Parenting Children Adopted from Virginia Foster Care

Parenting Skills and Strategies

Build a Healthy Foundation for Your New Family

Most parents will agree that parenting can be hard. This is true whether you're raising biological or adopted children, or parenting a child in foster care. Parents go through times of doubt, feeling unprepared and unsure, no matter your experience or support.

While parenting foundations can be helpful no matter your family circumstances, parenting children in foster care is more complex. When you adopt youth in foster care, you will likely be helping your child heal from trauma in their life. Many children experience trauma in their birth homes before coming into care. Separation from their home, family, and familiar routines can itself be traumatizing.

Meet Your Foster Child Where They Are

Consider the trifecta of children feeling scared and in the control of strangers. You'll quickly understand the need for unique emotional support for youth who spend time in Virginia's foster care system. Adoptive and foster parents make all the difference in setting children up for a fulfilling life.

Just as a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching in schools doesn't always work, neither does it in parenting. Individual children see the world through different lenses Each possesses unique skills and aspirations. Good teachers understand that children learn in their own way and must approach teaching to the individual child. Similarly, parents must approach supporting each child's unique life needs based on where they are today and what they need moving forward.

Building a relationship with a foster child in home care may require a creative approach. Our usual ways of connecting might not work for them. For example, some families gather to talk, reflect, and look forward during meals, such as family dinners. However, your child from foster care may never have experienced this before, and may not respond like you think.

Respect Diversity as Your Child Develops a Sense of Self

Across the United States, and certainly here in Virginia, these environments include diverse cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. Before entering the child welfare system, your child's experiences, rituals, and traditions may be quite different from yours. When you become a foster parent, remember that before you adopt, you'll have months to get to know your child as a foster family.

As you begin to lay the foundation of your future relationship, get to know your child. Understand how their upbringing influences them. A number of children will identify with cultural or traditional events, customs, and rituals that hold meaning for them.

Adapt to Your New Shared Family Dynamic

Whether you are a first-time parent or an experienced one, your new child will change your family dynamic. Kids who spend time in foster care grow up in various environments. Following separation from birth families, children and youth may stay in a combination of foster homes and group homes.

Before becoming eligible for adoption, some kids have been in and out of foster care placement. They may have returned home to their birth parents only to face child abuse or neglect again. No matter their age, youth in or recently out of foster care may find it hard to build and maintain healthy relationships. Many ways exist for you and other family members to help.

Above all, we hear time and again that patience is an essential virtue for parenting foster and adopted kids. Nurturing often entails pulling our loved ones close. Kids from the foster system may need time -- and space -- to process their trauma and grieve compounding losses.

How to Build a Foundation for Stable and Healthy Family Relationships: 

1. ​Create Structure - Set clear expectations and boundaries. Kids need to understand parent expectations and how they can contribute to a successful family structure. Success helps build rapport, teamwork, and trust.  

2. Give Space and Control - ​Allow your child the time and space to feel safe and seek your support. Your efforts may not have immediate results. However, this gift of control allows your child to decide when they're comfortable taking the next step.  

3. Offer Consistency Access - ​Stay flexible so you can be available when your child is ready to come to you. Whether for support or simply to discuss how they're feeling, consistent access is essential to building trust. ​

4. Serve as a Rolemodel - Model the positive adult behavior your child may not have had in the past. Show healthy affection, emotional regulation, and coping mechanisms, and take responsibility for momentary lapses. Young people are sponges, hyper-aware of behaviors and surroundings. They will notice when you practice what feels right to them.

5. Be Present - Give your full and present self when you are with your child. Listen without pushing, and focus on encouraging open communication. Showing empathy will help build feelings of trust and safety. ​

6. Offer Grace - If you sometimes feel frustrated, sad, or downright inadequate, give yourself some grace. You're only human, and try as you might, moments of doubt will happen. Remember, all parents experience ups and downs. Your support community of foster and adoptive parents is on a similar journey and ready to lean in. 

Patience is worth mentioning again. Remember that many foster care children have spent their lives unable to trust the person meant to protect them. Even when they join a forever family, they must learn to trust over time. Their young selves have learned interactions with adult figures who've let them down in their most fundamental caregiving role.

Thank You for Considering Adopting a Child in Foster Care

Hold your course based on these principles of parenting an adopted foster child. Seek support for your own self-care, and offer your child patience, time, and space. Recognize you're on a long journey and celebrate inches as you get ever closer to milestones.

Parenting a child who has experienced foster care can be rocky. However, there are few more rewarding paths a parent can travel. Thank you for stepping into this vital and often unsung role. Please reach us to ask questions about any part of the foster-to-adopt process, or take steps toward adopting a foster child today.