The Right Way To Have a Foster Shower

Every time I see a post or a story about someone hosting a “foster shower,” I cringe. I can’t help it.

What is a foster shower? Ostensibly, it’s an effort to welcome a new child into a foster home. Or it’s a way for family and friends to offer support to a soon-to-be-growing family. Gifts are common, as with baby showers, plus gift cards and money for the coming expenses.

There is often some sort of toast. Or cake. Or some ritualized way of congratulating the family, as one might if the family was giving birth to a baby.

If there’s a child already in the home, there will likely be a telling of the child’s story, complete with as many invasive and gruesome details as possible. Count on at least one guest to shake ahead and offer a solemn, “You’re such a blessing for those kids.”

There will be no mention of loss. No acknowledgment that this moment of growing one family means the disruption of another. There will be no enthusiastic hopes pinned on the child’s successful reunification with their parents.

Someone will call you Mommy or Daddy, and everyone else will smile.

...

Just writing that made my skin crawl.

Foster parenting is a different kind of parenting journey. It’s still a journey, and it’s still mine, and I still deserve the support and love of my community while I’m on it. But I’m not willing to accept love and support that comes with harmful assumptions and damaging attitudes.

A bad foster shower uses a kid’s story to make a hero of the parent, celebrates the growing family without acknowledging the loss, and, perhaps worst of all — involves the child by having them be physically present to be appropriately publicly grateful.

A bad foster shower kicks everything off on a crash of bad notes. It screams, “I care more about how others think of me than I do about your pain.” It says, “You, child, are a fabulous accessory in the photo booth of my life.”

The good news? Better is possible. The number one thing you can do to avoid most of the above pitfalls is simple: have your shower before any kids arrive.

When we had our foster shower, we did it about three weeks before our license officially went through, ensuring that our shower wouldn’t be influenced by the presence or promise of any particular kid. This is easy to do because licensing takes forever. You’ll have plenty of time to plan and execute.

Foster showers are an awesome space for ritual. So are baby showers — think of all those shower games that everyone hates and everyone plays. But you get a chance here to do something a little different. This is what we did:

1. Paperwork Station! We played it off like kind of a “ha-ha, all the paperwork of foster care” joke, but we set up a laptop with multiple open documents; one was for peoples’ names and addresses to give to our caseworker for childcare approval; one was just for us, and included names, phone numbers, and a description of what they’d like to help with (parent’s helper? housework? shopping? meals? rides to court and therapy?); and one for people to leave notes of general encouragement.

2. Candle Wishes: my partner and I each lit a big (novena/yahrzeit style) candle and said an out-loud wish for ourselves — mine was, “I hope that we can still show up to things regularly and be in community without making you all come to us ALL the time.” Then, each guest took a small candle, lit it off our big ones, and gave us a wish/prayer/piece of advice until we had a nice big tray full of burning lights.

3. We read Sharon Astyk’s phenomenal essay about things foster parents wish you knew. Had it been written then, I would’ve also read something from the fantastic writer and former foster youth, Sweetiele Moon. Maybe this piece or this piece.

4. We had a Q&A for all the assembled (“Will you be adopting? How old will the kids be? Will you get to know their parents? How long will they be with you?”) This was important because it gave people a chance to ask ALL their questions - and let us teach them which are appropriate to ask, and which are no one's business but our kids'.

5. There was a big cake and a potluck. The pagan friend who brought it explained that oak leaves and acorns are a symbol of new growth. (pictured below)

6. Everyone helped paint a picture that one of our close inner-circle people designed (pictured at top) with our family motto: You got this. We got you.

People asked if they could bring gifts, but we didn’t know the ages of any kids that might come to us, and we were open to a fairly wide range of ages. Mindful of the things we’d heard from former foster youth and adult adoptees about gifts to foster parents, we settled on something that could truly support our incoming youth: we suggested gift cards to both local and big box stores and saved them.

Our first three kids used those gift cards to outfit their bedrooms with decorations, curtains, and even bedding of their choosing (if they didn’t like what we had.) The money we saved on those things was passed to future kids, for whom we bought gift cards of their own.

(You can still do this with very young children. Even if a child is too young to go shopping on their own, you can take them to pick out their own books, toys, or bedding that will be permanently theirs, even if they move on from your home or reunify. If you take infants or children under age 1, they’re perfect to buy things like picture or scrapbook albums to create memory books for kids to have as they grow. The idea is to use gift money to buy gifts, not necessities.)

At the end of our foster shower, we had a beautiful piece of artwork that showcased the love of our community. What’s more, we had a solid group of people who truly understood some of what we were headed into and how they’d be able to play a meaningful role in our kids’ lives.

You don’t have to do everything you did to do it right. You can make your own traditions and celebrations for your foster shower. Just stick to three basic rules:

1. Host your shower BEFORE any children arrive.

2. Honor and emphasize the losses kids must endure before they come to your home.

3. Use it as a chance to educate people! There’s a steep learning curve for this stuff, and nobody gets it Right All The Time, but you can head off a lot of painful, cringe moments with a little proactive learning.

Now kick back, eat some cake, and welcome to the ride.