The best start in life is to be born to parents who love you and are capable of caring for you until you are mature enough to care for yourself. That is the natural order of things. It is what most children can take for granted. But children who come into foster care do not have this support. They hurt. They know something is missing. Something is wrong. Every child who comes into foster care is in pain.

     Whenever we lose someone or even something which is important to us, we suffer from the loss. If you have experienced death or divorce or the break-up of any important relationship and if you can bear to remember, you know that you suffered intensely. You felt lonely. You felt rejected. At times you were angry about being deserted. You went through periods of feeling guilty and wondered what you might have done to cause the separation or what you might have done to prevent it. Sometimes when you were preoccupied with your own thoughts you may have found it difficult to go about your usual tasks. You may have found yourself irritable with others. Maybe you snapped at them when they had not really done anything to warrant such a reaction. Trying to get along just did not seem worth the effort. It took a long, long time before you felt up to taking part in normal activities again.

     You might have known such suffering as an adult. Imagine what it must be like for children, dependent children who lose those on whom they should be able to depend.

     The children who come into our care have suffered at least the loss of their parents. If this is not the first placement, they have suffered the loss of other parent substitutes. Many have also lost the support of brothers and sisters. They have been separated from the place they knew as home. They have also lost many of the things they owned.

     When we stop to think about how much they have lost, we will find it amazing that they are able to adjust at all. Some never do.

     As foster parents, you cannot bear the responsibility for the children's problems. You did not cause them and there is no way you can possibly make up for all of them. But there are many things you can do to help children face their pain, understand it and compensate for it.

     Your first task is to recognize the severity of the pain. This is not easy. We do not like to see children in pain. In fact, one of the most important reasons you were selected as foster parents is precisely because you do not want children to suffer.

     Facing pain with a child can make us very uncomfortable. Even as we comfort, we wish the pain would just go away. It is almost an instinctive reaction. Remember the last time you were caring for a crying infant? You checked to see if the baby was hungry or wet or cold. After you had done all the things you hoped would make the child comfortable, you probably picked up the baby, placed him or her over your shoulder, gently patted the child's back and whispered softly, Shh, shh. There now. Don't cry.

     Love and comfort will help, of course, but as Professional Parents you will be expected to do more. If the children are to benefit from placement, they must be helped to face the pain which is the inevitable result of separation.

     The social worker will be trying to help your foster children with their feelings, but you will be the one who spends much more time with them. Unless you are part of the overall treatment plan, it will not be anywhere near as effective. You are in a better position to observe the children's progress and to give on the spot comfort and understanding.

     Giving true comfort cannot be accomplished by pretending there is no pain. It can be accomplished by letting the child know you understand.

     One of the ways to show your understanding is by keeping the losses to a minimum. This can be done by allowing children to keep as much of their past as possible. It will help if children can bring some of their things from home. These may include toys, clothes, their own blankets. Perhaps they can have some of the same foods and as much of their previous routine as is reasonable.

     Most of all, you can help the children keep alive their memories, both good and bad. This is very important, because if children are to profit from placement, they must understand and sort out their mixed feelings. They must be able to freely express their love, their hatred, their fears.

     No matter how miserable the past, it is never totally negative. Children may cling to the very slightest evidence that they were treated well. And why shouldn't they? You may sometimes find it difficult to understand how children can idealize relationships which you know were far from ideal. Sometime it is even more difficult to hear children berate their parents. We do not like to think about parents' cruelty to children. But if the children are not allowed to talk out their mixed feelings, they will never come to understand themselves. If they are led to believe these very normal feelings should be hidden, they will feel something is wrong with them. Their self-esteem will suffer.

     You can help by allowing children to speak freely and not being judgmental. There is no need for you to justify any of their parents' undesirable behavior. There is need for you to let the children know it is normal for them to have mixed feelings about themselves and their parents. When they know their feelings are acceptable, they begin to sort them out. This is a very slow process and needs to be repeated again and again.

     When you accept children's feelings, you are accepting the children. When you accept the children, you are helping them to accept themselves.

     That is the basis of all personal growth.

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