More often than not, when a child in our care has come home from a visit with their biological mother or father the world around the child has become convoluted and full of uncertainty. Those that are supposed to protect them from harm have been the ones that have harmed them the most. Even though the child is no longer in their care, they continue to perpetrate through their actions, behaviors and empty promises.
A child we had in our home would be allowed weekly visits with his mother, then come home from the visit to make our lives a living hell. Keeping documentation of these visits and everything that transpired on the visit and the child’s actions and reactions after each visit is vital. Through the documentation we were able to show the court a pattern that was occurring each time the parent had access to the child. It was determined that his mother was the trigger that caused him to demonstrate antisocial behaviors at home as well as in the school setting.
This documentation gave us what was needed to demonstrate to the court how this child’s behavior would escalate out of control, causing a set-back in not only behavior but in academics and social responses. Don’t misunderstand me, visits are vital to the health and welfare of the child, but those visits must be beneficial to the child, not cause them to spiral every time they happen. Taking away the visits removed one of the major triggers that caused overt behavior.
Now comes the hard part where the foster parent has to make the child understand that their behaviors also contributed to the decision being made concerning the removal of visitation. The younger the child the harder this can be. How this topic is breached needs to be age appropriate, and handled in a firm but sensitive way.
Understand that your goal should be to build a firm foundation under the child so that when the time comes for them to re-establish a relationship with not only their biological mother and father, but also their biological relatives, they can be strong. As the child gets older, they need to have the ability to determine how much access the bio-family has in their life, and the lives of their own future children.
One of the concepts that we try to get across to the children in our home (if a visit didn’t go well) is that their parents don’t have the capacity to parent at this time, and that we should never expect someone to be able to do what they’re incapable of doing.
I had one boy tell me that his mother kept telling him over and over again that she loved him. He told me, “She says that, but she doesn’t really mean it, she doesn’t love me enough to change her life, do the right thing, get the help she needs so that we can be a family again.”
Reunification between child and biological parent, although a primary goal, can be a slippery slope for some, creating difficulties for the child in care and anxiety for the caregiver. And although I would like to see every child reunified with their parents, reality dictates that the chances of that happening are slim to none.
Children at some point will have to go back to their biological parents and come to grips with the reality of their childhood. The foster parent needs to help facilitate this by helping the child become strong enough to understand why their circumstances were what they were and honor their parents for being their parents.
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