It's a Monday morning and I'm up early because we had an emergency/respite child arrive out of the blue late Friday night and she's due to go home first thing this morning. To be precise the plan is for her to be taken straight to school to give her foster family an extra 8 hours to right their ship before the child arrives at their excellent and wonderful foster home.
It's a fallacy that a foster home has to be some kind of a cross between a 5 star hotel and a goody-two-shoes show home. Life has its ups and downs for everyone and we in fostering are no different, no better, no worse. Indeed our homes need to be as normal as possible or else the period a child spends with us would be the equivalent of being wrapped in cotton wool and put in storage.
We've only had the child - Becky - here for a couple of days and nights but we offer attachment and engagement from the very start even if we know the child will be departing shortly. I'll admit I wasn't sure at the start of my fostering whether that was the right thing to do, but a Blue Sky training session put me right. Just as an aside, at the same training session the child psychologist was of the view that we should see ourselves as foster mums and foster dads rather than foster carers. In the expert's view a child in fostering needs a parent figure more than a person who offers only care. It might seem like splitting hairs, but I think my fostering has been improved by seeing myself as their surrogate mum, and in any case 'care' has connotations which children might pick up, whereby the cared-for are somehow unwell or disabled.
Becky is a picture of sweet peace and compliance, but you can tell that if she wanted to she could look after herself. For example; on Saturday tea time I passed around a plate of chocolate digestives and everybody took one. One of my other foster kids was having a debate with one of my own sons about football, it was an old argument, heated but sufficiently mutual for me to let them get on with it. Suddenly the foster lad pointed out of the window and when my lad turned he reached over and took a small nibble out of his biscuit and put it back on the plate. Becky was sitting next to the foster lad and saw it all.
What she did next is still tickling me. She'd already eaten half her biscuit, and in the confusion she switched her half-biscuit for the whole one on the foster child's plate. She moved so fast, like a card sharp, I could barely believe I'd seen it.
The foster child looked down at his plate and the half-biscuit and said "Hey..what the..where did..?" He looked around the table to see who was chewing; but no-one was.
Becky caught my eye and gave me a look that was the equivalent of a knowing wink, I don't think kids wink any more, but they can widen their eyes and wear a tiny smirk which is the same thing.
Good for her!
She going soon, I'll wake her up in plenty of time.
I'll get her some breakfast and drive her across town to her school, then she's on her own. I've packed her a packed lunch. It's got a chocolate biscuit in it. I don't need to write a note explaining that I got her payback joke. She's as bright as any button and she'll get it.
It's what I do for my own children who are with me for life, what I do for every foster child whether they're here for weeks, months or years. Or in Becky's case two nights.
Treat them to everything a parent should give a child; attachment, engagement, love and laughter.
And if they show a sense of social justice, combined with a sense of humour make sure they know you know and that you respect them for it.
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