Children in foster care and early coping behavior development

Children of Incarcerated

Children on Incarcerated

CHILDREN of Incarserated Parents

Children of Incarcerated Parents

Coping with Separation

Children of Incarcerated Parents

This paper will show the issues children face when their parents are arrested and consequently incarcerated. Children are not all the same, and it shows that younger children can easier cope with this issue, while older children are in need for help. Is our system set-up to allow for this help to be provided? Can we ensure that our foster system works the way it should work? All these questions will be answered in the following pages.

We all have seen the scene in a movie or a TV-Show where a person is arrested and brought to jail, and their children are taken away. Children whose parents have been arrested and incarcerated face unique difficulties. Many have experienced the trauma of sudden separation from their parent, and most are vulnerable to feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression and guilt. They may be moved from one foster family to another foster family (Wear Simmons, 2000). What happens next? Without the proper help those children will end up most likely the same way as their parents.

COPING WITH SEPARATION

While our legal system does not seem to care about these children and their future, our foster care systems does not provide the necessary care and treatment for these children. As Charlotte Weldon writes in her article "Effects from foster care, focusing on the psychological development of childhood, are severely untreated. Consequently, children placed in foster care suffer from emotional scars that, when left untreated, have great effects on the remainder of the children's lives." In other words, it becomes clear that children of incarcerated parents have to cope with a high load of issues (mainly loss or separation) and the fact that their parents, whether liked by society or not, are not around for a possible long period of time. Every child needs its parents and as the saying goes "You can't replace your parents."

How do these children cope with the loss of their parents?

"Every child undergoes challenges from different stages of psychological development. In addition to the normal obstacles, foster children are faced with other psychological demands to master. In order to experience all the emotions presented in changing homes, foster children must master and deal with feelings provoked by separation from their biological parents and the feelings resulting from being presented with new parents." (Weldon, 2001).

The issue is with separation is less evident in younger children due to the lack of time perception and the struggle of placement (Weldon, 2001). Children at a younger age have the capability to accept the current situation there are in since it will appear to them as this would be normal. Furthermore, younger children do not have the attachment to their biological parents as older children will have. This is because younger children can conclude that the current home is home by relinquishing emotional ties to the previous home (Weldon, 2001). While older children are aware of the loss of their parents and are trying to find a replacement or substitute to associate with and to do what they had done with their parent

FOSTER CARE TURN AROUND

Children in foster care are usually replaced about 3 times into different environments. These children will develop a resistance toward new environments, new foster parents, and a new family. It will definitely not be easy for these children to adapt to this ever changing environment since they do not know when it will be the last time they have to move. While younger children can easier cope with these situations, older children cannot. We have to understand that these changes can lead in the long run to a serious problem with and for the child. Scars resulting from numerous separations and placements and no treatment can be critical, sometimes progressing to the point of autism (Weldon, 2001). If the child reaches this state it cannot develop its own personality and may lose the trust in people. A normal assumption on the part of the child would be that love is followed by loss. If this becomes the child's mind set then it will be unable to make friends and to function properly in society.

Our foster care system should provide for these situations. It is understood that not every foster parent can be a psychologist, yet some training in this direction would be very helpful for those children. A regular check with foster families can also help and keep the control on the system and not giving up on the children.

The main reason for children to be apart from their biological parents is abuse, neglect, drug use, death, and incarceration of one or both parents. If the following experience for the child becomes very negative and can be connected to the foster care system, then the child may look into the way its parents used to live and try to follow in their footsteps. Children who have had multiple negative experiences and many unhealthy changes in their foster environments may not be able to live up to the standards and expectation society has for them. These children are so called "doomed" since a large part of society does not understand their issues and their needs, and therefore these children won't get the proper help they would need.

"As a result of experiencing physical abuse and neglect as a very young child and receiving no treatment for reactive attachment disorder, the effects at times may be very severe. In very few cases, these foster children grow up to become sociopaths and a severe threat to society. They may murder and rape countless victims as a result of never developing a conscience in the first few years of life, having no concept of right and wrong" (Weldon, 2001).

CONCLUSION