Is Foster Parenting for You? |
Find a therapist who understands adoption
More than love, foster parenting requires a trauma-responsive approach.
Children in foster care need safety, not control.
Potential foster parents need to ask themselves, "Am I prepared to parent through trauma?"
Many have considered foster parenting after reading an article about a child neglected or abused. Our hearts go out to them. We feel compelled to be that source of healing; in essence, to rescue a child from an unsafe situation. This is empathy, and at the same time, empathy can lead us to believe that just fostering them—providing safety, security, and love—will make their lives better. It feels like a mitzvah of love.
However, the question is not only, "Do you have love to give?" It is, "Are you willing to change how you parent?”
Foster parenting is not traditional parenting; it’s parenting differently and shifting your paradigm.
Stuart Shanker, a well-known psychologist, coined the phrase, “If you see a child differently, you will see a different child.” These children are not only different, but they have also experienced a world we can only imagine.
Children in foster care have often experienced separation trauma, abrupt losses in caregiving, food or housing neglect, physical or emotional abuse, instability of placements, and/or disrupted attachments. Their behavior often looks defiant, withdrawn, aggressive, controlling, or rejecting. But very often, what we are seeing is not “undesirable behavior.”
A foster youth's behavior is a way to survive the future because of the ghosts of the past.
Or, as I often say, what appears hysterical is often historical.
You cannot parent these children like other children because their starting point is different.........