Tweens and Beyond



Listen as former foster parent Mike Brooks reflects on his experience fostering teenagers.
(Photo/Melanie J Studios)


While many people take in young children, it is harder to find homes for older children and teens. And there is a reason for that. When children have spent their early years in an unsafe living environment, they can have difficulty developing healthy relationships.

For example, there is *Kassandra, who entered foster care at eight. That was after years of living with a mother who was a meth addict. She witnessed things that children should never see and spent her early years being dropped at state children’s homes or with relatives while her mother went on drug sprees. Sometimes she was left at a place for a day, sometimes for a week, and sometimes for a month or longer.

When she went to live with a loving aunt and uncle, they wanted to adopt her, but she refused. She lived with them until she was almost twelve. At that point, she went to an adoptive home, but due to her difficulties trusting others, she found it difficult to bond with her new parents and siblings as well.


Most are not delinquents or even bad kids. They are just children who came to believe early on in life that “adults, especially parents, are not to be trusted.”


Now in her 20s, she “couch surfs,” that is, stays with friends here and there, moving someplace new whenever she outwears her outcome. It’s getting harder for her now that she has two babies of her own. She wants to provide the kind of home for them that she never had as a young child, but does not seem to know where to begin.

Older children and teens, like Kassandra, need foster parents that are well-trained in parenting children who have suffered trauma and neglect. Such children may act out, as Mike Brooks’ foster son did. They may break trust repeatedly.

Most are not delinquents or even bad kids. They are just children who came to believe early on in life that “adults, especially parents, are not to be trusted.”

This is why foster care agencies require initial training and ongoing training for foster parents. It takes a lot of work to foster children, especially teenagers, but the resources are out there for those who are ready to take on the challenge.

*Not her real name

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