Foster parents who are emotionally stable are aware of their surroundings, feelings and behaviors. They have learned ways to deal with the stress and problems that arise due to the foster care system. They feel good about what they are doing.

However, many things happen in your life can disrupt your emotional stability and lead to  feelings of depression. These things include:

• Children moving in and out
• Having a child that’s difficult to deal with
• Getting divorced or married
• Dealing with courts, social workers, etc
• Money management
• Moving to a new home

All “change” can be stressful. Good or bad.

How can my emotions affect my body?

It is scientifically proven that our body will eventually breakdown if internal feelings and emotions are not dealt with. When you are stressed and emotionally unstable, your body tries to give you signals that things are not right. As a result, you could experience high blood pressure or a stomach ulcer might develop following a stressful event. These could be physical signs that your emotional stability is out of balance:

• Back pain
• Stiff neck
• Shift in appetite
• Extreme tiredness
• Headaches
• Insomnia
• Heart palpitations
• Sexual problems

Poor emotional stability also weakens the  immune system, making it more likely to get infections during emotionally difficult times. Also, when you are feeling stressed, you may not take care of your body as you should. Usually you will not feel like exercising, eating healthy or taking doctors prescribtions. Substance abuse is also a sign of poor emotional stability.

Taking care of yourself is vital

The best way to protect your emotional stability is to pay close attention to the details in your everyday life. You might be the type to brush things under the carpet only to find huge mountains to deal with later. You also might be the type  that hates confrontation. Both of these personality types can easily get caught in the currents of the foster care system and be easily swayed to the point of feeling lost and out of touch.

A simple approach to getting your life back

This might be one of the hardest things you have done, but it’s time to get honest with yourself. Take inventory of every thought you have during the day and deal with things as they come instead of putting them off to deal with later. If it involves talking to someone when you need to, then so be it. If it involves doing those things that you’ve been putting off and look like they might be impossible to do, then start one at a time. As soon as you put this principle into action, you will start feeling your confidence soar. You will not only feel good but you will start having a healthier attitude towards others in your life.

In the world of foster parenting, my wife and I have met both young foster parents and those who have been seasoned with years of experience. The thought of caring for foster children isn’t limited to any boundaries, it knows of only one thing and that is to love and take care of children who have had the unfortunate circumstance of not having parents around who could take care of them. The howtobeafosterparent.com website was developed to help those who are looking to be foster parents and those that are currently involved.

The weight of foster parenting does come with a emotional price and the ability to juggle the struggles that some children will bring to your family will be challenging at times. In some aspects being young foster parents will have it’s advantages such as the ability to roll with the punches easier and adjust quickly to the fast paced world that comes along with fostering. Social workers, court cases, attorneys, therapists, and others who will be in your circle of trust will all take chunks of time from your family. This is where the younger couple that is usually more mobile can adapt better. On the flip side the emotional stamina it takes to handle some of the children will placed could take a toll on the younger less seasoned parent. The years of life experience that parents 40 and up have will be useful in handling situations they will be faced against.

One of the toughest challenges a younger foster couple could also face is the fact that most foster couples will not be in there 20’s and 30’s. This could place them at a slight disadvantage in not having friends who understand their new world. When it’s all said and done, it’s nice to have a circle of friends who have fostered or are fostering so that they could understand the journey of foster parents.

Whether young or old, the challenges will arise just like in anything else in life. Once you’ve made up your mind to approach this new chapter in life, you just have to go for it and not look back. Make up your mind that you will be the best foster parents out there and you’re committed to give children a chance in life.

It may seem more comfortable to try to deny your foster child’s past. After all, how could your foster child benefit from digging up awful memories? Though adults may sometimes prefer to forget about things that bother them, children are not equipped with the emotional fortitude or maturity to be able to handle strong emotions that they will most certainly have about their past. It’s valuable for foster parents to tap into the memories and the accompanying strong emotions that foster children have from their lives prior to becoming a part of a foster family. By remembering your foster child’s past and allowing him or her to have strong emotions, you relieve a burden that your foster child is carrying.

Foster children are not fully developed, of course, when they come into your care. If they enter foster care when they are very young, they will see their situation as foster children through the eyes of a child. As they grow and their thinking matures, they will begin to see and think about other facets of their situation in foster care. They will have new feelings about foster care and some of them will be conflicted. Each time your foster children reach a new milestone, they will think about biological parents and the past.  Though they may be happy living in your home as your foster children, they will become aware, as they mature, of how their biological parents must feel, or should feel. They may start to see themselves as a burden to you. Your foster child’s maturing brain will regularly have new questions about how foster care works and what it really means to be a foster child.

Foster children may get muddled information in school that can confuses them. They may get mixed messages from caseworkers or biological parents or other relatives. It’s important that you broach the topics that you think might be bothering your foster child. Talking about what happened in the past and giving your foster child age-appropriate information and thoughts about their current situation can be extremely helpful to them.

Try to remember being young and misunderstanding what was going on in your own life. Do you remember thinking there were monsters under your bed? Do you remember feeling like you’d committed a serious crime after wetting the bed or spilling milk? As an adult, looking back on situations that bothered you as a kid, it’s easy to see your own disillusionment about how things really were. Children are dependent on their caregivers and they attach a lot of meaning sometimes to even small events. Imagine how much meaning and emotional stress is created in children’s lives when their caregivers have abused them physically or sexually. Talking about the past unabashedly, with acceptance and a calm and open demeanor can give your child the opportunity to think logically about what happened and develop healthy opinions about it.

Death, divorce, relocation; these things all involve loss. Children in foster care are grieving because they’ve lost their parents, their homes, sometimes their siblings, pets, and many of their toys and personal items. That’s a lot of loss to experience all at once!

Grief counselors who specialize in loss recommend that you talk with people young and old if they’ve experienced loss. Don’t try to sidestep the topic. Ask the person who is grieving to tell the story of their loss. Each time a grieving child or a grieving adult gets to tell the story of how they lost something or someone that they love, it removes just a little bit of the burden from them. When I go to funerals or encounter someone who has recently experienced loss, I ask them specific questions about their experience and I let them tell me whether their comfortable talking about it. People who are grieving will often tell the story of their loss over and over again, sometimes highlighting new details in the story. This is healthy. Telling painful stories helps people release and digest the pain without bottling it up or trying to deny that the pain is there. It is rare for someone to tell me that they’re uncomfortable talking about their loss. In our culture, we try to deny loss and “talk about something else” to get people’s minds off of it. But if someone is grieving, talk is therapy. Every time your foster child has the chance to talk about their loss, it’s like you’re taking a little piece of baggage off their shoulders. You can’t take all the baggage from them all it once because children need to think about what they’ve lost and work with it themselves too. But if you regularly talk with your foster child about their past and allow them to talk about what happened to them, what they’ve lost and how they feel about it, this will help them release their burden.

Open-ended questions (questions that can’t be answered with a yes or a no) can help get your foster child talking about the past. You can use questions to show your foster child that you’re listening and thinking about her (or him). All foster children are carrying a heavy burden of loss and need you to help them manage it properly. Never take your foster child’s history for granted, thinking that you can deny what happened to them and make it all go away. Instead, find ways to talk with your foster child and share thoughts about his or her past. In this way, you can deepen your relationship with your foster child while releasing a heavy burden slowly over time.

My wife and I foster six children at this time and we have both types of children in our house. For the ones that cry and seem outwardly effected by the separation and loss, we try to console and take extra time to talk about their birth parents and their past. This seems to calm emotions down quite a bit and will subdue their concerns of not knowing where their mommy or daddy are. One thing that we’ve also tried with great results is to sit down with the child and have them write a letter to their birth parents and tell them everything that is on their heart. We did that with our six year old. They talked and we wrote.

Our other child who rarely talks about her birth parents could be caught internalizing the thoughts and will show very little emotion towards the matter. After we caught this pattern, my wife and I now proactively bring up the history of her and the birth parents. We have learned to draw out feelings so they don’t stay bottled up inside and cause grief later on.

The idea of talking about birth parents to new foster parents could seem counterproductive but usually the opposite is true. Normally, the more you incorporate their family history, the healthier the child will be emotionally. This is not always the case but in the majority of cases, it stands true.

Tuning into your child on an emotional level is the most important thing you can do to help your child. This is where the magic happens and you start connecting in different ways. The child connects with you and understand your love and investment into their life. When an adult takes time and tunes in, foster children will understand and appreciate on various levels the true love that you have for them.

Remember that foster children have experienced life in very different ways than you might have. I’m saying this because in many ways they could be a lot more advanced in many areas than you might give them credit for. A six year old raised in a loving home is very different than a six year old raised by parents who have been on drugs since the child was born and have exposed them to a lifestyle of drugs, parties, sex, street life, etc.

Keep your hopes up with difficult children and they will slowly change in time, but remember that it’s a process. Learn unconventional way of dealing with issues and problems. You may be the only one who has ever believed in them!

If you’ve got more than one child in your care, your schedule may get tight at times. Some of the appointments on your calendar may be for stressful events like court dates and heavy decisions. Other appointments may seem unnecessary. It can be immensely helpful to “take the high road” in the way you think about these various appointments not matter what they’re for. By taking the high road, I mean thinking about things from above instead of thinking about them like you’re “down in it”. If you were looking down from a high place into the goings on in your foster family, you’d probably see things taking shape that would be important to you and your foster child. You’d see people calling to let the caseworker know that they were going to be present or absent for staffings. You’d see the judge being influenced by other cases and making decisions that are important for you child based on these influences. You’d see yourself perhaps getting frustrated or elated over seemingly random events. And, if you watched from a high place long enough, you’d certainly see how all of the events that transpired during the time when your foster child was in your care, were necessary and important for everyone involved.

As a foster parent, you are not in control of everything that happens to your foster child. This would be true even if your foster child became your adopted child. Depending on your religious convictions, you probably can justify what happens to your foster child on the basis of the idea that most of what happens in life does so for a reason. But, at times, it may be hard to see things this way. It may be easier to get angry at the judge or the caseworker and be outraged. Or perhaps it’s more your style to roll over a play dead…to give up. Whatever your reaction to seemingly negative events, it’s important that you do what you can to keep a little bit of joy in your back pocket.

The challenges faced in foster care belong not only to the children themselves, but to everyone involved in The System. When things don’t go as planned, consider the possibility that you’re learning important life lessons that will be helpful to you later on in some way. Perhaps there is a foster child in your future who will benefit from insights gained in past fostering situations. Rather than feeling wronged or angry, try to come up with ways that you could use what you’ve learned in some future, hypothetical situation. Then, when your brain asks, “Why?” you can remind yourself that there are lessons for you and for your children in everything that happens. And there always is a reason.

For example, perhaps you have a court date to decide whether the birth parents will be given custody back of a foster child who have been in your care for six months. You are completely against the birth parents getting custody back. You don’t feel like the birth parents have successfully completed the tasks they were given to sharpen their parenting skills. Your foster children are concerned about returning home with their birth parents who were abusive. It seems to you that if the judge decides to award custody back to the birth parents like this would be a huge mistake on his part. You have no control over the judge’s decision or the caseworker’s recommendation.

The judge awards custody back to the birth parents and you’re outraged. How could he do this? You’ve been the one at their parent-teacher conferences. You’ve been the one taking them to extracurricular activities and making sure they have their homework done. The birth parents have only shown up on time for visitations a couple of times. But the judge decided in their favor. It can be hard to understand why. Perhaps the judge makes “bad” decisions on a regular basis. Perhaps the caseworker never liked you and made a “bad” recommendation too. The key is to remember that the decisions that are made are the best decisions for this child. You do what you can for your foster children when they come into your life (a decision that probably seemed random and unfair to the birth parents). You try to maintain control over the things that are within your control in their lives. But, remember that shaping a child’s life can happen in small doses over short periods of time. The time that you spent with a foster child who goes back home to birth parents who have been given a second or sometimes a third chance with their children can have a huge impact in a positive way. One could argue that in some cases, a small dose of foster parenting is enough to make a lifelong change in a child’s life.

Perhaps the foster child goes home to his birth parents and realizes the big difference between his foster family and his birth family and makes the important decision to do things for his family the way his foster parents did. It’s possible and likely that foster children, as a result of their experiences (whatever they may be) in foster care are given opportunities to make important decisions that they otherwise might not spend time thinking about very much. As foster parents, we don’t have infinite wisdom. What we do have is infinite hope and infinite joy that we can bestow on our foster children whenever needed . Not losing joy means not losing perspective. Remember that the reason why you’re doing foster care is to shape your foster child’s life and provide him or her with positive opportunities. Every gesture you make, every appointment you fulfill, and every ounce of faith you can provide in difficult situations will be important to your foster child whether things go as planned or not. Don’t lose your joy when you’re in the midst of a challenge. Remember, that you’re shaping lives…

Our emotions rarely give us “factual” information. It’s possible for me to feel sad when everything in my life is going just fine. Sometimes I feel angry and irritable even though everyone has been treating me like a royalty. Emotions betray reality. Unfortunately, when you do an activity like foster parenting that involves highly charged emotions, it can be hard to see things as they are without looking through an emotional lens. If I’m angry, the world has a hue of red. If I’m sad, everything looks a little blue. On days when things are looking a little green, it can hard for me to see anything but…green. But there are ways to stay logical and stay focused in order to see the progress that your child is making no matter what the hue of the world and your emotional state of mind.

Keeping a daily diary is a really wise and important thing for you to do along with other foster parenting activities like cooking and cleaning. A diary can serve many purposes in foster parenting, but the one I’d like to highlight here is how a diary can help you see the progress that your foster child is making even on days when it seems like everything is going wrong. Your daily foster parenting diary can help demonstrate to you the incremental change that is taking place in your foster children from one day to the next as time passes. It is an important tool that you can use to change your emotional status from upset to content.

There have been numerous compelling scientific studies done on how memory works (or fails to work) in humans. These studies are truly shocking. Basically, humans remember things the way they want to. Humans make up details about “what happened” in the past and insert them into their memories regularly, often to satisfy emotional needs.  One study used a software program to take existing photos of individuals and insert images of them on a hot air balloon ride. These individuals who were willing participants in the study (and had no information of the purpose of the study), had never been on a hot air balloon ride. They were shown photos of themselves in the hot air balloon and a high percentage of these people began to fabricate memories of themselves in a hot air balloon. Foster care can be like a hot air balloon ride that never happened. Essentially, if you don’t write down information about your foster children on a daily basis, your memory may not provide you with accurate information about whether or not they’ve made progress in your care. You probably won’t remember things how they really were if you don’t take the time to record data about your foster children. Other people may be more likely to remember your foster children as they were when they first arrived to your home and be able to see changes more readily than you.

Looking for progress is an activity that can keep you motivated as a foster parent. But how do you measure progress? Every child is different and it can be beneficial to spend a few days watching your child when he or she first settles into your home, recording any noteworthy behaviors or other observable data in your diary. After you’ve spent a few days observing, you’ll notice some behaviors or attitudes that need some adjustment. Then, it’s a matter or recording small changes when you notice them in your child. Perhaps your foster child will say something or do something or you’ll hear about something that he or she did at school that will demonstrate that progress and change is happening. As time passes, you may look back through your diary and see behaviors or attitudes that have quietly disappeared. All of these things can help you stay motivated as a foster parent and continue to focus on helping your foster child achieve the very best outcome possible.

A foster parent diary can provide you with landmarks in your journey so that you don’t get lost in a jungle of emotions and memories that are slightly askew. Humans young and old rarely make great changes over night. Instead, we tend to make change slowly over time, which causes change to be  tremendously hard to really see with our eyes or hear with our ears. Like watching grass grow, seldom is a child’s growth and progress dramatic and obvious. But there are changes taking place that you’ll be able to see if provide yourself with markers and don’t forget to stay focused on them. Don’t let the emotional hue of a particular day distract you from your focus on the landmarks. It’s easy to get lost within the colorful emotions that emerge when you’re foster parenting, but staying focused on your child’s progress will keep the true colors of the whole experience shining through.

I have always tried to equate the concept of responsibility with freedom. I tend to believe that these two things naturally go together anyway and effect each other naturally and as children grow into teenagers, freedom becomes a very important commodity. As an adult, I have a love/hate relationship myself with responsibility. I enjoy the sense of importance that I can feel by taking on a new responsibility, but I love my freedom at the same time. When I take on unnecessary responsibilities, my freedom is correspondingly diminished. On the other hand, when I take on responsibilities that are necessary in my life and that grow organically out of my own desires and needs, following through on responsibility usually means that I get more freedom than I had before. These ideas about responsibility aren’t exactly straightforward and as with harmony, children need to be coached and have real world experience in order to develop skills at being responsible adults.

Some foster children take on too much responsibility. Parentified children who took on the task of parenting their parents can be overly responsible. They take responsibility for unnecessary things and experience a reduction in perceived freedom. This can be detrimental and it can be really hard to teach parentified children to let go of this sense of responsibility.

On the flip side, other foster children don’t feel the need to take responsibility for anything. They cast blame on whoever is standing closest to them and refuse to be accountable for their actions under any circumstances. These children can benefit from disciplinary strategies that systematically remove coveted freedoms. Teaching these foster children that irresponsible behavior and a lack of accountability results in a loss of freedom can have quite an impact in a short span of time.

One can be responsible toward others. One can be responsible towards oneself. Responsibility has different flavors. Instilling in your foster child the need for them to “follow-through” on promises and on what they say they’re going to do is important to them in all kinds of domains that they’ll encounter when they become adults. It’s important for husbands and wives to be able to follow-through on promises they make to each other. It’s important for employees to be able to follow-through when they say they’re going to show up to work at a certain time. It’s important for parents to follow-through on what they say they’re going to do for their children. Foster children who have lived with parents who do not take responsibility for their behaviors and follow through on obligations and promises may not understand the virtues of doing so. You can be a model of responsibility to your children, but make sure that you partake in certain freedoms as well. Demonstrate to your child how to balance responsibility with enjoyable activities in order to be happy day-to-day.

The unwillingness and inability for foster children to take responsibility for their actions is a major problem. If your child overcomes an inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions, you should celebrate this breakthrough heartily because it is a big one. Casting off responsibility can make it easy for people to ignore the needs of other and to forget that their actions have an influence on the people who love them. Taking responsibility means that foster children get to feel a sense of importance and a satisfaction in a job well done. It means that they get to enjoy certain freedoms that must also be engaged in with responsibility.

So, if there’s one behavior that you can’t ignore or let go, it’s a lack of responsibility. If your foster child behaves irresponsibly or fails to take responsibility for his actions, its imperative that you discipline and provide guidance on this important note. Responsibility is the crux upon which adulthood pivots. All activities that we equate with maturity require some level of responsibility. Responsibility should be a word that your foster child knows well and he should never questions it’s importance in the scheme of your parenting philosophies. In order for your foster child to grow into a well-adjusted, happy adult, he will need to master this important skill!

Even though I have been around the block a few times with the best of them, I am still amazed by the amount of people that consider foster care solely for financial gain. Since my wife and I are involved in the advocacy of foster care in California, we cannot count the conversations we’ve had with professionals about the amount of people who foster solely for a living. Unfortunately there aren’t not enough heartfelt parents to foster the large amounts of children available in foster care so the agencies are forced not to be to picky when it comes to granting licenses to foster parents. I’m sure there are many people who will say they have the solution to this massive problem in the United States and other countries around the world, but the answer is not simple to answer.

 Sometimes self-destructive beliefs that foster child have aren’t negative. For example, your foster child may believe that she will never get into trouble for doing something illegal. Though this belief about herself and the world isn’t “negative” per se, it is still destructive (and unrealistic). If you’re going to bring out the inner champion in your child, you’re going to have to set some of these things straight while going to work on the negative thoughts that lead foster children to do self-destructive behaviors in the first place. Getting foster kids to have a sense of realism that isn’t pessimistic, but still gets them to shoot for the stars is a hard balance to strike. It will take some work on your part, but it’s worth it in the end.

My husband an I teach martial arts classes and we work with a lot of children as a result. I use the martial arts classes as an example because many of the children are seriously challenged by things like breaking boards or kicking over a bag with a running jump front kick. I am always amazed at how a child’s way of thinking about board breaking or kicking over an obstacle affects whether or not they can accomplish the task. We tell the kids, “Don’t just aim to hit the board, go through the board!” This is hard for them. They have to get their focus off the board itself and the impossibility of breaking it with their small, delicate hands and instead, use their imagination and see their hand going through the board. The same is true for kicking over bags. “Aim back here.” We tell them and put up a palm right behind their target. It seems impossible, but we encourage them to believe they can do it. Children lining up to break a board or kick over a bag manifest facial expressions ranging from distressed to determined. Guess which ones succeed every time? The determined ones who’ve decided that they’re ready to break through that board or kick over that bag and they believe they can do it!

Foster children begin their journey with you as distressed individuals. They probably have a lot of beliefs that are self-defeating. They can hardly imagine surmounting the difficulties they face, let alone going beyond to achieve success at something they’ve dreamed of. But, teaching your children to aim not just to hit the board but to go all the way through it is an important lesson that translates into almost every area of life. Imagine yourself not just doing the minimum, but going beyond that. Do what you’re going to do with the confidence that you can succeed. This is what foster children need to hear from you ever day of their lives that they spend in your care!

Years ago, psychologists began to realize that depressed individuals all seemed to have what came to be known as “toxic thoughts”. Toxic thoughts are negative thinking habits that make people feel chronically unhappy and experience learned helplessness in their lives. Psychotherapy for depressed individuals was then aimed at getting rid of toxic thoughts, which often did relieve the depression as well. Foster children can really benefit from hearing positive thoughts about themselves and the world. It’s hard not to absorb a positive attitude if you’re marinating in it twenty four hours a day. As a foster parent, if you want your foster child to thrive in your care and grow up into a successful and happy adult, cultivate a positive attitude and make sure your foster child hears about it!

So, as you become aware of your foster child’s problems, don’t aim toward just fixing the issues. Try to give your foster child more than just the goal of “staying out of trouble”. Instead, give your child a positive goal to aim toward. Believe that you child can be more than just someone who didn’t do the wrong thing. Your foster child may be resistant and distressed by this at first, but if you believe in her and you encourage her regularly, she may just start to believe you and what you say. It’s hard to tell what your foster child can accomplish in her lifetime if you can imbibe her with the right attitude!

Foster parenting is no easy undertaking. No matter what your background, how many children you’ve fostered in the past, or how much you think you know about kids, when a new foster child walks through your front door, there are always surprises. It’s exciting to receive a “placement” and I have to admit, I have fallen prey to the temptation to treat new foster children as very important “guests”.  This “high energy” approach wanes as the days pass and I slowly realize I can’t treat these young people as guests. These children may be angry and frightened and they don’t feel safe as guests. I’ve learned with time, that if I start out in a sprint, expending large quantities of energy trying to make our family look like the most wonderful and welcoming family in the world that I won’t be able to keep running when its time for court dates and caseworker visits, staffings, and visitations. I had better be able to keep the pace no matter what happens because when that new child walks through the door, I need to be able to act as a parent from day-to-day, not as a host. In order to experience the highs that come with seeing the positive impact you’re having on your foster family, you need to take care of yourself and your family by exercising a balanced approach from the moment your child walks through the door.

There are few experiences that prepare us for foster parenting and what it actually is. I think perhaps, that it is only with time and experience that the difference between “guests” and foster children begins to emerge. Guests don’t typically get angry with you or cry themselves to sleep. They also won’t usually curl up on your lap for storytime. It is through trial and error that foster parenting slowly takes on a shape that clearly shows what it is not. Though you are charged with the power to act as a “parent-figure” in the lives of your foster children, unless you are permitted to adopt your child, you often cannot make even seemingly small decisions for your child (like how and when their hair should be cut) as you would with children who are legally your own. Foster parenting is not the same as parenting children who are legally your own, though it shares certain important similarities.

If you’re new to foster parenting, it’s important to remind yourself of what foster parenting is not until what foster parenting is begins to make sense to you, on a personal level.  There is no way to hurry this process. It comes with experience and I can tell you that foster parenting is something special. It is a job that requires effort and emotional fortitude but offers high rewards when you are successful. As you  slowly begin to develop a personal idea of what foster parenting is to you, it’s extremely important that you don’t take on the task of foster parenting as though it were a sprint. You cannot do a quick “fix” your foster children. And you cannot maintain a front in your own home to try to make yourself and the rest of your family look better than you all actually are. Pace yourself when you work with your foster children. Take slow deep breaths frequently to keep your stride.

Seasoned foster parents know that no child is like any other child they’ve ever cared for. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why foster parenting can be so rewarding, but it is also the reason why foster parenting can be very stressful. Bringing a new child into your home under any circumstances creates a high level of stress. You’ll get used to the process and better at it with time. Every member of the family has to adjust to make room for the new family member. On the surface, welcoming a new 7 year old into your family may not seem like a big adjustment (just a bed and some space for toys and books perhaps), until the 7 year old arrives on your doorstep with behaviors and attitudes that you weren’t expecting. But this is the challenge that foster parents signed up for, because they enjoy providing safety and love to other people who need those things. An it is a rewarding and enriching experience that will entertain and educate you, provide you with patience and offer endless insights into humanity.

Foster children don’t care about perfection. They don’t want you to try to “fix” them. They want people who can stick with them through thick and thin, without giving up or giving in. This is the marathon approach and it starts when your foster child walks through the door. Your family has a routine and a way of doing things that needs to continue no matter what your foster child’s behaviors or problems. Your foster child will take up the rhythm, the pace that your family sets. Trying to act as though your family is perfect or especially heavenly sets a pace that your foster child won’t be able to keep up with, and neither will you, for very long. And so, whether you’re a veteran foster parent or a newbie, strive to be yourself and keep your family running like it normally does even when new children arrive on your doorstep. Remember, it’s a marathon and not a sprint.