Saturday, January 21, 2006

On children who foster

If you have biological or adopted kids when you decide to foster you are deciding to become a fostering family. Your children will become children who foster.

This means that they are not just sharing their house and parents with foster kids -- they form relationships with those kids.

There have only been a few attempts to study children who foster, but what there has been seems to indicate:



  • Children have few complaints about "sharing" their parents, but have a very hard time dealing with kids who treat the parents badly.
  • They seem to be okay about sharing their possessions but get very upset if their things are damaged or stolen.
  • They have a greater understanding of the inequalities in society and tend to be more tolerant.
  • They recognize that they are privileged or "lucky" even if they don't get what their friends get.
  • They show more signs of separation anxiety. In older children this can manifest as more sick days.
  • The younger they are the more likely they are to think that foster children were given away because they were bad. This includes babies whom they think "cried too much."
  • They do not tend to develop behavior problems similar to those of the foster kids. In other words they tend to be "good" kids.
  • In general they seem to cope better with foster children who are younger rather than older than they are.
  • Their feelings of grief and loss when they get close to kids who are later moved can be severe.

We started doing care when our "fostering children" were only 6 and 10. The three fostered boys who have come into our family are older than they are. This has worked for us because we work in a program in which we are carefully matched with kids who will mesh with our family. We started with a youth who was in care for an easy to understand reason: his mother had died.

When people who already have children are considering foster care I tell them two things:

  1. The risks of your child being physically hurt or learning bad habits (which is what most people seem to worry about) exist, but are lower than you think.
  2. Don't do it unless you think your children are ready to be told the truth about why other children are in foster care. This is not to say that you give them all the ugly details (or even most of the ugly details). Realize though that you will be teaching your children that terrible things happen to children in this world, and that there are good people who open their homes to help. It is a powerful lesson.

I would do it again and I believe my kids would too. It was not the idealic love-filled experience I might have imagined it would be, but it is an adventure that has made all of us stronger.

4 comments:

  1. i saw this quote from your post above on antiracistparent.com and i copied how i responded on that blog. i don't completely agree with the paragraph below and i've explained why. but i do appreciate the rest of what you wrote about fostering. it's good to know what other people going through it are experiencing.

    “Don’t do it unless you think your children are ready to be told the truth about why other children are in foster care. This is not to say that you give them all the ugly details (or even most of the ugly details). Realize though that you will be teaching your children that terrible things happen to children in this world, and that there are good people who open their homes to help. It is a powerful lesson.”

    i don’t think i agree with this. my son is almost 3 and adopted from foster care. although he won’t consciously remember his experience before coming to us at 14 months, we have told him through his lifebook in an age appropriate way about his history. he already knows there’s bad in this world. he lived it. as do many other children, bio or otherwise. children experience many types of loss before they are emotionally ready to handle it. it’s just the way the world is. there is nothing fair about it but there’s also sometimes nothing we can do about it either.

    we are planning to build our family entirely through our state foster-to-adopt program and doing straight foster care down the road as well. yes, there are risks that go with that. but there are also risks with getting pregnant. you could lose the baby that way too. a sibling would have to deal with it in the same way. my goal as a parent isn’t to shelter my children, but to teach them how to deal with the imperfections they encounter. that includes the risk of fostering a child we may have to “give back”. some children are raised their entire lives with parents that foster kids. they get used to it. it’s a way of life for them. my son will probably think for a long time that babies come from social workers. eventually he will know better, but there are lots of different lifestyles people choose to lead and kids adapt.

    kids learn many powerful lessons throughout their childhood that add to who they become as adults. you can either guide them so these experience build character or neglect them and risk turning into negative behaviors. some of these "lessons" include dealing with bullies, losing a best friend, having a bad teacher, pet dying, divorce, moving, etc. i don't know, it's just my opinion, but the sooner kids learn the world is unfair and unjust, the more prepared they are for real life. that is to say of course, we don't want to be traumatizing them purposefully with these situations. but i would hope the experience with foster children could create a compassionate child who cares deeply for social justice issues, and the "underdogs" of society. or maybe that's just my ideological thinking. i credit many of the good things about myself now to my upbringing around disabled individuals (sometimes because of abuse), even though it may have saddened or confused me as a child.

    anyway, just my two cents. :) nice to see other fostering blogs out there.

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  2. We might not disagree. I started doing care when my kids were 5 and 10. The only thing I would do differently would be to talk more openly with them about some of the ugliness. I have found that it has been a positive experience and I think they do care more about social justice. I am happy with my decision.

    What I warn people against is the thought that they can do care and have the kids already in their home NOT KNOW. Doing care means not protecting your kids from certain experiences. You can embrace that reality as I have tried to do and you plan to do, or you can ... I don't know ... run from it, I guess. What you can't do is bring kids with traumatic pasts into your lives and have the kids already in your home not be affected.

    In my case I have found the affect to be much more positive than otherwise.

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  3. I would like to know which anti-racist post the original comment was on. I assume I made it, but it has been a while. If I was unclear I would like to fix that.

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  4. Nobody talks about this! Thank you for your honest post.

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Comments will be open for a little while, then I will be shutting them off. The blog will stay, but I do not want either to moderate comments or leave the blog available to spammers.