened to this show from day 1. I am not a parent yet, my husband and I just celebrated our second anniversary and we are planning on waiting a few more years until that venture.
I absolutely love your show for so many reasons. I’ll go ahead and list a few of them for you.
1) I graduated college just over three years ago. After graduation I was uprooted from my gal pals and this show filled in that void of “girl talk”
2) I am an ultra prepared, but pretty realistic person. Your show gives such honest commentary about parenthood.
3) You guys are just funny, hilarious and great to listen to. I listen to Adam’s shows and Alison’s show, but when Friday rolls around I instantly put you guys on.
Now onto this episode. First off, the video made me cry. To take a segment of people who are typically cast off from a normal life, Jodi’s story brings so much hope.
The part of me that is this ultra prepared person has brainstormed the scary possibilities of having kids. Being slightly neurotic I have thought about the possibility of either my husband and/or I being infertile. We already have talked about wanting to adopt, and Tiffany’s interview really answered a lot of questions I had. If/when we have kids, what if they have a learning disability? These have all been scary thoughts that have crossed my mind multiple times. But today’s episode really helped put those fears to rest. Looking at the other side of the coin.
Thank you so much! Love your show! Stefanie, love your books!
_Dev
I want to join in with Dev, and second the comments. I too am single, but love your show for all of the reasons she mentioned. I really look forward to Fridays, and save all of your shows, and when I have to travel long distances, you continue to keep me company. Keep it up Lynette, Stephanie & Producer Gary!!
Oh yes, and want to comment on the show with Tiffany, you really do need to have her on again, she was such a great guest, very eloquent and doing the work of angels!!
To be honesty, it’s a hit or miss with your guests. But, I really, really enjoyed listening to this episode. Please have her on more often.
Good Show – Interesting interview.
It sounds like this Foster care is just a back door to adopting.
And it shows Tiffany’s real intention was to just get a kid.
Foster care is about “temporarily” caring for a kid until the biological parents get there act together – Not to alienate a biological parent to gain a kid .
If you listen to Tiffany – she had an ulterior motive for “caring” for these kids but was really looking to adopt.
Not impressed with Taking away a kid from a biological Mother – Tiffany “reported” lack of car seat. Proactively removing a child is disturbing.
Interesting that the State removed a child from Tiffany’s care and she then had to go through a private agency.
There is more to this story than meets the eye.
Good interview though.
Foster Care is not about “temporarily” caring for a “kid” (nice choice of words) until the biological parents get there act together. 80% of foster children re-enter the foster system. For a child to be REMOVED from any home you will have to do more than just leave him/her in the front seat with out a proper car seat. That is not how the system works, these children enter the system for specific reasons. Drug abuse, molestation, neglect, the list goes on. Returning a child to it’s family does not always mean a better life. These “kids” look like they are in great hands.
Alejandro,
You are correct about “kids” with problem parents (i.e. troubled parents). I use the word “kid” as a common description not in a derogatory sense.
But you missed the point about hearing how Tiffany described how her Family “got lucky” in finding a Child who could be wrenched from the biological Mother.
A Biological Mother standing in front of a Judge – trying to “prove her worth” is tough to hear about.
I personally adopted my son because the Father did not wish to raise the child. I spoke to the Father and was told this directly. I would never go to Court to “prove” how bad a person is at parenting – when they are standing in Court looking at me trying to keep there biological offspring.
That was my point.
I agree; I was horrified by Tiffany’s complaints about how Amanda’s mother kept visiting. The goal of foster care is reunification with biological families–helping biological parents to get to a point where they can nurture their children. It is NOT intended to provide infertile couples with children.
Interesting.. I felt the opposite of the other commenters. I cannot bear listening to a wealthy, healthy, woman with education talking down about the biological parents of these children. I work with low income families and you should hear the stories from THEIR perspective. “Ghetto swap meet clothes”? Gross and offensive. Taking kids to Puerto Rico for vacation doesn’t make you a better parent than a poor person.
I tend to agree with you.
As a divorced Dad (Mother divorced after we had a biological daughter and I adopted her son). I spent ten plus years in court on avg. of 1.5 years fending off accusations of abuse by Mother with an agenda and a wealthy boyfriend fronting her legal bills.
I NEVER fought to remove Mother or reduce her time – She was the opposite.
What I learned was that the Family court system has an agenda to make one of the parties out to be the “bad guy” and to process the case so that it is “Final”. Most of the time it is easier to demonize the Father.
Most men are driven away from their kids and it takes a savvy and obstinate Father to stick with it and buck the system. But in the end the kids are alienated and the person who has the most “face time” tends to sway the kids to their side.
It was interesting to hear from the biological Father in the interview who had to “prove his worth” before being “allowed” to raise his kid. The reason being that the child had not lived with him before.
Very interesting interview. Keep up the good work. Thank you for the forum.
Fathers always get the short end of the stick, but that’s because women turn evil during a divorce and use kids to get back at the fathers
I love this podcast, but not so much of a fan of this guest. I have to agree with B and Fieldengineer on this one. Yes, I think it is wonderful that there are people out there willing to care for people’s children as they go through difficult times, but the comments Tiffany made about one of her daughter’s biological mothers was awful. And the comments on the clothes are superficial. Foster parents should hope that the child can be reunited with their biological parents when they are willing and able. Can she not be empathetic to the biological moms, or does she only see them as pesky insects? Lynette was just awed by her beauty and how impossible that someone so cute could be a foster mom. It was a bit odd. It seemed like Stefanie was questioning Tiffany’s actions, which I appreciated.
I completely disagree!! I felt like this woman was completely genuine and good hearted. Unfortunatley, not all biological parents are the best thing for some children. Thank God there are people like Tiffany and her husband that can make the best of the bad situations these kids are in! Great show!
Great show! Love listening to Tiffany tell her story. So wonderful for people like her to be out there!! Thanks for getting her on and sharing her story!!
one of the best shows ever. I have been wanting to do foster for a while now but I’m already spread too thin. Perhaps when my children are a little older and less needy. I didn’t even know that respite care existed, I might be able to work that into my schedule. BTW, I’m Chinese
Great show ladies. It’s awesome to hear the stories from people like Tiffany. It’s great to know that people like that are out there walking among us. Keep it up and I’ll be waiting for the next episode.
I’m hoping this episode marks a change in policy towards not having the guest on right from the start of the show. FCOL is about Lynette & Stefanie and the audience needs to hear them ALONE, talking to each other for at least the first 10-15 minutes of the show.
yes, the format worked much better.
regardless of what one thought of the guest…the format and flow was much better.
Best episode in quite a while.
Goodness, I love this show and I don’t even have kids. What a great guest! She restored my faith in humanity.
Amazing and important episode. I work licensing families for Foster Care and felt like Tiffany gave a wonderful and fair perspective of being a foster parent, especially for those who ultimately would like to build their family that way. I couldn’t have agreed more when she said that those who only desire to take in children who will definitely need o be adopted as “missing out on the blessing”. Every state is a little bit different in their timelines, how families are licensed, etc but it was all presented as her personal experience.
I was of course moved by her stories, but it is literally my profession. I hope others listening were also moved and will reach out for information!
As always, great job Gary, Lynette and Stephanie!
I am really confused. Lynette introduced this guest as 80′s singer Tiffany. This lady is not 80′s singer Tiffany that I know with red hair. Even the song that was played at the end of the podcast was “I think we’re alone now” which is not sung by this guest Tiffany.
LOL, I thought the same thing. This Tiffany was super annoying. I admire her for what she has done and doing to promote helping these kids. She talked too much about race, and ethnicity. If you don’t care, then you wouldn’t constantly talk about what color each child was…
Love you girls……
great and important episode!
people like my Tiff may come off as callous to you & me (..mr & mrs PC, appalled by words, uncomfortable with stereotypes)…because this kind of shit makes you and me cry our face off…Tiffany faces it every day after day and that takes a very unique caring person. As for any negativity toward these childrens biological parents, think for a moment how much average kids parents piss you off with stupid shit, now imagine parents of children who are in and out of the system…i hope you will have her back on the show, it is nice to hear from a non-famous mommy
Thanks, I agree. This woman is a private individual who has worked to help the children that society throws away. She is not a politician trained to say the right thing, at the right time, to the right demographic. She is walking the walk.
I am a former child welfare worker and I can tell you that being a good foster parent is a hard and thankless job. Tiffany was right in that a monthly stipend is provided but usually a month behind so you have to be financially stable enough to provide for an additional child for at least a month. And we all know raising children isn’t cheap. A child can be immediately placed with a cleared family member after a quick background check, ie aunt, grandparent, etc but the family member isn’t paid until passing an extensive background check, the home study and going through the fostering education courses which can take anywhere to three months to a year. This is a huge burden, financial and otherwise. I always recognized that my monthly visits were a bit off-putting to the foster parents. Who would want a complete stranger doing a suprise visit to your home on a monthly basis to make sure that this child (which you are supposed to treat as your own) is safe, healthy and relatively happy and that your home is sanitary and safe? I certainly wouldn’t and I have nothing to hide. Please continue t0 do interviews like this. It was very interesting.
Thank you for providing a perspective from the “trenches” that doesn’t mollycoddle the biological and legally declared unfit parent.
As to the previous commenter who said we should “hear it from the biological parent perspective”: I’m willing to give those individuals deserve empathy and understanding for their illness, however until their treatment is successful, I give no quarter to their quarrel or qualms concerning the care of their child.
I don’t say this to begin a quarrel either; perhaps you have not had a deep relationship with an addict, one which you relied upon them to provide stability as a parent or trusted partner. If so you may not realize the key trope missing in their tragedies is acceptance of being flawed, as all humans and good tragedies include.
If all stories begin and end with them as the victim, and especially when everyone is buying it, they are still deep within the illness; that is not a judgement of worth nor character in a vacuum, it just exists as part of what they must overcome. Outside that vacuum there are new humans who have a slim chance to escape the eddy before it turns into a whirlpool.
Therefore absent harm to the children, I’d advise all judgement withheld; especially judgement upon those who are picking up the slack. The slack not only of those directly and as it seems important to point out, biologically responsible, but the remainder of society that prefers to be the critic-spectator on the safe side of the ropes.
Hi Ladies, This was probably one of my favorite shows. Please have Tiffany back on again…. and her husband. He is pretty cute!
Great show. We adopted out of South Korea. People always asked “Why didn’t you adopt ‘American’”. This is part of the reason. There is no way we could live through the heartbreak and agony of going through the foster system like this. I understand some of the comments above, but thankfully there are people like Tiffany out there that do this. For the people who didn’t like her attitude, what are you doing for these children?
LOVED THIS! Please do more of these!
Fantastic episode. Never knew much about foster care before today.
Great to know there are people like Tiffany to take care of kids in need.
Thanks girls
Great episode – we have three adopted children from foster care and Tiffany had very similar experiences as ours. I think what is important all around is not to judge how people choose to build their families. We were foster-to-adopt only placement because we weren’t interested in fostering. We wanted to adopt kids but didn’t want to wait. We also wanted multiple placements because we knew we wanted to have more than one child and we wanted to be able to keep siblings together. The process of getting children in our home went very quickly for us after our home study was completed. We started visits with two brothers, 3 and 4, who had been in a foster placement for close to 18 months due to abuse and neglect. When we decided to take them it was considered “legal risk” because they was a chance, although slim, that the biological mother could get them back. As we were starting the process we were asked if we also wanted to take a newborn sibling who was born drug-positive. We met all three boys, walked out of the house after an hour, and said, well, I guess we need to get a mini-van! After that it was a long two years of visits and many court dates, including a jury trail, until we could legally adopt them. The boys are now 10, 9, and almost 6 and have been legally adopted for 4 years. We are white and they are black. We live in a very small town in Wisconsin and I’m a teacher. Everyone knows who my kids are!
One thing I wanted to point out is that respite care isn’t just for casual weekends away for the foster parents. These children have been though very traumatic experiences and it can mentally exhausting to parent them. My two older boys were also abused by their foster mother so they had major trust and attachment issues that took years to work though. We never took the option of respite but I think it was always nice knowing that option was there.
I could fill two hours of podcasts with our story. I wish I could attach a picture so I could show you my amazing kids. It is the greatest gift I was ever given. They were meant for me.