Recently, during a Parent Coaching session I was doing, a frustrated foster mom told me, “Our daughter has been with us well over a year now, and still, she just acts so ungrateful sometimes. That, along with her temper tantrums just makes me want to tell her, ‘Don’t you realize how good you have it here?!!—You have a roof over your head, three meals a day, and a warm bed to sleep in, and you still want to act this way??!!’” Sound familiar to some of you? I’m sure it does! This foster mom, along with her husband, have done a great job with their six-year-old foster daughter for the past 15 months. The child is attaching to them and calls them “Mommy and Daddy.” There are more good days than bad ones. But sometimes the bad days seem to cancel out the good ones. This Moms frustration is normal. But to keep from becoming constantly frustrated—and eventually bitter—it’s important, in the midst of the frustrating days for her to maintain a level of empathy for this child.
“Empathy?!” you say—“How can I have empathy for a child who just throws our love right back in our faces and verbally abuses us? How can we have empathy for a kid who tells us that he hates us and that we’re not his real parents?” Yes, I understand, it can be really, really tough. Your pour your blood, sweat and tears into providing a loving home for this child and he just throws it right back at you. It’s hard to love a child like that, let alone merely like him. What is the key to your survival under the same roof with such a child—a child who is pulling out every trick in the book to get you to reject him?—Empathy.
What is empathy? It certainly is not sympathy, which is just fee ling sorry for someone. Sympathy solves nothing for the challenging foster or adopted child. And anyway, sympathy is probably the last thing you feel. But empathy is different. For the damaged, traumatized, confused, scared, angry child, empathy on your part is allowing your heart to stay broken enough that you remember where that child has come from. Please understand, having empathy does not mean that you excuse their bad behavior. Empathy does not mean that you don’t set strict boundaries. Empathy does not mean that you give in to their demands. Empathy means that you see their negative, disrespectful and harmful behaviors as symptoms of survival from months—and typically years—of abuse and neglect at the very hands of the people who gave birth to these children. Many of these kids have created a self-fulfilling prophecy where by their behaviors, they set themselves up to be rejected by caregivers.
Foster and adoptive Dads and Moms, I urge you, on those hard, hard days to try and maintain your sense of empathy for these children whose’ internal suffering manifests in negative and harmful external behaviors. Remember where they came from, and that you and the child’s care team are in a marathon—not a sprint—to guide them through their suffering.
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