FOSTERING AND THE SCHOOL RUN

 Phew, just got back from the morning school run.

"Phew" because - as usual - there was endless criticism then arguments then borderline abuse about my driving. Happens every morning. Going to have to do something about it.

But what?

Sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee to sooth my wounded ego I can think a bit more clearly.

The sad fact is that many children coming into care are more argumentative than the average child. This probably has something to do with the fact that chaotic households are often a hotbed of disagreement. Shouting and swearing is all too normal and it rubs off on the children. Many of the disputes are baked into the home's brickwork. Regular arguments happen routinely. They happen over time-honoured topics such as pecking order, territory, and possessions. The same arguments get repeated over and over so much so one wonders if the combatents get some kind of peace and security from their familiarity. 

Argueing can be the closest some children get to intimacy and affection.

But when the household breaks down and the children enter foster care the shock and fear of the experience often sees them fall back on their security blanket of dispute. It can start small with squabbles, escalate to confrontation then disobedience and end in ill temper.

What to do???

The first thing your social worker will remind you of is that your own well being is extremely important. If the foster parent is knocked off her game she can't foster as well as she might. So; look after yourself.

Linking this back to my problem with the school run; if necessary I could find an alternative to driving them myself. Maybe seek out a car share with another parent, find out if the local authority has a mini-bus service, or put them on the bus.

I've had a better idea.

Sitting here thinking about it, their dissing my driving skills is obviously born out of the fact that a) they don't want to go to school b) they don't want to be in care and therefore being driven to school by someone who embodies their being in care is a hefty reminder of their plight.

I can't do much about that. But there is something I can try.

I notice that their beligerence begins at the start of the journey when I have to pull out of our road onto the main road. There's a slight backward slope so I have to do a mini-hill start, and according to them I always do it badly. Next there's my speed; it's a 30mph road and I tend to do 27/28mph, which gets abuse as it's "pathetically slow". My riposte than speedometers can be up to 5% inaccurate (I heard somewhere) gets ripped up by some sleight of mathematics, then we're on to my method of tackling the 3 roundabouts, all of which are 'incorrect'.

So. Here's my thinking. It may be that the route is festooned with triggers. There might be 20 or 30 triggers along the journey, from the mini-hill start to the exact spot of the final drop off.

Here's the plan. Starting tomorrow I'm going to use a different route. I'm going to exit our housing estate via a different road. I'm going to go what we call "the back way". It's a bit further but has only one roundabout and it's a different one.  And I'm going to finish by dropping each of them off at a different point to the one we've always used. 

And to top it off we're going to have Classic FM on and to h*ll with Radio One.

I might work... it might not.

Going to be fun finding out.