r/Fosterparents

My wife and I are new to foster care (about 1 year of being licensed)

the case was just postponed by 6 months, we have beem kinship for 2 years. Empower has been ordered by the court to facilitate weekend visits in another state but decided to allow a visit from Tuesday to Sunday because the biological mother was in town for court. My wife and I are entirely new to the process. We did not know we should have appeared in court as we were advised not to. We have had to drive 3 hours to pick up our foster child because Empower was not able to organize transport for previous visits.)

is this normal? We have had so much pushback from every agency aside from CASA who is telling us we are being taken advantage of.

we want to help children in need but this system seems so disjointed and my wife and I are looking for some sort of anchor point to normality.

edit: our Address was given to one of the biological parents without our consent. Does not seem to be protocol but no agency has shared our concern and we have our doubts now.

My wife and I took our first placement (17F) about 6 months ago. Shes a great kid overall, but we’ve run into an issue that is severely affecting our marriage.

My foster daughter has a long history of being sexually abused by both her biological parents and her peers. She identifies as asexual, and is extremely put off by any show or mention of sexuality (even things like kissing in movies).

She is also extremely attached to my wife and I, and doesn’t have many friends locally. We’re bringing her to a lot of social activities with the hope of helping her branch out, but she very rarely leaves the house to do anything without us (even though she has permission to do so as long as she tells us where she’s going).

My wife and I have always enjoyed a healthy, sexual relationship. At first, we had planned to only have sex when our foster daughter wasn’t home. But since accepting the placement in December, she’s only been out of the house without us long enough for us to have sex two times.

This is killing my marriage. My own therapist is telling me we should be having sex regularly (regardless of whether she is in the house) in order to model a healthy relationship, but when we’ve even mentioned anything related to us wanting to have an intimate moment, FD has a panic attack and throws herself down the front stairs. I think she knows that if she hurts herself badly enough we’ll forget about having sex all together (which is true). I also talked to FD’s therapist about this, but her therapist just said she had trauma and gave us no suggestions on how to compromise.

Last night I told FD that we were going to try something new over the weekend. We are going to give her a set time (~2 hours) in the middle of the daytime where we are going to have an intimate moment. We are going to give her lunch money, and if she would like she can walk to one of the nearby restaurants and have a nice bite to eat. Alternately she can stay in the house, but knowing that’s what we’re doing so don’t come in our room.

Again, when I told her this, she had a panic attack and threw herself down the stairs. I’m not sure what to do at this point- I am worried that if this keeps happening my marriage is going to end.

EDIT: someone suggested I include this in the main post. She comes into our room regularly in the middle of the night even when we have asked her not to. Last night, we went to bed with the door closed and her in another room. This morning when we woke up she was under our bed. The only reason we found out is because her phone went off.

EDIT 2 additional context: Having sex after she goes to sleep isn’t an option since she has insomnia and stays up to 3 or 4 am every night. She goes to school from home right now (safety incident at the school), so while she is at school isn’t an option. We had to take the locks off all our doors because she was locking herself in rooms to SH. I’m worried about a lock with a key in case there is a fire or something (I don’t want to be rooting around for a key). We also paid over $200 for a fancy alcohol lockbox with great reviews and she got into it the first night by unscrewing the door and taking it off its hinges. She generally has boundaries issues, and does things like sit outside the bathroom door when I am peeing or tries to come into the bedroom while I am changing, even though I have told her that makes me uncomfortable. I have tried lying and saying we have to go somewhere, but she insists on coming too.

My son’s best friend, and his friend’s younger sibling, got removed from their mom’s house last night. Aged 17.5, and I think the younger one is 15.5 or 16. This is the second time in the past six months that they were removed, first time they went to older siblings (there are six siblings altogether, quite close in age, and the other four are young adults.)

This time they went to a foster home but my son’s friend asked the DSS if he could stay with us. He’s over at our place all the time anyway. Supposedly they’re encouraging about this idea and going to call me at some point.

So I have a bunch of questions.

Will they just let him come here even though we’re not in the foster care system? What does that entail? I assume a background check and a home visit, but what do they look for? What are the general requirements, at this age level? We don’t have bed space or even floor space to take the younger boy, unfortunately—will they prioritize keeping them together?

What kind of time frame would this take place over? (The call from social services, and everything after that.)

Thanks in advance for any information!

I am both a first-time foster parent and a first-time parent, and I am new to trauma-informed parenting. I’ve never liked the term “allowance” because it feels like entitlement and welfare to me, and I want to teach my placements that earning money requires hard work. Would it be a safe parenting practice to pay my placements a set amount at the end of each month based on their grades in each class?

My little cousin was removed from her father about 2 weeks ago, due to child neglect. The court has ordered no-contact because. My aunt (her grandma) and I are sort of sharing the parenting responsibility. She has been living at my apartment with me. Her grandma has guardianship for the next six months.

Tonight, I was in my room folding laundry while she was basically having the kid equivalent of the zoomies. She saw that I was folding a lacey looking bra and asked if I wear it with my boyfriend. I said that I do sometimes, but usually I just think it's cute.

A little bit later, she asked me if I "get freaky" with my boyfriend. My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her, calmly, that that isn't an appropriate question to ask others.

I thought more on it, and after a few minutes I told her that if she can't use the word sex, I don't think she's ready to talk about it. She asked me again, using the appropriate word, then asked me why. I told her yes, because we have known eachother for a long time and I love and trust him. She seemed satisfied with that answer and went back to reading.

I knew that, given her age, she was likely to ask me about it at some point. I literally just gave her a book about periods and puberty. What caught me so off guard is that she 1) asked me after only about a week and a half and 2) asked me about myself, specifically. I'm also not sure if this would be considered normal curiosity, or if it's related to something more sinister.

She has not met my boyfriend yet but has heard me talk about him. She 100% already knows what sex is, mostly through media/the internet. Her mom passed away when she was only 4, so she has never really had a solid maternal figure or lived with an adult woman.

I really, really hope I haven't given her any weird ideas. Should I have shut the question down without follow up, or would it have been better to be super candid? Anyone been in a similar situation? I am just so anxious about whether I handled it appropriately. Thanks in advance.

Percentage of how many were coming directly from their own home/you’re their first experience in the system or they’re coming from another foster home and have been in the system for a while.

I think I just need to vent to someone who understands and might be able to give insight into some of my frustrations.

A family friend’s 9 month old was placed with me 7 weeks ago as a relative placement. We have weekly hour long supervised visits scheduled. Bio mom has made it to 3/6 with one of those being one we rescheduled for her.
I’m allowed to send her pictures & updates. So I send her a daily picture. She will save it to the chat & occasionally save it to her camera roll. Maybe twice a week she will ask how FD is doing. I’ll use that as an opportunity to show/tell something she learned, send some pictures I’ve taken, or even tell her what she did that day if bio mom asks in the evening. After I send the response I am met with an “aw” if I get any response at all.

I feel like some of this is probably normal, and I shouldn’t get frustrated about it. But it’s hard some days to not let it bother me, today just happened to be one of those days.

My Foster girl has gone back to her family and I am so happy that she has her family again. She missed them so much and this is the best thing for everybody.

But I’m gonna miss her so much. We got along really well and trusted each other a lot and had a lot of really great times together. I am always gonna have a special place in my heart for that girl.

But I’m also really happy that she’s back with her mom.

I’m also gonna cry.

Hi

My 16yo son came to me aged 10 with suspected sexual abuse history. No memory of it and no clarity from the agency as to what actually happened. We’re not aiming at memory recall but processing trauma as he’s sitting at emotional development of a 5 year old - still very clingy, needs lots of reassurance, needs to have a bed time routine etc.

We’ve tried talk therapy and he deflects. Play therapy (at 15) and we just made forts and attacked each other with missiles for a year. Life story therapy had the biggest impact (they go through the records of what parents were convicted for, raise issues of mother choosing the stepdad over him etc) but it’s led to him going to teacher to teacher frantically. They see him as a potential suicide risk. Something about school being a safe space means it’s the only place he’ll talk.

What other therapies could we possibly try?

No point getting a referral to a sexual assault service if he doesn’t know it happened. And we don’t know for sure.

I’m in Sydney, Australia

I’m currently house hunting for my first home with the intention of becoming a foster parent in the next few years. I’m in a HCOL area and with my budget I’m mostly looking at 3 bed/1 bath houses. I’m interested in fostering teens. Anyone share a bathroom with a foster teen? Will we be okay with just one bath in the house?

So my brother is going to prison and his wife basically abandoned them with my mom and her husband. They are becoming their temporary foster parents but the plan is for me to end up with them. Does anyone know what the process is like when you live in separate states?

Does anyone have a Respite or New Placement Checklist they can please share.

I had a kiddo last week for respite and his foster mom packed his daily meds in a pill dispenser. It occurred to me I didn't know exactly what he was taking. Also the agency didn't give me his birth date or CIN. Also, I wasn't sure of any pre-existing health conditions (they told me about mental health dx).

I should have asked more questions, but I knew the kiddo from the agency and he's hard to place bc of behaviors. I sort of figured they'd tell me this info before placement (but maybe not right when I agreed to the respite dates) but they never did.

I'm going to be taking respite children and possibly a new long term placement. What should I be asking - even for these shorter stays - so that I'm more prepared? Does anyone have a resource?

It was a fine week overall, but it would have been extremely helpful to know that the kiddo wets the bed nightly and has medication for it that the FP didn't get to refill before sending him to respite...

Thank you!!

TL;DR: f19 hot wires vapes and burned up a surge protector in her room today. Feeling angry and like our home is at serious risk. Sorry for the long rant.

Mostly need to vent, feeling stuck and burned out quite literally. Can’t sleep. Hoping to feel more level headed tomorrow.

Our adopted daughter (19) lives at home, she came into our care at 16, adopted a few months before her 18th birthday. I’ve posted a couple of years ago looking for advice on how to help her to quit vaping, fast forward to 19 and we gave that up long ago and just don’t address it any longer as it was a losing battle and she won’t be ready to quit unless she wants to herself someday. Today she could’ve burned our house down, though.

My husband and I were outside having coffee this morning and she came out to tell us that none of her outlets were working and her surge protector was broken. She had a weird story about how a metal necklace touched an outlet prong and caused a spark; there are burn marks all over the surge protector and a big black burn on her nightstand. My husband took the outlet out to make sure there wasn’t a fire in the wall and thankfully it seems to have stopped at the surge protector.

In the moment, we took the story about the necklace at face value despite it being odd, talked a little about outlet safety, got her a new surge protector and moved on with the day. Fast forward late tonight, I find a usb cord with the wires stripped in the laundry room, likely dropped on the way to the garbage. This is how people Hotwire dead vapes and is almost certainly the actual cause of the burned up surge protector. Several years ago we found a full bag of broken vape parts and stripped usb cords, and learned at the time that teens use stripped usbs to Hotwire vapes. The risks are fire and blowing your own face up. We had very serious conversations about this exact issue in the pat
St so she’s very aware of the fire hazard and chose to do it anyway. Regarding the addictive nature of vapes, I get it, but she also has a part time job and is blowing through her savings account so I assumed she’s been buying vapes and should have no reason to Hotwire them.

We’re going to talk about it with her tomorrow night after we have a chance to cool down, but I’ll be totally honest- we wish we could kick her out of the house. We are pretty easy on her, maybe to a fault, but now I feel like she’s going to burn the house down with us and our pets in it and I’m scared, sad, and angry. Based on old patterns, I feel like we will either have what feels like a healthy/productive conversation, but will that result in the same behaviors, or she’ll commit fully to a lie that will make zero sense. Either way I have no faith that this will be the last time no matter what we say as she is either too addicted, doesn’t actually care, or both, We are planning to find a family therapist to help us work through this but both of us feel angry and fed up. We’re committed but I’d be lying if I said we don’t feel in over our heads as she gets older. Independence feels and probably is years away and parenting someone who is legally an adult is hard. I know in my heart that this is all a complicated mix of normal young adult immaturity and legitimate trauma.

He’s a 13 year old boy. First night we had dinner and he tried to take it back to his bedroom to eat. We convinced him to eat it at the dinner table and he did but he ate pretty fast and then asked to be excused so we let him.

He’s really quiet and spends a lot of time in his room. I guess that’s normal for a teenager but I don’t know him well so I get kinda nervous on what he’s up to in there. But I try to respect his privacy also.

He just seems to avoid us as much as he can and it’s hard to get him to say anything. We try to be nice and kind and give him some space too. I just almost feel like he’s scared of us? Seems a little old for that but I guess I don’t know what he’s been through. We try to make him feel safe here.

Any tips? He’s only been here a few weeks so I guess it will just take some time.

hi all! today my daughter (8) told me that she tries so hard to make my son (9) (ADHD, PTSD), it goes unacknowledged, and doesn't work. Of course, I told her that wasn't her job and we will work with her and her therapist more on this. That's my day one response on helping her as well as sending her off for an afternoon with my parents for a break. I will help her more.

Onto my issue tho: I realized that we have made so many systems and accommodations in our house to stop son's angry blowups. And it lesseuns their frequency, but doesn't stop them. It feels like everything revolves around helping him control his temper. It really gives me "the ick" when I think about it too much. Son takes a stimulant in the morning and afternoon, an antidepressant, guanfacine and trazadone. We did just increase the dose of stimulants and I know that may be making things worse right now. Even if things level out for awhile, it just feels like we are stuck in a cycle where he blows up, we repair, we try to make more systemtic changes to help him, it works for awhile and then we repeat.

I'm so tired and it's negatively impacting all of us. Help!

I’m not sure how much detail is necessary but curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.

We are foster parents to a 6w old newborn that we’ve had since 11 days old. The pregnancy/birth were concealed from DCF due to older siblings being in FC and automatic removal.

The older siblings have been in care for 11 months and were all recommended for adoption/permanency at their last hearing. Neither mom nor dad have made significant progress in their case plans.

We are in Florida and wondering the likelihood of the newborn’s goal changing from reunification to TPR because of the siblings case? Could it be expedited or most likely be on the same timeline of 12m?

Apparently our foster’s ICPC was just submitted last week. What do we expect now? What’s the ICPC process like on the kinship’s end- like what steps do they have to take? What does a timeline look like? TN to Alabama kinship.

It’s so hard to say goodbye to a child you love. How do you cope?

what waterproof mattress pads do yall use? I got the utopia ones from Amazon a kids peed through 2 sets of 2 stacked ontop eachother so it just seems like an issue with the product not a 1 off.

Hello!

I have a specific question about fostering. My husband and I are considering becoming foster parents! My question is- those of you who have fostered after having a few of your own kids, how did your kiddos react? I feel like my kids would love it. They are very loving children. But my husbands nervous they will have their feelings hurt.

Would love some feedback!