This post may or may not relate to you, but I suspect it probably will on some level, so please keep reading!
I don’t care how long you’ve been fostering, but I would bet that at some point you have compared yourself and your ability as a foster parent to other foster parents. Maybe you’ve done it in a positive way, such as, “Wow, they handled that situation the same way I do and look how well it turned out!”
But if you’re like me at all, you have compared yourself in a demeaning way and you did not come out feeling so good about yourself. Here’s my example which I gave WAY too much space to in my head: “I feel completely stocked up on crazy and trauma, and life is so hard in my home…and I only have one kiddo from foster care. How do other families manage?!?”
Is that fair for me to compare myself to others like this? Would I tell someone else who said that to me that they are right to think that, or that they should stop comparing themself to others?
To answer that, I’m going to give you a little bit of our history with foster care. Our first placement was two girls, and it was way too much. I have long thought about it and definitely feel like if we had only had one of them, we might have been successful. If you’ve read my post in the past, you already know this, but we had to disrupt that placement because it was just too much.
Fast forward a few years. After our youngest son was adopted, we took another placement of the most relaxed infant ever. He was a cakewalk but our adopted son could not handle having him there. It was too much so we moved that sweet placement on as well. I’m saying all this because, if I’m being totally honest (and that’s what you come here for, right?), it has been 8 years since that happened and I STILL look at large families with foster and adopted kids and I think, “Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I handle that? How do they have so much more bandwidth than me?”
But, in an effort to let go of that detrimental comparison, I’ve thought on it and believe what’s really at play is that I don’t know their story. I don’t know what’s going on in their homes. I don’t know what their childhoods were like and what skills they developed or innately have. I don’t know that everyone is really thriving, I don’t know their kids diagnoses or issues or struggles, and, to be honest, my kid is just a lot. And I know for a fact that not everyone is parenting a similar complex and difficult diagnosis in their home like I am.
Obviously, I don’t know for sure, but he is honestly like five kids at times; dysregulation comes swift and often, so much so that the whole household would be just regulated if we had other kids from hard places. In fact, we don’t have other kids from hard places but the household sometimes gets dysregulated at times with only him.
So I say all this to say to you: don’t compare yourself to other foster and adoptive parents. Do what you are able to, and do your best – that’s all you really can do. The comparison does you no good. It can just end up leaving you feeling bitter, broken, discouraged, disgruntled, or discontent (and trust me, I know- I have experienced them all). But none of that is beneficial to anyone. And it’s definitely not going to help you be a better foster parent.
Though my post is short today, I just wanted to put this out there in case anyone else is struggling with the tendency to compare. Also, this might be a little cliché, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you’re worried that you’re not doing things well, you’re probably actually doing a great job with the trauma you are taking care of on the daily.
Sincerely,
Kris