Cultivating Resilience

Foster children live through many experiences that others do not. Through those experiences, they must learn and develop skills that many don’t. Due to their Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), they must develop survival skills to adapt and navigate life much earlier than most. The resilience these children have is something to celebrate. Their ability to adapt, prosper, learn, and grow differently than others is a sign of strength and durability. Foster children have skills that can take others much longer to learn and those skills will be beneficial throughout their life.

What kind of skills do foster children learn through ACEs?

One, for example, is adaptability. While change can be a scary thing, especially for children who have had their stability uprooted, it teaches a child to learn how to adapt in different environments. They also learn how to do this at a much quicker speed than the average person. Since foster children often are moved from home to home and are used to change being out of their control, they must learn to accept change in their life, whether difficult or not, and learn those new environments quickly to survive.

Another skill they learn is resilience. Foster Children experience trauma, neglect, abuse, poverty, and so much more. They must learn how to build endurance, perseverance, strength, and develop different coping mechanisms to get them through it. This helps with getting through difficult times later in life.

Environmental awareness is a common skill children in foster care develop due to being in dysregulated environments. Many children grow up knowing that a shift in tone or mood can indicate a possible change in their environment. Sometimes this can mean they have reason to believe they are not safe if something in their environment changes. They spend a lot of time analyzing behavior. A sudden change in tone can ring alarm bells to someone who is hypervigilant. Those with hypervigilance and environmental awareness are able to read people better and detect danger where others may be less aware. They are also able to detect a person’s mood to know when someone may not be okay.

Self-reliance is common for those who often believe they, themselves, are the only person they can depend on for their well-being, which is common for foster children. This can mean if there is something they need help with, a foster child will more likely try to figure out how to take care of it themselves before ever asking for help. This builds self-discipline and willpower which can be important for aging out foster youth who are about to enter adulthood on their own.

Problem-solving is something foster children must learn when faced with life-altering challenges at such a young age. This can look like learning how to emotionally regulate, independently think, and analyze situations to find the best outcome and solution. This is very essential to thriving in their adult life.

Lastly, foster children are no strangers to self-preservation. When their entire life has been a constant state of needing protection they often don’t receive, it is normal that they become overly protective of their safety and well-being. This can look like avoiding environments that feel unsafe or setting boundaries with people that disrupt their safe space. This can be a helpful skill when every day we are faced with situations where we must discern if things are safe and good for us or not. This also teaches self-care when at such a young age that care was neglected.

It is important to note that not all of these specific skills apply to every single foster child, but every foster child develops valuable skills through their experiences. Every single foster child deserves to be celebrated. They often feel that there is nothing good that comes out of what they went through, or that their trauma and unfair experiences have taken so much away from their lives. But that does not have to be true. Foster children are resilient, adaptable, hypervigilant, self-reliant, problem-solving, self-preserving warriors. What has come out of their upbringing can also be a tool to allow them to thrive.

These children did not ask to go through trauma. They did not ask to be removed from their home. They did not ask to spend years wondering if stability and security were something they could have. But it did make them uniquely skilled and strong. So this National Foster Care Month, we celebrate our beloved foster children and their cultivated resilience! Every foster child is amazing and capable of so much success. We appreciate and love our fellow foster community. Thank you to those who support foster children in their journey towards healing and utilizing skills.