learning
Developmental issues for young children in foster care
If you follow us on Twitter you will have seen us highlight this article from the American Academy of Pediatrics a week or so ago. It’s called Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care, and while it was published in November 2000, it is as relevant today as it was then.
We’d recommend you read it. Really. If you are a carer, or about to become a carer, read it.
It’s one of the most complete analyses of some of the early development issues faced by children in care in their early years. It’s an academic article, so you’ll find the language, well, academic. Don’t be put off. There are so many relevant points in it we were nodding at nearly every paragraph.
We found much of our foster care training focused on the high level issues you and your foster child will face. It wasn’t until we were in charge of a small person who had so much to make up, that we realised we needed a lot more information on how to accelerate learning and development, if that was indeed possible, and how to deal with the real day to day issues around attachment.
We think this article is so useful that over the next few posts we’re going to highlight some of the key aspects of it. Now we are not child psychologists. But we’ve faced so many of these issues with the Camper, that it’s not academic to us anymore.
Early brain and child development
Let’s paraphrase the article: brain growth and development are most active in the early years of life – that’s when personality traits, learning processes, and coping with stress and emotions are established and then become permanent for children.
For children who have little stimulation, or who deal with child abuse or family violence, this development may either stall or be impaired.
What is needed to let children develop their cognitive (perception, memory, judgment and reasoning), language and socialisation skills is stimulation and nurturing. So as a carer, you might find you need to do more than just attend to the physical needs of this child. While the system has hopefully prevented it happening further, you need to repair.
You may need to take on some serious activity and stimulation. We have done. When faced with a child failing to thrive we planned each day to cover many experiences. Among other things we sang, played, ran, hopped, jumped, swam, did kindy gym, talked endlessly and explained everything, played with words, mimicked one another, played with water and sand, played upside down, cuddled animals - both real and soft, chose and cherished special comfort toys, and read stories every single day. There were lots of social experiences too, visits to parks and playgrounds, shopping centres and coffee shops, family and friends’ homes. And there were lots of cuddles, and giggles, and routine.
You need to make sure you talk to all the resources at your disposal – workers, paediatricians, health services and others – to work out what may be needed for your foster child, and in fact what is possible.
But we can tell you we are in awe of what a child is able to achieve. And the more you can invest in them, the better chance they’ll have.
We’d recommend you read it. Really. If you are a carer, or about to become a carer, read it.
It’s one of the most complete analyses of some of the early development issues faced by children in care in their early years. It’s an academic article, so you’ll find the language, well, academic. Don’t be put off. There are so many relevant points in it we were nodding at nearly every paragraph.
We found much of our foster care training focused on the high level issues you and your foster child will face. It wasn’t until we were in charge of a small person who had so much to make up, that we realised we needed a lot more information on how to accelerate learning and development, if that was indeed possible, and how to deal with the real day to day issues around attachment.
We think this article is so useful that over the next few posts we’re going to highlight some of the key aspects of it. Now we are not child psychologists. But we’ve faced so many of these issues with the Camper, that it’s not academic to us anymore.
Early brain and child development
Let’s paraphrase the article: brain growth and development are most active in the early years of life – that’s when personality traits, learning processes, and coping with stress and emotions are established and then become permanent for children.
For children who have little stimulation, or who deal with child abuse or family violence, this development may either stall or be impaired.
What is needed to let children develop their cognitive (perception, memory, judgment and reasoning), language and socialisation skills is stimulation and nurturing. So as a carer, you might find you need to do more than just attend to the physical needs of this child. While the system has hopefully prevented it happening further, you need to repair.
You may need to take on some serious activity and stimulation. We have done. When faced with a child failing to thrive we planned each day to cover many experiences. Among other things we sang, played, ran, hopped, jumped, swam, did kindy gym, talked endlessly and explained everything, played with words, mimicked one another, played with water and sand, played upside down, cuddled animals - both real and soft, chose and cherished special comfort toys, and read stories every single day. There were lots of social experiences too, visits to parks and playgrounds, shopping centres and coffee shops, family and friends’ homes. And there were lots of cuddles, and giggles, and routine.
You need to make sure you talk to all the resources at your disposal – workers, paediatricians, health services and others – to work out what may be needed for your foster child, and in fact what is possible.
But we can tell you we are in awe of what a child is able to achieve. And the more you can invest in them, the better chance they’ll have.
|
Foster children walking on eggshells
Here is a quote, from a real person, Jennifer, who runs a site called Foster Care in America. Her site gets the thumbs up from us because of its constructive focus, and its positive objectives. Jennifer highlights foster care alumni and their achievements, and has recently started writing about her experiences as a child in care. How’s that for leadership?
So just take a moment, close your eyes, and try to think about what that might feel like. Knowing that the most fundamental element of your life – where you live and who you live with – might change at any moment. No warning. Out of your control. That’s stressful.
Why on earth would you begin to put down any roots? Why would you bother?
Children are learning to live with a level of stress that most of us only deal with as adults. What does that do to them?
As adults, we have lots of resources available to help us cope with stress. We have the ability to research for ourselves. We have support groups, family networks and often employers who care enough to teach us to deal with it or to support us if it becomes overwhelming. And we have life experience to put the stressful event in some sort of context.
Kids have none of that.
So, time for the ‘state the obvious’ question:
If moving children causes them such stress, shouldn’t we aim not to move them? Or if we need to move them, shouldn’t we have the guts to make it permanent, at the very least for those early formative years. When there is so much evidence that multiple moves harm children, why do we keep accepting that it is the best we can do?
Imagine if we could get a Prime Minister to say ‘No child should walk on eggshells, knowing that at any moment without warning; HOME CHANGE!’
So just take a moment, close your eyes, and try to think about what that might feel like. Knowing that the most fundamental element of your life – where you live and who you live with – might change at any moment. No warning. Out of your control. That’s stressful.
Why on earth would you begin to put down any roots? Why would you bother?
Children are learning to live with a level of stress that most of us only deal with as adults. What does that do to them?
As adults, we have lots of resources available to help us cope with stress. We have the ability to research for ourselves. We have support groups, family networks and often employers who care enough to teach us to deal with it or to support us if it becomes overwhelming. And we have life experience to put the stressful event in some sort of context.
Kids have none of that.
So, time for the ‘state the obvious’ question:
If moving children causes them such stress, shouldn’t we aim not to move them? Or if we need to move them, shouldn’t we have the guts to make it permanent, at the very least for those early formative years. When there is so much evidence that multiple moves harm children, why do we keep accepting that it is the best we can do?
Imagine if we could get a Prime Minister to say ‘No child should walk on eggshells, knowing that at any moment without warning; HOME CHANGE!’
Self control, and self interest, for children in care?
An interesting article crossed our desk this week.
It’s from The New Yorker, and it’s about self-control. Or rather, the ability or willingness of some people to delay gratification. The experiment, carried out in the 1960’s at Stanford University, put nursery school children in a room with a treat. The researcher offered that they could eat it straight away, but that if they waited until the researcher came back before eating it, they would get a second treat. A number of children successfully waited, and they used a number of mechanisms to take their focus off the treat sitting before them.
Over time, and with further analysis, the researcher ‘began to notice a link between the children’s academic performance as teenagers and their ability to wait for the second marshmallow’.
We quote: ‘ “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”’
This struck a chord with us. So many stories from children in care highlight how powerless and fearful they felt. So much of a skilled and loving parent’s task should be to teach children how to make situations work for them, to understand the ‘give and take’ or negotiations that they need to undertake for many reasons – safety, happiness, fulfilment, success. And if that kind of care and teaching is missing, how disadvantaged are these children in coping with life?
Often when a child in care comes to live with you, self-control will be an alien concept. They can be completely impulsive, fearful of change and dreadfully upset when any experience they are enjoying ends.
Nowdays, the degree of negotiation that goes on at our house makes us feel a bit like the United Nations. On occasion we have to invoke the ‘just do it’ creed. But after reading this article, we are pleased to see that the our child is well and truly working out how to make situations work for them.
It’s a good day when you see that sense of robustness and, to be frank, self-interest. There is plenty of time to teach them to put others first, but given their background, sometimes you have to actively teach them to put themselves first. They often miss because they are just struggling to survive.
So how do you start them on this path? Firstly, we show them how loving parents nurture their children. We show them how we could put them first above everything. They learn, sometimes for the first time in their lives, how it feels to have every need catered for. Through that they learn that they deserve it.
Second, offer them both a reason to do what you want them to do, and an understanding of the consequences. It takes time and it takes energy, and sometimes it will clearly be beyond their understanding and willpower. But they will began to learn how everything is connected, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that their actions trigger different outcomes.
It’s from The New Yorker, and it’s about self-control. Or rather, the ability or willingness of some people to delay gratification. The experiment, carried out in the 1960’s at Stanford University, put nursery school children in a room with a treat. The researcher offered that they could eat it straight away, but that if they waited until the researcher came back before eating it, they would get a second treat. A number of children successfully waited, and they used a number of mechanisms to take their focus off the treat sitting before them.
Over time, and with further analysis, the researcher ‘began to notice a link between the children’s academic performance as teenagers and their ability to wait for the second marshmallow’.
We quote: ‘ “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”’
This struck a chord with us. So many stories from children in care highlight how powerless and fearful they felt. So much of a skilled and loving parent’s task should be to teach children how to make situations work for them, to understand the ‘give and take’ or negotiations that they need to undertake for many reasons – safety, happiness, fulfilment, success. And if that kind of care and teaching is missing, how disadvantaged are these children in coping with life?
Often when a child in care comes to live with you, self-control will be an alien concept. They can be completely impulsive, fearful of change and dreadfully upset when any experience they are enjoying ends.
Nowdays, the degree of negotiation that goes on at our house makes us feel a bit like the United Nations. On occasion we have to invoke the ‘just do it’ creed. But after reading this article, we are pleased to see that the our child is well and truly working out how to make situations work for them.
It’s a good day when you see that sense of robustness and, to be frank, self-interest. There is plenty of time to teach them to put others first, but given their background, sometimes you have to actively teach them to put themselves first. They often miss because they are just struggling to survive.
So how do you start them on this path? Firstly, we show them how loving parents nurture their children. We show them how we could put them first above everything. They learn, sometimes for the first time in their lives, how it feels to have every need catered for. Through that they learn that they deserve it.
Second, offer them both a reason to do what you want them to do, and an understanding of the consequences. It takes time and it takes energy, and sometimes it will clearly be beyond their understanding and willpower. But they will began to learn how everything is connected, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that their actions trigger different outcomes.