My Foster family story

 Hi everyone, firstly thank you to anyone who left a positive comment about the start of the blog, I appreciate them all! Having high hopes for this blog, the feedback on it being a good idea means the world to me. 

Anyway, moving on to what I would like to inform you about today- my foster family story. I believe sharing this is way for you to gain trust of me and understand why I can help current or future parents. I myself am saying my views from my experiences and I would like to point out that no foster family will have the completely the same story. This is just to let people know my experiences. 

Roughly when I was 13, I met my first foster brother who’s name for this blog Ill call Johnny- for privacy reasons. Before this though was numerous checks and visits from the social worker. I can’t really remember all of that but if you are interested let me know and I’ll ask my parents about it. The first meeting we had was just for an hour at his previous foster carers, so we could get to know him, and he could get to know us.  This was a moment I’ll remember forever. His eyes were sad and scared from the sights he had seen, he was as thin as a piece of paper and smile, there wasn’t one. It reminded me to not take for granted what I had especially my parents. At 13 I was unaware of many things and thought all parents were the same, whereas I was blessed with parents who loved me and wanted to help other children. Time went on, he came to live with us and he flourished, his eyes had a spark again. 

Then a few years later, my next foster brother came to live with us, again after a short meeting of us all. This was defiantly a changing point in our family as conflict did occur between them. Johnny became unsettled by Adam (again not his real name).   So, this was defiantly harder for us all to adjust to.

If fostering has taught me anything, it would defiantly be that it opened my eyes to different conditions, mentally and physically.  Johnny suffers from ADHD and Autism. Adam suffers from ADHD, also doctors think he might be bipolar and he has seizures. Being from an only sibling to having two quite unique foster brothers was defiantly hard. What keeps you going though is the experiences they’ve had in early life probably makes them behave in the way they do. They’ve never had discipline, love or support. Remembering that is a big way to cope with their misbehaviour.    

So now. Adam is still living with us however Johnny is not. Sadly he became increasingly aggressive and was a danger to us and Adam. My parents had to think of our safety so sadly he had to go. This again was really hard. After he had gone everyone was really upset as it felt strange and honestly like he had died. As weird as that sounds! We had so many happy memories with him and sadly we could only get him so far on his journey. Hopefully he can progress more now wherever he is. 

This was just a brief overview of my foster family story as trying to write everything with a lot of detail would make this way too long. However if you would like future blog posts about specific parts of our family's journey, leave a comment and I will be happy to tell you more. I am just trying to give everyone a personal account of fostering before I start to give advice or talk about things such as Attachment issues. Enjoy the rest of your day, remember you'll only have it once so make it the best you can!

N x