As a human being you have the opportunity to be loyal. To your friends, your group, your employer or your neighbors. But a very special form of loyalty is that of a child to its parents. Even if a child is removed from home due to neglect or abuse and the child is angry or sad, he does not reject his parents. Regardless, they remain his parents, they are his roots and therefore the basis of his existence. How do you deal with this as foster parents?
Loyalty and rejection
The child is dependent on its parents at birth. Even though these parents do not respond to their child’s needs, they are the adults he needs to rely on. He remains bound to them. If the child no longer lives at home, that bond with his own parents will still play a role and in a certain sense also determines the way in which he will behave with people who take on the role of parents: his foster parents. He will behave the way he used to, because his parents treated him a certain way. In the foster family, the way in which the family members interact with each other will bring up feelings from the past. Pleasant, but certainly also sad feelings and often the child does not know how to deal with them. The attitude of the foster parents towards their own parents is of great importance. The child feels part of his own parents, even though he has been neglected. When foster parents reject his parents, he feels rejected. A child will certainly notice, even if foster parents do not do this openly. The child must be accepted for who he is, because who he has become is determined by the people from whom he was born and with whom he has shared his (short) life. A child will feel misunderstood or rejected if his own parents are not accepted. He will resist and does this through behavior. With so many difficult feelings, he will show ‘difficult’ behavior. The child will become inaccessible to foster parents. Foster parents will have to recognize and allow that their own parents remain very important in the life of their foster child. Even if contact is not possible due to circumstances, it is good to bring up this subject regularly and give the child the opportunity to express his or her feelings of loneliness and sadness. This way he doesn’t have to get the idea that he has to choose and he learns that he can go to his foster parents with his questions and problems. He then learns to be who he is and to be accepted, despite his past. This gives him the peace to develop.
Loyalty conflict
It is difficult for foster parents to accept the parents of their foster child. There has often been neglect or serious abuse or the child has been sexually abused. This also causes feelings of disgust and disgust among foster parents. Yet it is very important for the bond that will be built with the foster child to put those feelings aside for a moment and show interest and uphold the parents. If the foster child gets the feeling that he is not allowed to think, talk or visit his parents, this causes a lot of unhappiness, frustration and sadness. It brings the child into a conflict of sexuality. This does not benefit his development. He will waste his energy on resistance and disruptive behavior. It will also be at the expense of his school performance.
Parents and foster parents, both parents
Foster children are children with multiple parents. Parents, who are and remain very important to him, and foster parents, who accept this and will love him for who he is. Then the child will be able to develop properly. He has experienced many bad things, but he has also seen that there were parents who took him as he was and raised him as their own child. With his past and his behavior. They will show him what trust is and have given him love and peace despite all the problems. And that his own parents could be distant parents.