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Education is an essential part of a child’s development but foster children suffer trauma that can harm their progression. Some foster children may not feel comfortable about the prospect of going to school, especially in a new setting. To help support your foster child, you need to practice patience and put strategies into place to help them overcome these justified negative feelings. Throughout this article, we’ll give you our top five tips for supporting your foster children’s education.
Communicate with the School
Depending on personal circumstances, foster children may struggle with open communication, so they may be missing a vital part of the puzzle when they’re having difficulties with their schoolwork. Therefore, you must build a positive rapport with their teachers because they’re the only people in a position to tell you how your foster child is truly getting along at school. As well as this, they can help you put a plan in place for offering support at home.
Extracurricular Activities
Extracurricular activities are a fantastic opportunity to enrich the life of your foster children, so it’s important to find something they will enjoy. A great way to do this is to have open conversations with your foster children, as they will eventually warm to you and start opening up. However, if you’re struggling to form positive relationships with your foster children, get in touch with your agency for help.
Reading Time
Whether you’re registered with fcascotland.co.uk or another reputable foster agency, you will have been told during training about the importance of spending time with your foster child. Fortunately, you can do this while making efforts to support their education. For example, you can allocate time to share a book, which will help boost comprehension and imaginative thinking.
Tackling Homework
Your foster child may have come from a home where education wasn’t a priority, meaning homework wasn’t placed in a position of importance. Therefore, it’s essential that you lay down ground rules where homework is concerned. To start with, this could simply be one hour an evening where you are available if they need help.
A great way to motivate your foster child to engage with this system is using a start chart. If they complete one hour of homework everything evening after school for a week, you can reward them at the weekend. To choose a reward, communicate with your foster child to see what they will enjoy.
Building Friendships
Positive friendships is another essential part of a child’s development. However, your foster child may not have been taught how to interact properly with others. If this is the case, spend time teaching your foster children how to communicate properly with their classmates, and more importantly, to make lasting friends. You can facilitate this by arranging playdates for your foster children outside of school, even if it’s a visit to the park.
Education is one of the primary building blocks of childhood because it has an enormous impact on the type of person they will grow up to be. While a foster child is in your care, it is your responsibility to make sure educational experiences are positive.
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