Barbara Booth receiving award as 2020 Utah Mother of the Year with Amy Kroff, 2019 Utah Mother of the Year, on left, and Diane Weese, Utah President on right
Biography
Barbara Booth considers herself to be the very “lucky” mother of seven children. After losing her own mother at the age of nine, she was lucky to get an amazing step-mother (not the “wicked” kind). Then she lucked out when she married a “cute guy with a really great red Camaro” who turned out to be a fantastic husband and father. Her luck continued as she earned a degree in elementary education from Weber State College and taught the cutest second-graders in the public schools.
She became a mother while her husband studied to be a doctor and started his medical practice. As her family grew to 6 children, she realized how fortunate she was to have this happy, healthy, fun-loving family and figured out a way to keep the fun coming – “how about trying foster care?” This (luckily) turned out to be a perfect fit and has continued as they have fostered over 100 children (and adopted one that they just couldn’t give back!). After 27 years of foster parenting, she still loves it and can’t wait for the next placement. She’s so grateful for this wonderful trip she’s on and has learned that a better word for “luck” is really “blessing” – the greatest blessing is to be a mother!
Read her 3-minute speech on “What Being A Mother Means to Me”
Barbara spoke on January 22, 2022 during the Utah Mother of the Year Awards event. Watch her speech here!
Newspaper Article in the Standard-Examiner, Ogden: Ogden’s Barbara Booth, mother and foster mom, named 2020 Utah Mother of the Year
Parenting Philosophy
My first priority has always been to create a home where each child felt unconditional love and acceptance. I believe that the way we treat and talk to our children, day in and day out, can help them feel secure and safe enabling them to grow and thrive in their own lives.
I feel it’s important to teach our children to love and serve others. Being a good example of this is obviously the best way to teach, so I’ve tried to accept and appreciate all kinds of people and involve my children and grandchildren in this. We like to be involved in church and community service and do it as a family whenever we can.
Nothing makes me happier than hearing of a loving or giving thing that one of my children has done! I love to have a happy and relaxed feeling in my home. I wasn’t always good with rules or consistency, but it seemed better to have a lot of music, play and silliness in the home. I loved reading to my children. One teacher told me that she had a hard time finding a book to read to her class that my son hadn’t already read or heard. I’ve learned that maintaining authority or dignity isn’t as important as enjoying life along with your children or grandchildren.
A foster care license has to be renewed annually and one of the questions asked is “Do you have a support system and who is it?” I get a warm feeling when I realized that my support system is my grown children. I can rely on their love and support, just as they can rely on mine! Parenting does have its rewards and I really like my children!
Barbara Booth, 2020 Utah Mother of the Year with Greg Froerer, Weber County Commissioner
Motherhood and Community
When my youngest child turned six and was in school all day, I realized that if I didn’t do something concrete with that extra time, it would be lost. That’s when we decided to try foster care. I didn’t know much about what we were getting into, but I learned a lot pretty fast. Most of my community involvement had been through my church and I think the world that I knew was pretty limited. When you foster a child you get to know the parents, and most of these parents had real problems. I was actually surprised at how much I admired many of these people who were so different from most of the people I had known. It helped me to become less judgmental. I learned that parents who were addicts, petty criminals, or “down and out” loved their children and wanted to be good parents. Often I would learn that their own parents had been addicted or abusive and they were trying their best to do better. I learned that it’s pretty hard to be a good mother if you haven’t had a good mother. What responsibility we have as mothers! I learned that I could really feel love, compassion and even admiration for a tattooed, foul-mouthed drug addict. I like to be an advocate for foster care. I regularly sit on a panel training new DCFS social workers. I’ve seen the system change and improve over my 27 year involvement.
I also see better prepared people becoming foster parents and I like to encourage them. We’ve been able to care for over 100 foster children over the last 27 years. Most are medically fragile and need special care. They have stayed for 2 days up to a 1 ½ years It does take a lot of time and commitment and sometimes it’s downright frightening. I’ve told people that my car can drive automatically to Primary Children’s Hospital after so many trips there. I think that most of us want to do something good in our communities. To have found a way to do something that I love in a place where it’s truly needed is a great blessing.
Letter of Recommendation
Barbara’s daughter Becca had this to say about her mother:
My mom is famous in our family for being optimistic about work. If ever she needed a small task done, she would come to us saying, “I have a fun job for you,” to which we would respond with the inevitable groan and tease that her “fun” jobs were never really all that fun. Despite the hard time I gave her for the inaccuracy of her description, I was always grateful for her cheerful attitude toward work and for trying to use a “spoonful of sugar” to lighten our loads. The occasional dime for picking up a “rabbit poop” also helped!