Keeping your Marriage Strong: 4 Tips for Foster and Adoptive Parents
Keeping your marriage strong is important for every marriage, but foster parenting or adoption can bring some extra struggles to a marriage relationship. Here are 4 tips to help keep your marriage healthy while parenting kids from difficult backgrounds.
1) Respite, Respite, Respite
If you are a foster parent, get a network of people willing to be trained as respite care providers for you before you even receive your first placement. If you are a state foster parent, those who want to help you out will need to complete training to become licensed respite care providers with the state. You WILL need a break, and there is nothing wrong with that! Before you bring home an adopted child, have a few close friends you trust who can take your child on a regular basis to give you a break. Whether it be for a date night, or simply just to rest, make sure you have those close people you can trust so you can refill your own tank and connect with each other as a couple.
2) Parent together as a couple
This seems very obvious; however, parenting children from difficult backgrounds can bring disagreement in the way you parent. Parenting skills you learned and used with your biological children might not work the same way with children who are affected by trauma. Talk with each other about your struggles in parenting when the children are not present. Work together to support each other and don’t let the children triangulate you and your spouse. Recognize when your spouse needs a break and tag team parent if you need to. Make sure your children see you as unified and your spouse feels like you are on the same page, even if you don’t always agree.
3) Get Counseling
We talk a lot about counseling for our kids who come from hard backgrounds; however, sometimes you need some extra support for your marriage. It is helpful to have a trusted counselor to encourage you along your fostering or adoptive journey. Many parents suffer from post-adoption depression or secondary PTSD and don’t even realize it. Counseling can help work through these issues and the impacts it has on your marriage. Find a counselor who is trained and experienced in the unique complexities of foster and adoptive parenting and who can help you focus on your marriage relationship.
4) Keep Romance Going
Sometimes loving and parenting kids who are hurting becomes all-consuming. Between doctor’s appointments, therapies, IEP meetings, court appointments, birth-family visits, managing survival behaviors, and catching kids up in school, exhaustion becomes a way of life and there is little room for nurturing the romantic relationship with your spouse. Take time to plan regular date nights. Do little things for your spouse, such as bring home flowers or write a card or even send a text. Invest time and energy into your marriage, despite the times it feels like you don’t have anything left to give. If your spouse feels heard and loved, you will be able to parent your children much better together and your marriage will stay strong through the difficult times.