CHECK YOUR POCKETS FOR FISH

We had a really healthy argument in the house yesterday, between me and our middle foster child.

When you start in fostering you hope it's going to be roses all the way, and there are bouqets aplenty for sure, but there's no such thing as roses all the way in human affairs. Sometimes it's nettles and brambles, and the art of fostering is making sure it ends as roses. 

What the foster mum or dad needs to do is embrace the occassional hiccup and make good use of it.

What happened was this;

Middle foster child needed to have a piece of course work printed off to hand in. The document was a mock-up CV. The child is way too young to need a CV, but school is gearing them up for life in the outside world and I'm all for them learing how to write up their CV.

Child emailed it to my other half as my laptop has various security walls on it, so other half pinged it on to me. My laptop is the only device in the house that's linked to a working printer. The other two printers are either out of ink or don't work.

So my other half forwards it to me saying "Could you just quickly print this off?"

A piece of cake.

No. 

The email consisted of a link, not an attached document. 

I clicked on the link and it opened, but when I clicked "Print" a blank sheet of A4 came chuntering out of the printer.

The CV wasn't a Word doc, or a Pages doc, it was a PDF. I Googled how to  how to print a PDF, but none of the suggestions were sucessful.

So now I'm getting frustrated and annoyed partly that my afternoon was being hi-jacked, but mostly that I hate coming across as a dinosaur that doesn't understand modern technology. 

So I call downstairs to the other half who replies that I have to download the PDF. 

Like I said, my laptop has big-time security features, so now, stress levels going up, I want to know why middle foster child wrote the CV as a  PDF in the first place.

So I shouted upstairs to the child to come down and help me, forgetting that raised voices used to be a trigger for the child who had been happily practising guitar in the bedroom.

The child miffed off it was all my fault for having an Apple Mac when everyone else in the house had Windows.

By this point I'm in phase two meltdown. Who wouldn't be?

I'm fed up being used as a dog's body, the child could definitely show a bit of gratitude. My other half is keeping his head down as if it's nothing to do with him.  I'm sitting at my laptop tapping random keys in the hope of getting lucky.

And in the end I did get lucky! The CV printed off!

At least it tried to. But the CV document had a massive black border which was not only a pointless decoration, but used up all the remaining ink in the cartridge which is running down towards empty. So I shout to other half "How many copies do we need?" and he shouted; "Oh five should do it." 

So now I'm hunting high and low for a replacement cartridge knowing that if it's needed I'll have to do the whole alignment rigmarole, so now I'm properly the martyr.

So I shout up to middle foster child "You could at least come and help!"

To which he replied "Nothing to do with me."

Long story short; the whole saga was indeed, absolutly nothing to do with the child. My other half had heard from another parent that they had been asked to write their own CV, and anticipated that the child would find such a task difficult.

Think about it: imagine you're a child asked to write up their life thus far, and you're in care.

So. My other half took it on himself to write our middle foster child's CV for him, and when I read what he'd written I was touched. It was aglow with esteem for the child's many wonderful qualities.

Then, suddenly I was aghast that I'd been short with the child; my mistake totally.

So; a beautiful opportunity arose.

It was my chance to demonstrate what people should do when they mess up, namely they apologise.

And so I did. I didn't make a big deal of it, just called out I'd got it wrong in blaming the child for sending me a document to print that gave me a headache.

Child replied "Yeah, no problem", and meant it.

And was empowered to recieve what was perhaps his first ever heartfelt apology.

Later that afternoon he put his head round the living room door and announced he was going to the One Stop. And did I want anything "Like a creme egg or a Magnum or something?"

Our connection was better than ever before, I could hardly credit how such a ruck could end so well. 

Sometimes children in care obtain a mysterious peace from the resolution of suchlike m inor domestic conflicts.

I felt blessed. Lucky almost.

As my late uncle Paddy used to say to me;

"You're natural born lucky, so you are. If ever you fall in the water, check your pockets for fish."