Foster parents

Scorpion · Post by **Scorpion** » 13 Jul 2006, 00:12

I was just wondering if there were any other members of this forum that were foster parents. Both myself and my wife have been foster parents for a long time now. It's had it's ups and downs and sometimes we wonder whether it is worth it. One day we'll maybe write a book about it

. We've had some success but then again there have been some failures as well. If only we could control kids like we control computers.

Sorry, but I think it's time we had a holiday. Our philosophy has always been that we don't put kids that are in our care into respite care. However, we feel that for the first time in 20 odd years we are going to have to break that rule

It's been an interesting year but we had planned to go on holiday and it has been booked. Now it seems that we are going to have one extra kid that we had not expected

The plan was that she would return home before we went on holiday but it looks as if that is going to fall through. There is also another problem about to surface concerning a kid that we have had for the last four days that we are going to have to deal with.

Only another 7 working days to go

Epykat · Post by **Epykat** » 13 Jul 2006, 12:54

I take my hat off to you. When my kids were small I sometimes thought about fostering but when they turned into teenagers it quickly went out of my head

. I really enjoy working with teenagers though. The pressure's off a little bit when they don't actually belong to you. I think I'll stick to dogs

Cleopas · Post by **Cleopas** » 13 Jul 2006, 13:18

I knew a family that fostered over 50 kids in 30 years, as well as raising 5 of their own ... and they all turned out good kids!

I raise my glass to you.

foxy · Post by **foxy** » 13 Jul 2006, 13:37

I have never been especially maternal and much as I love my two darling little Fox-ettes....I am happy to enjoy and deal with each new stage as it happens.... but have absolutely no desire to repeat the experience

Thank goodness not everyone's like me...well done Scorpion and Mrs Scorpion...sounds like you need your holiday...enjoy

Izzie · Post by **Izzie** » 13 Jul 2006, 14:10

I also fostered for about 15 years and know where you are coming from.

We ended up adopting two and they were the last.

We took a break for a few weeks once,the house was very quite and my own kids were asking when we were getting more children.

So that was all that was needed and I was on the phone telling them to put me back on call by night time I had three more.

Scorpion · Post by **Scorpion** » 15 Jul 2006, 19:37

It's good to know that we aren't the only ones daft enough to be foster parents

Before we started fostering we used to take in French students. For about 6 weeks during the summer we had two 11-15 year old kids living with us each week. Then we had one older student staying for three weeks in August and another in September. One year we had this really snobbish student (19) staying with us and his English was very good. One day on my way home from work I met him at the Waverley market. He was not very happy at all and I asked him why. He told me he had been reading the Times newspaper and as a Frenchman had felt insulted by a reference in an article to a frogman