Let’s talk about planning for the holidays with foster children in your home. While there are a lot of emotional considerations that need to take place, that’s not what I’m focusing on. I’m talking about planning for your foster children’s actual physical presence, when, like I wrote in my post called ‘Foster Care and Dealing with Uncertainty’ you’re not guaranteed they will actually be with you on any given holiday.
So, how do you do it? Flexibility and a backup plan.
In our family, we start asking questions out as far in advance as we can.
“Will our foster child be doing a special visit for Thanksgiving?”, for example.
We ask the social worker. We ask the visit coordinator. It’s also great to ask this in a Family Team Meeting. We try to get a feel of the land and start placing the idea in the minds of those involved to be thinking about this early. If folks are thinking about it early, you can ask for a firm decision sooner rather than later.
Then, if we don’t receive an immediate answer, we plan as if this child is part of our family (because they are). We plan on them doing everything with us. And, if our child has special needs, such as sensory or dietary needs, we accommodate our family plans to meet those needs just like we would for a permanent member of our family. That means, if we need to leave a family function early because our foster kiddo needs to leave early then we do. Our extended family does not come above our immediate family.
We also have a backup plan. For example, what will travel look like if our foster child does end up spending the holiday with his/her biological family? Will we need to leave our family functions early to accommodate that? Or, will we need someone to care for our foster child either before or after his/her visit depending on our travel plans? Will we need to invite family over to our place instead of traveling to see them in order to accommodate our child’s visit? Who will watch our foster child if a visit is somehow cut short and we are unable to get back in time to pick him/her up from the unexpected change in plans?
These are the logistics that need to be considered and, as much as possible, planned for. However, things can change last minute in foster care and thinking about the holidays as just one more ‘normal’ day in which the unexpected can be expected will help cut down on frustration. We all want our holidays to be special, and they will be, we just can’t think of them as separate from the normal challenges of foster care.
So, plan, be flexible, and enjoy life with your special family!
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