June's Support Group topic
Understanding Your Foster Care Expectations
Expectations can make or break any experience in life. Learn how managing your foster care expectations can set you up for success with a positive but realistic mindset of your role as foster parents.
Rubber Tree Plant Video
This video helps parents reconsider their underlying expectations and hopes of how their child will turn out. Expectations are inevitable but they must be managed because foster care will challenge you to see that “Rubber Tree Plants are Different” and that’s ok.
Welcome to Holland: Poem By Emily Perl Kingsley
This short poem is well worth the read!
It shares a unique perspective of expectations by using the metaphor of an excited traveler hoping to go to Italy and ending up in Holland. The unexpected trip is a difficult adjustment - to say the least. The author’s metaphor subtly displays the emotions one might have if their child is not who they first expected or envisioned.
Click here to read the poem.
Why We're Unhappy - The Expectation Gap
The Ted Talk gives insight into how humans develop expectations based on those around us, their imagination, and their past experiences. We frequently create a framework for what we believe will make us happy and often set ourselves up for deep disappointment.
Article Resource
Families Considering Foster Care and Adoption
This article outlines the several factors at play when it comes to being a foster parent. It gives careful consideration to foster parent adoption and the broad spectrum of emotions, grief, and effects of separation that adoption naturally entails. The article seeks to inform but not discourage the individual from considering the many paths that can occur in foster care.