When a new placement (the technical term for a child in care) is settling in it's important to make sure everyone else feels loved and wanted just as much as before, because a new placement (it's such a barren term isn't it?) can take up a disproportionate amount of your attention.
The foster mum or dad is busy trying to get handles on the new arrival. Trying to find out who they are, what makes them tick. What their flashpoints are.
What they're like when their flashpoint is reached.
At the same time it's important to help them ease into a hugely challenging situation; they're in a stranger's house, they are suddenly part of a new family. They don't know anything about the parents or the other youngsters or how the home works. New place, new routines, new rules.
Yike.
As I've been explaining in the last few posts, our new placement - oh heck with that word - our new child is transitioning. As his foster mum I need to come up to speed not only on what he needs, but on the whole landscape of what's become a big issue worldwide.
The more I learn about him and what he's chosen to do, the more I'm saddened by the hostility he reads about every day on his phone.
He's not being perstered or trolled by schoolmates or anything. The hostility towards him is in the news feeds he clicks on.
I'm not going to join up the dots on this young man, he deserves his privacy. But I can share some aspects of his situation which are common to most people who choose to transition.
First, and this is the biggest deal of all, he is male. But when he was born, as is the case worldwide and from the dawn of time, when he came out of the womb they took a quick glance between his legs and a decision was made for him; "It's a girl".
Not long ago, maybe three or four decades, being designated a girl meant that he would have to go through life wearing what he was supposed to wear, not what he wanted. He would have to wear his hair how he was expected to, not how he wanted. Play girl's games - which largely means staying away from the centre of the playground where the boys were crashing about and playing football.
He'd feel sidelined, as a girl and later as a woman, for the rest of his life.
He may have found he liked girls in the same way many boys do. But girls having girlfriends and boys having boyfriends was simply not done. Adults who chose to make love to people of their choice used to be sent to prison, and in some countries still are. Or worse.
But the whole matter of love and romance and making love and making babies is, as far as the boy now in my care is concerned, peripheral.
He is an intelligent young man. He is well read and informed - believe me, he's researched the matter very thoroughly. He is a kind and gentle person, but immensely strong and courageous.
He has no side to him; he cares about everybody. He says he understands why some people are confused and even angry about transitioning, but saddened they don't mind causing him pain.
In a netshell; he's a good person.
We need more people like the one I've just described.
We need fewer people who have more strident opinions than they have knowledge.
I realise now that only a few weeks ago, when this young person arrived, I had a hotch-potch of views about transitioning, even though I knew virtually nothing.
For example, he's been walking me through the effects of testosterone treatment which he hopes to undertake when he's old enough. I have to say I had almost no idea what the hormone was about, But I do now.
I've met and known and worked with plenty of men. I was brought up among boys and men. I fell in love with, and married, a man. I've brought up boys, a couple of my own, the rest belonged to other people.
I know for an absolute fact, something I'm certainshaw burtonshaw about, that not a single one of them had or have the slightest clue about their testosterone. Ask them about it and they'll reel off a couple of sound bites they picked up in the playground or playing sport. They'll have an opinion too. Several even. Loud if necessary. Unshakable too, generally. Worth standing up for, maybe even fighting for.
Testosterone doesn't make people angry, it amplifies. I watched a lecture by a Harvard behavioural neurologist on how our behaviour is affected by our bodies, in particular neurotransmissions and hormones. It's a new field bringing science into understanding the human condition.
I didn't know there was so much I didn't know. Now that I know more, I know I still need to know even more before I have a right to an opinion about somebody I'm not.
(BTW I'm feeling a bat's sqeak of testosterone in my veins right now as I enjoy a flash of superiority over those who know less than me…there's a lot to be said for self-awareness).
See, it's the same with every other aspect of transitioning.
Everyone needs to know more.
But, bringing this back to fostering, I have a strategy in place to help him with the fact that half the world is going rabid about him and his fellow transitioners; I keep him away from news feeds, we don't watch the TV news and definitely not the opinion channels that call themselves news.
On a positive note, I gently probed as to whether he felt bullied or ridiculed at school. He said not. He added that if anything he's respected for standing up for himself.
I worry about the adults of today. The youth of today are dandy.
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