It's Official, I'm a Slaton
By Andy Hoag | Video by Andy Hoag • July 1, 2020
One couple's journey through fostering and adopting two sisters
“Can you believe in 30 minutes, we’re going to be parents to an 8-year-old?” Dave Slaton asked his wife, Sonya.
The Slatons were getting ready for their first placement since being approved as foster parents through GBCH&FM’s foster program, Bright Foster Care.
The two got married–by their own admission–a little later in life, and tried having kids naturally. But after trying for some time, this option proved unfruitful.
“We didn’t get discouraged or anything,” Dave says. “We decided to do foster care first.”
So the couple started their journey, completing IMPACT training, paperwork, and everything else needed to welcome foster kids into their home. In the summer of 2015, on the same day of their wedding anniversary, they were approved and awaiting the arrival of their first foster child being placed with them.
“It was pretty exciting,” Dave recalls. “We were hoping it would go well, and it did.” He laughs, “We learned to whip and nae nae on day one,” referring to the dance moves that accompany the song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” by Silentó.
Soon after, a second child joined the Slatons, but was only in their care for about a year. Nearly two years after the first child’s placement, Dave and Sonya learned she would be returning home in the following month or two. So they let the case managers at Bright know they were ready for another child to be placed with them, their third placement.
In June 2017, Anna and Emily were placed with the Slatons, and things seemed to click with everyone almost immediately. “They just seemed like part of our family,” Sonya recalls. This feeling only grew stronger the longer Emily and Anna were with the Slatons.
But at first, the joy that came from connecting with the girls so easily began to also come with some fear of the possibility that Emily and Anna could go back home. While Dave and Sonya knew from the beginning that they wanted to adopt and bring kids into their lives permanently, that option wasn’t available to them at the time.
“It was hard thinking that they might go back home because we loved them so much,” Sonya remembers. “But we also knew that we were just their foster parents, so we just loved them like they were our own.”
And that’s what they did. With their families and church support, they had teams of people rally around them to support and help in any way they could. During the Slaton’s foster journey, their church created a ministry to support local foster parents, and this group served the Slatons in countless ways, including doing laundry, cooking meals, and babysitting. While their acts of service were a tremendous help, the way this team genuinely cared for the Slatons is what was truly memorable.
“They didn’t just come in and drop things off,” Dave says. “They’d come in and sit down and talk, and want to connect with us and the girls.”
With their gracious support group, Sonya and Dave spent the next couple years caring for Anna and Emily, getting to know them, bonding with them, just building family time and creating memories together.
Then one day, things changed: there was a chance Emily and Anna could be adopted. It started as a slight possibility, but soon after, the opportunity was there and the girls could be adopted!
Dave and Sonya jumped on the opportunity and started the adoption process with our Bright case managers.
During this time, not only were Sonya and Dave working to adopt the girls, they were also exploring options of how to maintain a relationship between the girls and their birth mother once the adoption was complete, something that was very important to Emily, Anna, and their mom.
“[Their birth mother] really appreciates the fact we’re doing this because we don’t have to, but we want to,” Dave explains. “The girls have a relationship with her too, so we don’t need to be unfair and say, ‘No, you’re not seeing your mom anymore.’”
The Slatons’ flexibility and willingness to keep this relationship instilled a lot of relief for everyone, making the adoption something they could all be really excited about.
“They were extremely excited about it,” Dave says, talking about the girls’ feelings of being adopted. “I was talking to Anna one day and I asked her what she thought about the last name Slaton, and she goes, ‘I really like that name, but I have to learn how to spell it at school,’” he laughs.
From there, everything with the adoption went smooth, and on October 31, 2019, Emily and Anna officially joined the Slaton family.
That day, as excited as the girls were to wear their costumes and go trick-or-treating, they were even more excited for their adoption and adoption party. Each girl got her own shirt at the party that said “It’s Official, I’m a Slaton” on it, and both exclaimed that they wanted to wear the shirts to school the next day for everyone to see.
Now, months after their adoption, everything with the Slaton family is going like it was before, “which is really, really well,” Dave shares.
“It was kind of a natural flow, we just made it official,” Sonya says. “We call them our daughters, we pray with them every night, we get to love them everyday…”
“Love them everyday for the rest of their lives,” Dave adds.
Sonya and Dave laugh at how the girls’ personalities are so similar to theirs, that Anna will do something that’s just like Sonya does, Emily doing something similar to Dave, and vice versa. Anna and Emily remind Sonya of her and her sister when they were younger, too, with one having blonde hair and the other brown.
Sonya shares, “We couldn’t do this without God and without His people. That’s been very humbling to realize that we can’t do it without everybody’s help.”
Dave agrees, adding, “He’s given us a lot of patience and a lot of strength. We see these girls as a tremendous blessing and it’s going well, so God’s granted us the blessing of having them for the rest of our lives, so that was a huge gift, something that we’re thankful for every day.”
“He chose us to be their mom and dad,” Sonya says. “There’s no other explanation but God being the reason that we have them.”
In Georgia, there are nearly 13,000 children and teenagers in the foster care system. You can make a powerful difference in their lives by volunteering, mentoring, or even by being a foster parent or offering respite services.
Because of your support, lives are forever changed.
Thank you for giving children and families hope and a home.
Read more stories of the difference you're making:
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Helen Arnold - Director of Foster Care Ministry
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