Manitowoc couple fosters, adopts kids who need a home
MANITOWOC – Becky Brooks sliced a head of iceberg lettuce on a paper plate in her Manitowoc kitchen, listening to her granddaughter, seventh-grader Bianca Michel, and daughter Danyell, 17, chatter about their school day.
As the mother of five grown children and nine kids adopted through foster parenting, Becky is used to multitasking.
While the girls talked and giggled, the 58-year-old stay-at-home mom boiled water to heat hot dogs for the family supper, sliced buns and pulled out three
bottles of salad dressing, stopping the conversation to ask kids — ranging in age from 3 years old to 20 — if they wanted bun or no bun, olives or pickles, milk or juice.
“We use a lot of paper plates in this family,” she said.
The kids piled into the kitchen and moved to their usual seats at the counter or around the table in a tight dining area.
She ordered the youngest of the children — Brian, 6, Anna, 4, and Charlie, 3 — to strip down to their undies before eating, a measure meant to cut down on laundry in a household that does at least six loads each day.
It’s all part of a daily routine Becky and husband Rob Brooks, 48, have scheduled almost down to the minute as they’ve added to their adoptive family in the past seven years.
“We love it,” Rob said. “I live for these kids. They are everything.”
Seven years ago, he had decided the house was too quiet.
The couple had sent their youngest daughter, Samantha, off to college. And the niece and nephew they had taken care of for five years had gone back to live with their mother.
“I told Becky, ‘It’s too quiet. We need some kids,’” Rob said. “She said, ‘Well, I’m not giving you any.’”
They had noticed recruitment posters for foster families around town, so they decided to sign up.
The couple now has served as foster parents for 15 Manitowoc County children, adopting nine. Currently, they are fostering a 13-year-old boy, and recently fostered a 17-year-old girl.
They also do respite foster parenting — taking children for a few days when foster parents need a break, and serve as an emergency placement home when the county is low on options.
Neither works outside the home and both parent full-time, an operation Becky said she could not handle on her own with so many kids.
Becky worked at Mirro Aluminum before the manufacturer closed in 2003, and now is on disability. Rob was injured on his last job and receives payments through his former employer. Fostering and respite care bring in additional dollars to support the family.
The couple believes they are following what they were intended to do: provide a secure, supportive home for kids who wouldn’t have one.
Although the couple declined to share specific stories, their adoptive children typically came from homes with parents who physically or emotionally abused them.
One was sexually abused by a parent and a parent’s boyfriend. The three youngest were born addicted to drugs through their mother. One daughter has brain cancer, requiring trips to Madison to see a specialist.
“These kids don’t end up in foster care because they come from perfect families,” Becky said.
“Being a foster parent is a lot of work,” Rob said. “It can be really hard. It’s not all roses. People need to know that. Some of these kids come from really rough backgrounds.”
The couple’s foster kids may act out violently, a response to having been mistreated. Some struggle in school. One ran away on a regular basis; Becky would search nearby neighborhoods with a flashlight for hours.
“It takes a lot of patience and love,” Becky said. “I have learned to ask not, ‘What’s wrong with this child?’ but, ‘What happened to this child?’”
Couple works to turn kids around
The Brooks take pride in helping to turn around lives.
Danyell has autism and had fits of aggression — hitting the walls and screaming. She took 17 medications. After talking through issues and working on behavior control, Becky said, the teenager now enjoys school and can sit through classes.
She still has moments of frustration, but no longer bangs her head against the wall, Becky said. Piling out of the family SUV after school one afternoon, she played happily with one of the family’s dogs before taking him for a walk, and later eagerly showed off photos from her time spent at a therapy horse farm.
“She’s not the same girl,” Becky said. “Even teachers marvel at the differences.”
And daughter Cristel, who attends the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, said she likely would have dropped out of high school without her parents’ support.
“They have made all the difference for me,” the 20-year-old said. “Because of my past, I was having so many problems. It’s great to have someone who cares about me. They always made sure I got through school. They taught me to
help other people without asking for something back.”
Most foster families do not adopt the children under their care. The Brooks family is unusual, and Becky warned people should not become foster parents because they want to adopt. The goal is always for foster kids to be returned to their parents.
“Becky and Rob are amazing,” said Karen Zahn, foster care coordinator for Manitowoc County, who nominated them for the Wisconsin Adoptive Family of the Year Award, which they won in 2017. “They have never said ‘no’ to any child we have matched them with. They care about these kids and go the distance to make them feel part of the family.”
But the need for foster parents is great.
As of late February, Manitowoc County had 74 children in out-of-home care, living in foster homes, in group homes or with other family members. The number of kids in the system doubled in 2014 but has held steady since, Zahn said.
Today, the county has no waiting list for out-of-home care homes. Manitowoc has 30 licensed foster families, and 10 are in the approval process.
Wisconsin’s foster care program is run by counties and overseen by the state Department of Children and Families.
About 7,000 kids are in the Wisconsin foster care system, according to the state, and those in need of foster homes are most often teens, sibling groups or children with special needs. Many have experienced trauma. About 1,400 are waiting to be adopted.
Children may be placed in foster care because of abuse, neglect or other reasons that make it unsafe to live in their homes. They also may have delinquency issues, or parental rights are being terminated because of court action or because a parent has died.
“For me, it’s all about the love of the kids,” Rob said. “When they come through the door, they are your kids. When you see them going from seeing you as sort of a stranger to coming up on your lap and giving you hugs and kisses, and calling you ‘Daddy,’ to me, the love of the kids is what I live for.”
Becky has five biological kids, which Rob later adopted: three daughters and two sons, ages 27 to 40, as well as six grandchildren.
The kids the couple fostered and later adopted are: Robbie, 23, and Cristel, 20 (biological siblings) who were adopted by the Brooks seven years ago; Seleste, 21, and Skylar, 17, (biological sisters) who were adopted six years ago; Danyell,
17, adopted three years ago; Isabella, 16, adopted about 10 months ago; and siblings Brian, Anna and Charlie. The family also has three dogs. Robbie and Seleste don’t live in their home anymore.
As a large family, the Brooks’ older children are used to a noisy household and try to make the fosters feel like part of the sibling group as soon as they come through the door. They have been mostly supportive, although Becky said some of her older kids weren’t sure she should adopt the youngest three, especially Charlie as an infant, when she was in her late 50s.
Becky said she and Rob decided to adopt the youngest sibling set because they were in desperate need, but that she doesn’t plan to adopt babies in the future.
For oldest Travis Brooks, 40, who is Becky’s biological son and was adopted by Rob when the couple married 25 years ago, the additions to the household have allowed him to enjoy the older brother role many times over.
“I remember the very first two kids,” Travis Brooks said. “They came in with their bags of stuff, and they looked so lost. I love all of them. I think it’s awesome to have brothers and sisters through adoption.”
A growing family
Becky and Rob didn’t start out with the intention to adopt.
When going through the application and screening process to become foster parents through Manitowoc County, they asked to foster kids around the age of 5 or 6. But the county needed homes for teens, and social workers asked the couple if they would serve as respites for Robbie and Cristel.
“As soon as they came through the door, me and Robbie started talking about NBA basketball,” Becky said. “We all seemed to hit it off. I looked at (Rob) and he looked at me, and we said, ‘Why not?’ That’s how it started.”
Rob Brooks said he couldn’t imagine not adopting the foster kids.
“Once they walk in, they’re yours,” he said. “How can you not love them?”
As a 14-year-old, Cristel asked Becky and Rob if they would adopt her.
“I just loved them and wanted them to be my parents,” Cristel said. She said she likely would not have graduated from high school or enrolled in college without the couple.
“She was a wild one when she first came here,” Rob said. “She was a little high strung.”
The house was already quite full by the time the three youngest children came along.
“First, we consulted with our older kids,” Becky said. “We did that with all of our kids. Before adopting, we get together as a family to make a decision. If something happens to us, our older kids might have to take over. But they all said, ‘Yes, do it, it’s the right thing to do.’”
Brian is easily overstimulated and over-energized because of the drugs he once had in his system. He and Anna have had struggles in school. Charlie rarely slept as an infant, and today rarely sleeps for longer than a two-hour stretch.
Meeting the extraordinary needs of so many kids takes time and patience, the couple agreed, and they said their main goal is to get each child to high school graduation.
Becky said she plays the role of the disciplinarian, and Rob is the good-guy dad.
“We have some days when they all get the crayons out and do art projects on the table together or they will all get the Legos out,” Becky said. “Whenever someone comes into the house, the older kids take them under their wing, show them what it’s all about.”
The Rev. Stephen Melso of Bethany Lutheran Church has known the Brooks for nearly 20 years.
“I think the experiences she has had in life and the adversity, plus her faith, make Becky so good at being a foster mother,” he said. “And Rob is always willing to help wherever he can, always willing to pick up and drop off the kids or do whatever is needed.”
A special challenge
On a recent evening, the smaller children sat at the kitchen counter decorating cards for teachers. Becky hauled out a number of sparkly red paper hearts, and a huge case of markers and crayons, as the kids eagerly colored and designed, and like most small children, tugged on Becky’s leg looking for approval of their finished creations.
The older girls teased each other about boys, and a calendar on the wall marked which days either Danyell or Isabella choose TV shows to avoid arguments.
Wearing fuzzy pink one-piece pajamas, Isabella sits quietly nearby. She has inoperable brain tumors and is going blind. When she came to the Brooks, she also had behavioral problems.
“She went through several foster homes, and they were running out of homes,” Rob said. “We did respite a few times, and we knew the parents were going to give up their rights.”
Not many people would be willing to drive Isabella to Madison to see specialists, as Becky does, Rob said.
The girl’s tumors are growing, but doctors hope they can slow down the growth while they search for an effective treatment. A recent checkup in Madison showed the tumors had stopped growing, Becky said.
“Before we adopted, we met with all of our older children and said, ‘Do we let her go or do we take someone who is going through the process of losing her eyesight, who has cancer, and give her a forever home?’” Becky said. “Rob said to me, and I remember his exact words: ‘There is no choice, honey. We leave no child behind.’”
They adopted Isabella recognizing that their younger kids might to have to learn about death. No one knows Isabella’s long-term outlook, and the family prefers to think positive.
“Isabella brings a lot of goofiness, a lot of fun,” Becky said. “She has put us in a position to learn about life, and think about things, too. We have all learned things we wouldn’t have learned otherwise.”