Monday’s Fostering Blog
Well, I began the week with the sentiment of not really liking camping. After three days of torrential rain, I now most definitely do not like camping! It is one thing to be camping in good weather, with great facilities for showering and washing up, it is another thing to be in the middle a field in the rain. The more it rains the more the smell of cattle seems to rise to the surface of the ground. There are very few facilities for getting clean and the facilities that are available are getting filled with more and more mud as the week goes on.
Fortunately, the children seemed to be oblivious to the rain and have carried on regardless. The festival we are at have activities for pretty much most of the day and when the activities were not running the organisers have had the thoughtfulness of putting on a Disney film. So we all piled into the car and drove across the camp to watch Moana. We have been pretty much entertained for the whole day, whilst also been very very soggy for much of it too. It is much harder work pushing a child in a wheelchair through soggy fields, however I take some consolation in the fact that I was getting more exercise than usual!
After a whole day of rain, Alice’s mood starts to match the weather – rather damp and dismal. She began to pick arguments with everyone who came near. I think it was time for bed. She was really not happy about this. Alice has begun to question her bedtime and doesn’t think it is fair that her two older “sisters” get to go to bed later than her. She does not understand that as they are older than her they get to stay up later, and no matter how we try to explain it, she just isn’t getting it. So we get her into her pod in the tent. She was so angry, she kept unzipping it and coming out. I sat and tried to hold the zip closed. She started shouting “you are keeping me prisoner” I did explain that we all have our pods zipped up at bedtime. It was no use, she got more angry and started to bite me through the walls of the pod. Time to step back. I left her in the tent until Charlie returned with Lauren and Annie. Fortunately, he realised the situation straight away, went into the tent as though he knew nothing, made a big joke with Alice and then put her to bed. A lot of what we do as foster carers is working as a team. Charlie and I have worked out when we need to take over from each other. We have learnt that not every battle is worth fighting, and there are some days when you just need to go to bed and have a fresh start the next day!!
A Less Ordinary Family Foster Care Blog
