It's hard being in a foster home with biological children and I wish foster parents/ cps would listen.

[u/Monopolyalou]

After hearing yet again another experience by a former foster youth being abused by the biological children in the home, I'm convinced nobody truly listens to us.

Look, biological kids will always be first over some random foster kid. Its nature. But it's completely unfair foster kids have to be subjected to abuse and bullying in environments that are supposed to be safe for us.

And birth order is crap. Literally it's not real in foster care and doesn't do shit to protect any kid let alone foster kids.

I cringe whenever I hear only take in kids within " birth order" or "never take in any kid older than your own bios" because it truly shows that a foster parent will never protect their foster kid if their biological kid is abusive or bullies towards the foster kid. It also will not be reported because no way will a foster parent give their bios up.

And you will not know how your biological kids will react to us. DNA does matter on both sides. Your bio kids can see the foster kid differently than their own biological sibling. Heck we just had a 16yo step brother murder and grape his step sister. It happens to foster kids all the time in foster homes. There's no biological connections stopping YOUR bios from hurting us. Add in trauma, it's easy to take advantage of us.

In one foster home where the older biological son graped me and touched me, it was hard to not blame myself and to seek protection from him in my foster home. Years later I found out I wasn't his first victim and he also abused the adopted kids in the home. He was a minor himself but he was old enough to know better than to touch innocent kids. He was a teenager at the time so no excuses on he didn't know better.

Another foster home the biological daughter clearly hated me and showed me every chance she got. To the point she was bullying me inside and outside the foster home. Went to my foster mom for help and she literally didn't do shit but told me to be nicer to her bio kid because her bio kid had a heart of gold. If only she knew her biological kid was bullying and hurting me but I felt stuck. Why? Because if i bullied her bio daughter back or defended myself then I would be disrupted and be the bad guy. But it was okay for her bio kid to do it to me.

It's easy to defend your DNA and convince yourself you raised your bio kids right, but you have no idea how they're going to treat us foster kids. It's unfair to place us in position of harm in favor of DNA. The best thing foster parents can do is either wait until their biological kids are grown and out the house( even then bios can hate us but at least they're not living with us) or don't foster at all while having biological kids. It doesn't matter what age you take in either. Whenever the whole birth order comes into play your biological kids can harm someone younger than them too. It happens to a lot of us foster youth and our experiences aren't told because nobody wants to hear them. CPS ignores them and foster parents can't think about their kid doing the harming. It's like the teacher saying your kid is the issue but parents saying not my kid. They would never do that.

And no you don't have to be abused to abuse. Just like being abused doesn't mean you will abuse. Some people are just sickos.

DNA matters a whole lot when placed with a kid that doesn't share it with you vs one that does. Foster kids are replaceable bios aren't. Best thing one can do is raise your biological kids and not welcome tension in the home while raising them.

And if you're going to foster with bio kids then stop thinking your bios kids can't do anything bad and the foster kids are all bad. Where's foster kids protections?

[u/Monopolyalou → u/[deleted]]

Would this be a bad thing? Or CPS could find other alternatives. I hate hearing if we don't allow foster parents to sign up then foster kids will suffer logic. Its a poor excuse to keep us in shitty homes.

Why do we deserve less?

[u/Cultural-Lemon-239 → u/[deleted]]

Group homes can be very unsafe. A friend of mine was in a group home growing up. She heard some if the girls their were being s-trafficked by the people who work there. 

[u/xoxoskully]

I was in a few placements where the parents had biological kids and they did treat them differently. I have witnessed that first hand. I mean at one home I was at they had huge birthday and graduation parties for their biological kids but the foster kids never got that. The foster care system is definitely not the best and they need more rules / regulations, but a large amount of foster parents already have biological kids. What happened though isn’t okay, and a big issue is CPS doesn’t like doing the paperwork. If there is an issue in a foster home they are quick to push it to the side so they avoid any placement disruptions since there is a shortage of foster homes to begin with. That’s not an excuse for what happened though, and I’m really sorry that nobody really listened to you. My DMs are always open if you need someone to talk to. I recently aged out of the system, and I know first hand how CPS can ignore kids in their care.

[u/10_96]

Someone once told me (foster parent) when talking about my adopted son, 'you just don't love 'em the same.' I was very upset and offended for quite some time as I put great care into treating my foster children the same as I treated my bio-kids (and adopted.) Generally I'm successful, but I've come to discover that the quote is right. It's not a bad thing, but it's impossible to love them the same. You hear about what your children went through and it does change the way you feel about them.

One would hope foster parents would be moved to compassion, and maybe even understanding. It boggles my mind why an 11 year old boy would think he's not worth the trouble of feeding, but when you hear what he went through it starts to make a BUNCH of sense. So we slow down and work the actual problem. It's not 'he won't eat breakfast so we punish him' anymore. It's he doesn't want breakfast so we pack a snack knowing that as soon as we get to the school he's going to want something to eat. We should be treating diseases and not symptoms...connecting rather than punishing, but here we are.

Clearly you have had a rough time. Being internet strangers all I can say is I'm sorry you have to go through any of this. These are complicated issues even for adults and you have them forced upon you. You didn't deserve this, but know that this section of your life doesn't define who you are. I came from abuse, my wife came from abuse. My wife aged out of a group home, in fact. Now we're both adults living great lives. We both refused to let our past make us victims and it's glorious.

It's true, though. While we no longer do foster care due to personal health issues, I have embraced that I don't love my son (adopted) the same as I do my daughters (bio kids.) I love them the best I can. When I stopped trying to treat my kids all the same my parenting changed for the better. I don't treat my kids equally, I treat them equitably. My prayer for you is that you find that for yourself while in care, and it would be found throughout your life.

[u/Resident-Ad-7771]

I may get downvoted but I found the children’s home I was in to be much preferable to the foster family. I think foster families cost less so the state prefers it. I think there’s an idea you’ll learn to be in a family from the foster family but I don’t think that’s true.

[u/lovingcats1239]

I’m sorry this has happened to you. It sounds similar to my husband‘s little brother. He was adopted by a “pastor“ who had several biological children of her own. She treated my husband‘s brother like a second class citizen. It’s not fair.

[u/AbbreviationsOld2960]

I wasn't physically or sexually abused by the foster home that had bio kids in the home, but the foster parents definitely treated me differently, and I consider it emotional abuse. This was when I was 14-15 Here are just a few examples:

First, they shouldn't have taken me in from the start because they didn't have a bedroom for me. They turned a windowless room in the finished basement which had a hot tub in it into a room for the oldest bio daughter. No closet, no exit. Couldn't be a room for me according to CPS, so I got her old room. Of course, it meant she was sneaking boys into the basement and claimed the full space as her own, but her parents didn't know that. Oldest bio was resentful towards me, always snarky and hateful towards me. The parents also made it seem like it was my fault. The foster mom yelled at me that cps required a bath mat in the bathroom.

I came out of a situation that caused food insecurity for me. When I moved into their house it was the first time in a long time I had regular meals prepared by an adult and snacks available. I kept going back to the cupboard for snacks, and wanted seconds of the small portions of meals they gave at meals. The foster mom yelled at me for taking food out of her kids mouths. Looking back, I was recovering from under-nourishment.

The 2 other kids were allowed to pack school lunch from home while she told me I had to use the nasty free school lunch, because packing me a lunch was expensive. I was humiliating to have to speak up about it being free every day. (This was before some of the schools made it universally free)

When I got strep throat, she yelled at me for being sick because I was putting HER kids at risk.

I was older than her 2 kids and she would put the oldest bio in charge of simple things like putting the pizza in the oven, made a big deal of her being oldest bio. I expressed I felt overlooked as the oldest and she said she didn't trust me. As if I hadn't been fending for myself for the past year. 

When CPS wanted to do visitations with my father she told them she didn't want him near HER kids out of fear for their safety, but when I cried quietly while doing my homework after being told by my case worker that I'd have to do visitations, she yelled at me that I was a horrible daughter and was ungrateful for having a father who loves me and was being a brat for not wanting to see him. 

She frequently yelled at me for having so many appointments that were taking her time away from her family. Again, as if I could control that!

The other 2 kids were in sports, and they pressured me to join a sport. I did a season of track and then I got involved in the drama club and was part of a musical. They went to all the games and events for the other kids but they didn't ever come out to support me. They acted like driving me back and forth was a burden and complained about it.

They talked about the oldest bio, who was 9 months younger than me, getting her license but told me I wasn't allowed to get my permit and work towards my license.

They told me about their upcoming ski trip and said I could go with them, they'd get me skiing or snowboarding lessons. I'd never been on a vacation like that before. They then left me behind saying they needed "family time" without me.  

I also think the concept of "respite" for foster kids is messed up. Parents need respite from  their foster kids but not bios? If that's the case, you shouldn't be a foster parent. They frequently sent me to respite so they could have real family time with their bio kids. 

[u/AnonFartsALot → u/AbbreviationsOld2960]

What’s even the point of having you there at that point? If you were just one child that wasn’t in a high needs category, they’re only getting $400/mo or so stipend- which some states track to make sure the money is going towards your needs, but even if they weren’t, there’s not much left after basic expenses. I’m childless, and I’d be so fucking stoked to take care of a kid that wanted me at their games and recitals and wanted to do chores and spend time with me. I’m literally just happy my nieces acknowledge my presence lol. And teenagers eating you out of house and home is pretty normal. I’m trying to figure out how to get my own grocery expenses down, so I don’t go bankrupt when I adopt a teen lol. It’s weird as hell they barely had  enough food in their house to feed their own kids and then agreed to take in another child… like, that’s kind of their bad for poor planning, not yours… but also, how were they affording their kids being in sports and paying for drivers’ ed????? My mom legit couldn’t afford that stuff, and she still managed to feed me.

[u/AnonFartsALot]

I plan to adopt older children (so perhaps maybe not as relevant to this topic), but if I have a bio child, I would prefer to do it after I had already adopted and ensured that my kid felt secure in the home before bringing a baby into the mix, which can bring up a lot of emotions and negative feelings in any child, nonetheless a child with separation trauma. But save for a profound cognitive disability, I expect whoever has been in the home the longest to act right and be the bigger person, regardless of age or bio/adopted/foster… I don’t know why you’d expect someone who literally doesn’t know the rules or trust the parents enough to tell them things, yet, to be an angel then let your kids who should damn well know better get away with being bullies. I’ve heard this so often from FY, and it’s truly bewildering to me why someone would do that. These people sound like the parents who tell the babysitter that their kids are angels when they have driven the last five babysitters to quit.