Advertisements
Hi! Thanks in advance for reading. For a while now I have been drawn to fostering, every time I read a terrible abuse/neglect story about a child. My husband works full time, very busy most of the time. I work part time, and the rest of the time Stay at home with my son. We are well off financially, prob upper middle class. So money is not our concern, and all money from govt would go directly towards the child (clothes, items, whatever). We would spend time as a family often, and do enriching activities.
Anyways, I have spoken with my husband and he is hesitant, but open to the idea I think. There is a foster care meeting this weekend we may go to.
BUT I have an active boy toddler that is my #1 priority. His safety primarily, but also he does require a lot of attention. For this reason, I lean towards fostering older children, but I don't want one with a lot of issues (I'm sorry I'm not trying to be offensive, just honest). Def anger issues or aggression is absolutely out of the question for us. I also want to have another bio baby next year or so.
Is fostering a bad idea? I don't want to foster to adopt right now (maybe after having next and final bio baby). If we should wait, it would be many years.
Am I being too idealistic?
Like
Share
I'd wait. You have a toddler, you are new-ish parents, and you're hoping to have another baby relatively soon.
Now is probably not the best season in your life to foster.
There will be plenty of time to foster after your 2nd bio baby is a toddler.
If you do decide to foster now, I'd do infants only due to the age of your bio child.
Advertisements
I have heard numerous foster parents say not to foster out of birth order. They may be talking strictly foster to adopt, though.
I'm a newbie myself, so I can only offer my limited insight. As you go through the process of taking the classes you will explore how a foster child will impact the current dynamics of your family and that will give you and your husband plenty of opportunities to discuss if fostering is something that is right for your family - either at this time.... or at all.
One of the things they had us do what define out (almost to the behavior-level) what things we were / were not willing to accept. So, when you say a kid with "anger issues" I don't know what level you mean by that. However, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find ANY foster kid that won't, at some point, struggle with anger. Simply because it's a base emotion and they really haven't had a role model to teach them how to appropriately process their feelings. And the social workers don't always know the extent of their issues at placement.
I would go to the open house. Start the dialogue between you and your husband and begin talking through, specifically, how you see your home as able to include a troubled child that isn't biologically your own that you have no idea how long they might stay with you.
I would stick with younger kids if you want to foster now. Babies and toddlers in general, not just foster, are easy compared to older kids. You control the world of little kids, but as they get older things get more complicated. I spend far more time just talking things through with my older kids (8-13), than I spent playing with them as little kids (they took naps for 3-6 hours a day and slept 10-12 hours at night lol). We currently just take babies and toddlers, and my big kids take far more time and energy than these littles, and my bios have not experienced abuse and trauma.
I've never fostered but I adopted two older childrenI think it would be best to foster infants only. Yes, your son needs attention, but any foster kid coming into the home needs at least as much, and to be honest, probably more attention than him, at least at first. Older kids who have been through abuse/trauma are frequently emotionally and socially delayed, have challenges (might be behavioural, attachment, educational, PTSD etc), may need to be parented as a younger child, and typically need a lot more attention and supervision than other children their age. When I compare the amount of supervision my nearly 18 month old grandaughter needs with the amount of supervision my DD2 needed when she arrived home aged 8...the 8 year old needed more supervision!There are (a few, not many) older kids out there who don't struggle with anger, but you have no guaruntee you wouldn't get such a child..to be honest, I would not go into fostering any older kids without expecting a good amount of furious temper tantrums and/or rages possibly accompanied by swearing and some aggression. Agencies and SW may not have information on a particular childs behaviours or may even cover it up just to get you to accept placement - sadly we have several threads on the foster parent support board right now where parents are having to disrupt after being completely misled about the needs of the childOn the other hand, with an infant, you can get to know them from early on, won't have behavioural issues (although there may well be other issues), and your sons safety is not an issue because he's the bigger, stronger, more independent one
Advertisements
I would not foster! I take older kids and most have issues around aggression property destruction etc. it'll also take a lot away from your son... For example right now three days a week my kids have visits- Monday, Thursday, Sunday then Saturdays they have therapy then multiple monthly appointments with casework gal etc so doesn't sound like a good fit for your home