Psychologist Offers Tips For Growing Happy, Healthy Foster Kids
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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – An 8-year-old is taken from her family in the middle of the night and deposited in an unfamiliar house to live with people she doesn’t know. She’s frightened, angry and confused. Whatever problems she might have experienced at home are nothing compared to her terror at being so far from her mother.
Her new foster parents, who underwent rigorous scrutiny in order to open their home to a child in need, look forward to providing her with love and security, wholesome food and a clean bed. They imagine sweet hugs of gratitude.
The scenario, a common one in the United States, is a prelude to disaster – for both the child and the well-intentioned foster parents, says psychologist Kalyani Gopal, who has counseled foster parents and foster children for more than 25 years.
“When this child arrives, this child does not want to live with you,” Gopal writes in The Supportive Foster Parent (www.thesupportivefosterparent.com). “Some of these children resist adjusting to foster care, pine for the absent parent and get defiant, oppositional, aggressive, withdrawn, or just simply guarded.”
The good-hearted foster parents – who might have had a profoundly positive effect on the child’s life and the lives of the generations she begets – become disillusioned, hurt and even angry. They give up.
That doesn’t have to happen, Gopal says. Adults armed with the knowledge gleaned from experience can successfully cope – and teach their foster children to cope – with myriad problems, from anger to Oppositional Defiant Disorders, from sadness to clinical depression.
“Forty percent of children aging out of foster care become homeless at some point in their lives,” Gopal says, citing the failures in our nation’s foster care system. “Up to 80 percent of incarcerated youth have been in foster care at some point in their lives.”
With 408,000 children in foster care in the United States in 2010, the ripple effect is staggering.
But there are foster parents who help children become emotionally stable adults. They’re the people who truly love children and who are willing to learn how to deal with the issues that cause some foster children to behave in unlovable ways, Gopal says.
The president of Mid-America Psychological and Counseling Services in Merrillville, Ind., Gopal’s goal is to prevent heartache for adults and debilitating, long-term consequences for the children in their care.
For those contemplating the job, Gopal’s suggestions for consideration include:
Do you expect gratitude? Your foster child may be angry about being uprooted and may transfer that anger and pain to you. He or she may lash out with hurtful invectives. Will you take it personally? Will you lash out in return?
Do you have children of your own? Will they resent a child tagging along? Sharing a bedroom? Talk about it beforehand. Children who have a say in the foster parenting process are more likely to accommodate a foster child.
Show maternal responsiveness. A child’s earliest experiences can have lifelong consequences, but neglected babies and toddlers may not know how to signal their needs or respond to affection. Rocking the child, holding, putting words to their facial expressions of anger and fear in a calm, relaxed, soothing voice, singing, cooing, tucking into bed – these work to calm them.
In this difficult economy, grandparents, aunts and cousins are taking on the job of foster parents by default. Anyone can learn how to bond with the most challenging of children, she says.
The secret to winning that sweet hug? Knowing how to help.
About Dr. Kalyani Gopal
Dr. Kalyani Gopal is a licensed clinical psychologist with special interests in child sexual abuse assessment and treatment, attachment issues, and foster care assessment, adjustment and training. She serves on the Lake County, Ind., Child Protection and Child Fatality teams, and was the recipient of the Outstanding Service to Lake County award in 2004.
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