CROSSROADS

Oh dear, youngest foster child is at another crossroad in life.

Crossroads.

Have you ever noticed that life is nothing but a series of little crossroads punctuated by occasional big crossroads?

It's odd but the big crossroads are somehow easier to deal with because we can see that they are crossroads.

When we know we're at a big crossroad we hunker down and give it our all. We think about it endlessly, talk to people we trust. We work hard to make the right call.

Crossroads such as when a person has to decide about staying on at school or looking for a job. Big crossroad.

When a person has to make their mind up about a relationship. Big crossroad.

When it's the crossroad of choosing to leave home and go it alone or stay on at mum and dad's. Committing to marriage or a long-term partnership or not. Starting a family. Huge crossroads.

Back to youngest child and their current crossroad. 

What it is is…a falling out with the bestie.

They've been besties for nearly a year and it was great overhearing them laughing at the same bits in Spongebob, raiding the larder together and going through a tube of Pringles together. Meeting up in town and going off together for an hour then meeting me back outside Boots an hour later.

The falling out began over food, which is a major issue with youngest foster child because the child was ill-nourished in the birth home. When I say "ill-nourished" I'm repeating the terminology of formal reports. Fact is the kid went without food sometimes for days, apart from scraps in the bin and remnants in chip wrappers pushed down the side of the sofa. I'd call it casual, sometimes deliberate starvation, but the official term is "ill-nourished".

The ongoing outcome of being ill-nourished is a hyper anxiety about food supply. To remedy this I try to keep the larder well stocked and the fridge at least half-full. The child often surreptitiously visits the kitchen and has a quiet peek to make sure there's food in the house. After every weekly shop the child waits until I've unpacked the food and then goes and luxuriates by staring at all the packets and tins.

Example of the ongoing outcome of 'ill-fed'; the child never finishes the school lunch box. Brings home at least half of it and smuggles it into the bedroom. Why? Because the child needs to know that food is available, and that they have control to eat when they want to. Another example; have you ever eaten a stick of uncooked spaghetti? Of course not. But youngest foster child has. Because, we learned, the only item in the family larder was an opened but unused pack of spaghetti. The child used to snack one if alone in the house. Only one at a time mind, because the child knew there'd be hell to pay if the adults discovered the "theft". The child worked out they wouldn't miss a solitary stick every now and then. By the way, I tried one myself to increase my understanding of the child, trust me; don't attempt it. Poor kid.

Back to the falling out with the bestie. The falling out began when the bestie, at our house one Saturday afternoon, went to our larder and helped herself to a cookie. According to youngest foster child she didn't ask, didn't offer to share. Simply sat down and ate it.

Foster child went ballistic and threw her out. Told her to go home. Never wants to see her again. Shouted that "You only come here for the food, not my company!"

However, youngest is starting to see it was an over-reaction, and hence is now at a bunch of crossroads.

Has to decide whether to make up with bestie or move on. 

If the decision taken is to make up, the question is how? Should there be an apology, or try to pretend it never happened? 

If the decision is to move on, how to handle the gossip at school, and how to find new friendship?

It's always painful to have a foster child who is sad. They all have plenty to be sad about from past experiences, but when they come to us we hope they won't suffer any more. But they will, that's life. At least they have foster parents who will go the extra mile for them.

In the case of youngest foster child v bestie, I'm getting to talk more than ever before with the child. There's been a watershed of new intimacy and bonding. The child needs to talk about it, and in the abscence of a peer-age bestie, I've become...dare I say it…the child's new (temporary) bestie!

The child is benefitting from a bunch of things. For one, having to think through a previous action and process it. Two; learning about handling mistakes and coming up with strategies to repair them. Three; that the foster mum understands and is loyal to them without condoning the incident.

One thing I will never do is try to explain to the child how the over-reaction was triggered by previous abuse. That's too complex for a child. I'll leave that kind of analysis to the talking-cure professionals. Plus, if I brought the child's inner workings to the child's attention it might only trigger more angst by causing the child to remember past abuse.

The child's decision? 

Hasn't been made yet, but is drifting towards moving on, which I support. 

But when I say I support that, I'd support the child if they'd gone the other way.

I'm the child's foster mum, not the child's relationship counsellor.  

I'm not there to advise or judge, I'm there to support.

Support every twist and turn their lives take.

At every crossroad.

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WHEN YOU ASK A CHILD TO DO A HOUSEHOLD CHORE

 An anonymous reader has commented on a post I wrote 7 years ago. I had to re-read the post so that I could reply to the comment, and I smiled re-reading something I'd forgotten writing. It was a quotation from a psychologist I met at Blue Sky. She said "No child has ever said to me 'My problem is that I'm loved too much'".

The reader wrote about how they've begun getting the children to do jobs around the house. Jobs like taking lunch boxes out of their backpacks when they come home and putting them on the kitchen table. The foster parent says it was tough at first but once the penny dropped they were able to add new chores, and it gradually became second nature. But more than that; doing jobs around the house increased their sense of self-worth and independence.

I try to do the same, I reckon we all do with our own children as well as children in our care. Sometimes, if I'm dog-tired or stressed out it's easier to do the job yourself than have the five minute argument. And often they don't do the job properly. Many's the time I've had to do the washing up a second time after their efforts were pretty poor.

This is the thing; getting them to do a job is about three extra jobs that could have been just one. You have to win the discussion about whether they should do it, supervise it, check that they've done it ok, then do it over again properly. Wait, that's four extra jobs.

And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it can blow up in your face.

Like it did last night.

So. Eldest foster child is coming on apace. Not only do they tide up their room, but now, without being asked, go and get a bin liner and come down with a bag of empty plastic bottles, orange peel, a half-eaten sandwich, empty crisp packets…you get the picture.

Eldest's bedroom is a no-go area. I'm supposedly banned. Obviously I put a surreptitious head around the door when no-one's around, but generally do nothing to suggest that I've had a peek. His room is a bit of a mess, but I've seen worse. And like I say, the rubbish is brought down un-asked when necessary.

Last night I was finishing clearing the kitchen. You know, the enjoyable last bit where you wring out a damp J cloth and wipe the surfaces. The plates and cutlery were in a whirring dishwasher, the dog was fed, the breakfast things were out..I was all set for Love Island.

Then eldest appeared with a bulging bin liner. I made my usual neutral remark (they get to an age where praise is somehow insulting) and said something like "Oh nice one mate. Leave it there I'll sort it in the morning."

"Sort it" means I do the sorting of which stuff goes in the bin (food and food containers tarnished with food), and which stuff goes in the recycle bin.

The bin liner was plonked next to the kitchen door and I had to decide whether to sort it there and then (Love Island beckoned) or do it in the morning. I decided to do it in the morning, and was wondering about where it should spend the night; either outside on top of the wheelie bins (and hopefully out of reach of the fox), or maybe knot it at the top and leave it inside by the door, when suddenly….

The dog is choking. Choking hard. 

A choking noise I've never heard before or want to hear again. A deep, airless, gasping for breathe. Gasping for life itself. She had swallowed something and it was stuck.

If there is a dog-version of the Heinrich Manouvre I needed it, but there isn't.

I let fly an expletive and rushed to her. There was only one thing to do. With one hand I opened her mouth and with the other I reached into her mouth. Further and further my hand went down to the narrowing of the top of her throat. Nothing. Whatever it was it was out of reach.

Then.. wait! I felt something with the tip of my fingers. I reachen in a little further, really cautiously, conscious of the danger that I might push the object so far in I'd never get it back. I manged to get my first finger alongside the top of the object, then had to push a bit more to get my thumb against the other side of whatever it was.

Whatever it was was slimy with dog saliva, and somehow slimy in itself. Knowing I only had one shot I increased my grip and slowly pulled…

And out it came.

A chicken bone. One of the wing bones that are left over after someone has a KFC or Dominos pizza plus a side of wings.

It had all happened so fast that eldest was still standing in the middle of the kitchen having dropped off the biner liner of rubbish.

Panic over.

Except I was left shocked by the thought of what might have happened. I was angry with eldest, angry with myself for lack of viligance - I should have immediately checked there were no bones in the bag, eldest is old enough to order takeaway, I know he likes wings. Angry with myself that I hadn't drummed into him that we never allow chicken bones anywhere near where a dog could get them. 

It was a while before relief set in.

Sometime today I'm going to find a moment to explain to eldest that cooked chicken bones = death to a dog. I'll explain my strategy with them which is to wrap them tight in tinfoil and put them straight into the black wheelie bin and close the lid. They never get put in the kitchen pedal bin, just in case the dog learns to nose up the lid (it's happened). Most of all they never sit at the top of an open bin liner, catnip to any dog on a diet (which she is, that's another story).

All's well that ends well. It's 6.00am in our house and I'm downstairs with a cup of tea, been up since 4.30am when the dog started barking (she's just had a leg operation and is a bit anxious, all part of the diet story I'll get to another time) so I came down to comfort her. She's spread out on the kitchen floor.

Alive.

Eldest will sleep until about 11.00am as he's free today. He'll have his usual sore head when he does come down, so I'll have to pick my moment well.

I guess what I learned is something I already knew but failed in, namely assume they'll get their jobs a bit wrong and check their work as soon as you can without making it look as if you're looking to find fault.

Now I'm going to try to move on and forget the horror I felt when I feared the object was slipping out of my reach, that was the worst nano-second. 

Thank goodness for the hurly burly of a normal fostering family morning; you don't get time to dwell.

Bring it on. Please….

 

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WARTS AND ALL

 Blue Sky have had a flurry of feedback from readers of The Secret Foster Carer. Many of the comments and contributions are in response to posts that date back a long time. I want to say thanks to each and every respondent. And apologise for any delay in replying to all feedback; I try, but when one fosters there's not much free gtime.

I left that "gtime" back there on purpose. I'll tell you why. Has it got anything to do with fostering? YES! When you foster EVERYTHING has something to do with fostering.

Thing is this; I dash out my latest thoughts (wisdom? insights?…whatever) on fostering whenever I can.

Anyone who fosters knows that downtime is almost non-existent. When the children are at home it's wall-to-wall solid fostering. Foster parents are alert 360 degrees and tuned in to little else.

When they are at school - if you can get them to school - it's a mad rush of shopping and cleaning and bed-changing and paperwork. If you're lucky you get ten mintes for a cuppa and tune in to Ken Bruce.

Only Ken's gone, and I hardly noticed because you're rushed off your feet…fostering.

So. Sometime back I was approached privately by a "service" which offered to help me with this blog. They observed it's doing better than most blogs: had half a million hits, eat your hearts out you Khardashians.

But, they claimed, they could help.

They wanted to "tidy me up".

They offered me a service where one of their team would 'polish' my scribblings and make them more…wait for it…

'Corporate'.

Corporate! 

Well, I was amused. And because I'm pathetic at saying "No" (I pictured a couple of school leavers trying to start a business in their parents garage) I agreed to their trial offer. They would 'treat' two blogs free if I then signed up for a fixed term.

I replied "Aw go on then".

Now, up to that point, the Secret Foster Carer blog had been going along well enough. Hopefully providing some insights/comfort/amusement to fellow fostering folk. Warts and all.

Long story short; the professionals bombed.

They jazzed the pages up with non-royalty images, corrected all thw typos ("thw" - there goes another one) and turned the posts into the sort of soul-less writing you'd want for a pamphlet selling loft conversions.

But fostering doesn't.

Fostering is chock full of slight mistakes, human errors and little things that go slightly wrong because you're rushed off your feet.

The fact was that the polished, corporate blog didn't click with foster parents or would-be foster parents.

Nobody commented or fed back. Why? Because it lacked the human touch.

So I said thanks but no thanks.

Fostering is all about the human touch.

Yes we have to make sensible professional decisions about many things, but to the children in our care, it's all about the human touch. Definitely not the corporate touch.

The many tiny inperfections of human family life are the life-blood of fostering.

The hair in the sink, the slug trail at the kitchen door, the essential hair-grip the dog has eaten, the small blue mark on the last slice of bread.

The can of coke that was thrown away when there was some left, the missing beanie, the over-recording of BGT.

The wrong type of Pringles.

Nothing sums up the non-corporate nature of fostering than that we fosterers will NEVER, EVER buy the right Pringles.

In fostering you can't get further from the men and women in suits who stay up late with their spreadsheets saving doomed companies and bi-annually upgrading to the preferred BMW.

They're missing out on the joy of saving a doomed child. And having to go back to the One Stop and upgrading to the preferred Pringles..

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ENCOURAGING THEM TO HOPE

 It's hard enough coaxing some enthusiasm out of children, especially when they get into the teenage years.

If I had a square yard of paddock for every time I heard "What's the point?" I could graze a herd of horses.

It was hard enough sometimes to motivate my own to get out of bed and go to school, even though they'd grown up in a home where the motto was that you get out of life what you put in.

I suspect that the problem is that when your children start to become aware that one day they'll have to strike out for themselves; it's scary.

It's even harder with children who come into care.

Harder because they've often started out with role model adults who have given up on the world. Their parents didn't allow themselves any more hopes because their hopes kept getting dashed and to avoid any more disappointments and defeats they don't try any more.

The children learn at their parents feet that aspirations are for suckers. They often learn that rather than try to build a life at work it's safer to fall back on the benefits system. They hear opinions such as;

"If you do have to get a job they make you work stupid hours, treat you like a slave and by the time they've stopped your money for National Insurance and tax you're better off on benefit."

Such like thinkers go looking for stories to back up their philosophy. I've heard;

"They made her take a job as a waitress and one night this load of blokes ran out without paying so they stopped the bill out of her wages."

Or;

"I know someone who knows someone right? Her son went to college and ended up with a student debt. Then when he started a job they started stopping money out of his pay to pay it off and there was nothing he could do about it. And they were still stopping him tax and National Insurance on top."

Many times I've had children stay with us who, when asked gently will say they hope to work with animals. Or children. Please don't think me old-fashioned, but those ideas came up mainly from girls, I'm just reporting things I heard. One hoped to own a sweetshop. One wanted to be a soldier, and another wanted to be a plumber. The rest had no idea, no notion there might be a point in trying.

I've always put only the gentlest of emphasis on the idea that a person will find fulfilment in work, because among the children I was at school with, very few of them ended up loving their jobs.

What I'm leading up to here is that the future has never looked bleaker for young people in the UK setting out in life.

I don't believe there was a single reader of that last sentence who disagreed with it.

But. It's for others to run the country, I really wish them luck.

As fostering folk (if you are one of us), there's a much bigger job in hand; it's galvanizing and inspiring children who have often been reduced to utter despair about their chances by forces we had no control over when those forces had control over the children.

It's always been difficult helping children in care see their potential. Nowadays it's even harder persuading them that the world itself has any potential.

But we do. 

Or at least we try to.

There's probably no solution to the current situation, but that won't stop us giving it our best shot, all day, every day, for every child that comes under our wing.

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GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN

 One of the first things that goes straight to the back of your mind when a new child arrives is that the job is about getting them back to their birth parents' home.

You find you SO want to make it work for your whole household that the thought of them one day packing a bag to leave your house, your home, your family…FOREVER…simply doesn't get a look in.

This is where your Social Worker kicks in, gently reminding you that the child's parents and home life are making progress, sorting out their chaos, getting their act together. The SW talks to the child, exploring the child's thoughts and feelings about going back. Sometimes they can't wait, other times they've got reservations but don't have the confidence to voice them. You have to suss them out.

For example, if a child was neglected or worse, and they're old enough to understand, they might have grown to appreciate regular meals, the abscence of shouting (unless it's the child sometimes!) and being surrounded by adults who are sober, clear headed, reliable, fair and lacking the short fuse. When the birth parents start getting hold of things, provided it's true, I always try to keep the child apprised of the progress that's being made at their birth home.

Ok. So far so good.

Then comes the bombshell, which can go like this;

"If it's just as bad as before can I come and stay with you again?"

Or something like that.

I've even had;

"Why don't my mum and dad come and live with us in your house so they can see what a proper mum and dad are like?"

Honest. Those were the exact words. Heartbreaking no?

In answer I always try for the truth, age-appropriate. I explain that the process of court orders and other checks and paperwork would have to happen, but that in theory if it didn't work out, then they could indeed come back to us. It's only happened twice in the whole time I've fostered and one of those occasions was halfway between a secondary respite and a short-term placement. My old friend the 'greay area' shows up. plenty of times in fostering.

But more usually they want to get back home regardless; jumo back into the mix.

When the great day of them going home comes I help them pack their bag and round up their things from around the house. I promise that if I do come across their missing spare charge lead I'll give it to Blue Sky to post to them. I've probably mentioned elsewhere that I've never had the address of a child's birth home, and a parent of a child in my care has only on one occasion found out where I live and got into big trouble for doing it.

Then off they go! In a Social Workers car, grinning and waving to me, or often as not miming crying and waving.

And as life and fostering goes on each and every child who's come into your care pops into your mind and you cross your fingers for them.

But a child going means you've got a spare bedroom, and soon the phone will start dancing and you'll hear the magic words;

"Would you consider taking a child who…?"

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