Ask Dr. Rick

Rick Delaney, Ph.D. is a psychologist who has been trained by foster and adoptive parents. He will share what they have taught him over the past 25 years when it comes to raising kids with serious emotional and behavioral problems. Read his column: Small Feats: The Unsung Accomplishments of Foster and Adoptive Parents.

Historic Roles Children Bring With Them Into the Foster or Adoptive Home

by

Richard J. Delaney

You’ve heard about skeletons in the closet. These are past issues that haunt the present. Skeletons abound in the lives of foster children. Yes, past history wields a great deal of power in their lives and in your home. Soon, without knowing it, your life and your child’s are in the boney grip of history.

Even though foster and adoptive parents strive to provide children with a present life and a future hope, the past continues to bog things down. When children enter a foster or adoptive family, they often bring with them the effects of neglect, abuse, and sexual exploitation. They have accumulated behavior problems, habits, expectations, and survival behaviors that have developed in their early experiences. If their history has been one of maltreatment, the history is not simply set aside with removal from the immediate danger and placement into a good foster home. The history can have an on-going, underestimated influence in the next family. You might say that children enter foster and adoptive homes with histories that won’t quit. Skeletons in the closet.

 

Some—maybe most—foster children come from families with tremendous dysfunction. For whatever reason, their parents did not succeed in being good parents to their children. They did not adequately nurture and guide their off-spring. Nor, did they keep their children safe; they did not consider or meet their children’s needs. In sum, you might say there were holes in the protective fabric of the family. Accordingly, children were forced to fill the holes and take on roles in the family which were abnormal, premature, unhealthy, and eventually resistant to change. Indeed, when your foster children arrive in your home, they enter your lives ready to play out their roles. Some of the most common dysfunctional historic roles are:

 

Prince-in-exile	Child has been the favorite or preferred child
In-house paramedic	Child has cared for a sick, disturbed, or addicted parent
Scapegoat	Child has been the target of disapproval
Concubine	Child has been the sexual object
Companion	Child has been the constant companion of needy parent figure
Little parent	Child has cared for other children in the home
Self-parenting	Child raised himself
The perfect child	Child learned to never make mistakes

 

Let’s look at how the foster and adoptive parents can better understand these roles by a discussion of the first type: prince-in-exile.

Living With The Prince (or Princess)-in-Exile

If a child has been the clear favorite in his family, he/she takes on a role that, for lack of a better term, we call “prince” or “princess.” This child may have been preferred over the other children; may have been told that he was better than his siblings; and may have been awarded a status in the home that the other children could only dream about. The reasons for the preferential treatment of this “teacher’s pet,” vary widely. The child may have been given princely status in trade for sexual favors. Or, the child may have been fathered by a male who was respected by the mother, as opposed to the father of the other children who she hated. Whatever the cause, the attitude is: “All children are created equal, except that the prince is more…equal.” Special treatment, special favors, and immunity from rules are often applied to the prince.

When prince-in-exile comes to foster care, a rude awakening is frequently in the offing. The prince is in for a shock. Why? The foster family is simply not prone to favor, prefer, or spoil one child over another. There is a sense of fairness, equality, and a sense that all children are entitled to the same love and devotion of parents. And, from a disciplinary point of view, the foster family has the belief and practice that no child stands above the law. All children get their due in the areas of nurturance and consequence. Can anyone fault foster parents for wanting to treat the children fair-and-square? No, not at all.

However, what follows in this climate of fairness can upset and destabilize the foster home. Often, in a desperate attempt to re-gain what the child (e.g the prince/princess) feels is his rightful share of attention and approval and status, he (she) resorts to negative-attention-seeking behavior which forces the family to provide him with center stage. In short, the child becomes the “high maintenance” scapegoat. It’s not what he was used to in his family of origin, but it’s a reasonable substitute. Now, instead of the princely role of favorite child, the child commands parent attention as the problem child. He becomes obsessed with what he views as maddeningly unfair, e.g. other children receiving their fair share of parental love and attention. It becomes a constant source of resentment, bitterness and questioning: why am I no longer special? Even if “special” in the family of origin meant that the child was treated, not as a child, but as a sexual partner, the child may pine for the “good old days.” Unfortunately, the way the child pines may be to grow increasingly naughty, demanding, acting-out, rebellious, oppositional and defiant. And, it escalates. A whole array of behavior problems can follow, forcing foster parents to attend (negatively) to their misbehaving prince-in-exile.

In addition, the prince-in-exile can direct anger towards other children in the home. Other children are seen as arch rivals in the fight for center stage. Vengeful, hostile, and even harmful behavior may be vented upon these other youngsters.

So, how should foster parents deal with the child who is a formerly preferred, favored child? Is it wrong for them to treat all their children as special human beings? Certainly not. Should they feed into the child’s distorted view that he, and only he, is worthy of parental love? That doesn’t sound wise or fair. But, what can be done then?

Some Thoughts About Parenting:

It’s always important to know from whence your foster child cometh. That is, knowing your child’s background and history is so important. Understanding your child’s historic role is crucial to helping them overcome the past. If we pressure the child to become “normal” without respect to what they’ve experienced and learned in the past, we invite struggles which could have been avoided. Sadly, we may actually slow the process of positive change. With this in mind, here are a couple of ideas to consider when parenting the prince-in-exile:

1. Try to give the child something of the past role, the special-ness that the child so craves. Of course, you would always avoid the weird, dysfunctional parts. But, look for ways to provide special, positive attention that is normal, healthy, safe, and makes the child feel better. You may need to find safe ways to spend one-on-one time with the child on a daily basis. We are basically trying “preemptive strikes,” that is, sneaking in positives before the child “forces” us to parent negatively.

2. Understand that mere “quality time” as a family may not help. In fact, family time may be more aggravating than helpful for the prince-in-exile, because the child spends more time watching as you give attention to others than appreciating the time you give him.

3. Set up ways for the prince-in-exile to vocalize his frustration at sharing attention. Help the child understand that it’s hard for him or her to share parent time and attention with other children. Without being critical, identify what’s going on. Acknowledge that the child is used to a certain position or place (e.g. the historic role) because of his past. Sympathize with the difficulty the child has in dealing with the change.

4. Try to negotiate ways that the child can feel special again. We want the child to feel special without feeling superior. We want to work out ways that the child can feel special without dysfunction. See if the child can vocalize ways that would help him or her feel special.

5. Keep other children safe from vengeful and hostile behavior from the prince-in-exile.

6. As always, confer with the child’s therapist, caseworker, and other helping professionals so that your parenting coincides with the goals of the “treatment team.” Try to focus upon why the child acts the way he does. Try to avoid taking the negative behavior too personally. Remember the skeletons in the closet.

 

Dr. Rick Delaney - May 2004