Whether you have your own family and want to share that love or have never been lucky enough to have children of your own, foster care can offer some amazing opportunities. That said, with foster children inevitably troubled in some instances, and with the need to continually let these kids go after forming a bond, it’s also fair to say that the foster path can be tricky at times. 

Luckily, there are ways for potential foster carers to prepare for these challenges. Seeking professional help and preparation from organizations like Youth Villages is the best option here, but it is also possible to test the foster waters by simply considering the following skills that any future foster father will need to bring to this role. 

# 1 - Acceptance

Foster carers work with children who are coming directly from challenging and sometimes distressing backgrounds. If you enter these agreements with pre-existing expectations of how these kids will be/act, then you only worsen an already tough time for them. By comparison, an accepting foster carer can adjust to these challenges, and help children to see that they are worthy regardless of their past or current behaviors. 

# 2 - Patience

Foster fathers need a great deal of patience when it comes to getting those foster kids on side. After all, improvements here rarely happen overnight, even if you do approach with an accepting mindset. Instead, you need to be willing to work with children through ongoing issues for the duration of their time with you. In some instances, you might not even see improvements before kids move on, but patience and an understanding that this is all part of the process still mean that you can help, even when you don’t personally feel the fruits of that labor. 

# 3 - Communication

Often, foster children come from environments where they’ve been either spoken down to, ignored, or even spoken to aggressively. This can have a major impact on their communication skills, highlighting the need for your communication to be top-notch. In particular, you need to be able to speak with children on a level that shows you respect but also understand them. Equally, your ability to communicate with everyone from that child’s social workers to their doctors, etc. is going to significantly help you to help them. 

# 4 - The art of letting go

As tough as it can be, foster carers often have quite short periods before most children move on to either other foster arrangements or, ideally, adoption. As such, for the sake of your mental health and that of your foster children, you also need to be able to let go and accept that you won’t necessarily be allowed lasting communication with the kids you help, but that this by no means negates the good that you’re doing by opening your home in the first place.

Foster care certainly isn’t for the lighthearted, but if you possess these skills, then it’s just possible you’ll be a fantastic foster father for more kids than you can count.