Sometimes things get unexpected and your future turns to another direction
“I look in the mirror all the time, and if you would have told me 10 years ago that this would happen, I wouldn’t believe you,” Barry Farmer said. “I wished to be a father, but it wasn’t going to be this soon.”
Barry Farmer is a single dad, a very busy single dad.
At the age of 21, Barry Farmer, a Richmond Schools employee came to be the father over eight years ago, when he got his foster care license and took in Jaxon.
(From FOX43)
“My oldest has been calling me Dad since the day I got him,”Farmer told WTVR. “And I really didn’t know how to respond to it, I was so young at the time. and I just said, OK, I guess we’re gonna’ do this. I guess this is the role that I must play now.”
Farmer raised by his grandmother so he is also a part of the foster care system. Unsurprisingly the bond with his seven-year-old foster child grew stronger and their temporary relationship turned into something permanent.
“We went through the whole process. In court, we went to the judge and sat there at the table and I told the judge that I will be responsible for him,” said Farmer.
After a year in the making, his life changed forever said Farmer.
“Knowing that the adoption was very final, that means I’m finally his father, he accepted me as his father,” he said. “So those moments are unforgettable.”
Over the next four years, after Farmer and Jaxon met Xavier and Jeremiah, in 2013 and 2014, he knew that this family had to grow.
And the fact that they were already boys and not babies made no difference.
(From FOX43)
“There’s no reason to be afraid of our foster children who are waiting to be adopted,” Farmer said. “And all they need is some security, some love, some attention, stability. Because older children are the babies that you’re looking for. There are a lot of firsts to the experience as well: you can still have your first bike ride, your first trip to the beach, first roller coaster, first day of school. All of that can be experienced through foster care adoptions.”
The bond this family of four share and the love that shields them make this father, who is now barely 30, as happy as ever.
“Fatherhood has brought me lots of joy. I can’t imagine my sons not being with me,” Farmer said. “They are at this age, very secure in their placement with me. They’re great kids. They’re not perfect; no kid is perfect. They’re just dealing with typical teenage things right now, typical children things. And I can’t complain about that.”
And you may have noticed Farmer’s boys don’t look like him. As for some occasional stares his family encountered, the last thing worry him is what others think of transracial adoptions.
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