Tori is seven years old. She recently came into care after being removed from her biological parents’ home. They were manufacturing, selling and ingesting methamphetamine right in their house. Their residence was a place of squalor—dog, cat and rodent feces was everywhere. There wasn’t always running water. Tori would sometime wake up at night with rats chewing at her toes as she slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. Yet, after three months in your home, she continues to pine away for her parents, describing their love and care for her in glowing terms. “Why did CPS take me away?!” she often cries.
Many of you foster parents have experienced it—you have a child who absolutely worships his or her biological parent(s); but you know from the information provided that logically, your child should instead loathe these parent(s). These are the parents who have committed malicious acts toward your child, or who have at least been physically and emotionally AWOL from your child due to issues such substance abuse, transience and mental illness. It can really make you scratch your head, thinking, “Can’t this child see how crazy their home was?” The answer is “not always.”
Tori is a child who is still attached to her parents by what I call “The Emotional Umbilical Cord.” We all know that the physical umbilical cord is the life-sustainer of the child in-utero. In young children like Tori, the emotional umbilical cord connecting her to her parents can remain attached amidst the most deplorable of living situations. As the old saying goes “Blood is thicker than water.”
There are reasons why children like Tori may create a fantasy family:
It may be too painful for Tori to face the truth about her Mom and Dad. This is especially true for a younger child who sees the world in black and white terms, and is not yet fully able on a cognitive level to think “big picture” about her surroundings and her parents behavior.
Creating a birth parent fantasy is a way for Tori to have some internal control over a chaotic situation where she had little or no control.
Tori’s fantasy can help numb the pain of her reality by replacing it with a more pleasant version of a harsh reality.
Tori may be confused by the gaps in her memory and history, so she creates a pleasant script in order to fill in these gaps and thus (internally) create more pleasant memories. This also gives her a more acceptable story to tell others about her family of origin.
Do you have a foster or adopted child who has a birth parent fantasy? Next week, in part 2 of this blog, I’ll share some “caution flags” regarding when and if you need to be concerned, as well as some practical approaches and responses to your child.
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