Every foster child will deal with abuse in very different ways. Abuse overshadows so much of a child’s life that some adults probably do not realize. As adults we struggle to wrap our minds around the abuse that a child has spent his entire life living with. These children learn early that adults in their lives have the power to hurt them and do unspeakable things to them (sometimes in the name of love).

These children lose so much of their innocence, being able to trust the people that are suppose to protect them. In some cases, nighttime is not for dreams; it is when the nightmare begins, their childhoods, and their right to be safe, chance of an education, friends, control over their bodies, the belief that there is anything good in them and/or about them is lost totally to the abuse. These children learn to build up walls around themselves to protect them from abuse, the thoughts of the abuse, and not to allow people close (emotional) to them to hurt them even though they than can still physically hurt them.

Some foster children may think abuse is a part of every child’s life. An older foster son that I parented was exposed to a lot of pornography and sexual acts in his home. His biological mother and her boyfriend would watch porn and doing other sexual things. This left him believing that this is what happened in a normal home. He also struggled with not talking about this in public or other inappropriate times like Thanksgiving dinner. One of his most memorable revelations was when his mother and her boyfriend taught him to put on a condom (I will not go into all of the gory details, just think the worst and you are there).

While some children completely shut out their abuse by being some other place during the abuse allowing them to distant themselves to get through it, others may turn the anger, and/or rage they feel towards themselves or others. A few children will even start to do what has been done to them to other children. Understand that just because these children are not being abuse now does not mean they are not reliving it in their mind or that they are fine now. The abuse they have endured is a part of them that they will need to learn to accept and find a way to live beyond the abuse.

More reading:

Survival Skills with Your Foster Children - Abuse

Survival Skills with Your Foster Children – Stealing

Survival Skills with Your Foster Children – Dealing with Stealing

Survival Skills with Your Foster Children - Food

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