Do you want to know how to become a foster parent? Well, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I used
to be a foster parent for many years and in this video, not only are we going to talk about
how to become a foster parent but I'm going to share with you tricks that nobody else teaches.
In this video, I'm going to share with you my story of foster parenting and what I learned so that you
can be successful. I'm also going to be sharing with you things that other people don't normally
teach others who are looking into foster parenting. So, I've been teaching for years at conferences
and people will come to my parenting classes and then afterward they come up to me at a booth or
somewhere else and they'll say, "Nicholeen, I am so glad that you have done foster care and I'm so
glad that I am in your classes because we are wanting to be foster parents and we weren't
sure if we had what it took. But we know now if we learn some of this stuff it will help us". So, let me
help you if you're looking into that question to see if you might be a fit for foster care or not.
Let me just tell you my story a little bit. So, I never planned on being a foster parent actually
and I went into it for probably a different reason than many people go into foster parenting. I think
most people go into foster parenting because they really care about children. They want to open their
hearts and their homes to other people because they're hoping to make the world a better place.
This is a very noble reason to go into foster parenting and everyone hopes that the foster
parent that their child might go to or that a child gets placed with has that type of a heart
on the inside. But I have to honestly admit that was not my original heart place. This didn't mean
that I was opposed to opening my home or helping people have a change of heart but I actually
started foster care for a different reason. So, when I started foster care I did it because I
needed a job and I wanted to stay home raising my own children. So, for years I was a career woman.
In fact, pretty high level, and then when I started having babies of my own I wanted to be at home and
so I started pulling everybody home. Well, then my husband changed careers and went back to school
and we were going to take a significant pay cut. We wouldn't even be able to help our family have
the finances that it needed to survive and so I knew I had to do something but I'd worked
so hard to become an at-home mom which was what I wanted to be at the time. At that point, I decided
I needed to do something and the light bulb that went off for me as the solution to my problem was
foster care. I could do foster care. I'd gone into psychology and education in my college years
why not use that to my advantage? Why not use that to help other people? So, we decided that we would
start doing foster care but I did it as a job and I remember when I called the foster care agency
that I had decided might be the best fit for me. You know why they were the best fit because they
paid the most. It was high-level care. I needed high pay and I felt like I had the constitution
that could do that high-level therapeutic care if I had the proper training and they were willing
to do that proper training for that therapeutic level of care which took actually a long time
to get trained. It wasn't the quick like here's a six-hour class or here's a two-day class it was
way more than that. Now, some foster parenting does the two hour or the sixth hour or whatever class
and then they certify you. But for me, it was weeks and weeks every night of training that I had to do
and make sure that I passed off everything. So, what happened when I went to my interview? I went to my
interview and they said, why are you doing this? Why are you wanting to do foster care for our proctor
agency and I said, truthfully, I'd like to say it's because I just care about children and I do.
But really, it's because I care about my children and I need a job so that I can stay home with
them and the lady I was talking to who was doing my intake paperwork. She was like, you don't know
how refreshing that is and I was like, okay. I thought it was going to be the wrong answer but
she said no. She said, being a foster parent is a job and many parents come into it with really big
hearts and they want to open their hearts and homes and they get hurt and children get hurt
because they don't look at it like a job. If you already see it like a job and you treat it like
a job you will be very very successful because this is a lot of work and I was like okay and so
that is one thing that I am going to throw out there to you with my own story, is it's a job.
Don't forget it's a job, it's love, it's caring. You may get to adopt somebody at the end of it.
There's a lot of great outcomes that could be part of it. Just changes of hearts that you get to be
part of which are truly life-changing for you and for all the people in your family. But it's a job
and if you don't remember it's a job you might end up letting your guard down and you could hurt the
foster child or maybe even your own children if you already have children of your own. So,
you don't want to burn out so make sure you always remember it's a job. I've got a step-by-step how-to
process for you. But before I get to that, click the subscribe button now. This channel is full
of tons of information and I would say probably 90 percent of the information that I talk about
in videos on this channel will benefit you as a parent or foster parent. So, click on the subscribe
button now and don't forget the notification bell because that notification bell is going
to let you know when new videos come out. So, how to become a foster parent? Step number one, decide why.
Why are you becoming a foster parent? Are you doing it to help other people? Are you doing it for
a full family experience? Are you doing it for a job? Why are you becoming a foster parent and then
write that down make sure that is clear to you. You are going to need to have a vision of what you are
hoping to accomplish with this. There will be hard days. You will have sleepless nights. It will be a
hard thing that you do, you are sacrificing, you are giving, some of your life your years to other
people. It's the most satisfying thing you ever do but you've got to know why for the hard minutes.
Every parent needs to remember that not just a foster parent. So, make sure you take a little
bit of time to write that why down. The next step is focus on being logical more than emotional. So,
examine yourself, are you an emotional person? Do you have one of those really big hearts that can
just give and give and give but you also get crushed when you see something tragic happen
around you. You might be more of an emotional person, that's going to go a long way when you're
connecting with people. But it's going to hurt you when they are trying to disconnect from you
or they have some serious difficulties. Many foster children are not neurotypical they have processing
problems. Probably they have fas fetal alcohol syndrome because maybe they had trauma even
before they were born, okay. But because they've also had other trauma they could end up with
different ways to solve their problems because of their just brain functioning. So, you need to also
be able to be logical with yourself and with them. If you are an emotional person that doesn't mean
that you can't be a foster parent but you need to get some skills to bring you to a logical place on
a regular basis so you don't fall into emotional traps where you're taking other people's behavior
personally. Now, if you need some of those skills I am your girl, that is what I teach. I actually
am very logical but I also have a history of being emotional. In fact, when I was being raised
I was the most emotional child my parents had and I was constantly attacking them arguing taking
things personally. I had to train myself how to not do that in order to become the person I am today.
So, I do have all of the skills and training that you will like. Step number three, examine the impact
on your family. What is your family dynamic? Now, make sure you examine impact. Many people will
say don't mess up the birth order and I have to put my stamp of approval on that piece of advice,
don't mess up the birth order. So, Nicholeen, how did you take in teens so many years ago
and then raised four children of your own without messing up the birth order? Well, I didn't mess up
the birth order because I structured it a little bit differently. So, most people would take in
littler children than the ones they currently have. This makes sure that the child I already have in
my home keeps their own birth order. If they were oldest they maintained oldest. If they were second
they maintained second. That's important for their own identity their connection to family and their
feeling of self-worth. Many people do not recognize that they think, oh, they'll be friends. It'll be so cute.
But oftentimes, there's competition. Oftentimes when that one child that's their same age gets
more attention than them because they have more processing difficulties they start to resent
that other person and they even have a hard time bonding with their parents at that point and they
don't even know why they're having a hard time bonding and it's usually because their birth order
got disrupted. So, you have to be careful about that. So, what did I do? I had babies they were ages three
and one when I started doing foster care. So, I took in teens troubled teens and we never really played
it like they were brothers and sisters. In fact, the aunts and uncles of my children were still
in high school at the time. So, it was almost like we had aunts and uncles that were kind of there
visiting. They never babysat my children ever. You got to maintain appropriate boundaries,
super important and so it was like they were just there in our house but we didn't treat it as if
they were brother and sister. These were our foster children, these were our children. We were doing
treatment care for them. They knew the placement in our home was going to be short term and our
children knew they were our children. That's how we played it and it worked out really really well.
So, depending on what type of a dynamic you're wanting you need to plan that. So, plan the impact
on the family so that you can make sure you don't regret the decision you've made. After
you've determined the impact on the family and the ages of children that you want to take
then you've got to determine the space that you have to work with. So, how much space do you have at
your house? Make sure that you take a look because a foster child has to have their own room or they
have to share a room with another foster child. In most states that's the rule. So, you can't have
them share a room with your child. You don't want them to anyway because you don't know if they've
been perpetrated on and if there could be some sort of reactive tendency that could come out on
your child. So, you've got to keep your own children safe which means they need space. So, before you
take on foster care make sure you restructure your home so that when you're trying to get admitted to
a proctor agency you can say that yes you do have the space. Next comes the time where you shop for
proctors. So, there are many different agencies some do low-level care, some do just infant care, some do
high-level care, some do care for people who have mental disabilities or neurological challenges. You
want to go to the proctor agency that most fits what you are looking for, who you're trying to help,
and what type of skill set you're hoping to develop because you will develop a lot of
skills as you are working with foster children. So, for me, I needed money because I was being
suddenly the breadwinner for my family. When my husband was going back to school
so I needed to make a certain amount of money. So, I had to go for high-level difficult care that
involved a lot of training. So, that's what I did and we found a place that trained us better than I
ever thought I would get trained. So, super grateful for the youth village which was the proctor agency
that we worked with. Anyway, there are many agencies shop around ask a lot of questions and make sure
you understand the pay and you understand how they will check in on you. You understand what type of a
support person or network you have. Some proctors offer more support than others. For therapeutic
treatment care and for working with teens that are troubled make sure you've got a support person
who is on call for you, that's going to be super important. Finally, get additional training. Many
of the proctor agencies will do training but what I have found is that major the majority of them
do not do adequate training to handle all of the difficult things. With the parents of
that tiny baby that you're taking in because guess what? You get to be with the parents too.
Many people don't recognize that but when you have that little toddler or that little four-year-old
and that parent has visitation rights here and there suddenly you're parenting a parent
and you're working with the child. That's part of foster care. So, they don't have the skills to help
you with that but necessarily that they teach they don't always teach everything that you need for
skill development for the child and for yourself so that you don't react to misbehavior. So, get
the help you need and guess what? I have help for you. I have a world-class level parenting course
it's called the TSG Parenting Course. TSG stands for teaching self-government. TSG parenting course
it's on my website teachingselfgovernment.com. This parenting course is 21 hours
of training, it also has personal coaching, and you can ask me questions about any of the difficult
behaviors or things that you are concerned about for a whole period of time after your training
as well. So, this is a big deal. You get support from me as well as from your proctor agency
and you will get the training you need. Now, if you want an in-person training you can also
come to one of my three-day parenting mastery trainings. Those are all talked about on the
website teachingselfgovernment.com. The three-day parenting mastery trainings we will do 24 hours of
training within three days. So, if you've got to get at this fast you want it personalized, you're
dealing with some things, that you didn't know you'd have to deal with then come to the training
quick let's do it and let's get you the support you need because those also come with continued
support afterward for asking your questions. So, go to teachingselfgovernment.com today and click on
the TSG Parenting Course or The Parenting Mastery Training and I will see you there.