by Ashley Bennett, Director of Trauma-Informed Care
What life might need to look like after saying YES and welcoming a new child? When you invite a child to join your family, you become a new family. Things that worked before may not work any more. Expectations might need to be adjusted, routines switched up, and space made to create the capacity to meet everyone’s needs.
Now I wish I could tell you how long this new season is going to last. For some of you, a few months will allow you to adjust and establish a new healthy foundation for your family. There are lots of factors that will contribute to this: your child’s story of harm, their age, the number of kids in your home & their own adjustment, your own personal style of coping, etc. For some of you, this adjustment period will be much longer. For some of you, you will make permanent changes to your family because parenting a child with special needs changes things and sometimes those needs are lifelong, or at least last for longer seasons.
The important part is for us to understand as foster parents that changes will be required regardless, so that we can have the right expectations when we welcome a new child.
What might some of those changes be? Check out this “Life After Placement” resource for some ideas.