Lesson Three 1 2 3 4 5 6
Read the following passage and answer the questions at the end.
READING ASSIGNMENT #2: "After A Visit"
Thoughts from Tammy Keech, ACRF Trainer and Adoptive Parent
Visits with parents often make the resource family’s job more challenging. Children can be harder to care for after these contacts. Sometimes parents often give false hopes of going home. When children arrive back at the foster home, they might regress in their behaviors, such as eating with their fingers, sleep difficulties, wetting the bed, and wetting their pants. Resource parents may feel resentment towards the birth parents for giving children false hopes. Resource parents may wonder why they have to deal with all the behaviors when they didn’t cause them in the first place.
Daily care of children is one of the most exasperating and difficult jobs in the world and it can be 
difficult if birth parents openly or subtly criticize the foster family during a visit. The birth parent might question how child is being cared for or comment about the clothing they are wearing, the hair style, or school work. The foster child may come home from a visit and say, “I don’t have to listen to you. You are stupid!” It is a natural reaction for the foster parent to lash back, “Look who is taking care of you!”
STOP, and think about it! You may not feel good about comments from a birth parent, but it may help if you stop and consider what it must be like for the birth parents. Imagine having all your weaknesses out for all the public to see. Imagine what it is like for people to know that you couldn’t take care of your children’s basic needs and your children had to be placed in a foster home. What would that feel like?
It is important that you give birth parents the respect due them. They are human beings who are struggling with problems. The parents are so preoccupied with their own problems that they are unable to be good parents. As a foster parent, your job is to help the children in your home handle their feelings. Foster parents can help children understand and work out their problems, so we can help to break the cycle. Focusing on the child’s needs (and not your own feelings) can help you support a child after a visit.
If birth parents make promises that they do not keep, you should never remind the children that their parents continually break their promises. As a resource parent, your job is to allow children to talk about these things -- not to throw in your comments about how you feel about them. Children need to know that it is okay to love their parents even when those parents do not seem to be doing what is right. They also need to feel free to express their anger and feelings of unfairness toward those parents without feeling they have betrayed their parents.
Accepting a child’s birth parents as human beings who are struggling also shows that you are accept the children when they are struggling with feelings and problems. With love, with patience, with understanding, we can help the children be more successful in their struggles. Children then will develop a better sense of self. If we help them accept themselves, we will have given the greatest of gifts.
Sometimes children come home mad at their parents and start taking it out on others such as your pets, household items, and even themselves. How can we help children work out their relationship with their parents? One way to help is to allow them to talk freely. We can allow reasonable visiting, letter writing, and telephone contact with the social worker approval. I have found if I allow more contact between visits, the behavior seem to decrease. Letters always seemed to be a good way to say things that they wouldn’t say face-to-face or on the telephone.
Allow children to possess things from their birth family’s home, such as pictures of their birth parents or mementos given to them. Remind children when their parents’ birthdays come around and help them send cards. Most of all, accept a child’s mixed feelings as natural and allow children to look to you for their daily comfort. Making the child’s life as normal as possible in every day events is important. I feel in general that the more normal you can make a child’s life in your home, the easier everything goes. This includes the time after visits. Establishing a good relationship with a child is crucial, so begin with helping a child learn to trust you.
I have found I need to change my expectations and remember how I feel when I leave my parents after a visit. I often want to cry and I may not be able to sleep since I don’t know when I will see my family again. I know I often just want to be left alone or be held. I think after a visit with family, you are often exhausted from all of the excitement. Both children and adults are more emotional when they are tired. And when a foster parent doesn’t know how to deal with a behavior, they may unknowingly escalate it.
I am not saying that you should let children’s behaviors slide after a visit. If they urinate on the floor, they should clean it up. If they regress and start eating with their fingers, they should be reminded that we eat with our utensils. But I do want to say that you need to have some extra time after visits to spend time reading a book, cuddling or just being available to chat a little longer than normal.
IN YOUR LEARNING JOURNAL, ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
1. Do you agree with the author? Why or why not?
2. What is one thing that you learned from this article that you can use in your own home?