Ever watched “19 Kids and Counting” or “Kate Plus 8” and wonder just how these families deal with so many kids? As the mother of three biological children, one adopted child and an assortment of foster children, Rose Marchick will be happy to tell you if you can get her to sit down long enough to tell her story.
Marchick and her husband, Clint Pitts, are foster parents. As such, the Duggers or Kate Gosselin may actually have it easier than the Marchicks because these reality show families know how big their families are. The size of the Marchick family can change at any minute because it specializes in emergency foster placements.
Emergency placements are “kids who are removed from their home in an emergency situation and are in a foster home for three to five days during an investigation. The Marchicks also take in regular placements, who are children who will be in a foster home for at least a couple of months.
Since the Marchicks became foster parents six years ago, they have taken care of more than 50 children ranging in age from 1 day to 3 years. But it’s been a slow week for the Marchicks, with “only seven children” living in their home on Monday. That included their three biological children ages 7, 8 and 15; their 10-year-old special-needs daughter who was adopted when she was 3; and “only three foster placements.” They’ve had as many as 11 children in the home at one time.
“It’s been a really quiet two weeks around here, so I’ve been organizing drawers and kind of pacing,” Marchick said.
Repairing the world
Marchick’s Judaism has drawn her to the life of a foster parent because “kids need homes and you do what you need to do.”
“I adamantly believe that our purpose in life is to do everything we can do in our situation for the world,” she said.
Someday Marchick would like to go to another part of the world and work in an orphanage. But she knows while she has young children her place is where they can be kept safe and well cared for. So she chooses to make sure that other kids are safe and loved as well.
“If it means I get up at 2 in the morning and don’t get back to sleep, but a kid goes to a home and has someone tuck him in after being pulled away from his parents, that’s OK. If it’s my convenience or their safety and security there’s no issue,” she continued.
She is a true believer in tikkun olam, repairing the world.
“I really believe the foundation of Judaism is doing active deeds,” she said. “I tell my kids every day that the most important thing is making a difference by doing something. Every kid that comes here has been warm, safe and loved while they are here.”
A devoted caregiver
Marchick is so committed to being an emergency foster parent that she literally sleeps with her cell phone in her hand. She said it’s not unusual for it to ring in the middle of the night, either.
“I keep it on vibrate so it doesn’t wake up my kids, because a lot of times I have a kid sleeping in my room. But I want to hear it in case there is an emergency,” Marchick said. “It’s in my hand or on me physically at all times. I could go two weeks without an emergency kid and then get a call for a sibling group of four.”
One of the reasons Marchick is so popular with the foster agency is that she is always willing to keep families together.
“We refuse to split siblings. With all the upheaval in their lives, they need each other,” explained Marchick, who first became certified as a foster parent while living in Indiana. When they moved here a year and a half ago, they had to be re-certified by the state of Kansas.
“There are case workers in and out of here all the time. Our life is just an open book,” she said.
They live in a five-bedroom home that is filled with “lots of bunk beds,” to accommodate the ever-changing size of the family. There are rules about who can share rooms, often determined by the children’s ages and gender.
Finances are tight and Marchick said she will always do without something for herself if it means getting something one of the kids needs. She said foster children often arrive in the middle of the night with no belongings except the pajamas they are wearing. “They often don’t even have shoes on,” she said.
If Marchick doesn’t have something in storage to fit the child/ren, she will make a trip to an all-night WalMart to get whatever is needed.
In fact Pitts, who works 80-hours plus a week as a restaurant manager, said “there’s never a dull moment” around their home.
As Kate Gosselin has been quoted saying, “It’s a crazy life, but it’s our life,” Marchick can say the very same thing. On an average week she washes about 40 loads of laundry. She holds a doctorate in psychology and even finds time to teach two days a week at a community college.
She grocery shops twice a week and said “you can imagine what that bill is like.” But that doesn’t keep her from letting the kids invite their friends to stay for dinner, where she feeds an average of 10 to 12 people on any given night.
“We always invite more for Shabbat,” said Marchick, who said as strict vegetarians it’s very easy to keep kosher.
Although most of the foster children are not Jewish, Marchick said it doesn’t seem to be an issue for any of them. The two youngest Marchick children attend the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy while the other children attend a variety of schools.
Next to the dinner table is a color-coded chore chart to help keep the family organized. Each child has a color that matches, among other things, his or her towel, cup and toothbrush.
Marchick doesn’t want to be considered a saint by any stretch of the imagination.
“I’m tired, but that’s life. Anything we’re doing, we’re just doing. It’s not difficult compared to others. It’s not a death march and it’s not living in Darfur with bullets flying over your head. So what do any of us have to complain about?”
Marchick believes her children have all grown from being foster siblings.
“They would give anything to anybody who needed something,” she said.
