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 parents, we have to look at how things affect them. Also it is up to us to help when issues arise that we have control over, and gifts are one of them.

Personally I cannot stand seeing a child feeling left out. In the beginning of my become a foster parent I expected and felt that if someone brought my children a Christmas gift then they should also do the same for my foster children. Which I did not mind stating to family and friends and it was not always well received. Really that did not bother me. If you would not provide gifts for all my children including my foster children then do not bother doing it for any of them was how I viewed it.

Then one day I realized that I was punishing my children because of our foster children. This thought caused me to really think about things from all sides and to take a step back. The truth is that some family and friends may already have a full list of gifts to purchase that they struggle with doing without me adding my demands.

My main realization was that becoming a foster parent was my calling and journey that I choose. That it is completely wrong to try and force others to become part of my journey.

More on how to ensure your foster children are not left out when exchanging gifts with family and friends coming next.

More reading:

Including Foster Children During the Holidays

Helping Foster Children Connect With Their Biological Families During the Holidays