This Saturday will be our final foster care training class. Then your dad and I will be considered professionals I guess. It may still be several months till we are officially licensed and I'll probably request to hold off on placement till after the holidays.
I'm worried. Not necessarily about the child that will come to live with us but about everything else. I'm afraid people will judge the child that comes to live with us--and that you will too. Because people are ignorant and so are you. You don't mean to be, I just need to be better about preparing you and teaching you.
We have a group home in our neighborhood and the girls from the group home often come to church. They don't go to class, they just hang out in the foyer. They eat snacks and sit and talk. They wear jeans and sweaters. Apparently people in the ward are annoyed with that. They think the girls dress inappropriately and are disrespectful. They shouldn't be wandering the halls. They encourage other youth to skip class. They are distracting.
I think most adults look at teenagers in foster care and think they are out of control. They think they've been raised incorrectly all these years and now they're messed up. Disrespectful. Weird. They need discipline to reign them in.
Actually, what they need is positive structure, time and trauma-informed people surrounding them.
I organized a photo shoot the other day for the Lottery. They wanted to get some photos of CASA for their media kit so I organized a few "children" (they were actually 16 and 20-something) and their advocates to come in and be photographed in a courtroom with a judge. I took some time to talk with the 16 year old while she waited for the others to finish their portion. I asked her how she felt her CASA changed her. She said she was a bad kid in the system. She disrupted from placements and was angry. She said once she got a CASA she had someone to turn to when that anger came up again and it helped. She was eventually adopted and now wins beauty pageants and participates in cheer. She's learning to drive and talking about college options. She wants to be a nurse or an engineer. She's beautiful. She's one of those kids that you look at and think "Why in the world was she in foster care for so long? Who WOULDN'T want to take her home?"
I asked her what she did that was so "bad." She said she thought she was an adult. So she acted like an adult. Keep in mind the adults she was use to.They probably weren't respecting authority figures. They probably weren't calm and collected.
That wasn't her fault. She was forced to grow up quickly and she modeled the behavior she saw around her.
You girls do it too. I bought calculators from the Dollar Store and you use them as "phones." (Yay for buttons!) Eisley walks around the house all the time playing on her "phone," calling people and "turning on music" and I think it's hilarious how often she says "Stupid phone, I don't want music!" That's exactly what Brendon says when his phone turns music on automatically when he gets in the car.
I'm afraid that we're going to get a child placed in our home and he's going to be closed off for a while, maybe a little disrespectful and you girls are going to think Why did we let this person come into our home? What's wrong with him? I'm afraid he's going to roam the halls at church and people will whisper behind our backs about how we need to control him better.
It's been getting on my nerves a little bit lately that every time we mention we're taking in a teen someone tells us "Bless you!" like we'll probably never make it out alive. Teens are SO hard, right? We did an exercise in our class and each couple had a "child" (on paper) placed in their homes and it went through a few scenarios and you had to write about how you would react. The kids were all different ages, 2, 9, and 14. What was cool about the exercise was every kid did the exact same thing. The two year old pulled the TV down on themselves and got hurt just like the teen did. The 9 year old saw his mom at Walmart and ran to her just like the teen did. The 2 year old ran away just like the teen did. No matter the age of the child they all got in trouble. I liked that. They're all kids. Kids are trouble. That's ok. My little girls throw tantrums. I expect this teenager to do the same. And we'll talk about it--just like we do with our young kids. Because teens need us to model behavior and to talk things out just as much as my little girls do.
I don't really know where I'm going with this. I'm just venting. Point is, I hope we can all be a little more accepting. I hope we can realize the way we've been raised is not the only way out there. These kids in the system are kids--but they don't know that. I'm going to take every opportunity to talk to you girls about how lucky we are to have what we have and how much I love and adore you. And then explain that not every child has that. That doesn't make them bad. That doesn't make their parents bad. We just need to accept them and we need to teach them--and let them teach us--and we need to be there for them.
I'm worried. Not necessarily about the child that will come to live with us but about everything else. I'm afraid people will judge the child that comes to live with us--and that you will too. Because people are ignorant and so are you. You don't mean to be, I just need to be better about preparing you and teaching you.
We have a group home in our neighborhood and the girls from the group home often come to church. They don't go to class, they just hang out in the foyer. They eat snacks and sit and talk. They wear jeans and sweaters. Apparently people in the ward are annoyed with that. They think the girls dress inappropriately and are disrespectful. They shouldn't be wandering the halls. They encourage other youth to skip class. They are distracting.
I think most adults look at teenagers in foster care and think they are out of control. They think they've been raised incorrectly all these years and now they're messed up. Disrespectful. Weird. They need discipline to reign them in.
Actually, what they need is positive structure, time and trauma-informed people surrounding them.
I organized a photo shoot the other day for the Lottery. They wanted to get some photos of CASA for their media kit so I organized a few "children" (they were actually 16 and 20-something) and their advocates to come in and be photographed in a courtroom with a judge. I took some time to talk with the 16 year old while she waited for the others to finish their portion. I asked her how she felt her CASA changed her. She said she was a bad kid in the system. She disrupted from placements and was angry. She said once she got a CASA she had someone to turn to when that anger came up again and it helped. She was eventually adopted and now wins beauty pageants and participates in cheer. She's learning to drive and talking about college options. She wants to be a nurse or an engineer. She's beautiful. She's one of those kids that you look at and think "Why in the world was she in foster care for so long? Who WOULDN'T want to take her home?"
I asked her what she did that was so "bad." She said she thought she was an adult. So she acted like an adult. Keep in mind the adults she was use to.They probably weren't respecting authority figures. They probably weren't calm and collected.
That wasn't her fault. She was forced to grow up quickly and she modeled the behavior she saw around her.
You girls do it too. I bought calculators from the Dollar Store and you use them as "phones." (Yay for buttons!) Eisley walks around the house all the time playing on her "phone," calling people and "turning on music" and I think it's hilarious how often she says "Stupid phone, I don't want music!" That's exactly what Brendon says when his phone turns music on automatically when he gets in the car.
I'm afraid that we're going to get a child placed in our home and he's going to be closed off for a while, maybe a little disrespectful and you girls are going to think Why did we let this person come into our home? What's wrong with him? I'm afraid he's going to roam the halls at church and people will whisper behind our backs about how we need to control him better.
It's been getting on my nerves a little bit lately that every time we mention we're taking in a teen someone tells us "Bless you!" like we'll probably never make it out alive. Teens are SO hard, right? We did an exercise in our class and each couple had a "child" (on paper) placed in their homes and it went through a few scenarios and you had to write about how you would react. The kids were all different ages, 2, 9, and 14. What was cool about the exercise was every kid did the exact same thing. The two year old pulled the TV down on themselves and got hurt just like the teen did. The 9 year old saw his mom at Walmart and ran to her just like the teen did. The 2 year old ran away just like the teen did. No matter the age of the child they all got in trouble. I liked that. They're all kids. Kids are trouble. That's ok. My little girls throw tantrums. I expect this teenager to do the same. And we'll talk about it--just like we do with our young kids. Because teens need us to model behavior and to talk things out just as much as my little girls do.
I don't really know where I'm going with this. I'm just venting. Point is, I hope we can all be a little more accepting. I hope we can realize the way we've been raised is not the only way out there. These kids in the system are kids--but they don't know that. I'm going to take every opportunity to talk to you girls about how lucky we are to have what we have and how much I love and adore you. And then explain that not every child has that. That doesn't make them bad. That doesn't make their parents bad. We just need to accept them and we need to teach them--and let them teach us--and we need to be there for them.
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