Children coming into care nowadays come into a home which contains an additional unseen foster parent. If the foster parents are partners there are three foster parents in the home. If the carer is single there are two parents in the home.
The add-on parent figure is the internet.
By 'parent figure' I mean influencer, a term that used to be 'role model' in the good old days.
The internet has become a surrogate adult role figure. Back when I was little the potential surrogate parent figure was our favourite teacher, or maybe a TV figure or a pop star.
Not long ago a child's underdstanding of adults other than their mum and dad was limited to a small group of grown-up outsiders, but now they can hand-pick from millions of potential role models. Or, if you're not careful, be hand-picked.
On the whole, although ocassional problems happen, it's a great thing.
They can watch and listen to adults from all walks of life and find out who they like. Perhaps more important they can choose friends from any number of people of their own age.
One of my current trio of foster kids is a very particular child, someone who would have struggled to find a friendship group if the child's choice had been confined to schoolmates, neighbouring children or children of family members. That algorhythm was the total extent of potential friends for all children until recently.
Now, they have a world-full, but how do they pick and choose?
Easy, the internet narrows it down for them, narrows it down for all of us, actually.
It brings people with similarites together. Some folk will rush to the negative there, and there are potentiual pitfalls. But the positives don't get enough reporting, maybe because the positives don't result in headline-grabbing misdemeanors such as the Washington riots, they result in happy contented young people, relieved that they aren't the only one with that viewpoint, those likes and dislikes or that problem, whatever it might be.
Five years ago, on this blog, I posted a piece entitled "The Noise of.." about how us foster parents have to be half awake through the night especially when a foster child is anxious.
In the post I mentioned that I had begun using honey instead of sugar in my early morning cup of tea.
Five years later - three hours ago - I got this response, proving that the internet's trawling of information and it's dedication to bring people with what it thinks is shared interest is alive and well, if sometimes off key.
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