Parents can interact with their children in different ways. This usually leads to a bond with the child, the child can bond with the parents. A foster family often involves children who, due to various circumstances, are not or not securely attached. A child can show this through his behavior in different ways. Yet foster parents also try to build a good relationship with such a child, although that is not easy.
Origin of attachment
Much research has already been done by behavioral experts into the relationship between a child and its first caregivers. The behavior of a child who seeks contact with another shows a lot about how parents have reacted to him. Have parents been sensitive to the child’s needs and how have they responded? The different ways of responding can lead to secure or insecure attachment. A secure attachment is created when the parents have always shown the child that they are there for him. But there are also children who have had to deal with parents who, depending on their mood or their own problems, have not been able to adequately meet the child’s request for protection and contact. These children develop an insecure attachment relationship with their parents and this is often noticeable in a child’s behavior.
Behavior in insecure attachment
When children have experienced that their parents meet their needs for nutrition, contact and protection, the child learns that he can turn to the parents and trust that they will be there for him. This usually leads to monotonous behavior in the child’s development phase: the child only wants to be with the mother and only be fed or comforted by her. This is called separation anxiety and this phase occurs around the first year of the child’s life.
Children who do not have parents who are there for them at all times or who have had many changing caregivers will not show monotonous behavior around this stage. The behavior displayed therefore depends on the experiences that the child has gained. There will be children who show no fear at all when the caregiver disappears from the picture. The child may even turn to any stranger without any problems. Some children cannot be comforted or resist their caregiver or are aggressive towards themselves or those around them.
Behavior in foster children
Even though the child has been removed from a situation that was not good for him, the out-of-home placement is still a traumatic experience for such a child. Usually the child is placed in a crisis observation family for a few weeks. During this period, the best solution for further placement or returning home is examined. He will only be in this family for a short time and after a few weeks, sometimes months, he has to say goodbye and then go to a family where he has to get used to it again and find his place. There will always be the fear of being rejected or having to leave again. The child experiences fear and will not feel safe. It will experience stress which can manifest itself in behavior. If the child has had to experience many changes, it may also be that he or she learns to adapt quickly and silently, which leads to flattened reactions, hardly responding, apathy and not wanting/daring to make contacts. This can also be done in a different way: aggression and brutal behavior, which also stems from fear. All this does not make building a good relationship with the child any easier for the foster parents.
Building a good bond with the foster child
With a short or crisis placement, the primary concern is that the child can relax in a safe place and not directly to work on the development of attachment. That is the goal with a placement that offers perspective. It is important to know a child’s history and to be able to accurately estimate what you can expect from the child. Can the child still bond with an adult? The success of a placement in a foster family also depends on the age of the child and what he has already experienced in his life. There are behavioral experts who assume that the child still has basic confidence up to the age of 7. can become. And from that trust they can still learn to enter into relationships. The circumstances in which the child has lived and their influence on secure attachment cannot be clearly assessed in advance and they remain risk factors that hinder secure attachment.
Yet foster parents can give him many things that he needs: attention, clarity, structure and the certainty that he can be who he is. These things give you a safe feeling. The safer he feels, the better it is for his development.