"All they need is love"

I get that a lot, especially from well-meaning older folks with grown kids of their own: "Foster kids just need the same thing as every kid needs: they just need love.  That's all."

Short answer: nope.

Think about it like this: if I had a child who fell out of a tree and broke his leg, and I decided that all he needed was love, I'd be a terrible parent.  A kid with a broken leg needs a visit to the doctor, an x-ray, a cast, and a pair of crutches at the minimum.  He might also need a visit with a specialist, some surgery, a wheelchair, or some physical therapy.  Yes, this child needs love.  He also needs specific interventions to address the damage to his leg.

Foster kids are not in the system because of some single tiny problem.  Especially where we live, there has to be clear threat of imminent harm to children before they are removed from their homes.  Because of this, any kid in the system had experienced some pretty terrible things.  Those terrible things, unfortunately, cause kids brains to develop in problematic ways.

For a comprehensive overview of how neglect and abuse influence child brain development, here's a brochure from the federal child welfare agency.  Briefly, though, inconsistent care giving, neglect, or abuse creates an environment of toxic stress.  Children can respond to this stress by becoming hyper-alert, easily upset, or over-sensitive to sensory or relationship stimuli.  Alternately, children can respond to this stress by withdrawing and becoming under-responsive to their environments.  They may not develop the ability to form strong relationships.  With inconsistent or inappropriate input, children develop unevenly, fall behind their peers, or fail to meet developmental milestones.

To put it bluntly, the situations that land kids in foster care are situations that cause brain damage.  Yes, a foster child needs love.  He also needs specific interventions to address the damage to his brain.

Love is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

Family Math

I have always wanted what modern Americans count as a "big" family.  I grew up as one of four siblings and loved having that number of playmates and companions built into my life.  I used to joke that Husband wanted three kids, and I wanted four, so we were compromising with three and a half, rounded up, of course.

With the plan of four children firmly in my mind, I asked a lot of women with bigger families for their perspectives and experiences on raising four or more kids.  Each and every one agreed that the first child completely changed her life.  Probably 75% said the second child required another huge rearranging of family life, and the third child fit right into the new normal without much transition at all.  The remaining 25% said adding the second child wasn't much different from just having one, and the third child resulted in major upheaval.  Each and every one agreed, however, that after three children, her family's patterns were firmly established, and each new baby fit right into how they were already doing things without disrupting the general enterprise of family life.

I counted on that math all the way up until last month.  G and B went home the week of Christmas, and after I took a few days to breathe, I realized foster families don't add up the same way.

In retrospect, it seems silly to me that I never considered that my assumptions based on families with only biological kids might not apply to families with foster kids.  Moreover, how nearsighted that I didn't think to ask any foster parents in my initial conversations.

Of course I wouldn't change my decision to have my biological children.  I adore Z, V, and L, and am so glad to be blessed with each of them.  I also know that we will foster parent again.  It's such important work, and the fact that it's difficult only underscores for me how well equipped we are to handle it.

Clearly, we are still going to have a "big" family.  However, I have to make this just as clear: the words I have been saying for eight years now about family size are utterly wrong.

In a family with only bio-kids, three is the same as four is the same as seven is the same as twelve.  After you have three biological children, you might as well keep going.  In a family with foster kids, though, each set of children gets added separately.  Parenting G and B along with Z, V, and L was not like parenting five kids.  It was like parenting two kids and three kids.  G and B never fit right into how we were already doing things.  Because of their pre-existing patterns, needs, and behaviors, and because of the requirements of the state surrounding kids in foster care, G and B required a complete re-engineering of the general enterprise of family life.  So much of what required change, too, wasn't accountable for in advance, so there's no good way to plan ahead for the next set of kids to join our family.

In the end, though, I suppose I'm only surprised about how surprised I was that the math is just different for foster families.

Fostering Successful Eating- G's journey

As I said in my previous post, many if not most of the kids who come into foster care have issues with food.  My lovely G is no exception.

When she first came to our home, every meal took a minimum of 90 minutes between her sitting down at the table and her standing up again.  Each meal followed a pattern: she would look at the options on the table and ask for a serving of the option that looked the least threatening.  If she didn't want the first item, she would choose the next least threatening, then the next, and so on until she arrived at an item she determined she could eat.  Once she decided she could eat something, G would eat all of that item until it was gone and then meltdown, crying that there was no more; or if that food didn't run out, she would eat all of that item that she could possibly cram into her body.  We're talking about a 3 year old eating a loaf and a half of bread, 2 pounds of frozen peas, 5 pounds of oranges, or 2 pounds of roast beef.  She would only, however, eat one food at each meal.  If I served bread, peas, and beef, she would only eat the beef, and if the beef ran out before she was nauseatingly full, she would cry, rather than eating some bread.

If there were no un-threatening foods on the table, G would ask for a huge serving of everything and then sit for hours, staring at her full plate and pushing foods around with her fork without tasting any of it.  If you pressured her to taste something or asked her to get down from the table without eating, she melted down and screamed for what seemed like an eternity.

On top of that, the list of foods she found un-threatening was minuscule.  It took me 6 weeks to find a dozen foods she would consistently eat.  Pizza, peanut butter on bread, and cheese on bread were the only mixed foods she would tolerate.  Peas and pasta in the same bowl were rejected.  Any sauce was unacceptable.  Even putting pepper onto a food rendered it too threatening for G to taste.  She lived on plain starches, salt-and-nothing-else seasoned meats, cheese, frozen peas or corn (still frozen), and oranges for months.

The first sign that there might be light at the end of the tunnel came 3 months into the placement when G started getting down from the table to go play with the other kids.  Finally, meals and snacks could last an hour or possibly even less.  Slowly, she started eating more than one food at a meal.  Slowly, she started tasting foods.  Slowly, she accepted that her most preferred food on the table could run out, and it wouldn't be an emergency.

Don't get me wrong, there are still major issues.  G still eats until she is Thanksgiving-dinner-stuffed-full almost every time she sits down at the table, and we sit down to eat 4 times a day.

G still obsesses about food: if I make enough hamburgers for everyone to have one, she'll gobble hers up and then ask to eat other people's for the rest of the meal.  She still asks repeatedly for me to pick preferred foods out of a mixed dish so she can, for example, eat only the chicken in the chicken noodle soup or only the olives in the chicken with olives.

G still asks for foods she doesn't want.  She requests a huge serving of chili, and then eats only bread.  Or she eats 5 servings of pasta and requests a 6th before leaving the table without taking a single bite.

She hasn't gotten any more consistent, either.  She'll eat pears twice in a row and then reject them for 10 days straight, so it's difficult for me to guess what she's going to eat at any given meal.

This week, though, G surprised me twice.  On Wednesday, I served beef and cabbage stir-fry with white rice on the side.  She ate both, asked for seconds of both, and notably didn't ask me to serve her only beef.  On Thursday, I made a pot of navy beans and a pan of kale, onions, and bacon.  My plan was to eat both mixed together, but to keep the navy beans plain as the safe choice for G.  She tasted both, preferred the veggies, and happily ate multiple servings.

An outside observer dropped into our home at mealtime would see disordered eating.  I, however, can't help but be encouraged with the progress this little girl has made in only 9 months.

Fostering Successful Eating- The book you need to read

Let me start with this: lots of kids from chaotic homes have a history of inconsistent eating.  Parents who are failing to properly care for their children are typically not feeding them properly.  As a result, many if not most of the kids who come into foster care have issues with food.  

I love food.  I love to cook it.  I love to eat it.  I love to share it.  I love to talk about it.  Food is important in my life, and so food is important in my home.

Early in our foster parenting journey, someone shared with me the book Love Me, Feed Me.  It was one of only two books I read during the first 6 months of our first foster placement (the other being a brainless chick-lit novel I despised but read while sitting on the floor of the foster kids' room every night so they wouldn't cry themselves to sleep).  I cannot recommend Love Me, Feed Me enough.

The premise is based on Ellyn Satter's work, and it's pretty simple: the adults' job is to teach kids to be competent eaters. Competent eaters feel good about eating, eat consistently, and enjoy food.  Competent eaters trust themselves to eat well.  This means they can eat a wide variety of foods, try new foods, choose foods that support their physical health, eat enough to satisfy their hunger, and stop eating when they are full.

Teaching competent eating is done through structure and modeling, not through coercion or pressure.  It's not the adults' job to make kids do anything or to get kids to do anything.  It's simply the adults' job to set up the structure that will, over time, teach kids what competent eating looks like and how to eat competently.

That simple premise, then, gets implemented through the division of responsibility (DOR): Adults choose what foods are offered, when they are offered, and where they are offered.  Kids choose if, what, and how much they will eat from the offered foods.  The DOR means you can parent all of your kids the same way, because the rules are the same for the adopted and biological kids, the "too fat" and "too thin" kids, or the typically- and differently-abled kids.  The DOR also means meals can be relaxed and pleasant opportunities to connect, because the adult has finished all of his/her part of the responsibilities BEFORE sitting down at the table.

The book delves into the details of how to implement the DOR, potential roadblocks, typical eating problems with foster/adoptive kids, and a host of other topics.  There's a ton of valuable information.  Suffice to say, though, that it revolutionized how I thought about feeding my children, particularly the non-biological kids.  With that revolution in thinking came a tremendous sense of relief and an immediate increase in the joy of preparing and eating meals in my house.