Why Should You Get Enough Sleep?

How many hours of sleep do you get each night? Do you have any trouble falling asleep or sleeping soundly? How do you feel in the morning after sleeping only a couple of hours?

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Foster love

Do we choose to love someone before we even know them?

Can we love someone we didn’t choose?

When a foster child turns up at your house it’s like internet dating, but without any matching, filtering or selection— it just starts.

It’s safe, it’s the best thing for them, and you have agreed to it in principle, and you’re kind of ready. Except you’re not ready. You don’t choose them, they just arrive.

And we love them.

And they love you, but they’re too small or emotionally ignorant to show it. Not emotionally unintelligent, not stupid, just ignorant — a lack of knowledge.

So we show them love, and after a while they learn what it is and give you some back.

We foster love in them.

There are the tantrums, the tics, the constant talking, the wild moments, the relentless draining behaviors.

You tell yourself it is not their fault, it’s their upbringing, a product of the environment.

So why doesn’t their new environment change them?

It does.

Very slowly, it fosters love.

We spend a large quantity of time to find nuggets of quality time.

We have to still the chaos in their head, in their heart.

Sometimes we have to model things ten times over, and they still don’t believe you. Sometimes we do things once and a child will mimic it forever, or expect it each day — because they are so desperate for routine, for certainty about how the world works.

And there is fun. There is a baby giggling, or a deep belly laugh from a three year old at something so silly it infects the whole house. And shrieks of joy from being chased around the garden that can wipe away a week’s worth of wails and tears.

There is that time when they first stop demanding your attention, and instead accept love. That time, maybe days or weeks after arriving, when they are tired or ill, and drop their guard and relax and let you hold them. When we can put aside all the things that have brought us to that point, and be still together.

And there we foster love.

Whilst court proceedings and legal happenings and endless visits and meetings swirl around us, there is a calm place in our home. A season of growing, of catching up, of discovery, and blooming. A time when they reward us, when we find meaning and purpose from our own hospitality, when we are recharged by giving and enthused by the potential of life.

And then, an ending, because this too shall pass. The beginning of the end comes like the first chill of autumn. As the carers we feel it first, the knowledge that our time with them is drawing to an end. You learn about plans that other people make for our child, and we try to keep it private, saving our strength for what is to come.

The love we have fostered feels stronger than ever when you hold a secret about the child’s life that they cannot yet know.

When the end does come, we do our best to prepare our child. We have taught them to love, now we need to teach them to transfer that love. To feel loss, and then reattach themselves to their forever parents.

We try to name their feelings as well as labeling our own. We try to protect their ability to love, not crush it with uncertainty. We help them with one last great transition whilst pushing down any of our own doubts.

One last push to pack in as much love as they can carry with them.

Then the silence. The emptiness. The grief that is necessary.

The fields lie fallow, recovering.

When we are ready, we start to prepare. The rain is still falling, but the sun starts to break through. We sow the seeds — suddenly you feel you’re not ready after all — but then it happens:

For more thoughts about fostering:

Why Should You Get Enough Sleep?

Foster love

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