LOVE ISLAND...

So here's another thing we foster carer's have to think about in 2017:

It's 2017, not 1977, or 1987, or whatever the year was when we were kids.

There have been massive changes and we have to roll with them.

What got me thinking was this; one of our foster children has become a massive fan of a certain type of TV show. The interest started with "Bargain Loving Brits In The Sun", a look at British ex-pats living in Benidorm on a tight budget.

They live on caravan sites, drink and smoke a lot, laugh big time, duck and dive their way around, always on the lookout for a dodge. They're all loudly proud of 'living the dream', in other words their lives, though lacking outward success, are, they state categorically, exactly what they want them to be.

I suspect the foster child who watches this show every night sees something of his own adult family in many of the people on screen.

It's great because the child shows up in the living room bang on time and we watch and talk and share thoughts.

It's not that long ago families always got together a) for meals and b) to watch TV.

My generation used to sit round the same table and eat the same food. Everyone was home and ready to eat around 6.00pm. We'd talk about anything and everything, share.

Remember the nightly gathering in front of the goggle box? We didn't know at the time it was a priceless cementing of the family, watching whatever.

The getting together was more important than the food or the entertainment, ask anyone who remembers it. But times change, and change they have.

If you have a placement who is willing and able to eat the same food as the rest of the family, good luck. In our home not only do the foster kids have fads, our own children do, and to be honest so do I (trying to lose 7lbs for the beach).

Once the meals are split into different diets it's easy for the eating times and venues to get separated. People start wanting to eat by themselves. You have to make sure it remains a treat, not the norm.

The TV, however, even in 2017 with all the alternative gadgets, occasionally brings us together. Usually it's something that social media has highlighted such as Eurovision, the X Factor, Big Brother or... Love Island. 

I won't diss it; if I was 14 I'd watch every frame of it, trying to work out my own appeal and what appealed to me about other people. 

So it's been brilliant for the last few weeks; an hour of pudgy toothless old Brits in the Sun followed by an hour of sleek young Brits in the Sun...

We've had an amazing breakthrough in our family and it's down to the TV and I find it hard to process. Not that I care about the whys and wherefores, in fostering if it works go with the flow.