Planning Christmas Celebrations outside the Home - Behaviors

When you are celebrating the holidays with family and friends including exchanging gifts with each other, how your foster children with fit in will arise. I have talked about why it is so important to include your foster children and what responsibility may fall upon your shoulders. I also have talked... more

Some foster children will come into our lives hoping and looking for a forever family to call their own. Occasionally a foster child will come into care starved for a family to care for him or her, seeking love and acceptance. This foster child can latch onto a foster family rather quickly hoping for things to become permanent.

Before we know it, we are faced with the question: “Can I stay here (meaning your home) and be part of your family?” This is a difficult question to answer and has no easy answer. Granted it is not question you will be answering every day, but... more

Planning Christmas Celebrations outside the Home - Behaviors

The second concern with your foster children when celebrating the holidays with family and friends is gifts. When everyone exchanges gifts and your foster children are left out, this bothers them. Why wouldn't it? To have to sit and watch other children and adults unwrap gifts sends home the message that they are not part of the family.

This does only more damage to a child causing them to withdraw more into themselves. We are suppose to be helping these children and teaching them that they do matter. So, as the foster... more

Christmas celebrations outside the home can take some extra planning and fore thought when foster children are involved. Some of these issues may also come up when family or friends are also visiting your home for the holidays.

Mainly for two reasons: The first one being, any problems with the foster child, or behaviors that may pop up during the Christmas celebration. Granted you do not need to get into all the details but it is helpful to prepare family or friends with an idea of behaviors that could appear. Secondly, this can be the time when you can... more

I do think it is very important for these children not to feel guilty about what they are experiencing, and that they are having a nice Christmas. A lot of the time, there is quite a bit on the foster parent’s hands and we are left to react to how the child is made to feel after going on biological family visits. I have found that in some cases granted, not all that we as foster parents can do things that can help ease the feelings the biological family may be having to some point by including them with the children’s holidays.

When we do our holiday traditions, I try... more

Even though Christmas time can be a difficult time for foster children they still want to included and become part of things. They will have times that they feel guilty for having a good time and enjoying Christmas because they know that is not the case for the biological parents. I have found that they talk more about their lives, home, biological parents and things that happened during the holidays.

Including a foster child during the holidays can be more than decorating the Christmas and baking cookies, while these things are great starting points, it is just the beginning.... more

Sorry I have been a little slow with posting since November. When you have computer issues things come to a complete standstill and then to top it off that we can only get dial up. My computer has some major problems so I will be sending it out to be repaired that will leave me posting when I can. Oh how I miss digital instead of dial up…..hmmm….what would I give to be up running at high speed. A girl can dream.

To celebrate National Adoption Month I had a give away for the... more

This is something that I looked forward to when I was a child, and have wonderful memories of every Christmas baking cookies in our kitchen. This is a tradition that I have carried over to my children and also my foster children. My children look forward to it every year. My foster children are a little reserved in the beginning, but quickly become involved.

This is a great activity to get foster children involved in without great difficulty. Really this is something in my experience they involve themselves in without much need of encouragement. They do not have to... more

The Christmas tree is up and fully decorated with all the ornaments that have meaning from the past years. The stockings are hung and the house is all decorated for Christmas along with the festivals and excitement of Christmas. While for most of us, our Christmas is built around tradition. Some foster children however, do not have this.

I have yet to have a foster child that has experienced what most people consider a normal Christmas with the Christmas tree, decorations, baking cookies, singing Christmas carols, making crafts, etc. with their biological or birth... more

Foster Parents Dealing With Children Living in Limbo

Foster Parents Helping Children Living in Limbo

I fostered a little boy (five years old) for a little over a year he was mentally retarded and autistic. In your mind, picture the worst child and his behaviors, then magnify that times five that is probably close to what he was like.

He had so many issues... more