Mia Marconi - If Only He’d Told Me - A foster family pushed to the limits

Although Brody found school a problem, at home he had found a soulmate in Alfie. They became so close they were almost like brothers. Alfie was so used to being surrounded by girls it was a breath of fresh air for him to have someone to play football with, build dens at the bottom of the garden with and ride his bike with in the local wood. It all seemed pretty perfect, a match made in heaven, a proper bromance.

A carer’s children are key to helping a foster child settle in, which not everyone realises. Quite often when new children arrive the older ones are withdrawn and sullen, while the younger ones can be screaming, spitting, kicking, throwing themselves on the floor and making themselves sick. It’s all fear about what will happen next, but you can see them calm down really quickly once they realise that there are other children in the house.

It’s not nice for my kids to see another child hit and kick their mother, so when there’s an ‘incident’ I make sure they’re out of the way and always explain why children are acting in this way. It is still frightening, as life is sometimes, but I know my son and daughters are prepared.

I have no doubt that the fact there was a boy of a similar age to Brody in the house gave him confidence and helped him feel at home. I had seen it a hundred times before and thought back to the time when we had a two-year-old girl here called Bethany, who was very uncomfortable around bath time. Most toddlers reach up to you to be lifted in and out of the bath, but she would freeze if I tried to touch her. My girls instinctively sensed that they could help and, without me saying a word, one of them would lift her out of the bath, wrap her in a towel and give her a big cuddle. She felt comfortable with them doing it rather than me. Bethany had been badly abused by her mother, so why should she trust another female adult? But why should she miss out on one of the best things about being a child – being cuddled in a towel after a nice warm bath – because of this trauma? For weeks Francesca or Ruby would gently lift Bethany out of the bath until one day, without thinking, Bethany lifted her arms towards me. At that moment I knew we were making progress. I smiled at Francesca and Ruby to let them know that this breakthrough was thanks to them and that it might never have happened if it wasn’t for their caring.

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