Welcome to Foster Family Matters

Thank you for joining us! Welcome to another episode of Foster Family Matters with your hosts Shawn Wilson, Ryan North, and Lori Fangue. If you don’t already know, we are a foster care, adoption, and behavior health non-profit in North Texas.

What Are We Chatting About Today?

Today’s episode is a continuation of one we started last time talking about relationships. Specifically, we will be looking at indicators of healthy relationships. What truly makes a healthy relationship? There are four tenants; giving nurture, receiving nurture, negotiating wants and needs and being interdependent. We will dive into each of these during our four-part series.

All Things Social Media

We are currently focused on social media and trying to grow the show. We are extremely grateful and excited about the success we’ve seen so far. We’ve also started posting video versions of the show on Facebook and YouTube as well as highlights on Instagram TV. Make sure to check those out!

If you aren’t already a member, you can also join our Facebook group called Foster Family Matters to find community with likeminded parents. The group is really about relationships in a familial setting and connecting with people who have similar interests in improving relationships.

A Little Background

Jude Cassidy did some research and formulated a theory that there are four things that a secure relationship in order to be healthy and positive. Today we are specifically talking about the ability to receive nurture and care.

In This Episode

Receiving nurture and care
Taking care of someone vs doing something for someone
Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps
How receiving care looks
Not taking how someone receives care personally
The practice of accepting nurture and care

What does it really mean to receive nurture and care? That is what we are talking about today. It can be hard to allow someone else to step in. It can take a conscious effort to allow others to really take care of you. There are many reasons for this. Most are centered around belief systems, coping mechanisms and the way we are accustomed to receiving care.

It’s easy to fall into being an independent person and rejecting the help of others. To be in a healthy relationship, it requires give and take. That means you have to be willing to take and willing to receive love and care.

Smart people ask for help. Healthy people ask for help. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Even though this goes against a lot of popular belief. Vulnerability is important to healthy relationships, it’s not a sign of weakness or something to afraid of.

We are continuously growing in relationship with people. For foster parents, the moment the children come home we just want the relationship to be where we think it should be. Yet that’s not always the case. For most foster children, taking care of themselves has been part of their survival mode. They’ve learned survival skills and it’s going to be hard to let those go. It’s going to take time to develop that ability to receive care.

We tend to want to receive care in a way that feels familiar to us. Kids may only know care as neglect or abuse. They are waiting for the fists, red faces, yelling, screaming, etc. It’s not care; but that’s the only care that some kids have ever known.

Sometimes kids won’t take care the way we expect and then we take it personally. Giving care is just as important as receiving care. We must receive care so others can give care.

Learn more about receiving care in a healthy way, being patient as we grow in our ability to receive care and this important component of having healthy relationships in this episode of Foster Family Matters.

Final Thoughts

If you ask for help, it means you aren’t pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which creates cultural tension for us because that’s what we are supposed to do and be. Vulnerability has wrongly become categorized as weakness. Whereas, really, it’s a sign of strength.

Connect

Show Website: www.fosterfamilymatters.org

Show Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/fosterfamilymatters

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