The need for sensitivity to long-term foster children’s understanding of their lives

by Vibeke Lasson

Do I have four or six grandchildren?

After six years’ awareness of having four biological grandchildren and the realities of one daughter with two long-term foster children, removed from their home by law, I find myself in a dilemma, which I probably share with many other grandparents. I will try to describe the different complexities of the situation.

One of our three daughters works as a professional foster mother of a brother and sister, who were placed with her and her husband when the boy was only eleven months old and the girl two years. The children were removed from their biological mother by law, with all the following problems of such a placement.

Now, after almost six years, the children are an integrated part of all the family. The boy, in his memory, has not known any other life situation. As for the girl, now nine years old, the situation is a little different. She sees both her parents and her grandparents regularly. The children have different fathers and are abused children. For a long time now the boy has refused to meet his biological mother for the two hours permitted to them. To him the foster family and its network are his family and network. Meanwhile at the moment his biological father is the great provider of expensive presents.

When does the professional approach stop?

My thirty years of work at a treatment centre for maladjusted children made me believe that foster children were to be treated professionally, including emotional involvement and frames of reference which any child has a right to. One had to remember at all times that a biological family existed somewhere, whether close by or further away, and that the child belonged there. With this in mind, fostering has always to be regarded as a temporary arrangement in the eyes of the law. Since today it is natural for children to call even parents by Christian name, and since we are living in Denmark at a time when there are so many so-called “cardboard parents”, it seemed simple and right for me to name myself by my family nickname, Vibs, as far as the foster children were concerned.

But it is no longer that simple. The foster children have, maybe unavoidably, tested our feelings for them,
- maybe because they experience the feeling of belonging;
- maybe because they want to use the same way of addressing us as the biological grandchildren;
- maybe because others in the family call themselves Grandma etc.

Until last Christmas I still named myself Vibs, correcting the children discreetly when necessary, but in February at a family gathering the oldest foster child confronted me by asking following, “Can I call you Foster Grandmother or do I have to say Vibs?”
Such a direct question demanded an answer, “I will not be named Foster Grandmother. Either you call me Grandma or Vibs!” I was not able to live with my biological grand children calling me Grandmother and the foster children calling me Foster Grandmother.

The children’s predicament

Since then, I have again been pondering about the predicament which we adults and society create for children when parents do not manage to cope with caring for their children. At any time they will remain the children of their biological parents, whether they are six or sixteen years old. As long as their ability to care for their children is still subject to re-evaluation, the possibility exists of the children having to change home and be removed from the foster family, which might be the only home the child has known during its childhood.

Here I am not talking about the emotions that adults have to endure by such a “cut of the umbilical cord”. Naturally, this too has its deep-hitting, emotional sides. But the foster family is professionally engaged and paid by society, no matter how deeply it becomes involved with the children. Likewise, one can imagine the trauma which the biological family endure by not having been able to fulfil the needs of their own child. The whole situation is unhappy, also, for all the adults involved.

How adults react

Let us return to how I myself and many others are to choose to react towards the needs of the children, so that they can experience recognition, acceptance and value.

As a help to myself, I remembered a teenage boy who for years stayed at our home during his holidays. He travelled with our family and was close to our three daughters, but the relationship was not like fostering him. He was placed at the residential family treatment centre where I worked and my husband was the Director. His father fell very ill and died during the boy’s placement. His mother got a job on a tanker, sailing all over the world, which meant she was away most of the time. We took him into our family whenever the need occurred during holidays when the rest of the children in the centre went home for weekends and vacations. His mother was pleased with the arrangement and we maintained good contact with her.

It was on a trip to London, when the boy had reached the age of fifteen, that, for the first time, we experienced that he needed to demonstrate his belonging by addressing my husband as “Father” in a conversation with other people on the ferry back to Denmark. My husband left the question up in the air. It was repeated later, and we agreed that the boy was old enough to know why he chose to address my husband in this way when other people were present. He needed to demonstrate he belonged!

If I had not had these episodes to reflect back on, I would probably have continued stubbornly correcting my daughter’s foster children, insisting that they called me by my Christian name, among other things when we talk on the telephone, because I still do not feel sure what is the right thing in relation to them. On the other hand, are children with “cardboard” parents and grandparents fully aware of the situation when they choose to use a title or a name that implies a family relationship? The family circumstances of children removed from their families by a court of law are so very uncertain. They are influenced by political trends, local policies affected by geography and many other matters. One even sees parents take local policy into account as reason for moving house to get their children home, and who will blame them for thinking this way?

Children’s needs come first

But when a child has grown and lived in a foster family over years, who can validate what is right for the child? Who does the child have a right to stay with and which persons are responsible for the child and its need? Most people will say that the child belongs to its parents. This is right, but the parents failed, not being able to care for the child and be responsible.

The United Nations Children’s Charter clearly defines the rights of the child, and countries like Denmark have agreed upon it. In spite of this, our different political parties have different attitudes towards words like responsibility, right and duty. The party colour decides whether we talk about the right of the child or the right of the parent.

I have learned from adoption officials that in England it is possible to adopt foster children after a number of years. This is not the case in Denmark. Generally, the biological parents will not agree to their child being adopted away as long as it is under the age of eighteen, and when the child comes to age of eighteen, you cannot adopt him or her for inheritance tax reasons. So foster parents who have grown close to a fostered child have no chance of making a will where the child can inherit without having to pay a very high tax.

The key responsibility for adults, for example in drawing up legislation, must be to consider the foster children’s outlook on life and hence the consequent emotional nuances in the language used. But how can one as an adult know which, in the long run, is the right language nuance for the individual child? Today I have come to the conclusion : When the child is informed about and understands its family situation, I am not the one to decide what the child chooses to call me!

I have to remind myself that I as a person often choose to describe all the six children of my daughters as grandchildren - children by law or not! In the end it has to be the need of the child for equal dignity which has to be balanced in the child’s favour here and now. It is only secondarily the duty of foster families and society to show respect for the biological background of the child, whenever he or she shows the need to look into this subject.

H.C.Ørstedsvej 17. st. th.
1879 Frederiksberg
Denmark