I have been glancing through other blogs I follow. I as I read them, I wonder are we still in the heights of the honeymoon phase? The girls have only been here 18 days. We had an "issue" a few minutes ago. One girl went and did what I had just told her not to do. Of course, I immediately went and handled it the best I could. She didn't seem sorry for what she did but upset because I got on to her. I am not even sure she understood the problem. Is this an eight year old problem or a foster child issue? I sometimes am not sure. Did I need to handle it like the other three kids or differently? I wonder if and when we will see some of the issues surface that we saw during their visit. They seem to be doing well.
I wonder if it will change? School is going to be out in a few weeks and I wonder if we are going to have problems then. Too much free time, too many idle hands and minds, is there going to be problems? If so, I guess we can start school again.
We have been truly blessed so far. I think they have been given things freely in foster care. Not necessarily by the foster parents as much as everyone else in the community. They don't like that we don't go out to eat all the time or buy them things everywhere we go. They didn't like that we rented movies today instead of going to see a movie. I tried to explain the cost of going to a movie. I am not sure they understood. I also chose that moment to say we don't purchase things to eat when we go because it is so expensive. We don't give an allowance either. We never have. We believe that chores are part of being a family, not to earn money.
Is this a bad thing? We hope we are teaching them to be good stewards, not to have a poverty mentality.
I am starting to see a few gripes about chores, but not anything abnormal for kids. I think they are learning that crying, manipulation, whining, and arguing gets you no where in this house.
They are really sweet girls. The three girls have played pretty well today. Either they aren't arguing as much or they aren't bringing it to me. They are starting to break off and not play with each other all the time. Usually two are together at a time. It is not always the same ones. It is nice that the odd girl will go and play with the boys. The boys have been SUPER big brothers. We are VERY proud of them.
Yes, you are probably in a honeymoon phase. But that doesn't mean it will be terrible when they move out of this phase into the next phase. I went back and read about Beth the first several months she was soooo sugar sweet and NEVER did anything wrong. She was the peace maker. Never crossed anyone. Always polite... You get the picture. The little girl we have now isn't quite the same. Very stubborn, defiant, sassy, argumentative, bossy... you get the picture. But I think part of this is due to her getting older and getting a mind of her own. It really is hard to know, like you said, if what they do is normal behavior for their age or foster care related behavior.
ReplyDeleteAll we can do is take it day by day and trust that whatever happens that day we will be given the grace and guidance from our Savior to handle it. I have to agree with you, we sure are blessed!!!
The dreaded "Honeymoon Phase"......Ours lasted about 3 months with our newest daughter. When she didn't get one of the things she asked for for Christmas, the attitude came out and hasn't left yet. :-) We also deal with her having the wants everytime we go somewhere and begging to go out to eat for every meal. This too will pass. God gave us these wonderful kids because he knew we could love them and help them grow into wonderful adults. This is just a bump in the road. At least that's what I tell myself. :-)
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