Home for the Holidays

I think by adulthood most people understand that holidays and anniversaries are not always as easy or as happy as we are led to believe.  Even a close-knit, healthy family has its share of dysfunction riding above the underlying joy.  As we grow and mature, we hopefully become better able to work out our differences, establish our own personal boundaries, and love each other through our humanity.  We learn the gift is giving, more so than receiving.  We learn that our families are our heritage, where we come from, but not necessarily where we are going.

Children in foster care have not necessarily learned these lessons yet.  Often the hurt of fear and rejection is still too raw to establish healthy boundaries, too raw to effectively balance the pain and the joy.  Holidays, anniversaries, and family visits throw a child into a whirlwind of expectations, excitement, hopes, confrontations, and dichotomies.  Often, children are reminded of what they don't have or confronted by the reality of home not being what they remember it to be.  Children are unconsciously being asked to weigh the life with their foster family against their life with their birth family.

This is an unfair expectation to place on a child.  As loyal advocates of the child, it is a family's and a worker's job to not make the child choose between parents.  We know asking a child to choose between parents in a divorce situation is wrong; it is just as wrong to ask a child to choose between sets of parents in a foster care situation.  Our job, as champions of the child, is to help in the restoration of the family.  Restoration does not always mean reunification, though that is certainly optimal.  Restoration means bringing the family relationships back to an earlier and better condition.

Here are some practical ways foster parents can enable this restoration to occur and make being home for the holidays easier on both the family and the child:

1)  Talk with the child before visits, being candid and respectful of what the child can expect from their family.
2)  Discuss with the child and with the family what would make this a good visit.
3)  Brainstorm with the child good ways to handle situations that might come up.
4)  Discuss and validate the child's emotions surrounding the event.
5)  Help the child to establish rules for himself (what is okay for my family to do with me and what is not).
6)  Always speak positively about the visits and the family members (this includes to other people and includes facial expressions).
7)  Provide the child with a way to connect with family (photos, work that the child has done, gifts for the family).
8)  Set the family up for success (one foster parent shared how she never let the child receive more presents at the foster family's house than at home, sometimes this meant giving the family presents to give to the child).
9)  Communicate with the family about what they can expect from the child and parenting techniques that have worked for you.