Fostering children is a rewarding and fulfilling experience, but it also comes with unique challenges—especially if you’re already parenting your own children. Integrating foster children into your family requires careful consideration, empathy, and balance to ensure your biological children continue to feel valued and supported. Whether you’re fostering for the first time or have years of experience, helping your own children adjust is key to creating a welcoming and loving home for everyone.
How Fostering Impacts Your Children
Before blending your current family dynamic with foster children, it’s important to understand the potential impact this change may have on your own children. Fostering brings new routines, responsibilities, and relationships into your home. While these changes can be positive, they may also create challenges for your children.
The Benefits Of Fostering For Biological Children
- Increased Empathy and Compassion⎯Fostering can expose your children to diverse experiences and challenges, helping them empathize and have a deeper understanding of others’ struggles.
- Better Social Awareness⎯Children who witness their parents fostering may develop a greater appreciation for the complexities of social issues, and the need for support systems those struggling may have.
- Developing Life Skills⎯Having foster children, can teach other children valuable life skills such as patience, responsibility, and adaptability through their interactions with foster children and the dynamics that occur.
- Strengthened Family Bonds⎯Fostering can strengthen family bonds everyone has to work together to support each other.
- Sense of Purpose and Meaning⎯Fostering can instill a sense of purpose and meaning in your children by allowing them to contribute to a cause that is bigger than themselves.
Potential Challenges Of Fostering For Biological Children
- Jealousy and Resentment⎯Your own children might feel jealous or resentful if they perceive the foster child receiving more attention or resources.
- Changes in Family Dynamics⎯The presence of a foster child can disrupt the family’s established routines and dynamics, potentially leading to conflict or tension.
- Behavioral Changes⎯Your children might adopt negative behaviors from the foster child, or they might feel pressured to act as role models for the foster child, causing added stress.
- Emotional Distress⎯Your children may experience emotional distress, particularly if they witness the foster child’s difficult experiences, or if they develop a bond with them and then they have to leave the home.
Strategies to Support Your Children While Fostering
Communicate Early and Often
Communication is the foundation of a healthy and smoother transition. Have your children involved in the fostering process even before a foster child arrives. Explain what it means to foster a child and how they can help. Set expectations about what might change such as, will they have to share a bedroom and address potential questions or concerns they may have. Also encourage open dialogue so your kids can ask questions and express their feelings and thoughts.
Have One-On-One Time
Keeping your attention balanced is one of the most crucial ways to ensure your children still feel prioritized. Set a day where you spend quality time with your kids whether that is a weekly activity, outing, reading before bedtime, or watching their favorite movie, can show your child how much you love them.
Encourage Emotional Expression
Allowing your kids to process their emotions will help minimize feelings of jealousy, confusion, or frustration. Reassure them that whatever emotions they’re experiencing are normal, and share your feelings as well. It’s important to be honest with your kids so that they feel they can be honest with you.
Establish Boundaries and Privacy Rules
Setting clear boundaries will be really important between your children and foster children. If they’re sharing bedrooms or spaces, create boundaries so everyone can have privacy or a place to decompress.
Get Professional Support
If your children are struggling with having a foster child in the house, Dawn Lamprecht specializes in using creative and expressive techniques, like sandtray therapy and play therapy that she personalizes to each of her clients needs. To schedule a consultation with Dawn, email her at info@eastcobbrelationshipcenter.com or call or text her at 770-209-3517. You aren’t alone, and Dawn is here to support your children as they process having a foster sister or brother.