There’s a variety of experiences that make fostering one of the best things you could possibly do.
It is an accumulation of experiencing little moments;
They can be anything like the first time your foster child calls you mum/dad or even the moment they refer to your house as home.
These little moments go a long way, especially the joy of knowing the child sees you as a parent.
Then there are the big moments;
They can be anything from the first time they go on a holiday with you. But the biggest moment you’ll enjoy and cherish is when the Social worker shows you how much progress the child has been making under your parenting.
Having interactions with foster carers, the greatest moments you get to cherish as a family are the festive seasons or holidays. Like Christmas for example, its one of the best times a particular foster family shared with their foster child.
The foster child was in a cross-cultural placement where the foster parents worked on trying to get the teenage child to spend Christmas with his family. Arrangements were made for him to go home on Christmas Eve and come back to us on the 27th.
The connotations of holidays is a time we spend with our families and loved ones and for this particular child, he had the opportunity to spend time with his biological parents so he doesn’t get to miss out.
The foster parents took the child out and helped him buy presents for his family. ‘We helped him pick a few things out and let him buy what he wanted for his family’ the foster carer said.
‘We also bought a few presents for the child and gift wrapped them with the expectation that he would open them on Christmas day’.
The foster child had been through a lot and the memories of his home were something that was quite frightening but here he was all ready to go home and spend Christmas day with his family.
The hope and inspiration of their desire to reunite with their family was a very happy moment for us, to make things alright with his family.
Fostering is a temporary term for how long ever it lasts but the end goal for the child to have a normal life as possible. The foster carers although they didn’t share the same beliefs and didn’t celebrate Christmas still went out of their way to make sure the child didn’t miss out on celebrating Christmas.
All this came to fruition under the supervision of the social worker. the safety of the child is always a priority and if circumstances allow for the child to reunite with his family of the festive days so they can carry on the homely tradition of getting together over christmas is a great thing for the psyche of the child.
It is really important to make sure that the child doesn’t miss out on the things they would celebrate in their own household as that can have a negative impact on them. All this helps the child’s road to recovery and going back on the trajectory of living and fulfilling their potential.
