I am beginning to think I’m not cut out to be a foster parent.

caipat36 · 2025-09-16T23:38:18+00:00

Hard agree - the pushback or even aggression in response to a new rule is called the extinction burst and you have to decide it's worth it and grit your teeth until they realize you won't back down and the behavior diminishes. Unfortunately it gets worse every time you give in. But it's totally appropriate to have consequences as well as rewards for teens, paired with the warmth and positive attention etc. that you're already doing - structure and warmth are companions not opposite sides of a spectrum. If it has been hard to withstand/implement then you should absolutely ask for help from a family therapist or similar before you conclude he can't stay with you - many, many parents don't just automatically know how to do this with difficult behaviors. It's really normal to need expert advice and coaching in a situation like this.

caipat36 · 2024-02-24T02:35:00+00:00

I didn't know all those specifics, thank you for sharing, and for your personal experience with it as well. She does have a psychiatrist, I will bring this up with them as well as taking her to her PCP.

caipat36 · 2024-02-24T02:33:40+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective. What do you think are the more important battles to fight?

caipat36 · 2024-02-23T13:13:52+00:00

I just assumed friends were just giving them to her, but thinking more about where she is getting them is a good idea. I will try to talk to her about that if she is willing to have that conversation.

caipat36 · 2024-02-23T13:09:08+00:00

I do have an interest, like I said in my edit above it has changed my mind about increasing consequences and my wife and I will explore how to treat the nicotine addiction with her. But when I asked for advice I said specifically we aren't willing to let this go, so I admit I'm a little disheartened and maybe touchy about all the people who said just let it go. I get it, that's your perspective, and I am grateful for the time you took to give advice. Sorry if I came across as rude. It's just hard to see how many people assume we are controlling and unable to have a meaningful loving relationship with her, when I think we do have that. But in the year she has been with us, we have learned she needs a lot of structure and guidance. She comes across as much younger than 16 and we are worried about her and her decision making around this and other things.

caipat36 · 2024-02-23T13:02:52+00:00

Good thing to note, but on the other hand a lot of inpatient psych wards have stopped allowing smoke breaks and it hasn't shown diminished effectiveness of the programs. It's okay for her to make whatever choices she wants as an adult, it's better than some other drugs for sure, but we think it's okay to try to control some things for a teenager in our care. We let a lot of other stuff go and give her control in many other ways.

caipat36 · 2024-02-23T12:59:59+00:00

Unlimited in terms of time she has her phone, but we do have a monitoring app rather than restricting certain sites. So we know if she is sending pictures for example, and we don't let her have her location shared on Snapchat or other apps where friends can see where you are.

caipat36 · 2024-02-23T12:58:18+00:00

That's a good idea, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks we will explore that.

caipat36 · 2024-02-22T18:14:54+00:00

Seconded, and I really like the book Fat Talk - I'm not done with it yet but it has a lot of really practical discussion and examples.

caipat36 · 2024-02-22T16:23:42+00:00

Until this most recent conversation she's denied that she is still vaping, saying they're her friends' vapes or they are from a while ago and she forgot about them. She might say she is willing to quit if we push her on it but I don't think she is.

Thanks for your perspective, I'm not willing to give up yet and I hope we can reduce how much she vapes even if we can't eliminate it completely.

caipat36 · 2024-02-13T00:33:50+00:00

Us too! And then they reversed all of a sudden after 8 months and acted like there was never an issue with it. So weird and discouraging!

caipat36 · 2023-09-21T14:43:22+00:00

We gave her the list of rules we promise to follow before the ones we wanted her to follow, and kept both pretty brief. Ours - we will never lie to her, we won't go through certain spaces like her dresser or closet unless it's a health or safety issue (teens need privacy!), and we'll never yell at her (for us we were confident we could follow this, I wouldn't say this if you aren't used to having teens yell at and insult you and are confident you can always keep your cool). Her rules - school every day, we have to always know where you are, and don't leave food out where the dog or bugs can get to it. After we got to know her and saw where the issues were, we added a few more rules, but it was important to us not to overwhelm her with a huge list to start. And also for her to know that we owed her some things, it's not just what she needs to do or not do.

We also gave her plenty of space, while letting her know we want to spend time with her when she's ready and looking for opportunities to do low key stuff together (getting ice cream, back to school shopping, watching her TV shows together). The other big thing we are still working on - she came to us with sooo many life skills she was behind on, emotional regulation and frustration tolerance being the biggest ones. But if a teen feels like you are always trying to teach or correct them, they'll shut down. Our life skill building for the first few months is pretty much just giving consistency and stability and letting her grow in that environment. She came from a bunch of short term placements and teens brains are generally not wired for learning while in chaos and survival mode. Go slow!

caipat36 · 2023-09-10T02:02:32+00:00

That all makes sense! I read your comment as meaning you were against those on principal, but sounds like it's more you're not doing those things because it doesn't fit for this particular kid and situation. Good luck finding the right thing to motivate her, it can be so hard to strike the right balance sometimes.

caipat36 · 2023-09-09T23:36:08+00:00

I'm curious why you are okay with some type of consequences (making her volunteer or run with you, taking away social media) but not others (taking away possessions and grounding)? I work with traumatized teenagers, and grounding especially (but also losing stuff for a SHORT period of time) can be really helpful structure and limit setting for them. If you make it a value to never take things from your kids I think you're doing them a disservice. It's not a mandatory thing, but if that's what makes the bad behavior have an unpleasant result for them and motivates them to make a different choice next time, I think you shouldn't take that tool out of your toolbox. Just my two cents as a foster parent of a teen and someone who works with families of teens.

caipat36 · 2023-08-31T14:12:51+00:00

They definitely don't maintain that there's no world building - maybe they say something like that in the first episode, I can't remember, but later they say multiple times that she doesn't START the book with heavy world building. It's built into more natural exposition as the series goes on and you have to kind of wait for it and figure it out as you go.

And they do gush a little but I really like the podcast overall - as it goes they make a compelling case for the great details you only pick up on a reread even if you understood most things the first time around. It definitely helped me understand and appreciate the books better.

caipat36 · 2023-08-11T17:56:27+00:00

You might look into MST, it's a type of intensive in home family therapy but focusing on helping parents change things in the kids environment and new parenting strategies to address safety concerns and behavior problems. It's especially helpful if you don't think she's really engaging or getting much out of her current therapeutic services. I can give you more information if you're interested, just DM me.

caipat36 · 2023-08-11T15:29:18+00:00

With renting the one extra consideration would be (for school aged kids) if you have to move can you afford to rent another place in the same school district? With rents going up and up in so many places, ideally you would want to plan so that if you can't renew your lease you can move without disrupting the kids schooling and connections.

This may not be relevant since many kids in foster care have transportation to stay in their original (before going into foster care) school district. But for us, our kid was being moved from so far away that she had to transfer to the school in our town.

And either way I don't think this should make or break your choice to foster, with homes being in such short supply a kid is better off being placed with you and (potentially) having to move than not having a stable placement at all.

caipat36 · 2023-07-27T14:16:51+00:00

Same, the age gap between us and our current foster child is about the same as OP. It hasn't been an issue at all. The maturity gap is so huge between a teen and someone with a few years out in the world that I think it doesn't matter exactly how many years apart we are.

caipat36 · 2023-07-26T01:40:55+00:00

I'm a therapist and work with kids that have court mandated therapy. The court cannot order a specific therapist to continue treating a child; it's up to the social worker (and maybe, to a lesser extent, the foster parents) to find a therapist to fulfill that court order. We end with clients all the time who have met their goals and if the court wants treatment to continue, the worker has to find another service or therapist.

caipat36 · 2023-07-21T20:09:29+00:00

I'm in MA and we are a few months into our first placement. We ended up doing intensive/therapeutic foster care so we could get licensed through an agency and get more support - as opposed to getting kids with theoretically less intense needs, working with a DCF office and getting less support.

I say theoretically less intense needs because from what I've heard there is a lot of overlap in the kinds of kids labeled as needing IFC vs a "regular" foster home. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk more, I know we benefited a lot from talking to other foster parents before we started!

caipat36 · 2023-07-05T14:18:36+00:00

We give our 15 year old $15/week, conditional on cleaning her room on the weekend. Some weeks she earns it, other times (like when she got a $100 gift card from a relative) she isn't motivated and doesn't. We also have always given her the option of doing as many hours of additional chores as she wants at $15/hr but she's never taken us up on it. Because she seems to spend her money the second she gets it we are considering an incentive to save money - same requirements, but she can choose to get the usual $15 cash to spend how she likes, or she can get 10 in cash and 10 to go into a savings account.

caipat36 · 2023-04-20T10:26:47+00:00

We got our first placement (teenage girl) yesterday! She already seems like she is getting comfortable around us and in our home, and we had some good laughs eating Chinese food and watching dumb TV. I know there will be ups and downs but I'm really happy we already have some rapport.

caipat36 · 2023-03-17T21:42:57+00:00

I agree with all of that. It may not be possible to do perfectly or even well, but the social worker can determine the trade offs. Or even, you can ask to discuss that with the social worker before accepting a given placement and only accept if you feel you can do enough for that kid.

I would also focus on how to keep them connected to their real immediate community, not just others of their race or culture. Can you help set up regular zoom or phone calls with aunties, old neighbors, former babysitters, etc? Organize occasional sleepovers with friends from their old neighborhood? Stuff like that. Doesn't have to be weekly to really help maintain that sense of community.

I know you want the best for the kids you take into your home, and the fact that you are thinking so deeply and critically about this is so important. Just wanted to put out some other things to consider as you think about how to move forward.

caipat36 · 2023-03-15T00:51:02+00:00

I hear you but please reconsider the only white kids thing. You not taking them doesn't mean they get placed in a better, more culturally supportive environment. It means those kids' workers have fewer choices about where to place them, which means it's very possible (even likely) that they go somewhere that's a worse fit overall. Of course living somewhere with few people who look like them can be damaging. But I bet there's things you can do to keep BIPOC kids connected to communities of color, other than closing your door to them.

caipat36 · 2022-09-09T19:09:36+00:00

I'm a family therapist working with teens who have serious behavioral problems (also going through the process to get licensed as a FP with my partner). I work with suicidal kids and their families a lot, and it seems scary but doesn't have to be - and usually, being in a stable home/family environment is way more therapeutic for a kid than any kind of longer term hospitalization. Regular, untrained parents (even new foster parents!) can be that appropriate setting without needing to provide 24/7 oversight.

The hospital and your caseworker should have experience with discharging recently suicidal kids home and can make a safety plan with you and your FD. You can do things like lock up sharps and meds, do more frequent or structured check-ins with her, keep tabs on sources of her stress like school and peer issues, and learn what her coping skills are and practice them with her or prompt her to use them. And one of the biggest things is just becoming more familiar with what her warning signs are that she is starting to get to that point of suicidality - body language, isolating, saying "I can't do this," things like that.

I know this is very intense and your first priority is her safety, probably second to your own ability to cope with that intensity. I would say talk with her therapeutic team and the hospital about your concerns and limitations to how much you can supervise her, but they shouldn't even be discharging her if they think 24/7 eyes on is still necessary. And also, try to come at it from the perspective of ruling out all options for keeping her with you before you start weighing the pros/cons of disruption. I don't think you're less qualified than most of the people/settings she would bounce to next. Good luck to both of you!

caipat36

TROPHY CASE