I can only really give you the perspective of a foster parent, and my view of the experience. My experience has been almost exclusively with young children who would struggle to put a few sentences together. So, I can not tell you what their thoughts were, but I can tell you my view of what it looks like from my viewpoint.

Foster Care is hard for foster parents and kids

Everything about foster care is a case study on the resiliency of human beings. Take a kid that has been hurt (physically, emotionally, sexually, or mentally) out of the only home they have ever known and place them with people they don’t know, in a home they aren’t familiar with, feed them food that may not be used to, and give them rules or boundaries they may have never experienced and you are bound to run up on a few confusing potentially volatile situations.

Over time all of those things can be overcome. But, at the beginning of any placement, there is a lot of adaptations that all parties must work towards. I am not just talking about kids adapting to a new situation, but mostly it should be foster parents adapting to the reality of a child’s norms. 

If a kid is normally eating nothing but highly processed or fast foods, it is unrealistic to think you can move them straight to a vegetarian diet without some pushback. Moving to a healthier diet may be necessary, but there must be some understanding that they are going through enough changes to throw their life into turmoil already. Food choices may not be today’s battle!

Bedtimes may not be something kids are used to. Setting limits on screen time is oftentimes a new concept for kids. Using appropriate language may not be a normal boundary that they have experienced.

It would be unrealistic and silly to think that we should attack all of these topics at once with any expectations of success. Especially since almost all cases of kids in care are there because of some type of trauma. Even if the trauma is just being removed from a home they are familiar with – it is trauma.

This can be specifically challenging if you already have biological or adopted kids that are adapted to a certain way of life and you find them questioning this new kid’s choices.

Learning to integrate their life with yours requires flexibility and understanding. Being too rigid with rules will only serve to isolate a child. Kids have an amazing BS detector and they don’t care what you say until they know you care. Building those relationships is difficult, especially with a child that has experienced pain or abandonment before.

Foster Care is unpredictable

“Hello, Mr. Palmer, we are looking for a home for a short term placement for 2 siblings.” 18 months after that conversation we were watching these same 2 kids move back in with their biological dad. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything negative about case managers. 

The truth is that the majority of cases we have dealt with involve bio parents that are struggling with drug addiction of some sort. If you’ve dealt with any kind of addiction or the people in that struggle, you know that predictability is not a piece of that puzzle!

Your entire family will struggle with the unpredictability of it all was well. Your bio kids, other foster kids that may be in your home at the time, as well as your extended family whose lives become entangled in the web of connections with these kids as well

Mental health struggles are also a common struggle for bio parents as they work through their cases. There is always a certain level of unpredictability for those cases as well. Our friends at the Barren to Blessed blog has this article that explains it well.

Regardless of what the case manager tells you when you get that call to pick up a kid, they can only tell you as much as they know and sometimes there are more speculations than facts available to them.

You will usually deal with parents in crisis mode. It is the reason a lot of kids come into care. Being flexible and not having too many expectations about how it will all play out will help you deal with the unpredictability of being a foster parent. Try to remember that it is also an unpredictable time for the bio parents and the kids too. 

Foster Care is rewarding when it is done right

There are many relationship stressors when you first get to know a child. However, when you do it right it is wonderfully rewarding! We have had many kids that have come into our homes and found their way into our hearts. 

There is nothing more rewarding than being able to witness the moment when a child decides to trust. If you are paying attention and can see that one magical moment when fear turns to hope, all the hard moments you’ve experienced together are worth it!

Yeah, there are some struggles, but anything worth doing will come with struggles. If something is worth doing, you will expect hard moments and walk through the fires of hell to get it done.

You will sit with a six-year-old little girl while she tearfully asks why she isn’t “good enough for her mommy and daddy to quit doing drugs and take care of her.” You will have no answers that will soothe her soul.

You can tell her that it isn’t her, that it is the addiction. She may nod her head, but it is apparent she doesn’t believe you down deep in her soul. You may sit with her and cry with her, and that is all you can do. It is hard to watch a young one deal with the existential angst and feel like you can do nothing to ease her pain.

However, years later when you see the young woman beginning to blossom with the confidence that she matters to someone; when you can see the pain you shared with her turned into a strength that propels her forward into her own life regardless of what others have said to her and you know that that moment you shared her pain has led to her embracing her beauty – You will know the rewards of your struggles were worth it!

This is why we love doing foster care. The magical moments when the course of a life is changed forever are without a doubt the most rewarding piece of being involved with kids in the foster care system.