Into the Fold: Blending Your Bio Kids with Your Foster Kids - Part 2: Rooms to Grow…

by John and Diane

I asked my daughter to write down her thoughts on growing up in a home with foster children and I thought that her advice and insights would be very valuable to new (and experienced) foster parents out there. I feel that foster parent training may not really prepare families for the realities of bringing children with complex emotional, behavioral and cognitive issues into their home. Caseworkers and counselors, though they may be well meaning, do not always “have your back” and you must take the reins and lead your household in the safest and most nurturing way possible for both your biological and foster children.

My wife and I made some mistakes early on, which have shaped everyone in my family to some extent, as all experiences do, and it is my hope,that by sharing our past, we can help others to avoid the pitfalls that we lived through.

At one point we had 4 foster children in our home, plus our own daughters. We grew close and some of the foster children we had began to feel like true siblings to our own two children. It was easy to get comfortable in the home and feel safe. That was a mistake.

From my daughter, who was 13 or 14 at the time:

“For some reason my parents thought that it would be smart to put all three teens together downstairs, let me forewarn all the future foster parents right now when you put teenage girls and boys together things happen. Although I will not go into details if you have daughters I STRONGLY advise against allowing boys within a 3 or even 4year range of your daughters in the house or even just older boys period. They were fun at times for me to hangout with but because we didn’t have the blood relation naturally people become attracted to each other as inappropriate as it might be. Young girls are very impressionable andit’s just not a risk worth taking. “

I thought that because the bedrooms were at complete opposite sides of the finished basement, and I had monitoring cameras and had clearly discussed boundaries with the children that this was acceptable. I can see that it was foolish.

Conversely, I have also learned that no matter the gender of a foster child, or even if they are blood-related, each foster child should have their own bedroom. Meaning each girl, each boy, brothers, sister each child should have their own room.

Sometimes foster children come into the program with sexual abuse issues (as discussed previously) that have not been discussed or discovered, hence, it is easy to inadvertently put children at risk for being abused by other children, including siblings, when they are sharing rooms.Rooms should be single occupied onlyand the house rules (as detailed in Importance of House Rules/Chore Lists for kids with Trust Disorders and RAD) state that children are not allowed in each other’s rooms, must be enforced.

I cannot stress to you how important this is. No matter how pressured you might feel to take more children, unless or until you know for certain that there are no sexual or abuse type issues with the child, it is not worth the risk to anyone under your roof to share bedrooms.

So, again, perhaps you think I was too naive, or that my story is atypical, but I am sure that there are many foster parents out there that are learning by trial and error; which is an unfortunate state of affairs when we are dealing with troubled children already.

Hence: Lessons learned thus far in this series:

Part1.

· Insist on getting new foster children’s criminal and personal case records

· Do not rely on your own children telling you the truth in regards to foster children’s behavior

Part 2

· Keep teenaged and younger children on separate and well-monitored floors or better yet, do not take foster kids who are older than your own children.

· Each foster child should have their own bedroom,no matter if they are of the same sex, or are related.

More to come....

Please share your experiences and thoughts...