Do you have to be a 'kid person'?

It takes a lot more work to connect with kids who already come with their own experiences, personalities, opinions, etc than to connect with an infant. Part of it would depend on what age you are considering fostering. It sounds like older children would be much more of a struggle for you, since they are often harder to connect with anyway. Imagine one of your kids' friends coming to stay for a long weekend and not knowing anything about their likes, dislikes, needs, etc. What would that be like? What age do you think would be easiest for you to connect? I know a lot of people who only take newborns, which typically means drug affected babies. I'm not nearly so much a fan of newborns, though I've had them; my favorite is the 9-18 month range. I know people who connect best with teens. One of the biggest challenges I have had recently, and a lot of the reason I'm not renewing my license, is my mama bear side. My son has been negatively affected by our last two placements; I think I was much less tolerant of challenges in my most recent placement due to the problems in the previous one. That's always something to consider when you have kids at home as well. The good (depending on how you look at it) news is that there is generally need for foster parents for all ages. If you have trouble managing behaviors in kids you don't know, you might do best with babies, since you would be able to get to know them before that became an issue. It's also okay to not want to foster or adopt. The people I've known who have gone into fostering because "we really should" because they have space in their home and there is a huge need have typically not been successful and have not enjoyed it. Doing anything for kids out of a sense of obligation is usually not going to work; you have to actively enjoy it. Instead of focusing on whether you can handle fostering, ask yourself whether you would enjoy having another child in your family, on possibly a long term but also possibly short term basis. If that sounds miserable, don't foster. There are lots of other ways you can help kids in foster care, including mentoring, providing supports for foster families, donations, fundraising or volunteering to make special events happen, etc.