They say parenting is the hardest job. I contend that foster parenting is the hardest job. All of the struggles of parenting, fewer of the perks, more difficult children and lots of people constantly evaluating you. Essentially you are the janitor of children: you get to clean up other people’s messes.

I asked what to write about, and MerseyDotes of Elevated Umbrella (I’m on her fantasy team for NaBloPoMo) suggested I talk about foster parents. Whch is a great idea. Foster parents make my job easy and hard. They are amazing and frustrating. They do the job, we tell them how to do it and they put up with us.

If I had to write an ad in a paper for foster parents, it might go something like this: “Seeking certifiably crazy adult or adults to bring chaos, destruction and heartache into their life. Pay is horrible and not enough for abuse adult will endure. You will have no less than two people telling you how to do your job. Training is thorough but you will not integrate it until you are living it, if then. Benefits are: children in your home, for all the good and bad they bring. Also, self-gratification that you are doing “something good”. Must have own psychiatrist to apply. Good luck.”

No, I kid, I kid. Mostly.

I have to preface this by saying again: Foster parenting is one of the hardest jobs you can ask someone to do. Children are hard, our children are harder. They have undergone some sort of loss, abuse, neglect, betrayal, and/ or trauma. That’s what got them into our system. Once they’re in our system, we’ve often abused and traumatized them more, if that’s possible. Foster parents get to do the 24/7, day in and day out of the mess that abuse and neglect makes of these kids.

And it makes a mess. Abuse, neglect, and trauma are horrible on children. Children are absolutely resilient, however they bear the scars of the parenting they did or did not receive. Our children act out all over the place. They lie, swear, and steal. And those are the easy kids. They hit, kick, and punch. They pee the bed if you’re lucky: if you’re not lucky they’re peeing in your flowers or on your carpet. They poop their pants if you’re lucky: if you’re not they smear it on your walls. They have nightmares and daymares. They react oddly to the strangest triggers. They’re horribly inconsistent and difficult to figure out. (A side note: I work in therapeutic foster care. The kids we have require an extra level of training and support because the children are more difficult and require more work. There is a level down and those children are not quite as needy and difficult. Ideally.)

So. While I have the utmost respect for the foster parents I work with, they can be SO FRUSTRATING. I’ve written before about our kids not being puppies or returnable clothes. That said, here is what an ideal foster parent has/ understands/ are:

Our best foster parents have:

~Some experience with children. They don’t need to have parented before, but need to have some kind of experience with children. Have nieces and nephews, have taught, mentored, something. People who have no experience with children are going to struggle with fostering.

~A working knowledge of age-appropriate expectations. One of my most frustrating experiences with foster parents is when they have to be told, or explained, that the three year old they are fostering is not “oppositional/ defiant” in terms of having a disorder, but is just acting three. Or that their fourteen year old boy is not looking at internet porn because he has been sexually abused or is going to be a sexual offender, but that he is doing something considered age appropriate for him.

~A working knowledge of how abuse and neglect affects children. These children are not typical children. It makes me cringe when new foster parents expect our children to “just be normal kids”. In some senses, sure. In many, not so much. If you expect them to be “normal” you will be blindsided quickly.

~A good support system. This is crucial.

Our foster parents need to understand:

~Love is NOT enough. I cannot stress that enough. I. Cannot. Stress. That. Enough. Love goes a very long way, but these are children whose parents- the people who are fundamentally supposed to care for and protect you- have failed in the most basic ways. You loving them is not going to fix that.

~Our children are not going to be grateful. WE will be grateful, more than words can ever say. Our kids, your kids? Not so much. They are angry, sad little people and don’t have the room to be grateful to you. More often they will take out their anger and frustration at the world on you.

~That if you have ANY unresolved issue, foster children will bring it out. Then they will recognize it. Then they will use it to their advantage. So resolve as many issues as you can before foster parenting.

Our best foster parents are:

~Committed.

~Patient.

~Long-suffering.

~Calm

~Realistic

I know. It sounds harsh. But to do the hardest job in the world, you have to be ready. Some of my foster parents are amazing and ready. Rarely are our new ones, but they learn with time. We have some that just don’t get it. Again, these are not our agency requirements or what we actually talk about. Some of this we do talk about as an agency. But these are MY perceptions on what I think a foster parent needs to succeed.