Greetings, foster mammies and daddies!
And welcome back to the Adventures of a Biological Foster Child in Ireland! After a short hiatus thanks to COVID (boooooo), I am so happy to be back and full of energy for the new year. If this is your first time here with us, do feel free to check out the homepage to learn more about My Child and Fostering Ireland, and how this blog can help you on your fostering journey. It might also be worth your while to check out the welcome blog to get a feel for what kind of themes I’ve been following thus far! So without further ado, let’s get started.
With just 339 days until Santa comes to visit, I thought it only fair that I grace you all with a heartwarming Christmas special. This time of year can be quite a confusing time for both foster parents and foster children alike; the list of reasons why could go on and on, long past the dawn of Boxing Day when Santa has done his bit and headed back to the North Pole to prepare for another year of gift-giving and bags-of-coal-giving. One of the most common questions that has been burning away in the back of my mind in the days leading up to this Christmas has been this:
My child still believes in Santa, but my foster child doesn’t! What do I do?
One of the most common mistakes a lot of foster parents make in this scenario is quite a simple one, and is a mistake made through no fault of their own. When we think about this situation hypothetically, it is far too easy to imagine ourselves on one side of a river with a fox and a chicken and a bag of corn and a boat. We are the poor farmer, our biological child is the greedy chicken (go on, deny it, I dare you) and our foster child is the malicious fox, and the bag of corn is Santa. We’re all sitting on one side of this river, and the boat to success is bobbing up and down on the water in front of us. We look out of the corner of our eye and give the bag of corn a boot (secretly it is Santa dressed up as a bag of corn), to remind the culprit inside that our child’s happiness depends on them remaining hidden. The foster child (the fox!) is eyeing up our chicken-footed biological child, the words “Santa isn’t real!” simply raring to escape as soon as we load the bag of corn into the boat. We can’t leave the chicken and the corn alone together, and we can’t leave the fox and the chicken alone together, and the bag of corn is so damn fat and heavy from an immortal lifetime of cookie and milk consumption that it is impossible to transport it in tandem with anything else. So we all sit on one side of the river with big ‘ol solemn expressions on our faces, staring over at the Christmas party taking place in full swing on the other side of the river bank.
The mistake here, is that we are viewing our foster child as a fox, when we really should be viewing them as a trustworthy livestock guardian; perhaps a big fluffy collie, or a St. Bernard.
When I was ten years old my mother fostered a girl just a couple of years older than myself. I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but Lauren had known of the secret behind Santa’s existence for quite a long time. When I cornered Patty this morning and asked her how she managed to govern Santa-related conversations between her own children and the children she fostered, she immediately chastised me for assuming the foster children were so eager to ruin the childhood beliefs of my sister and I. She told me about Lauren, and I realised I had been thinking about it all wrong.
When Patty first sat Lauren down and asked her if she could keep Santa’s secret for my sister and I, Lauren was excited. She had just been offered a mission that only she and her foster carer knew about, which meant she had an in with Patty that Sophie and I didn’t! It was a chance to bond and feel like a grown-up in a way she never had before. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Lauren and Patty would steal away on weekends to meet Santa and discuss what presents he would be giving to Sophie and I on Christmas day. Lauren had become one of Santa’s trusted elves, and in return she was even able to choose her own presents that year! But most importantly, she was able to build a connection with Patty and learn about what Sophie and I liked. She was able to watch us open our presents on Christmas day and feel a sense of pride at the joy that blossomed on our faces at the sight of what Santa had brought for us, and then she could wink at Patty and take solace in knowing she had helped nurture the idea of magic in two young and impressionable girls.
Lauren was the opposite of a fox. She was infatuated with the idea of Christmas and loved sneaking out with Patty on the weekends. And the surprise wasn’t ruined for her, for on Christmas day she could still go and see her parents who had their own gifts for her, on behalf of Santa.
I guess my advice on Christmas is not to play governor over the children you care for, but to work as a team. If you find yourself looking after a young one who simply doesn’t believe, don’t panic! This is an unmissable opportunity for you to team up with them, to make them feel special and like they have a connection with you that no one else has in your household. Christmas is quite literally giving you the easy route to integrating a foster child into your home. And while there still may be some anxiety there that the truth may slip, it is important to remember that when your biological child is as young as I was, their mind can easily be (re)convinced of magic with a little creative planning on your behalf. Ever heard of Elf on the Shelf?
I hope you enjoyed this week’s topic, and I hope you are all immensely enjoyed the Christmas holidays! As a Christmas baby, I had the pleasure of celebrating my 23rd birthday with the biggest roast turkey and ham dinner I could possibly dish out for myself in my grandmother’s house. I can confirm that I have gained at least a stone.
As usual I would like to extend a huge thank you to Kerry Hession over at Orchard Fostering for helping this blog find its feet, and if you have any enquiries about becoming a foster carer, you can find Orchard’s details on the homepage. If you foster mammies and daddies have any burning questions about Christmas time and today’s topic, please feel free to submit them all to me through the question portal. Finally, if you’re new to this blog you can always like and subscribe through the homepage to receive each week’s post directly to your inbox. Thanks so much for reading, and happy New Year!
‘Til next time,
Naoise
Naoise McGuinness 