Foster kids and Christmas- how does it work?

[Nanu57v]

No, I'm not sure.

I love the idea; but yes, ask the agency if its her real name. Ours changes names if the child is in county. Its the same name if the child is from counties away.

 

[Nanu57v]

My mom sent me this thread last week and I wanted to respond on a computer. We've been foster parents for 7 years, having long term placements for the past 6 years. As others have mentioned, these kids enter our home with trash bags. Every time! Even if a child is only staying with us a few days, I'm sure to go and at least get them plastic bins to transport their things.

The first Christmas was crazy! We were fostering two teens and had no idea that the agency bought gifts for our foster children. So, we bought about five gifts for our two foster children and our two children I gave birth to. Still 20 gifts was a lot! A couple days before Christmas the agency showed up with two bags of gifts for our foster youth. So, now we had an imbalance! We hurried and bought more gifts for the non-foster children so it matched (they were 3 and 7). But all the gifts!!! You could not enter our family room at all!


After that we got wise. We knew what special item each of our foster children wanted and kept that in mind. Then we anxiously waited for the foster agency to arrive each Christmas. If the special gift was not received, we became very thankful for Amazon Prime! Its a blessing to have community members buy presents for our foster children. While we love and care for each child as our own, kids are expensive and any stipend we receive doesn't of course cover the cost of basic needs, clothing, dance class, ski club, vacations, transportation to a gazillion appointments every week, etc. So to those of you considering shopping for a foster child this Christmas, know that you aren't only blessing the child, but you are also blessing the foster parent by letting him and her know that there are others out there who do care and support their work!

There are other ways to support foster parents as well. We fostered a teen who experienced severe trauma and thus it affected her brain a lot! No exaggeration; but hours every day was spent with her screaming, swearing, and threatening. It was a stressful several months for us until we were able to move her to a wonderful private school and get her a team of amazing counselors to help her to heal! During this time a couple from our church would take her for a few hours each week, just to give me a break and let me relax. This was a life saver! I'm so grateful for that. When we received an infant placement, I had a friend offer to make us a meal and multiple friends babysit a few hours so I could take a nap! Just some other ideas; and to those who are helping - thank you for being part of the village!