Foster Home Tour - Examples for Younger Foster Kids
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มี.ค. 2024
- In today's video, I showcase what the first day with a young child may look like. I walk through saying hello, showing them your home, navigating the first meal, and supporting at bedtime. This transition into your home can be incredibly difficult for a young child. They often don't understand what foster care is, don't understand the nuance and context of the situation, and may not be aware of any concerns related to their parents.
Every child is different, so feel free to drop in your additional ideas and tips that you have in the comments below!
Planning to foster this age group? Check out this playlist for more content: • Young Kids
Looking for more? I offer 1:1 DM support (plus checklists and templates) on Patreon for as little as $1. / fosterparenting
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I'm childfree & don't plan on fostering or adopting, but your videos teach me how to communicate with others more effectively, how to make them feel safer around me (with my mental health issues) & how to express caring feelings in a way that won't be overbearing or creepy to them. You're truly a vessel of God, Laura, & so is Chris. I'm praying for you guys always! 🫶🏻
As someone with a rough childhood: I was one of the very fearful and anxious who worried a LOT about my mentally ill parent, to the point I had panic attacks during nighttime if I wasn’t around them. Sleepovers were awful. I can still feel the absolute terror and gut wrenching loneliness of nightfall in someone else’s home.
Someone like Laura would absolutely have helped long term, but it would’ve taken quite some time for me to settle in and feel safe at night. Lots of nightly check ins and reassurance.
To everyone who considers fostering: please be patient. Some of the children you meet will be hurting a lot, for reasons you sometimes can’t understand. Patience, kindness and availability will help with the healing so much more than strict rules, discipline and forced independence.
Would it be alright to know a little more about your situation? Perfectly ok if you don't feel like sharing.
I have a lot of mental illness myself but I really still want kids. I just don't want to cause trauma/affect them badly at all. It's probably going to be a few years of decisions and checking with therapists and parenting classes until I feel comfortable enough to make a decision whether I even try and have kids or not
I'd love to see a "first morning" with all the age groups
Oh what a good idea - i haven't made a video like that. Thanks for the idea!
I’m so glad to have found your channel! I have kids in my home that need trauma-informed parenting and I’m so glad this information is becoming more widely available! Also it’s cool that you’re able to share in a generic way that’s not personal to any kid. I so desire to teach other parents but I feel like it’s more important that I keep my kids’ stories as their stories and don’t share them around so it makes it harder to teach other parents, especially online. You have a unique opportunity and I’m glad you’re using your platform! If you ever want to connect, I’d love to!
Sorry this was inside a reply… I didn’t see it till I hit send haha!
That would be AMAZING! We're just a few weeks out from being open for placements and your content is wonderful.
Our forster son will be moving in with us tomorrow. He is 2,5 months old and we will become his forever family.❤❤
Aww congratulations!
I came from a violent family. You help me heal. I imagine talking to younger self using your language. It helps ground me
Here's a hug from a stranger ❤
I take my inner child to do things she enjoys, like playing on the swings. It really helps my executive function to get her on my side by being nice to her and letting her play sometimes. Sometimes the only person you can trust their intentions is yourself. Then you have to be the one to show yourself kindness and play.
Doing this also helps keep me from being so desperate for attention that I put up with unkindness from others in order to fit in.
I have a topic suggestion: what to do when kids don't talk and just stay in their room. I was 12 when I entered foster care, so I wasn't a little kid, but I imagine that also happens to little ones. I've been trying to make sense of my time in foster care and made contact with one of my former foster families on Facebook. They said when I first arrived, I didn't say anything, stayed in my room and barely interacted with them at all, not even wanting to go to a special outing (they had tickets to a MLB game). That was summer, so I was home from school and spent the whole time barely leaving my room and they didn't know what to do. I was their 1st (and only) foster care placement. They quit fostering after they disrupted. While maybe videos showing kids being outgoing and fun to be around may encourage people to foster, training may be needed on what to do when kids aren't like that.
Yeah, maybe about making contact with a child.
I wonder how you would have felt if they spent time with you in your room? Would that have been comforting or invasive?
I can imagine situations for either, some children may even feel their space is no longer safe and actually hide somewhere, or they might feel comforted by someone being there. So I'm wondering about what the solution might be there. One the one hand you would want to make a child feel safe and not like they can't be on their own if they want to, but also, you want to help a child thrive and not feel like they should hide away. I dunno.
It's especially hard if you don't know why a child might want to stay in their room. Are they afraid of something bad happening if they are somewhere else, like abuse? Do they feel like they don't belong? Do they feel afraid of the foster family? Are they ashamed of showing their emotions? So many possibilities. And the solution to one thing might actually be harmful in another.
@@AnnekeOosterink I started hiding in rooms to avoid people bothering me, so no, I didn't want anyone invading my room. I had been in foster care nearly 2 years by that point and had come to the realization I wouldn't be able to return to my mom or get to see her (she was in a nursing home) and my mom wasn't going to recover. I think the biggest thing that could have helped was foster parents understanding the situation and being told by my caseworker rather than every time I moved having to explain and argue with them about what was going on. I also really felt like each family had their interests, hobbies, and ways of doing things and I was expected to change, they never changed to adapt to me. I liked anime & manga and that was always seen as bad by these very Christian families. I wanted to see my mom and there was no visitation and TRP had happened so they didn't understand and kept trying to explain to me like I was stupid why I couldn't see my mom. And my mom had been moved to a care facility even further away so getting there by bus was impossible even if I did try to run off to be able to see her. My mom was stuck in that little room at the care facility, so I was stuck in my little room as well. I was so focused on my mom and how she was doing and her treatment and recovery and when that was over - I was lost.
You provide such great modeling for all parents, foster or not.
Yep, my parents would've really benefited from these
I wish my mother was 1/16 as caring as you.
Thank you Laura. Your videos are like therapy to me, and also help me better understand my experiences in the mental health system as a teen. And they help me so much to be more confident working with children. And I find your videos generally comforting, calming and reassuring. Many thanks 💚
I love it that you treat children like the people that they are and give them the dignity that they deserve and any control that you can when they have so little in these situations. We all know that children need structure but starting off with house rules, "no we can't eat this or that, you have to do bedtime this way, it's xy and z in this household"... none of that would be helpful to any child right off the bat. Thank you for caring about their individual needs ❤
This is such a comforting video. I wish my parents had watched your videos 40 years ago. Thanks Laura❤
i came across your videos a couple of months ago and i absolutely love them! i actually shared them with a teacher of mine who started fostering recently
Thank you for sharing them!!
I wasnt given clear instructions on where the toilet was in one house. There was just a vague arm wave in the general direction. Even now as an adult i cant ask where i will find toilets. So as a young person to not know where the toilet was in a home i was staying in was a disaster.
I am a social work student, so I love your videos and am learning a lot from you! Thank you!
Thank you for watching!
I wish every foster child coild have you as a foster parent!
I plan on working in child care part time and these videos and shorts are leaving really good tips and tricks
My mom died suddenly when I was 9, and since my parents were divorced, my siblings and I were of course placed with my father ... and his new wife. We were intruders into the life they wanted to build for themselves and we were punished for it.
Our experience was very much the opposite of the experience you provide. Watching these is really helping me to reparent myself and understand the kindness, patience, and open-heartedness we should have been shown. It gives me a lot of peace to know there are kids that won't go through that because they have you to guide them through traumatic and difficult situations. Thank you.
Your heart is so beautiful. I am glad I am in the world with people like you, it gives me hope. All my best to you and the children you support.
It is good to know where the parents are located. I had a child placed with me and her parents lived next door. My foster daughter was terrified to go outside.
Wow! That doesn't sound like a good placement at all!
Look, if we were talking about a parent who is sick and can't support a child, then the child being next door is a good idea: parent will take the kid back soon so child can see parent and will have a better time adjusting. But if the kid is afraid of the parent to the point where they don't want to see them, then this was a really bad idea. Like the parent just kidnaps the kid at night and unalives them in the woods because the parent is jealous. Like, please don't be steangy with the gas and get the kid away
It was a placement mistake. The agency admits. @@willow100cm
That is heartbreaking!
I've heard of this from other followers too. It's interesting that things like that get missed. I Could see for some kids that it actually is really helpful being close to home and within the community they know. But for other situations, I could see it being very upsetting to kids.
Wonderful video!!
Laura..✨with all sincerity,..you are an amazing human being💫 especially born for this time in these days for this reason..💕
definitely fulfilling your... ✨Destiny🙏💖
You thought everything through so well ❤
Thank you! These videos have evolved, I'm grateful for all of my followers who have shared little tidbits on what they do too, I try to incorporate as much as possible from everyone's experiences!
@@foster.parenting 😊😊😊
My favorite part was to greet them with familiar foods. 💕
I think I've watched pretty much all your videos but if I missed this one please let me know. I would love a video on what to do when a child can't sleep at night and is always awake. Specifically, a child that isn't used to sleeping alone at night as I i know in most places foster parents and children aren't allowed to share a bed together. How do you handle a situation where a child has never slept alone?
I think that’s a great question. I know someone who ran into a situation like that. They thought the child would be thrilled to have their own room after having to share all their life, but the child had trouble sleeping every single night, missing the presence and sounds of a sibling.
I know someone who has been in this situation. Leaving the bedroom door open at night or getting a white noise machine or radio playing softly might help. He had this space projecter that he was allowed to use whenever he wanted, so he could just look up at the 'stars' on his ceiling to distract himself until he got sleepy. Hope this helps! ❤
Aww.. ur the best..❤
This could be helpful for babysitting as well
Hi Laura ! I've noticed you're always saying "this is where I sleep" instead of "this is my bedroom". Is there a particular reason for that ?
Not from experience but usually it's because of a parent or guardian usually leaving to go somewhere else to sleep to get away from the child or wasted on the couch
Question, in your opinion, how long should you work at a new job before beginning the licensing process? I’m about to begin working as a respite care worker for military families with special needs. I believe I’ll be on a like after school activities type of schedule. And I’ll be fostering while single. I was thinking maybe 6 months, just so I can get used to the schedule beforehand, but also I was thinking maybe I could begin the training within the first few months of beginning my new job.
As a parent of a very resourceful and independent small child (long since safely grown up!), I would have used language about the pool that really emphasised adult accompaniment as a condition for pool use, as well as 'when it is warmer'. I could imagine such a child deciding on their own that it was now warmer, and trying to figure out their own way into the pool. I am sure that you have safety fencing around the pool, and are diligent about supervising, but there is a reason why the phrase child resistant is a thing, instead of child proof!
Pretty sure in the videos about getting certified, one of the requirements for a pool was that it be inaccessible in some way. I got the impression that they don't even give you a small child until they cannot reach the pool on their own. That might be why there's no admonition.
What about having the child write their mom or dad a note if they’re old enough and missing their parents? Is this appropriate to encourage knowing that their parents may or may not ever be able to receive said note?
You're so thoughtful and gentle. Were you always that way or does the foster parenting training helped you be that way?
I had a really good trainer, she actually modeled scripts and situations during our classes. This was the most helpful part of the training IMO. I would ask her about certain situations and she would model what to do and how to respond. I also have had in-home behavioral specialists. They have come in to help us learn how to support specific situations that was incredibly helpful. That hands-on training shaped how I approach most situations.
Can you put a link in the community tab for this neck massager thing.
This is of topic, buts what's going on with the lights on your water/ice dispenser on the fridge??? It's having a party hahah
What if the child wanted me to sleep with them in their bedroom? Would it be ok to do that?
hey laura! i would just be careful about showing the outside of your house.
Thank you! I didn't show my address, but curious what else I should be aware of. Thank you for caring and the information!
0:28 you are one of the good ones
I doubt all are like you are
I hope more of them can learn to be like her with these.