When you feel like a fostering failure

Fostering Marriage

On this episode, we’re talking about when you feel like a failure as a foster parent and how to manage through that.

• Foster marriages opened their heart and home to helping out children in need, had good intentions, perhaps a lot of expectations of how everything would go, and now reality is setting in and you’re not handling things well at all

Types of situations when foster parents often feel like a failure:

• Responses to behavior
• Feeling a lack of bond and blaming yourself
• Feeling like a failure to your bio-kids
• Feeling like a failure in your marriage and you don’t have anything left to give
• Feeling like they’re failing God or as a Christian

What’s happening at a deeper level

• Importance of understanding your "Root System"
• Thinking/Lies and emotions of fear, guilt and shame, and stress
• Why personality styles happen

The risks of not managing yourself well:

• Living in the guilt/shame and stress of it and constantly either feeling out of control or becoming very submissive
• Beating yourself up / negative self talk
• Feeling out of control and reacting to everyone that way
• Seeking worth in other ways or in very unhealthy ways
• Lots of conflict in your marriage that creates disunity
• Living in disappointment with each other

How to move forward - both immediate and longer term solutions

Recalibrating expectations

• Of yourself
• Of each other
• Of your child
• Taking thoughts captive (this is a practice that’s long-term though)
• Discussing struggles with each other
• If that’s uncomfortable, start with little things so you practice becoming more vulnerable
• Responding well to each other
• Holding each other accountable and offering help
• Seeking help
• More training/knowledge
• Babysitters/respite
• Counseling

Failure is inevitable. It’s how we respond that is most important.

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