1. Make some time for yourself even if it is only a long bubble bath. Do not give up the things that make you who you are (gardening, scrap booking, reading, painting, etc.). Mostly likely these activities that are important to you can be a great stress relief for you.

2. Do not let what people may say or the inappropriate questions that they feel is okay to ask you, get to you.

3. Prepare for a crisis by lining up a someone to help with the care of the children, if you should need it. With foster care it is probably more like when it will happen. You can almost that there will be a crisis (child falls needs stitches, a spouse gets hurt, a child has a super melt down or explosion, etc).

4. Carry your date book with you everywhere. Make notes (phone numbers with caseworkers, doctors, therapists ,etc.) of the day, and write down every appointment.

5. Write down the date of birth of your foster children. So, at the pharmacy when you drag all the children to fill a prescription and you are asked the date of birth you do not look like a deer in head lights Yes, granted you may get some funny looks or questions. It is better than what I have been know to do, give them a couple of options (when I forget my note of Bdays).

6. Spend time doing fun things with your children.

7. Do not sweat the small things (like a child forgetting their coat, a child becoming creative with crayons, when a child uses a whole new bottle of shampoo during one bath, etc.). I promise before you know it someone has flushed something down the toilet cause a major back up in your entire house, you see “I hate you B***H” written on your furniture and walls, you get the dreaded phone call from school, and the list goes on.

8. You must find humor and laughter, or at times it would be completely unbearable. You may send children to school wearing each others shoes (because every time you turned around someone was having a melt down) and the teacher points it out to you. Laugh and say, “ Hey I’m just glad they were wearing shoes and with two children having melt downs, we made it on time.”

9. When it has been one of those days and your phone rings, it is a caseworker calling just let it go to voice mail. Then you have the choice of calling them back later or hopefully it can wait until tomorrow.

10. Hide some chocolate away so, you will have it when you are on the edge of insanity.

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
Ursula K. Le Guin