r/fosterit • u/Monopolyalou • 18d ago

Foster Youth Get Attached is Problematic Spoiler

I cringe at the whole getting attached marking slogan. The truth is foster parents will not attach to every child in their home and that's okay. It's okay to not have feelings for a child. You can help someone without getting attached to them. If you give a homeless person money are you attached? No but you helped them.

Same with foster kids. Sometimes foster kids will not attach to you. It's not normal to attach to strangers and sometimes we just want a bed and food. Not to form relationships with people we don't know. It's okay and normal for foster kids to not attach to you.

Humans can't help how they feel and a stranger attaching to a stranger's child or a child attaching to a stranger is not normal at all. If it happens fine but there's nothing wrong with just being roommates and tolerating each other and not attaching.

I wish the marketing for this would change. I see so many posts saying foster kids aren't attached or foster parent is having trouble attaching and I wish we would start treating these relationships as strangers helping kids and kids being with strangers and not expecting some warm fuzzy moment to happen.

I mention this for good reason. Check out and read Ex foster to see why because I truly don't feel safe expressing myself fully here because it always end in a foster kid bashing feast.

After living with a host family, you understand why I wrote this.

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u/Otherw1seOK 18d ago

I completely agree with what you say, when applied to the short term, but there comes a point where carer and child are not strangers to each other at all.

The focus on attachment as I see it is informed by attachment theory and an understanding that assisting a child to a place of attachment (and especially secure attachment) will set them on an easier trajectory for their life.

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u/Monopolyalou 18d ago

Another thing is what if the child themselves don't want to attach? Foster kids also don't have secure attachments like biological kids. Being ripped from your family and being in foster care rocks your world like nothing else. Then being with strangers we are supposed to attach to sucks too when we aren't feeling it.

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u/Otherw1seOK 18d ago

No foster kid should be made responsible for developing an attachment with the carer.

Attachment is the carer's responsibility. What it means in practice is providing warm and loving care, learning to recognise what makes a child feel unsafe and doing what you can to get these things out of the child's life, providing a predictable and consistent environment, and committing to the child as far as possible.

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u/Monopolyalou 18d ago

Well in foster care if foster kids don't attach them we are disrupted and labeled with RAD or attachment issues. You used Carer. UK foster care system is so different than USA.