Earlier this year I moved house and am now comfortably at home in my new abode – a perfect fit, meeting all my needs and greeds. The garden remained a project-to-be-tackled over the summer holidays – a small but unruly wilderness of wild poppies and willowherb, bindweed and ground elder, all protected by the natural barbed wire of brambles and nettles. I spent a lot of time with my secateurs and garden fork, clearing and pulling out deep tap roots, and turning over the soil. It was very satisfying. I realised as I worked that I was unconsciously making judgments, taking sides – so the two foxgloves I found were not consigned to the garden waste sacks with the other weeds but carefully lifted and planted in the cleared soil – protected species. Worms that I disturbed and saw wriggling their distress signals, I would rescue and put back in ground that I had already turned … until a robin arrived, perched close by, with his head on one side, clearly waiting for his lunch. His needs took precedence and a couple of worms would be sacrificed – left on the soil’s surface for him to feed on. Slugs were also laid out for lunch – but ignored.
I tell you this, not because I think you are interested in my gardening, but because I realised as I gardened that I often take sides without even being aware of it. At the time I was updating some training around the issues birth children experience in fostering families, and was reflecting on my own family’s experience, as we had started fostering when our birth children were quite young. The research clearly demonstrates that birth children are resentful at having to compete with their foster sibs for parental time and attention, along with being expected to share toys and space – and sometimes even friends.(eg . Adams, E., Hassett, A. R., & Lumsden, V. (2018). ‘They needed the attention more than I did’: How do the birth children of foster carers experience the relationship with their parents? Adoption & Fostering, 42(2), 135–150).
In the conversations I have had with our birth children, who are now adult, they can acknowledge the gains (our family comprised a rich culture of social and ethnic diversity – and our children are now comfortable mixing with people from all walks of life and have embedded tolerances that many of their peers may lack) but they have also made it clear that there were times that they felt that their needs were being ignored as we focused more on the demands of our foster children. I am sure I made choices instinctively - based on need – so our foster children would often take precedence, one way or another, because I knew something of their earlier traumas and what they had survived. Unconsciously, perhaps, I expected our birth children to understand that, even though they were so young. I certainly told them – probably at least once a day - how much I loved them – but never shared with them the details of our foster children’s histories.
The self-awareness I now have, as I garden, I wish I had had when we first started fostering. Children’s sense of hurt – and sometimes rage – at their parents taking sides with a foster sibling needs to be more sensitively validated and addressed than I think I managed to achieve with our children.
