Dancing with a Porcupine

Parenting Wounded Children Without Losing Your Self

By: Jennie Owens

Narrated by: Joana Garcia

Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

You’re a foster parent or you’ve adopted children who’ve already had some years in foster care or spent their crucial early moments in an orphanage. You want so much to help them heal, but here you are at the end of your own rope. The kids are often angry, needy, rude, resentful. In fact, they know too well how to push your buttons.

You feel guilty that, sometimes, you want to just quit. You feel inadequate. How can anyone bear the sadness and pain they’ve gone through and that is now your burden, too?

What can you do? How can you make it through the day? How can you help your kids while also taking care of yourself?

In Dancing with a Porcupine, Jennie Owens shares the compelling story of her struggle to save her own life while caring for three troubled children she and her husband adopted from foster care. How could she stay loving, giving, and forgiving in the midst of a daily battle with children acting out the rage, resentment, and pain of their own traumatic pasts? Is there such a thing as secondary trauma, and if so, what do you do about it? When faith, endurance, and creativity are not enough, what’s next?

©2019 Forever Homes (P)2019 Forever Homes

Relatable

As a foster parent myself, this entire book felt like a moment of I am so glad I'm not the only one. I was constantly nodding my head in solidarity and understanding. It helped me reframe the way I am approaching a lot of situations with my foster kiddos. Put this on the must read list for foster parents most certainly.

Thank God

I truly think God for this book. Fost/adopt living can be so unexplainable & therefore often lonely. I have longed to hear someone who could talk about their experience candidly. The validation was healing for me & gave me hope that I will find my way through.

A must read for any foster or adoptive parent!!

As a foster parent, this book is so relatable! I am so glad I picked this up. It gives me relief to know I am not alone in how I feel or what I am experiencing. She also gives amazing insight for dealing with challenging times.

Amazing read!!!!

This book was just what I needed! I could relate to so much and it helped me to know I’m not alone.

Encouragement for Adoptive Moms

This is a great book to read to encourage you as you walk a difficult road of adoption. Well worth your time!

So insightful!

Thank you for sharing your experience! It made me have hope for the future and want to really take a look at caring for myself while caring for a child with a traumatic background!

Would Not Recommend

I hope a child in foster care never reads this book and is lead to believe that all foster parents or social workers share the same view of them as this author. Dancing With A Porcupine perpetuates the false narrative that all children in foster are all dangerous and burdensome. I had to stop listening when the author described her new foster placement’s demeanor as that of a “school shooter,” because he was not jumping up and down with joy when he first met her family. Being a foster parent is a undoubtedly a demanding and complex role to navigate, but this book is not the roadmap you’re looking for if you’re trying to selflessly make a difference in a child’s life. Please seriously consider your motivation for becoming a foster parent before doing so. Self-care is important, but there isn’t any amount of it that can replace a genuine commitment to changing a child’s life.

Robotic narration. True book, but horrific over sharing

So much of the author’s experience is relatable to me as an adoptive and foster mom, but the condescension with which she talks about her kids - let alone the gross over sharing of unnecessary parts of their private stories is painful to listen to and detracted from the good parts of the book. There are helpful tools and takeaways for parenting kids from hard places, but none that aren’t also available in other books. The main take away is: Self care is good. Trauma parenting is hard. God is faithful.

like having a kindergarten teacher read a horror movie script

the woman reading this book drove me nuts. she read the entire thing with the cadence of a kindergarten teacher. If I wasn't in the process of adopting from fostercare there is no way I would have been able to tolerate it.

As for the content of the book: I think it is useful to hear other people's experiences but to remember that they are just that. When Foster parents get information about a child's difficult behaviors things like the constant need for attention or constant hurtful comments don't come but they can wear you down more than something like the child's grades, which is always provided. The fact that she provides these real life glimpses is helpful. However, these are her personal experiences and I don't recommend anyone see them as recommendations. If you are looking for evidence based recommendations (which the title would suggest) look elsewhere.