Tough parenting

I hear it all of the time.

"Do you think she does that because of her trauma?"

"Doesn't her past explain that behavior?"

" Poor thing. She doesn't know better."

The truth is that yes, she does act out due to her trauma. And yes, her past experiences, like watching her mother threaten to kill herself every time she got in a fight with HER parents, has had a effect on my child.

And yes, there are a lot of behaviors that she has never been told are WRONG.

None of this, however, means that I can let her get away with anything.

It has become alarmingly apparent that little miss Snow White is an expert manipulator, twister of truth, and white liar.

She lies about EVERYTHING!

Some things are a direct link to her past. I honestly believe that she was trained by the excuse for human beings who gave birth to her (who are homeless again) to never expect to get what she needs.

She has learned that the only way to get what she needs, like food or attention, is to manipulate, pitch a fit, or lie.

For example, she has the weird habit of telling me that her tummy hurts instead of telling me that she is hungry and would like breakfast. I honestly believe that when she was with the bios she would wait all day long for food if she didn't lie about a tummy ache and whine about it until they relented and gave her food.

Lies like this are extremely frequent.

However she is also 6 and smart enough to figure out how to "work the system" to get what she wants. Or to get out of trouble. Skills she also learned from her parents.

Despite all of this, despite her trauma, her experiences, and her life lessons so far, there is something worse. Are you ready to hear it?

Are you ready to read everything I say instead of calling me a "bitch" and going to another website?


The truth is, when it comes to parenting her and teaching her, her past doesn't matter.

 It doesn't matter that she is mad because she was abused, she can't punch hole in my wall.

It doesn't matter that she misses her mom a lot, she can't use it as an excuse to sneak out of bed.

It doesn't matter she hates foster care, she can't scream in anger at the top of her lungs while I am driving 70 mph on the interstate bridge.

Your foster child has to be taught all of the lessons that you would/do teach your own. Every child has an excuse/reason for their behavior, but that does not make that behavior ALLOWABLE.

So we give her consequences, talk about trust, tell her we love her no matter what, praise her when she shows improvement,  and give her more consequences when she backslides.

We tell her that it is ok to be mad. To hate foster care. To hate her abuser. To want to punch something.

But we have to teach her how to channel it, because if we don't do this she will end up being one of the stats. Like the stats that tell us that 70% of the prison population is made up of former foster kids (over 90% of people on death row).