Sunday, February 14, 1999
Worth, not birth, matters to family of the year
BY RICHELLE THOMPSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BLANCHESTER — It's a girl. 62 inches long. 125 pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. 13 years old. A picture of a wavy-haired Michele Stein accompanies the adoption announcement. It's tacked to a clock Janet Stein made to celebrate Aug. 6, 1997, the day Michele became her second daughter and fourth child.
Mel and Janet Stein never anticipated they'd need two hands and a foot to count the members of their family. They have two biological, five adopted, and two foster chil dren. On weekends, a third foster child stays in their Blanchester home, about 5 miles east of the Warren County line.
Mrs. Stein explained how each of the children came to the family, then broke off.
“We're breaking our rule,” she said. “We don't talk foster child, adopted child, biological child. We're family. Period.”
The Steins' open door and hearts propelled them to the top of 50 nominations for 1998 Ohio Family of the Year by Public Children Services Association of Ohio, a nonprofit group that works with the state's 88 county child protection agencies. They were one of seven families in Ohio to receive the award.
“We want to honor these families who go to extraordinary lengths to do a heck of a job for abused or neglected children,” said Dan Schneider, director of the association.
The Steins are among 10,000 foster families in the state and 22 in Clinton County helping house the 19,000 or so children who need their care at any given time.
In fiscal year 1998, the period during which the Steins adopted their five children, the state department recorded 1,467 adoptions. That doesn't include private or international adoptions. About half of the children were adopted by their foster parents, said Jon Allen, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Human Services.
While the Steins are honored to be named an Ohio Family of the Year, it's not what drives them. Four months after receiving the certificate, it still lies on a living room shelf. The frames that cover their walls are filled with pictures of their children, not awards for caring for them.
Michele and brother Steven came to live with the Steins and their biological children, Mel Jr., now 20, and Megan, 17, in 1995. Their mother took off with a man,
and they had no place else to go, Mr. Stein said.
The Steins started the licensing program to become foster parents so Michele and Steven could stay with them.
That's when “we saw all the kids who needed homes,” Mrs. Stein said. By the end of 1995, Clinton County Children Services had placed three sisters, Oceana, now 8, Jalisa, 7, and Mariah, 6, with the Steins.
After a close call when the sisters were going to be split up, the Steins adopted the girls in 1997, too. The foster children cannot be named because the confidentiality policy at Children Services.
Mrs. Stein quit her job at a furniture store in 1996 to take care of the children. Mr. Stein works full time as a machine operator at Full Flo, a valve company in Blanchester.
The 100-year-old farmhouse got a new addition last summer to accommodate the growing family. Instead of everybody crowding into a kitchen the size of a large walk-in closet, the Steins converted their old living room into a dining room and purchased a table for eight. When the whole family is eating, a few spill over to another small table.
They added two bedrooms and a bathroom, a laundry room and a living room that's the hub of late afternoon activity.
While most of the Stein children have some sort of learning disability or emotional problem and see counselors once or twice a week, the best therapy seems to come in the huge living room. That's where the children scribble down their homework, catch a cartoon on the Disney channel and engage in time-honored teasing.
Love won't change everything that happened in the past for these children. But it helps.
As Mrs. Stein wrote Michele on the back of her clock: “Time will heal all. You are a part of this family for life.”
Being a family requires work — everybody has chores — and patience.
“It's big,” said daughter Megan. “I like it, but it's hard to get time with (Mom). I'm waiting for her to say, "Take a number.'”
Michele says it's never boring. And sometimes it's nerve-wracking, said son Mel Jr.
“But it's worth it. It takes people with a lot of heart to do something like this,” he said. “I'm proud of my parents but sometimes it gets really hectic around here.”
That's not news to Mrs. Stein.
She's the one who sprints to the grocery store three times a week while the kids are at school, piling the carts with 10 gallons of milk at a time. With dozens of appointments, meetings and counseling sessions each week, the datebook is her link to sanity.
And don't get her started on laundry. If everyone wears only one pair of jeans a day, 77 pairs hit the laundry basket by week's end. And that's if nobody wets their pants or muddies an extra pair.
Despite money for the foster children and an adoption subsidy for from the state, penny-pinching is a way of life for the Steins. Clearance shopping is the only option.
“We can't offer the kids a lot,” Mrs. Stein said. “We can't give them name brands or all the "in' styles. But we decided family and love is more important than material things.”
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