Discussions at the Round Table

Greetings, foster mammies and daddies!

And welcome back to the Adventures of a Biological Foster Child. If you’re new here, please do check out the homepage and some previous blog posts to get a feel for what this blog is about, and what topics I like to discuss. You can also like or comment on each blog post, and you can subscribe to us through the homepage so that each new blog post is delivered directly to your inbox! Now that the housekeeping is done, let’s get going with this week’s topic: discussing possible placements with your biological children, and why it is important to touch base before bringing anybody new into your home.

Alas, many years ago now, on my eleventh name day, my birth-giver and blood sister thus integrated me into what they called the ‘discussions at the round table’. At this I was rather confused, as our counsel did not convene at a round table, but at the rectangular one adorning the center of our kitchen. Up until this day I was simply introduced to new foster children as they arrived, and encouraged to act accordingly with and around them in order to create harmony in our humble environment. Life mosied along with the essence of surprise, and yet I never complained. I liked surprises.

Hence, one can imagine my surprise when this secret counsel involving my mother and sister revealed itself to me and demanded I become a member.

But why wasn’t Dad on the counsel?

Father, as our family’s esteemed winner of bread, had been given the opportunity to join the counsel many moons before, but his heart lay with winning bread. He said, “Patricia, fostering is your vocation. I trust your judgement.” And he was off, galloping toward the bread mountains on his noble steed with bread knife in hand and a wheaten sack to collect his winnings within.

And so the counsel had thrived as a two-person collective, until I turned eleven and became old enough to make important decisions about fostering new children with my elder biologicals.

Patricia said to me yesterday, “Naoise, do you really think you’ll foster?”

I was taken aback by the genuine wonder in her expression; after growing up around the world of foster care and becoming the young woman I am in light of it, I couldn’t quite believe that my mother considered that a viable question.

See, Patty has retired from taking on new placements this year (new year’s resolution and all that!), and of course retirement from any line of work comes with a time for reflection on the many years spent dedicating such a big portion of time and energy to that work. We find ourselves reflecting on the amazing golden memories that work has given us, but we also think about the downfalls and how harmful they could be – how long it could take to heal after a particularly hard blow. So when Patty asked me this question I knew she’d been reflecting on the bad times, and that she felt like she had subjected my sister and I to placements that were harmful to our development. But she had forgotten about the round table!

What is this round table?

The round table was a little process that involved Patty, Sophie and I sitting down the day before (or the day of) a possible new placement and simply chatting openly about the pros and cons. It wasn’t organised, and there weren’t lists of anything to be checked off. It went something along the lines of:

Patty: “Girls, I’ve had a call from my link worker. She says there’s a wee boy that’s been picked up over the weekend, and he’s going to need somewhere to stay until things settle down.”

Sophie: “What happened? Spill the tea!”

P: “Absolutely not. Now, he is eight years old and he’s going to need his own room because he can get very angry sometimes and he’ll need his own space.”

S: “But that means I’ll have to share with Naoise again!”

Naoise: “Oh my God really? I love my big sister so much Mam please can I share a room with her?!”

P: “Sophie, you’re right. You and Naoise will be sharing again for a while, sure there’s bunk beds there that Dad can put together. We can make it work.”

S + N: “Okay then.”

N: “What’s his name? Where’s he from?”

P: “His name is Tiernan, and he’s from Drogheda. So he’ll be changing schools and he won’t know anyone down here. I’m counting on the two of you to make friends with him and make sure he isn’t lonely.”

N: “I can do that, he’s closer to my age than Sophie’s.”

P: “Thanks, pet. Apparently he likes Playstation, too, so will you show him how to play Guitar Hero?”

N: “I will, but he won’t ever be better than me.”

P: “That’s obvious, pet.”

S: “And you said he gets angry a lot?”

P: “Well he has some behavioural issues and ADHD, so he can be very hyperactive and bold sometimes.”

S: “Okay, but you know sometimes bold foster kids can be scary for me. So if he hits me or you or Naoise I don’t want him to live with us.”

P: “That’s perfectly fine, Sophie. We’ll see how it goes.”

And, scene.

The bottom line here is to run any new placements by your kids before you take them on, of course waiting until your kids are old enough to know what fostering is and to give a concrete opinion that isn’t based on bribery!

If Patty hadn’t been so careful to know how my sister and I felt about each new placement as they came to us, I think my opinion on fostering would be very different. Being included from a young age made me feel closer to my mother and my sister, and it reminded me that I actually had a say in the whole process. So, now that Patty is retiring and reflecting on her time as a full-time foster carer, she can do so with a clear conscience that she never subjected her children to a harmful placement. And although some placements did break down with emotional consequences, my sister and I had known (at least to a certain extent) what was coming.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post! If you enjoyed it, but maybe you didn’t quite get a detailed enough answer for a specific question you have relating to this topic, please feel free to submit a question to me through the question portal. I can answer your enquiry through another blog post on the topic, and of course you’ll be completely anonymised! You don’t have to know anything about fostering to have a question: all questions are valid and no question is a silly one.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe guys, and thank you so much for reading!

‘Til next time,

Naoise