Throughout my life I have been privileged to know and be involved in organizations that take the time to teach the next generation of leaders. In each organization (church, work, clubs, etc) there have been many different foci for learning leadership skills. One organization distilled the tenets of good leadership into three character traits. A leader is one who is Faithful, Available, and Teachable. These seem to sum up most of the traits discussed in other models.
What I’m finding is that in order to do well in participating in the foster care system, I need to approach interacting with my child, people from the county Department of Human Services, the courts, therapist(s), and other individuals with these same three traits in mind. In this situation, it breaks down like this:
Faithful
Look out for the best interests of the child, even if they conflict with your own desires. Commit to doing what the child needs in order to succeed. Ask questions to find out how to get from where you are now to where you need to go in order to help out the child. When you see that the county is doing or about to do something that is not the best for the child, speak up. You are with that kid every day and, as a result, see what he/she needs better than anyone else. You are their best advocate. When the going gets tough (and it WILL get tough), stay the course. Make sure that your child knows that you love them and that tough times will not diminish your love or commitment to him/her.
Available
Taking on a child in the foster care system is a big time commitment. You don’t have 9-10 months to adjust to another person taking up your time. It’s an instantaneous change. There are therapy appointments; doctor appointments; dentist appointments; caseworker, foster care worker, and GAL visits; as well as your usual day to day activities. I used to be actively involved in several community organizations and have pared that down to one in order to accommodate my son’s needs. I keep one volunteer activity so that I have outside-of-the-home involvement for myself. I can’t be available to support my son if I’m not taking care of me. (The biggest complaint I hear from stay at home moms is that they don’t get enough adult interaction or intellectual stimulation so I find having involvement in at least one place outside of work and home to be important.)
Another way that it becomes necessary to be available is to spend focused time with the child. If he can’t have my undivided attention for some period of time on an almost daily basis, he becomes stressed and worries that his needs won’t be met. There are many children in foster care who have had to fend for themselves for every need because mom or dad wasn’t available to make sure that they or their siblings were properly fed, clothed, etc. Spending even 10-20 minutes of intentional time with him each evening helps to reassure that his needs will be met. This helps to mitigate some of the “acting out” behaviors.
The third way that it is important to be available is communication. One of the primary roles of the county workers, GAL, and therapist is to provide you the support needed to make the relationship between adoptive parent and child successful. (Remember that “successful” does not mean “smooth”.) When something happens and you aren’t sure how to handle it or whether you handled it well, call or email the caseworker, foster care worker, GAL, or therapist and ASK. I have found that an email to all of the parties involved is helpful because it keeps everyone in the loop and sometimes I get different perspectives on what might be going on and how to approach the situation. On the reverse side, there was one recurring situation that I thought I was communicating well but it turned out that I was not because only the therapist was involved in the communication. Once the other folks were included, the right people were involved to help get us the services needed to move forward.
Teachable
Questions and your response to the answers are your biggest tool in making the relationship with the child successful.
As previously indicated, questions to the other adults involved can help you get where you need to go. These folks (county workers, GAL, therapists) work with children in the system every day. They’ve been around the block a time or two and have great insight on helping these kids. LISTEN to what they have to say and be willing to change your methods in order to be the best parent for a broken child. At the same time, listen to your parental instinct. Since you spend more actual time with the kiddo, there may be elements that the county worker is missing that may alter to some degree the manner in which you implement their advice.
Also do not be afraid to ask the child questions. These kids are sometimes wise beyond their years. They’ve had to make some pretty hard decisions at a very young age and can often communicate what they believe needs to happen based on their experience and limited knowledge of the world. Also be aware that in order to survive, they’ve learned manipulation techniques that would likely never occur to your brain. Start watching for patterns and learning them so that you know when you are being played or lied to vs. when something is true.
And learn to discern what portions of a story might be important so that you can address the important items rather than the peripheral junk. This is difficult. It requires becoming familiar with your child’s history and with their perception of that history. For instance, if a child says, “One time I got in an accident and we got a bunch of money because of it. Then I bought [relative/friend] a new [item] with that money but he/she ruined it by xyz activities”, what is not important is that he was in an accident or that the family got money in a settlement. What is important is that he feels he provided something nice for someone and that the person essentially told him that he was worthless or unimportant by not caring for the item. More than likely something has just happened that triggered the memory and feelings of unimportance, inadequacy, or worthlessness.
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