CRISIS FINDS CHARACTER

I can only speak for my own foster children, although my Blue Sky social worker and others at the office say that my experience is not uncommon;

It's this; the rest of us can learn a few things from the way children in care are dealing with the whole pandemic thing.

Really.

I've noticed many adults going one way or another depending on their general disposition. Glum people have got glummer, cheery people get cheerier. I remember someone saying at a training session; crisis experiences don't so much build character as find character out.

Lots of children in care who've been through terrible times at home - and let's be blunt, being in care in someone else's home, no matter how kind the carers, no matter how lovely and calm the home, being fostered is also a stressful thing - these children can teach us a thing or two about staying steady in difficult times.

They are, on the whole pretty matter-of-fact about the whole virus/lockdown/social distancing thing. Well, compared to many of us adults.

I'm not minimising the stress and hardship, not to mention the agony of those struck down and their families and friends. 

I'm also well aware the children tend to be less at risk of serious consequences should they contract the virus.

But looking beyond that there have been other aspects of these strange times where fostered children just rise to the occasion.

Take lockdown for one. Our eldest foster child could have been quite within their rights if they'd gone stir crazy with a vengeance. We were ready for anything. How can one expect a teenager with normal energy levels and hunger for interaction to spend weeks, then months in the same four walls. How did he do? He flew it! 

Social media helped of course, he stayed in touch with the people who matter to him. He played his games just as before the pandemic appeared. It was almost as though he was enjoying a holiday from the pressures and stresses of having to be out and about with friends; hanging around outside the chip shop or behind the trees in the park.

He's done whatever schoolwork he feels is right for him. From what I can tell he's done most or all of it in the subjects where the teachers have reached out to him, half or less than half of the set work in subjects where the teachers haven't connected with him, and next to none in the subject where the teacher 'hates my guts'.

It will be very very very interesting for schools to get the stats on which teachers are getting good responses to their electronic lessons and which don't. And why.

Our foster children seem happier learning at their own speed, free from the fear that they are going to be reprimanded or made to feel stupid or left behind in front of their peers. 

It's me that ends up feeling those things every time I'm asked to help with a maths problem; it's stuff that's new to me. This I don't get, because while certain subjects keep on the move, such as science, history and even geography (I did a project at school on Yugoslavia only to wake up one morning to this on the news; "Yugoslavia no longer exists.."). What I don't get is how something that's older than mankind ie 2+2=4 can change so hugely in a couple of decades.

Then there are the big changes to contact. 'Contact' being where every looked-after child has to be taken to meet a significant other, mainly a parent, sometimes a sibling. It usually happens once a week. It almost always causes emotional disruptions and not just for the child. The virtual impossibility of contact during the lockdown played a big part in helping many foster children get through it, in my view. I have no doubt that having non face-to-face hook-ups with their significant others will not cause alienations if and when the families are re-united. 

That's not to say we haven't had a few scenes. But we've also had some great shared experiences. I now am up to date on the Avengers, and am able to answer questions on The Night Manager. 

We all hope and pray the worst is behind us, but more and more people I meet agree that while it would have been infinitely better if the pandemic had never happened, some good things may come of it.