“Discipline: The practice or methods of teaching and enforcing acceptable patterns of behavior,” from Encarta Dictionary: English. Notice the contrast between punishment and discipline. Punishment is a penalty for wrongdoing, whereas discipline is to teach proper behavior. Be assured that a new foster child will arrive with plenty of unacceptable behaviors. So many, that you would be constantly criticizing if you chose to address all of them at once. That is why you start with trying to change one or two of the most unacceptable behaviors. How can a foster parent discipline a foster child to cause the change?

“Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering intended to punish a person or change his/her behavior,” from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Foster parents are not allowed to use any type of corporal punishment. Some examples are spanking, hitting, slapping, or pushing. One of the reasons behind this licensing regulation is that children who have suffered abuse and trauma will not respond to this type of discipline. To them, it is more of the same and puts the foster parents in the same category as the abuser in the child’s eyes.

Has the severity of foster child behaviors been increasing over the years? Some people, including teachers, foster parents, and workers believe that it has. There are those who attribute the increased violence to television and video games.

You know the old saying “Birds of a feather flock together,” and so foster child seem instinctively to find each other. Over the years, teenager girls have come and gone. They usually made friends, some more than others did of course. I have always made a point of meeting friends and asking questions. Inevitably, the friends are somehow affected by foster care or adoption. Some are adopted through foster care, part of a foster family, foster child, or they should be. My children always seem surprised when they discover that their new friend is somehow associated with foster care. Over the years, I have realized the truth of the phrase, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Foster children are able to find each other almost intuitively.

Well today was our scheduled day to go back to the local health department and get the results of all of our TB tests. For some reason I had thought that we were supposed to go between 11 and 2, however after digging the small slip of paper with our return time written on it out of my purse I discovered with a gasp that we had already missed the scheduled time, which had actually been 9 to 11 am. Hey, at least I had the 11 right!

I called the health department and explained my blunder. After she finished laughing,

JulieC asked the big question, Adoption Photo Listings: Good or Bad? We all look at photo listings now and then. People can and do recognize children on the internet especially those of us who have done a lot of respite care. However, it certainly has made placements possible that never were before. Personally, when I see children I know, I feel an obligation to help recruit for them. I send emails to everyone I know who may be looking to adopt a child. People are matching with children all over the country. The alternative, those children could have aged out of foster care, never having a forever family.

 Enough of that though, which states have all the young children listed for adoption and why? Which states have big sibling groups, young sibling groups, or the cutest sibling groups? The number one place to look for young children is NWAE. They have the cutest little toddlers and beautiful sibling groups. Why do they have so many young children available for adoption when other states do not? I hate to break it to you all, but they have the lowest adoption subsidies.

People that are new to the adoption community may not know that there is a lot of controversy around adoption photo listings. There are those who are for the adoption photo listings, and those who are against adoption photo listings, the interesting thing is, they both cite the same reason for their viewpoint; exposure.

There are large adoption photo listings, featuring children from all over the country, or all over the world, as well as small adoption photo listings that only feature children from a particular state, or children that a particular agency is sponsoring.  Those who are for the adoption photo listings feel that the exposure the children receive on these listings greatly improve their chance

If you are going to foster teenage girls be prepared to address menses issues. You may engage in conversations that you never imagined even in your wildest dreams. Unfortunately, hygiene is usually a difficult issue with any older children who come into foster care. Many of the children are not used to bathing or brushing their teeth daily, or even occasionally. You can expect to remind these children daily to brush teeth, hair, and put on deodorant for years. You can expect arguments over bathing or showering especially from teenagers. I had one girl who bathed fully dressed for the first month she lived with me. I figured the clothes needed to be washed anyway. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that issues would arise with menses in teenage foster daughters.

The first issue I ever had to address was odor. I decided it was best to tell her just like it is. “Honey, you are better off hearing this from me than one of your schoolmates. You smell bad. You need to change your sanitary pad more often. In fact, it is ok with grandma if you change it every time you go in to use the bathroom." Now when a new girl arrives I address the issue immediately. When she has her first period at my house, I suggest changing with every bathroom use, when we purchase the first box of sanitary pads. Of course, that wasn’t quite as bad as the foster daughter who refused to wear pads every month. She just dressed normally, and bled around the house and on the furniture.

Well today was try number two, as I loaded the kids into the van for another attempt at getting our TB test done at the local health department. The state requires that we have this done before we can become a licensed foster home, and while I am still wary of the process, I figured I would take baby steps and wrap up all of our loose ends so that the only thing that we will have left to complete when the social worker comes for the home study will be the home study itself.

Our first attempt at getting our TB tests started, ended abruptly when my car died, leaving us stranded on the side of the road. That experience caused some high flying acrobatics to occur in the pit of my stomach, as I again wondered if life was trying to tell me something about going through with being a foster family. Although admittedly still nervous about the whole thing, I decided to bite the bullet and accomplish today, what I set out to do last week.