The hardships and misconceptions of fostering
Every child deserves a safe and loving home but for many children and teens in Yuma County and all over our country that is not the case. May is National Foster Care Month and we continue our foster care coverage looking at life in the system in part three. Today we hear from a foster parent who shares some of the hardships and misconceptions of fostering a child.
It’s not always easy, the job of parenting, and some even say it’s never easy but always worth it.
Cori Rico, Foster Care Program Director at the Arizona’s Children Association can relate to many of her clients because she herself is also a foster parent.
“I think it was really humbling to me that I could say Cori you can preach this all day long at work and you can preach this all day long to your friends but now I get it when the hot mess mom says oh my gosh I went into the bathroom and cried because you feel like a failure at times,” Rico said.
Rico believes it’s a matter of remaining calm and remaining consistent, but admits it’s not always easy to do.
“What they’ve gone through is horrendous when most of us could not survive and though they have certain behaviors at times, that to us are concerning when addressed appropriately, you really see this shining star at the end of it and you see children that come out that are much wiser than us as adults,” she said.
She explains that a major misconception is the idea that younger foster children aren’t affected by constantly moving around.
“All I need to give them is love and they are fine, well that’s another misconception that that’s not reality and though they may not be able to verbalize that this person is taking me out of the home, brain development shows that when you remove an infant from their caregiver that that detachment, what it does to our brains and our connections can have lifelong consequences,” she said.
Looking around her office, you can tell what a blessing she is to others, b ut Rico says it works both ways.
“They say, ‘you’re such a blessing to them,’ and I’m like oh no no it is opposite. I have learned so much as a mom, as a wife as a human just what it’s like to be humbled and vulnerable and giving someone else something that they don’t have and I think that was just life changing to me that how can you love a child as much as you love your own. Like my son is my son and though he may not look like me physically, he already acts like me and that’s also humbling, the good and the bad, you know,” she said.
Tomorrow we continue our “Found Families” coverage with a look at how one couple is transitioning out of the system. That’s tomorrow in part four.
