OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — It’s a house with a revolving door; all kinds of children are welcome and given a place to call home.
“I like it. I’m happiest when there’s a house full of kids,” said Rose Marchick.
Marchick and her husband have three biological kids. After that, they decided to get into foster care, only taking children with special needs or that have mental illnesses.
“You can find anybody to take the cute two year olds,” she said.
They’ve also adopted two children. After almost 10 years fostering children, the Marchicks are used to large piles of laundry, cabinets filled with food and stacks of paperwork always needing to be filled out.
“It’s busy. There’s arts and crafts everywhere. At any given moment, two people are painting, two people are building a robot, one’s decided that they have to build a fort in the middle of the living room,” said Marchick.
Lily, her 12-year-old daughter, likes the company. The oldest biological son, Tyler, says it’s chaotic at times.
“It used to be very stressful having kids come in a lot, you just kind of learn to tune it out though,” he said. “We’ve had 13 kids before at the house at once, and there’s no easy way to do that.”
There are currently seven foster kids living in the home and having a so many people under one roof means having a lot of rules and structure. Rose says she feels like it’s her calling to take care of as many kids as she can.
“It’s as simplistic as, there are kids who need a home, and we have a home. People are always like, stop, you can’t fix the world, and I say no, but I can do what’s in front of me,” she said.
The Marchicks say it has been quite a rollercoaster, and through the good and the bad, it’s been worth it. But let’s just say it probably won’t be a family tradition.
“I just want to have a simple family, live a simple life,” said Tyler.
Rose doesn’t plan on closing her door any time soon and she predicts she’ll have fostered more than 200 children by next year. To read more about the family’s story, click on this link.
