We answer a listener question on how best to get extended family involved in the life of foster children. Should you restrict contact at first in order to develop attachment with you first? What if your extended family isn’t crazy about adoption or foster care, how do you bring them along?
What a great point that our families haven’t chosen foster care and adoption. That alone really helps me with my perspective as I think about integrating our extended family into our foster situation.
do you think that foster children should call their foster parents mom & dad, or by another name?
In my opinion, what they call you depends on the child’s age and situation and your family situation as well.
Our FK’s ages 10,11, and 17 called us by our first names even after 2 1/2 years in our home. That had to do with their age and their continued contact with birth family as well as their culture.
We encouraged our 2 1/2 yr old FD to call us by our first names because we knew she was returning home. (she occasionally said mama and daddy anyway)
Our current FK’s, ages 6 and 7, started calling us mommy and daddy after maybe 6 months and we encouraged that because we are adopting them.
I just always try to do what is emotionally right for the kids. Hope that helps!
On a side note: Our extended family have always been called grandma, nana, papa, aunt, uncle etc. just because I think you can never have too many of those!!
Thanks. I wasn’t really sure on this.
My FB’s call my parents mom & dad to us, but by their first names to them.. its interesting to say the least.
Thanks guys! Great thoughts.
I am listening to this as I type
This is for straight foster care. I knew that it was going to be hard on all of us when our foster daughter left. My biggest advice is to let your extended family know that if this child leaves they need to be prepared with a support system. My mom doesn’t have the support system and when our foster daughter left, she tried to rely on us. We weren’t in a position to do that.
Hi Tim and Wendy! First I want to tell you that your podcast is amazing and has helped so much during my licensing process! I just became certified May 21 and am still waiting for my first placement. I live in southern Illinois. We currently have an abundance of foster homes waiting on placements which is a great thing but the waiting is hard. Listening to your podcast helps kill the time but since I started 2 months ago I am now caught up and enjoyed every one of them. I am constantly searching the internet for answers to my questions. I am glad to have the podcast to go to for information. Thank You for taking your time to do what you do!
My wife and I have fostered five children, and adopted two more from the foster care system. We’re hopefully going to add a third sibling in a few months. Most of our children have been classified as legal risk, meaning we would generally have first right of adoption if parental rights were terminated.
While stressful enough for us as foster parents, we have found that the stress it caused our parents was something we should have considered, but didn’t bargain for. When foster children leave your care, or are returned to their parents, your love for them doesn’t diminish, but you lose the ability to know how they are doing. The unknown, especially when children were returned to parents who have abused them, haunts us, and our parents. They do not understand why we foster, and repeatedly tell us we should stop and concentrate our energy on the children we have adopted. While we’re disappointed at the lack of support, we tell ourselves it’s all about the kids. We provide them with a role model of a safe and loving home, and hope they carry that memory forward and build upon it in their own lives.
Almost Everyone around you will be supportive and helpful for your first one or two placements. After that, many seem to adopt the attitude that since you are choosing to take on the added stress and work, you must be able to handle it all on your own. Friends and family are generally less enthusiastic for each new placement. We know we can’t help them all, so we’re working with our church to develop an orphan ministry so that we can continue to help these kids long after we accept our final placement. Kudos to you for creating a podcast to help educate others about the joy foster children can bring to our lives.
We always ask foster children to call us daddy Dave and mommie Wendy. After several months, they usually drop the first names. We find it helps the kids in conversation, there’s rarely any doubt whether they are talking about their birth parents or us, and it prevents confusion with their therapists.
This was a great episode. It’s been fun to catch up on all that has been going on. Before foster parenting we adopted 2 children from China and with both our kiddos we were the primary caregivers for the first several months. We even took turns at church on who would leave after worship to sit in the cry room with the newest arrival. We did that for about six months with our daughter and in retrospect should have done it longer with our son, who was older when he came home from China and had significant attachment issues. In fact he’s been home for 3 years now and we’re just within the last 6 months seeing that he’s is actually attached. It’s been a rough road with that kid! Our current foster baby has been with us 6 months and he’s almost 1 year old…so we haven’t had those issues. He thinks I’m Mama and that my hubby is Dada..I have no idea what is going to happen when he actually calls us that in front of his birth mom….How do I handle this with an infant? Any ideas? Should we just let him call us Mama and Dada or…?
We had a foster son for fifteen months whom we were planning to adopt and due to a multitude of issues and reasons that did not happen. It was a horribly sad time for our family and we actually took six months off after he left our home to recover. Not only were we dealing with the loss, but an amazing amount of guilt accompanied that loss as we felt let him down. We know now as we did then – that it was best that he leave our family but oh the pain and sadness.
As a result of his leaving our parents were also devastated. We both come from close families and our foster son was incredibly charming and engaging and so stinking cute. He made every one fall in love with him. We had many difficult experiences with him and his attachment issues and even our parents struggled from time to time in terms of how to best support him and us. We did not realize how deeply our foster parenting affected our parents until after he left. My mother couldn’t talk about him for months without crying.
We have two other legal risk placements in our home now, two girls, who have been with us sixteen months, and I can’t imagine what it would be like if they did not end up staying with us. All of the grandmas and grandpas are in love with the girls….we often remind them that nothing is forever yet. The good thing is that they never treat them as anything less that their grandkids which is so wonderful and such a blessing to the girls.
I feel that our foster kids deserve to have the benefit of grandparents and enjoy them as much as my wife and I enjoyed our own grandparents while growing up. I personally would never withhold my foster kids from my parents as they have caught the foster bug and consider themselves foster grandparents and have learned so much from this process.
Our kids have always called us mom and dad and we have not dissuaded them from doing so. We have always given our kids the option to call us whatever they want to call us (as long as it is not doofus or weirdo). LOL
Blessings
Brock