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Holidays are a time of celebration, family time together, and happiness. In foster homes holidays are all of these things, but also a time of stress, behaviors, acting out, sorrow, sadness, confusion, and an overall insecurity of everything. While I do realize most people to do not understand this in the slightest, it is just how things are. We have to find ways to make difficult situations easier and helping these foster children cope.
“Holidays are suppose to be fun”, is sometime I hear more than I would like too. Believe me; I do not want to be dealing with issues during the holidays. You cannot expect children that have been abused, traumatized, or neglected not to have issues with holidays. Seriously, these foster children struggle with daily life. These kiddos do not come with a button to push so all their issues disappear for the holidays.
Before I was a foster parent, my image of the holidays with my foster children would be great in every way like an image on a Christmas card. Boy…. was I in for a shock. I have experienced some holidays with some bumps, minor issues along the way and we have experienced difficult, heartbreaking ones.
My first Christmas as a foster parent was a real doozie. This experience leaves us with painful, bittersweet memories at Christmas. It left our family with lasting scars. We faced a foster son that we were working towards adopting trying to kill our daughter and then myself. We faced a lot of judgment during this time from everyone including our families because he left the day after Christmas. At the time we were unable to explain what was going on even to our families because we were just trying to get through and help our daughter at the same time. Really how to you start conversations like that…..”Merry Christmas, our foster son tried to kill our daughter so he is going to be moved!!” After this our extended family thought we were completely nuts to continue fostering.
Before you start judging foster parents or even adoptive parents raising abused, traumatized, or neglected children remember, you really do not know what are stressors for these children and what the entire families go through. Holidays are a very difficult time for most of these children.
More reading:
Autumn and the Effects on Foster Care
Oh holidays can just plain suck. We’ve had our share of both good and horrid. We no longer go to family gatherings because
1) We’re not welcome
2) They criticize everything we do with our kids.
3) It’s too much stimulation.
We now opt for a quiet family day.
Family gatherings are a tough one.
Lanette