Very often, foster children have come into care specifically because they have experienced abuse or neglect. Those experiences and other kinds of trauma that may have occurred in their home, including being removed from their birth family, can and often do influence how a child behaves.
Foster parents receive specific training during the process to be licensed to foster, to gain a basic understanding of why a foster child behaves the way she does and what they can to help her cope. Once foster parents welcome a foster child into their home, however, they can find that the child’s behaviors are often particularly challenging.
Creating a Family has many resources to help you who are Parenting Foster Kids with Challenging Behaviors. A few that we think you might find particularly helpful are:
- When Your Child’s Trauma Impacts Your Marriage (blog post)
- The IDEAL Response: How to Maintain Connection When Correcting Your Child (blog post)
- Using Scripts to Build Trust with Foster & Adopted Kids (blog post)
- 5 Parenting Tips When You Have a Challenging Child (blog post)
- Parenting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma (1 hr. radio show w/ expert)
- Raising Resilient Kids (1 hr. radio show w/ expert)
- Parenting Toolkit for Harder to Parent Kids (1 hr. downloadable AdoptionEd.org course)
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for more resources that Creating a Family offers in the form of blogs, radio interviews/podcasts, tip sheets, fact sheets, and Q & A’s with experts for support in Parenting Kids with Challenging Behaviors.