Three of my daughters are sitting at home with me tonight. The rest of the children went with Super Dad to the annual Christmas party held by our local Department of Human Services. The party is at a local pizza parlor that has many games for the children to play. The machines spit out tickets that the children exchange for candy, trinkets, or dollar-store toys. As you can imagine the children always have a lot of fun there. I really enjoy going every year as well. It gives me an opportunity to catch up with other foster parents that I don’t see very often. I also enjoy seeing all of the children that we have provided respite care for over the years and how they have matured.

This is the first annual Christmas party that I have missed in 14 years of foster parenting. I warned the children a couple of weeks ago that some of them were at risk for not attending the party. I thoroughly explained the unacceptable behaviors to the children and told them what they needed to do so they could attend the party. Then I had to leave it up to them. A therapist that is currently working with two of the children told me that I needed to accept my children’s decisions not to comply and let them deal with the logical consequences of those choices.

It is imperative for us parents to follow through with consequences once we have established them or we risk never modifying undesirable behaviors. Unfortunately, that sometimes causes inconveniences or more work for us. However, if behaviors can be modified, then it will be worth the temporary inconvenience. I continue to be an optimist about my children’s futures. The closer some of them get to adulthood the more frequent my visions of jail become, yet I continue to try.

Years ago, I had two children scheduled to take driver’s training at the same time. That meant making those 7am trips once for classes and driving. Unfortunately, our now adult daughter chose to run away from home so she wasn’t allowed to take driver’s training that summer. That meant that the next summer I had to make those early morning trips again so she could take driver’s training. That was inconvenient and more work for me, but it worked out for the best. We didn’t have any more trouble with her running away after that.

Photo Credit 2007 Julia Fuller