You Gave Me Up: "Home" for the Foster Child

When I came to live with you I was told that this was my home. You showed me my room and told me that this was mine, and that I could even hang up my posters and make it feel like it was really my own. You introduced me to your friends and told them that I was your new son; that I would be living with you and become part of your family.

You introduced me to your church family, relatives, and your friends and neighbor; I was really feeling like I was somewhere I could belong. This was going to be my permanent home. This would be the home that I would grow up in, you promised.

I know that I was bringing with me baggage that I had acquired through my early years. All of the placements prior to me coming to live with you, I had blown out of. I know that you had read all of the stuff that had been written about me. My whole life was an open book for you, and everyone else that had anything to do with me. You knew that my behaviors were considered to be extreme, and that’s why I had to leave my last placement, but your home was going to be different, you told me so.

So why is it that now you’re telling me that I can no longer live with you and that I’m being moved to a home that works with kids like me, and understands my behaviors? Isn’t that what you told me when I came to live with you, that you understood what I had been through and that you would help me work with my behaviors? You even told me to call you “Dad,” and that I was your son, are you no longer my dad, and I’m no longer your son? I know that I need help, please don’t throw me away, I’ll try harder, please don’t throw me away. 

~

So often this is the scenario that foster children go through. The reality of rejection and being tossed around like an unwanted puppy is the world these children live in, and have to learn to cope through. Some do well enough to get by, others fall through the cracks and end up going from foster care to our penal systems.

The foster child in most cases lives in a world of uncertainty. Even when they find themselves placed in a home that is conducive to their healing and well being. The governmental agency that is in charge of them often times makes changes not based on what’s best for the child, but what looks best for the immediate bottom line.

All children, especially foster children, need to have an environment that is stable, safe, and unchanging. The child needs to be able to rely on the fact that their home isn’t going to be jerked out from under them at any given moment by those that aren’t looking at the long term ramifications of destroying a child’s life by the constant turmoil of indecision.

When deciding whether to become a foster parent, you must keep in mind that it is a long-term decision. We cannot play with the lives of these children, thinking that we can simply “give them back” if it does not work out. If you are considering becoming a foster parent, make sure you are ready to commit to these foster children and give them a chance at finding stability and success for their future.

Do You Really Love Me?: Parents and Children in Foster Care

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.

The Blowups That Lose Placement For The Foster Child

During the holidays I received a call from a social worker begging me to take placement of a child that day. We had already agreed on taking this child after the holidays because of his acting out, and the severity of the tantrums he would throw. We had family visiting from out of town, and we didn’t want them to be subject to the extreme type of behaviors this particular child had been presenting.

I agreed to have the social worker drive him down to our home thinking that it should be ok.  There is typically a honeymoon period in which each child that is placed will try to act their best and maintain a higher level of control.  It did work out in this case; the child didn’t act out while the family was here, but the day after they left, all hell broke loose.

We were getting ready to take the children to youth group and this child decided that he was going to show us what a real temper tantrum looked like. Nancy proceeded to take the other children on to youth group, and I prepared myself to throw a temper tantrum right along with this young man. In order to throw a temper tantrum that is going to be effective, the adult throwing the temper tantrum has to be in complete control of their emotions. This is an opportunity to teach, and you cannot be effective if you become angry and out of control yourself.

The entire ordeal lasted about fifteen minutes, until the child exclaimed to me, “I don’t like being yelled at and talked to like that.” “Well”, I said,” If you don’t want to be talked to in this manner, then you need to talk to me, and everyone else, in this manner...” at which time my voice got very soft and low, “this is how people talk to one another.” At that point he balled up into a fetal position and I pulled him up into my arms and rocked him to sleep. When he was asleep I put him under his covers, tucked him in and left him alone until the following morning.  If you’re going to rock a twelve year old, I recommend eating your Wheaties in the morning.

For this particular child, this was the first and last temper tantrum that he ever threw while he lived with us. He learned through that experience that he was not going to be the one in control. He had come to live in a parent run home, not a home run by the behaviors of a child.

When working with traumatized children, it’s not if they blowout and have their tantrums, it’s when. The caregiver cannot at any time believe that this isn’t going to happen. The caregiver needs to prepare himself or herself both mentally and physically in order for the child to heal and learn appropriate behaviors when these blowouts occur.

Part of the child’s healing will be that blowout. He should able to take all of that anger and pent up hostility and vent it out without fear of being removed from the home. The caregivers should be prepared and properly trained so that they are able to handle these situations and so the child is not automatically placed in a psych ward or removed from the home.

In the movie Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan climbed up into the crow’s nest aboard their shrimping boat and cried out in anger, ranting and raging, letting all his frustrations that had built up and manifested to a point of boiling over, come out. In his case he was in an environment where he could vent out without reprisal. In the case with a lot of our children in foster care, when they vent out like this, they find themselves in a lock down mental institution.

I had a young man just recently have a blowout and there was a venting of built up hurts and frustrations that flowed out. When it was all over I asked him how he felt. He told me that he felt so much better. Forrest Gump ended that scene by making the statement that he believed Lieutenant Dan had made peace not only with those that he thought had let him down, but also with himself.  It is often the same with the children in our care.  Our training in these situations could be the difference between a child losing placement, or them getting the chance to make a bit of peace with their circumstances.