by Jo Ann Wentzel

Created on: March 11, 2009

Basically, foster care is the placing of a child or children in a substitute home with parents who will care for them as their own until those children are able to return home. The situation can be temporary, long-term, permanent, or even result in an adoption. But no matter what the plan,foster care is a different world.

Families are challenging today. When you have a traditional number of kids it is difficult, when you have additional kids, more than the average home, and challenging kids such as in foster care, the world you live in is different, and it is a different place. Thinking about the fact that foster parents open up their homes to strangers and immediately make family members of them is something that the average family does't do. Your world is very unlike that of your non-fostering neighbors.

Large families are familiar with some of the problems involved with caring for a whole mob of kids. Everything you do is on a large scale- cooking, shopping, laundry, school events, doctors, illnesses and meetings. I think they have some idea of what life as a foster parent is like. But, foster parents have all this and then add the stress of a variety of behavioral problems, learning disabilities and kids just trying to push the envelope - and lots of these kids. Family dinners look like Roman feasts with all the dishes.

A parent in a melded family resulting from several marriages and each spouse bringing their own children to the family have some idea of what the family dynamics are for a foster family. But as foster parents you have a whole array of personalities that you are trying to make into a unit to function as a family. The numbers and look of the family change constantly as kids come and go. That is what makes your situation so unusual.

Most families have problems and crisis occasionally; a foster family lives it 24/7. There is usually at least one child among your brood who thinks it is his job to keep you in a constant state of anxiety. You wonder if the oldest one is doing drugs. You may worry the middle one has a very strong crush on an older girl. The next two are both experiencing school problems and one has been thrown off the bus for acting out'. The smallest one is not responding well to love and attention. You believe she isn't bonding with you and your husband. And those are just the beginning since problems can change hourly and new kids can arrive with their own set of problems. Older kids can move out on their own, or get put into another

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>