Foster and biological parents face many of the same challenges with childrearing. They want their children to develop into happy, responsible, and independent adults. Solving problems and making decisions is essential to childhood learning and growth. Even if the foster care placement is short, adults make a big impact by teaching a child decision-making skills.
As they grow into teenagers, children begin make more decisions that directly affect them. They learn and develop as much, if not more so, from their mistakes as their successes. Foster parents do a disservice to teenage foster children when they make most decisions for the youths. Children must be prepared to fully assume a decision-making role as adults.
By teaching children how to work through each step involved in the decision-making process and allowing them to make decisions, foster parents help children learn valuable skills. The adults can also model appropriate behaviors and bring this to the attention of the child, opening up communication that can otherwise become restricted during teenage years.
Making decisions begins with identifying and defining the issue or problem and listing all possible alternatives or options. Brainstorming with teens allows them to develop a list of ideas without judgment. At the evaluation stage, teens consider the positive and negative aspects of each option, with adults taking a back seat in the process. Careful evaluation should make one option rise to the top.
Once the best option is selected, the teen should create a relevant plan and implement it. It is common to assume that this is the last step. A thorough evaluation of the problem and the solution is also necessary because it is valuable for learning. By identifying what led to the problem and how it was solved, teens can prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future.
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