Fostering Teens: What You Need To Know

Like everybody else, teenagers experience problems and bad days from time to time, but they are still amazing, strong, and admirable people. It is beyond worth it to be able to reestablish their understanding of love and family.

Teenagers in foster care are an innocent and often-forgotten population. Regrettably, the main causes of this are unjustified worries and false information.

I want to use this occasion to remind everyone that all infants grow up, whether you adopt them or give birth to them. It seems like many adults are extremely intimidated by the teens in foster care.

Most of the intimidation I witness has more to do with misconceptions about the origins of foster youth than it does with age alone (more on that later). Some phobias stem from a lack of familiarity with this particular age group.

Many individuals worry about possible harmful impacts when talking about the idea of fostering teenagers. What if one of my younger foster children is negatively influenced by an older foster child?

This is how I would respond to that. Siblings, whether adopted or biological, tend to have less influence than peers in the workplace and other social settings, according to my years of experience working with families.

Friends from school, the youth group at your church, your child's gymnastics class, etc. are typically more of a cause for concern if you are worried about harmful influences in your child's life.

In all honesty, if you talked to a family that is now housing teenagers, they would probably confirm your fears about influence, but not in the way you may anticipate.

They would probably share with you tales of how helpful their teen foster child was, tales of how they helped out around the house, how to have a conversation with adults, how to read, etc., and tales of how they taught their foster brothers and/or sisters.

I've heard several tales from foster parents raving about how a teen modelled good big-sibling behaviour for their younger foster siblings. The effect was favourable!

Amazing Chance

Any UK Fostering family that has fostered teenagers will attest to the great chance it is to show love to this underserved group of people. Had every day been ideal? Obviously not. Was it worthwhile? Absolutely.

Like everybody else, teenagers experience problems and bad days from time to time, but they are still amazing, strong, and admirable people. It is beyond worth it to be able to reestablish their understanding of love and family.

The final line is that, if you are feeling called to foster care, I encourage you to pray about taking in a teen for a while. Fostering teenagers is like having a huge mission field in your backyard.

Helping out with respite foster care is a terrific method to get exposure to many various age groups if you're not sure where to start. Respite care, to put it simply, is temporary foster care provided to allow permanent foster parents a break. Typically, this is required on the weekends or for a few days at a time.

Once more, UK Fostering really urges you to think about fostering teenagers instead of staying in your comfort zone. You might be pleasantly surprised by how much you and your family appreciate it.