Thought for the day…why are we giving up on these children? They are being made to leave another foster home because of their lying, stealing, violence or running. They are again leaving because they are too dirty, have no respect or just can’t get alone with others. This is a vicious circle because really they are leaving because their trauma is showing. Why do we see these behaviours? The ones that we decide that we as foster parents can’t abide? We see them because they have trauma. Their tools to fix situations are different from ours. They don’t feel safe. They cannot just turn off all of the damage done to them by all of the rejections and moves. They can’t all of a sudden just decide to be “normal” and act like a child without trauma. Our children come with all sorts of behaviours and then they are punished and rejected for it, because we the adult (the professional and healthy person in their life) can’t figure out “why are they doing this to me”? I know it is difficult, one of the most difficult things in the world is to not take personally what feels like a direct hit from another person. It feels impossible when you are lied to for the 100th time, not understanding why they keep doing it. You didn’t hit them, you didn’t starve them, you aren’t the one that sexually abused them, so why are they punishing you? The fact is that they aren’t…they are not punishing you, they simply are using the tools they learned from when they were starved, hit and sexually abused. Their tools for survival are different than yours. Please, don’t give up. See through the trauma and see the child inside, the one that doesn’t know how else to communicate with you. I know it is difficult, maybe one of the hardest things you have ever done, but please remember that they really aren’t doing it to you…their trauma is simply showing.