Foster Care Training

So I started this entry WEEKS ago, and then there was a problem with the save and I lost it all!  And everyone that has had that happened after they wrote something long, you're not so eager to just jump back and do it all over again!  So alas, it's been almost a month.  But our foster classes are now over with and I wanted to share some things that I learned!  It definitely had its ups and downs (and I was hormonal already anyways, so that just adds to the mix) but I learned a lot that will help in just my own life whether we do foster care or not.

Mostly I am going to share from the class on discipline.  The other classes were heartbreaking or more relevant to just foster care, but the night on discipline was amazing.  And enlightening.  And seriously could be the sole reason we have felt to do foster care at all (even though we are still going forward with everything).

I don't really know how to share this information in an organized fashion (and I don't remember at all how I did it last time), so maybe I'll just do bullet points?  That's more how my notes are written...  So here goes.  I am sure some of these you already know, as many of them I already knew, but I almost guarantee there is SOMETHING in here anyone could learn from.  I know I still learned a lot.

• Give attention to the behavior you WANT to see.  So many people forget and just get mad or talk to their children when they see the bad behavior.  Give high-fives, praise, and hugs when they are nice to siblings, put their cup in the sink, sit in the car quietly, etc.  Whatever behavior is reinforced/gains attention will continue more.
• If you want to change a behavior, instead of taking something away for doing that behavior (no t.v. if you pee your pants) give an incentive for doing what you want instead (15 extra min of tv if you pee in the potty... can you tell we are in this phase?? ha ha).  This allows the child to make the choice for themselves, and has them WANT to make the right choice.  This also puts your attention on the good behavior and is a positive way to treat the situation.
• Whatever behavior is LOOKED for will be FOUND.  If you are looking for your child to do something bad, you will find it.  If you are looking for your child to be good, you will also find it.  What do you want your focus to be on?
• A human being is more important than their history or choices. This is a great reminder not only as parents, but just of people.  Look at them as children of God as that is who they are.  Definitely helps with judging.
• ***Your relationship with your child should always be your number one priority.***  This was the main idea of everything said.  If you are always thinking about this, you will not react in a negative way towards your child.  You can still discipline and have a good relationship.  If you ever feel you are hurting that relationship, stop what you are doing.  (yelling, being rough, talking down to your child, etc)  Stopping immediately in the middle of a sentence or punishment will not hurt the relationship more.  If you need to take a breather before you come back, do so.  Never feel like you have to react immediately to a situation to where you can't handle it unemotionally.  If you have to take a whole day before you can talk about it, do so.  The relationship with that child should always be more important than discipline/teaching.  3 questions to always ask about any interaction with your child that helps you stay in check:
• How are you feeling about interaction?
• How is child feeling about  interaction?
• How is this impacting the relationship?
• Compliant parenting (not giving child a choice/they are forced to comply) is appropriate in health/life situations (walking in a busy street) and only that.  It shouldn't be a regular parenting technique.
• Consistancy is CRITICAL.  The moment you break or give in tells them how far to push.
• Don't set expectations for kids (You will not swear in this house no matter what) as it only sets up a challenge for them and you can't force them to do anything.  You can have rules with consequences (If you swear, then you get soap in the mouth) but don't say it in a way that makes the child feel they don't have a choice.  Because in fact, they do.  They always have the choice.  This ties with...
• You only have control over yourself.  Absolutely zero control over anyone else, including children.  You have influence, but no control.  So don't act like you have control or can make them do anything (and trying to do this will most definitely hurt the relationship).
• Just teach and help your children to make right choices that benefit them.  They learn this by having the free opportunity (free as in you won't give a negative consequence if they don't choose what YOU want) to make those choices. And here I am not talking about you should let your children hit each other and a natural consequence will follow eventually.  You can still have a consequence that is TIED to the choice.  But not letting your teen drive because they don't want to go to church is a consequence not really tied to the choice.  Let your kids MAKE choices and teach about the consequence, whether it be a good or bad consequences.  Let you two year old be able to choose to brush their teeth every night.  If they choose not to, the dentist will be a HUGE learning experience for them that you didn't have to hurt your relationship by FORCING them to brush against their will.
• Let children make their own choices, and ultimately mistakes.  Then teach about the connection between them.  The sooner you let them make their own choices (even if you disagree), the sooner they will learn about how making good choices benefits them and what those good choices are.  This will help teach them to learn down the road at the consequences and then choose the choice with the consequence they want.
• Have children feel like a part of the solution instead of feeling like they are the problem.
• Always think as to why the child is modeling a certain behavior.  If you can find out why, you can help to eliminate that problem.  If your child is old enough, ask them calmly.  Understanding the why not only helps solve the problem from happening again but helps you to not jump to conclusions that may be wrong.
• Understand where a child is at developmentally.  For example, two year olds don't understand time.  So don't get frustrated when they keep asking, "Is it time yet now?  Is it time yet now?  Are we there yet?  Can we finish our project?"  It helps keep you calm when you don't expect something that the child is incapable of knowing/doing.
• Present yourselves, as parents, as a unified front.  Never say something with "Don't tell your dad" or not knowing what your spouse would say.  Always say "Let's go talk to your mom/dad" even  if it's inconvenient. Showing this unified front will tell your kids that you respect one another and work together.  It puts the "who has the power" to both of you.  And it helps your marriage as no one will be finding out things that the other said "Don't tell."
• Every interaction is a teaching interaction:  Bad or good, you are teaching.  So act the way you want your child to act.  And interact with your child when they are being good!  This teaches them that you will give attention when they act that way as well!
• When you mess up, say sorry.  No one is perfect, and especially parents (believe me, I know best of all...) Saying sorry is the best thing you can do for your kids.  It no only repairs the relationship that you just ripped down, but it models the behavior to your kids of what you want them to do when they behave wrongly.
• Here are few more things in an acronym, TEACH
• Timing matters: be aware of what you and your child's better time is.  For example, I am NOT a morning person and therefore, I am not the best at being calm and teaching in the best way early in the morning.  So I don't do it!  It won't be better than whatever Aaron is doing if I start yelling.  I also try to not "set Aaron up" during this time.  He has a hard tim sharing with Trae, so I don't have them play together until I am awake.  Does that make sense?  Also remember the child's time... Aaron is not the best when he is tired.  So trying to calmly teach him to react differently when he's crying over everything doesn't help either.  Teaching moments work best when timing is right.
• Every bad behavior is purposeful: If you find out the "why" it will help you and the child to stop the behavior.
• Appropriate consequences: Appropriate means consequences that make sense to your child.  Aaron loves playing the ipad, so he plays this when he has a successful potty day.  Our next child may love finger painting.  Do negative and positive consequences that work for that individual child, which therefore will usually mean different consequences per child.
• Control yourself: You can't do anything positive if you are not in control with yourself (more on this in just a second!!)
• Hands on parenting:  Be there!  Don't just tell your kids what to do while you watch tv.  Play with them!  Get on their level to play with and talk to.

And one last thing that we actually learned on another day was probably the BEST information I got.  Not only has it helped in how to parent my two year old, but it's helped me keep myself in check.  It's helped more with myself  but it's how to help keep yourself in check.  You can only activate one part of your thinking brain at a time... and two of those parts are your logical and emotional side.  So if you are thinking logically (and we hope to always be here), we won't be acting on emotions.  And vice versa.  So if you are emotional, you CANNOT think logically.  So the tip for ourselves, if you are emotional, take a breather until you are thinking logically.  And a good trick to switch is to first admit you are thinking emotionally.  Feel that emotion and embrace it and admit you are feeling it.  Then start asking questions of why, and answering questions takes our logical side and therefore will help us switch.

This same technique helps with kids.  If kids are acting on emotion (fell down and are crying), they CAN'T think logically.  So if we say "you're fine, get back up" they don't know this.  They don't listen to this.  They are feeling emotions, not thinking "Oh ya, I am just fine."  So, as a parent, first talk about the emotional side.  "Are you sad?  Are you feeling hurt?" and just asking questions will help the child to start thinking logically again.  We have pretty much stopped tantrums with Aaron with this technique.  We warn him of time up with the ipad (but remember he doesn't understand time?) but he still gets upset when we take it away.  Instead of saying "We told you one more minute" like we use to, we now say "Are you sad?  Did taking the ipad away make you sad?" When Aaron responds through his tears, we know he's starting to move his thinking.  So then we can talk logically and say, "It's time for the ipad to go bye bye.  We can play the ipad again later, ok?  Right now we can play trains though.  Do you want to play trains?"  And this usually ends his sadness before a tantrum even starts.  Its AWESOME.  And this works with MANY situations; I just gave this one as an example.

Knowing this information of logical and emotional, I've helped to stay much more logical.  Now I am aware of when I am starting to lean to the side of emotional, and I can jump back to the logical side quickly.  And not that I stopped being emotional completely, (Since I have been married, I have always been either pregnant, have a newborn-4 month old baby, or going through a miscarriage.  Talk about hormones going crazy ALL THE TIME.) but I stopped giving excuses.  I use to just say "Well, I'm pregnant" or "I don't get sleep" or something along those lines to just validate what emotional outbreak I had.  And after three years, (sadly it took so long) I am learning that this phase of having extra emotions is not going away anytime soon.  It probably won't end until I am completely done having kids, and even then I will still need to control myself.  Recently I learned that ANYONE can control themselves at ANY moment.  There just is no excuse out there that this does not apply to.  And so I started to control my emotions, despite the heavy odds against me, and this tip (among others) have helped SO MUCH!  I just start to feel myself going to the emotional side, and can readjust my thinking quickly.  I can take a break when I am emotional, and wait until I am logical again.  Last night I was heavily emotional, and a topic of discussion came up with my husband.  I told him I knew I was emotional and so this conversation should happen at a different time when I knew I could think it through (and my responses) with logic. (Remember the tip of knowing your good timing??)

Anywho, that last bit was me rambling a little bit.  But what I learned has seriously helped me SO much!  I almost want to take the class again just to more solidify everything as it was just so good.  I hope you learned something too!  If you have any questions (like if something didn't make sense, as I am writing this super late as my children are screaming in the other room...) let me know!