I have a confession. Every foster parent I know asks themselves the same question at night, usually after the house goes quiet and usually while pretending to scroll their phone. Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing enough? I’ve been at this long enough to know the answer never fully arrives, and the question never leaves either.
Today was one of those days. Behavior issues came up in my home, the kind that require real consequences and real conversations. It was also a day full of love (the good and the hard always seem to show up in the same hour). Our newest girl headed out for her weekly check in before she joins us permanently, and she gave me a hug that made me forget the rest of the day and told me she loves me. Later, the young woman who was in and out of my life for four years, and has been home with me for good since July, told me she was so glad I welcomed the newest girl without question. She was also the first kid who ever told me she loved me, so I did what any composed professional would do and held it together until she left the room.
Both things were true on the same day. That is fostering.
Here is the part nobody puts in the training binder. Being a trauma informed parent means I understand that behavior is communication, that a kid’s worst moments usually have a story underneath them, and that my job is to be safe even when she isn’t trying to make that easy. It does not mean I skip consequences. Empathy and accountability are not opposites (I wish someone had told me that in my first year). If I let compassion erase every consequence, I’m not protecting her. I’m postponing the lesson until the stakes are higher and I’m not in the room.
My girls are nonminor dependents, which means they are legally adults who are still in extended foster care. They are adults who missed years of practice. I’m not raising toddlers. I’m coaching young women who need to learn how to pay a bill, argue with a landlord, and survive a bad decision without deciding they are a bad person. That means I have to let them make real mistakes with real costs, while standing close enough to help them make sense of it afterward and far enough back that they know the lesson belongs to them.
That is where the worry lives. Rescue too much and I’ve taught them nothing. Support too little and I’ve confirmed what the world already told them, that no one is coming. I don’t have a formula for the line between those two. I find it again every day, and some days I find it by crossing it first.
There is also a kind of weight that doesn’t show up in any training. Some of it comes from the system, the meetings and the paperwork and the phone calls you brace for. But some of it comes from the love itself. You can grieve one day and celebrate the next, or do both before dinner, and no one hands you a place to put that. Not every ache means you did something wrong. Sometimes it’s just what showing up costs.
So what does it really mean to foster? It means loving kids who may not be able to say it back yet, and loving them anyway. It means holding a boundary and a hug in the same hour. It means welcoming someone new without question while the ones already here watch to see if you mean it.
If you’re a foster parent lying awake asking whether you’re doing enough, you’re asking the question the good ones ask.
Keep showing up. We’ll figure out the rest at 11 PM.