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Welcome to my blog! I hope to be able to provide valuable strategies, insights, ideas, and resources for foster parents who are trying to juggle the roles of both biological parent and foster parent.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

"Check-Ins"
An idea for foster/biological parents (or any parent) to spend some time with their children without foster kids around is what I call "check-ins." Going on the theory that it's "quality" and not "quantity" that counts, check-ins can be an invaluable source of private time for your biological children to spend with you.
Think of a somewhat mindless activity that you engage in daily, that is not a private activity and is not one that most children will want to participate in (cleaning the bathroom, putting clothes in the washer, folding laundry, loading the dishwasher) and designate that time as "check-in" time. Have your biological children join you in this activity (whether they help or nor depends on the temperment of the kid, they can just sit with you while you do it-it should not seem like a "punishment" or an extra chore) and spend five minutes (or more or less) listening to him or her. Ask an open-ended question (What's been going on a school? Tell me how things are going for you with [these new kids who are living here]) and just let him/her talk. In the beginning you may have to ask questions to prompt your child to talk, but it won't be long before he/she can fill the entire five minutes with discussion without any prompts from you.
A couple of ground rules:
This is not an opportunity for your child to tattle or complain about specific people (though as a parent you may discover some circumstances where you have to intervene.) This is a time for your child to express his or her own feelings about a situation/situations.You may need to teach your children "I" language and set that as a ground rule for check-ins (i.e. I feel uncomfortable when [the boy I share a room with] walks around naked)
Refrain from using this time to "lecture" your children. Keep this as a sacred time for the "check-in." Your job here is to listen not talk.
Make sure you listen 100% of the time. If your child senses that you are not hearing them (i.e. you're thinking about appointments, etc.) check ins will not work. This is your biological child's time with you and you cannot allow anything to interupt it. (on that note, make sure the foster kids/your other biological kids are otherwise occupied/supervised during this time so that you are not interupted by them, but not doing something that your biological child wants to do.)
Make sure you have a schedule and you stick to it. Maybe every day doesn't work, so maybe it has to be every other day. Maybe your child is very busy during the week with homework/extra-curricular activities and you can only do it on Saturdays. It doesn't matter, what matters is that once the schedule is set, you stick to it every time, every week.
Rotate your "check-in" schedule. This can also be an invaluable tool for getting to know/understand a new foster child. Foster children should also have "check-ins" if you're doing it with your own children. You may want to do it differently with your foster children, though, so it can feel like "special" time to your biological child. Maybe your "check in" with your (younger) foster child can occur as he/she is getting ready for bed. Check in with an older foster child as he or she is getting/eating a snack. DO NOT differentiate checks-ins by calling them different names (i.e. real kid check-ins, foster kid check ins)
However you do it, nobody (foster kids) should feel left out, yet biological kids should feel like it's a special time for them. What worked in my family, might not work in yours (my son always came down cellar with me and helped me sort laundry for our check-in. It was a formal daily ritual with my children and was informal with the foster kids-but I still did it. As we were so often in the car going to appointments, etc. I would do check-ins with foster kids then. If he/she had something they had to talk to me about in private, we would set up a later time for a one-on-one conversation.)
You may start a check-in process and find it's not working and may have to change it. Different children moving in may make what has been working in the past no longer work, therefore you may have to be flexible in how you execute check-ins. Before you make any changes, talk to your biological child ask him/her what will work best.
The important things here are listening, sticking to the schedule, and doing it in such a way that nobody feels left out, but your biological children feel it's a little extra special for them without it obviously being so to any other child ( i.e. don't do your check in with your biological child over a bowl of ice cream after dinner while everyone else sits in the living room without a treat.)
As parents, we have to be creative, as foster parents with biological children, we have to be twice as creative. Put in some thought as to how this can work in your family and you may find that taking that five measly minutes a day, might actually give you some extra time.
Happy Mother's Day to all you special moms out there...

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

"Quality Time"
When my children were young, we had a very busy foster home. New children moved in and out on a regular basis. Obviously there were going to be times that my children did not get along with a new foster sibling. Often, these feelings had nothing to do with the foster child themselves, but with other circumstances, such as: the new foster child took the place of a foster child with whom my children had developed a friendship. The new kid would walk in the house, and my kid/s didn't like him/her right away, without even giving him/her a chance.

 I came up with a consequence called "Quality Time." If kids argued (either foster kids amongst themeselves, or my bio kid and a foster kid) they would have to spend a half an hour together doing an activity chosen by the person "who didn't start it." If there was an arguement about "who started it" (as there often was) they got one hour of "Quality Time" with each of them choosing the activity for half of the time. They could play a game, teach the other person a new skill, or whatever (I had to approve the activity to make sure it wasn't designed to cause additional problems: i.e. a girl making a boy play "dress up.")

We had a boy move in, who took the place of a boy who my son was friends with since before he even went into foster care. My son did not like his new foster brother, without even knowing him. During their "Quality Time" consequence, my son taught his new foster brother how to skateboard.

They are still friends today (and they are in college.)