Treat them like your own

[Daveshome]

My suggestion for a "best practice" is to always treat your foster children just like you would your own children, and encourage your family, friends and neighbors to do the same. This way the kids won't feel any more "different" than they have to.

Equally important is to drag them into your life and lifestyle rather than let them (or their parents, relatives, etc.) drag you into theirs. Your life is (or should be) so much more stable and good for them then their old life. Even if they eventually must return home, they should be given every opportunity to experience a better life while they live with you. Hopefully this experience will stick with them when they return home, and will inspire them to do better for themselves.

Thems my two cents, anyway.

Dave -- 15 year veteran foster parent
http://daves-foster-home.blogspot.com/

[Jacqueline]

I have been told through my PRIDE training that foster parents are babysitters of other people's children and we should always be aware of this. Which, seems odd to me because I thought that foster parenting was designed to give the children a family to live with, even if only temporary.

[momof4boys]

We had a lawyer say that in court one day (that foster parents were just baby sitters), and our judge went off on him!! That statement makes me soooo mad!! We are not babysitters. Babysitters get to send them home at the end of the day, not take them home with them.

[momma-duck]

In general, that's a good principle: treat foster kids like they're your bio kids.
But in reality, that's legally prohibited.

For example, I'm not allowed to cut my foster child's hair.
For the first two months I wasn't allowed to choose my own pediatrician.
I haven't been allowed to use the baby formula that I prefer to use and have had to use another kind.
I haven't been allowed to see his birth certificate and I'm unsure of his actual legal name since the case workers can't seem to agree on it.

Sure, we're way more than babysitters. But that doesn't mean they treat us any differently than they'd treat babysitters.

[jkaiseresquire]

We learned the hard way too that when dealing with kids with severe attachment issues and certain kinds of abuse you simply can't treat them like your own children. First of all, they have more frequent outbursts because the idea of attaching and being part of a family is not only frightening to them, but they often either don't know what a family is or have a very skewed idea of family (i.e. daddy beats mommy). When they sense you trying to make them a part of your family they often freak out (for our foster child it was either destruction of property or physical aggressiveness).

Also, say the child has issues with sexual abuse in the past (and I've been told that most kids in the foster system with more than three placements have been sexually abused at some point, even if it doesn't show up on their record) you can't let them have sleepovers; something your bio child might be allowed to do. While it might not seem "fair" to them, they know that they are different from our biological children. They aren't stupid. They realize they come with certain baggage, and pretending they are no different from our own biological children (especially when they have severe abuse issues) doesn't help anyone.

We also found it was often just another way our foster child could attempt to manipulate us and others around her- "why does (the bio child) get to sleep over a friends house?" "Because we can trust her, we know she won't break things or hurt people when she gets frustrated. You haven't earned that trust yet." The only other option is to either deny our bio child a normal childhood experience that she has every right to enjoy b/c of her foster sibling's history and out of some fear of making her foster sibling feel bad OR we could let our foster child sleep over a friends house and negligently ignore the potential damage the child might cause to herself or others in such a situation.

I might be on a bit of a soapbox here, but I have found in my short time in this system that people are so wrapped up in making the child feel good about themselves that they deny the child an accurate picture of themselves and the world around them. In an effort to build their self-esteem they feed the child false information. The child is left either confused, undeservedly justified, deluded, or given yet another tool to manipulate the adults in their life.