Views from the bin bag kid

Care roulette

People, used to ask me how it felt knowing that I was going to a new home, but having no idea where untill I got there

And to be honest I could really find the words to explain it

But now I word it like this…..bouncing around the care system is like playing a crazy game of roulette, you just don’t know where your going to end up landing, could it be good or could it be bad? I just never knew

Image the good as the red. The bad as the black and the person spinning the wheel as the system

The majority of foster carers I had were amazing people but there was a few that shouldn’t of been fostering & I have no idea how they got approved

There are good and bad in all things in life and foster carers are the same…..

Roulette of life is something I felt like I played a lot growing up

Can you ever prepare for those emergency placements where you have no clue where you’re going, my opinion…. No…….how do you prepare for the unknown???

I feel guilty

I say it all the time, but being a kid in care is a minefield of emotions, like one big game of whack a mole once you’ve dealt with one emotion weighing on you another one pops up out of nowhere, one of the things I struggled with the most was GUILT, I felt guilt for many things

⭐️Guilty for being ok without them

⭐️Guilty for feeling happy

⭐️Guilty for feeling settled

⭐️Guilty for not thinking about them everyday

⭐️Guilt for realising they were the issue

Everytime I was settled which was rare, I’d do something to mess it up as I felt so guilty for feeling settled, crazy right?

So I’d sabotage stuff to try and show my mom I still loved her

Kids take on adults feelings and issues and it shouldn’t be like that, kids should be just that KIDS, their biggest worry should be what topping they want on their ice cream not worrying about adults and their feelings who are big enough to figure stuff out theirselves

Carrying all that emotional baggage of other people becomes heavy & even kids have a breaking point

What's your "our thing"

I’ve spoke about creating something between you & your foster kid that over time becomes “our thing” mine was washing the car every Saturday with my foster dad, those little things make you feel apart of something gives you a sense of belonging and it can be really subtle small things

So got me thinking what’s a thing that became “our thjng” with you & your foster kid 🩵

Brave not broken 

Broken, damaged, victim are a few of the words I used to hear ALOT when I was growing up in care, & it was usually the professionals who used those terms, it would easy to jump into those categories but I chose to change those terms to brave, resilient, survivor, we are all a little bit broken through life and it's challenges whether in the care system or not, but we have the choice whether we let it define us or we do something with the knowledge & pain we encounter along the way in life.....bad things happen that shouldn't happen in life but we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward

Kids in care aren't broken they are brave

Abuse

Abuse comes in so many forms and if I was to sit and talk about all forms of abuse I would be here forever

But one thing all abuse has in common is, control and manipulation to the point that you don’t know who you are without the control…

Kids especially, how can they even recognise manipulation with the treatment they are recieving, when it is all they have ever known

This may shock some people or some people may disagree but sometimes control & manipulation becomes a comfort, love and care is the alien concept to some kids

We have to teach children about manipulation & control and abuse in general

Course we would love all children’s childhoods to be fairytale like, but the truth is not everything is a happy ever after kinds story

We have to give children the tools to cut the puppet strings

We so quick to teach kids about healthy eating & exercise

How about we start making it mandatory for kids to be taught about healthy & unhealthy ties

I don’t mean when they get to their teenage years I’m talking about teaching these kids about these things as soon as education starts

Puppet masters can’t control once the strings are cut

Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable to be comfortable

Sometimes things don't fit

💚

So imagine trying to wear a pair of shoes that are 3 sizes to small all that's going to do is cause pain and make you miserable right??

That's the same as foster homes, sometimes things just don't fit, and forcing them to fit never ends well just like the shoe analogy forcing things to fit will only cause pain and make everyone miserable & nobody wants that right?

But Sometimes shoes are a couple sizes to big we know we can't wear them just yet but they don't cause us pain when we try them on we just know we got to grow into them to be comfortable, and again this is the same as foster homes, some things take a little time where as others are just not going to work no matter how much time you give it

Never force something because you don't want to feel like you failed them because you haven't. It's as simple as this "sometimes things just don't work out" that's why there should be so much more focus on kids being matched with carers better, , to try and reduce the amount of placements (hate that word) end up breaking down,

Because each breakdown of a placement a child goes through the less trust and hope they go to the next foster home with

But still we should never force things

Calm in chaos

💛

One thing I really found helped me in homes was predictability, when your life's been chaos it's nice to know what's coming...even if it's the same food certain day of the week, a certain tv show at a certain time, an activity, predictability may be boring to many but to a kid in chaos it's calming

Predictability is the foundation of trust.

Triggers 

🩵

I was never the easiest foster child to look after, I was angry, I wasn’t angry at a particular person I was angry at the world……..when your in care as a teen I feel like the adjustment is harder as you already know your “normal” so even if the normal you know isn’t healthy, when being taken out of that situation can be a massive shock to the system

Things that triggered me would always be things that people would be like “why she kicking off about that”

I destroyed one foster homes bright white living room wall with pasta sauce…..as it didn’t taste like my moms…..it sounds so stupid when I say it out loud,…. But I began to realise that the pasta sauce wasn’t the trigger it was the memories it gave me…..spaghetti and meat balls was aiways a thing my mom made to apologise to me with….instead of having nice memories of it, I just remembered the reasons why she was apologising to me…..

The thinhs that seem small to you can be huge to a foster kid…….

Even to this day I still can’t eat spaghetti and meatballs anymore…..

Always try and identify triggers for your foster kids sooner rather then later

And remember these triggers may be so small to you that you won’t even understand how it could trigger someone…

But triggers don’t always have to be something huge