Article Summary: Fostering a child in need can be a beautiful experience, but it can also be incredibly stressful. That’s why therapy for foster parents is important. Therapy can help foster parents develop new tools, process their own emotions, and understand the pain and frustration the foster child likely feels.
Foster parents fill an incredibly important role in society, but their responsibilities are rarely easy. That’s why we advocate so strongly that foster parents consider attending therapy.
As we’ll explain later, the data around foster children is heartbreaking. Most of these kids have experienced neglect, child abuse, sexual abuse, or the death of a loved one.
And all of that trauma is then carried into the foster home.
If you’re not ready for the hurdles that come with being a fostering parent, you could face an incredibly difficult time adjusting to this new lifestyle.
Tip: Check out our Adoption Counseling Services.
Table of Contents
Questions to Ask Before Fostering
Why Is Therapy for Foster Parents So Important?
What Does Therapy For Foster Parents Look Like?
Our Message for Potential Foster Parents
Access Therapy for Foster Parents
Questions to Ask Before Fostering
1. What can you handle? What can’t you handle?
Many children in the foster care system suffer from PTSD, mental delays, physical delays, and emotional issues.
Will you be able to remain calm and helpful even after prolonged behavioral problems in your home? To test yourself, consider these questions:
- Can you manage an eight-year-old with severe anger issues?
- Can you manage a nonverbal seven-year-old who still isn’t potty trained?
- Can you manage a 10-year-old who’s never been to school?
Understanding your limits can help you determine whether fostering a child is really a good idea for you—and it will also help you prepare to discuss your preferences with the agency early on in the fostering process.
Related Reading: Therapy for Involuntary Childlessness
2. Are you fostering to provide respite, or are you fostering to adopt?
Before beginning your fostering journey, it’s important to understand your long-term goals—and to be honest with yourself about them.
Some families become foster parents because they simply want to provide a safe, loving home for children during a difficult season of life. Others hope fostering will eventually lead to adoption. Both motivations are valid, but they create very different expectations.
If your primary goal is adoption, remember that the foster care system is generally designed around family reunification whenever it’s safe and possible. In many cases, your role is to care for a child while their biological family works toward reunification.
Understanding that reality beforehand can help prepare you for the emotional challenges that may come if a child returns home. Knowing your goals—and discussing them openly with your agency—can also help ensure you’re matched with children whose situations align with your family’s expectations.
3. Why do you feel called to be a foster parent?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question, but there should be an honest one.
Some people foster because they feel a deep calling to serve vulnerable children. Others have experienced adoption or foster care themselves. Some hope to grow their family after struggling with infertility or involuntary childlessness. Others simply want to make a positive difference in their community.
Whatever your reason, take time to reflect on your motivations before opening your home.
Fostering isn’t about “saving” a child or expecting gratitude in return. Instead, it’s about providing safety, stability, and unconditional care during one of the most difficult periods of a child’s life. Understanding your own motivations—and any expectations that come with them—can help you become a more patient, resilient, and compassionate foster parent, regardless of how long a child remains in your home.
4. What will you do if the child goes back?
In many cases, the county (or other governing body) wants to keep families together—not tear them apart.
That could mean you have just enough time with a child to get them settled—and then the county suddenly takes them back to their home.
You need to ask yourself an important question: Can you handle that?
And, if you decide to foster a second time: Can you handle that happening again?
Being mentally and emotionally prepared for the rollercoaster of childcare can help you, as the parent, have a more positive experience.
Why Is Therapy for Foster Parents So Important?
Yes, foster children should likely attend therapy to manage their own trauma and emotional wounds (Tip: Read 6 Signs of Adoption Trauma In Adults), but therapy can be equally useful for foster parents.
Here’s why:
1. Foster parenting is emotionally and psychologically demanding.
Parenting is already challenging enough, but foster parenting is even harder. Numerous studies have shown foster parents manage higher rates of:
- Stress
- Depression
- Anxiety
Foster parents are also more likely to experience secondary traumatic stress—when a foster parent absorbs some of the trauma and stress the foster child experiences.
One study found two surprising statistics:
- 50% of foster parents experience moderate secondary traumatic stress symptoms.
- 24% of foster parents experience serious secondary traumatic stress symptoms that are bad enough to warrant clinical attention.
That leads us to our second point…
2. Foster children can create new challenges for you.
It’s well known that children in foster care have high rates of PTSD. In fact, 90% of these children have been exposed to trauma, like child abuse, neglect, or the death of a loved one.
That’s already challenging enough. But that trauma and neglect may also mean:
- Social anxiety and panic attacks
- Developmental delays
- Mental disabilities
- Physical disabilities
None of these are easy to manage, and they will require deep patience, compassion, and empathy.
3. You might be simultaneously managing feelings from involuntary childlessness.
Many who decide to foster do so because they can’t have children anymore.
This sort of involuntary childlessness can be its own form of loss, and it can cause intense mourning.
Not addressing this wound can create issues in other areas of your life, and that’s essential to overcome so you can properly care for your foster child.
4. Foster parenting can end in loss.
We’ve seen it over and over and over again:
A foster family receives a foster child. They help them unpack, welcome them into the home, enjoy life together… And then the county takes the child back—often because of something that happened in the legal system.
It’s frustrating at best, and it’s heartbreaking at worst.
In some cases, these foster parents will never see or hear from the foster child ever again.
It’s incredibly common. Children who’ve been in foster care for at least two years experience at least three moves, leading to “placement disruption.”
It’s obviously hard on the child, but it can create equally difficult emotions for the foster parents and foster siblings.
What Does Therapy For Foster Parents Look Like?
1. It’s An Opportunity to Understand Yourself
Foster parenting has a way of bringing your own emotions, past experiences, and parenting style to the surface. Therapy provides a safe space to explore your triggers, expectations, fears, and strengths.
By developing greater self-awareness, you’ll be better equipped to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting emotionally when challenges arise, creating a healthier environment for both you and your foster child.
2. It’s An Opportunity to Understand the Foster Child
Many foster children have experienced significant trauma, neglect, abuse, or loss before entering your home. Therapy can help you better understand how those experiences shape a child’s behaviors, emotions, and relationships.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with this child?” you’ll begin asking, “What happened to this child?”
That shift in perspective can build greater empathy, patience, and compassion while helping you respond in ways that foster healing rather than unintentionally reinforcing fear.
3. It’s An Opportunity to Vent Your Frustrations
Foster parenting can be emotionally exhausting, and it’s important to have a place where you can honestly express your feelings without fear of judgment.
Therapy offers a confidential environment to talk through frustrations, disappointments, grief, anger, and even moments of self-doubt. Rather than bottling up difficult emotions, you can process them in healthy ways, reducing stress and preventing burnout while allowing you to show up as the best version of yourself for your family.
4. It’s An Opportunity to Develop New Skills
Every foster child has different needs, and therapy can equip you with practical tools to meet them.
Your therapist may help you:
- strengthen communication
- manage conflict
- establish healthy boundaries
- regulate your own emotions
- respond effectively to trauma-related behaviors
You’ll also learn strategies for navigating interactions with:
- biological families
- caseworkers
- schools
- the foster care system itself.
These skills not only make foster parenting more manageable—they also help create a stable, nurturing home where children can begin to heal.
Our Message for Potential Foster Parents
I’m an adoptive mom.
Many people on our team have worked with foster parents.
We have a deep perspective on working with foster families and adoption scenarios. Through everything we’ve seen, we’ve come to believe that all foster parents should go in with the same child-first mentality:
No matter what happens, I’m going to give this child the most love, security, and safety they could possibly have.
Even if they go back to their birth parents, and even if they get moved to another foster home, they can always remember a time when they were genuinely loved and cared for.
That will be because of you.
Access Therapy for Foster Parents
If you’d like to book a therapy session as a foster parent, contact us.
We’ll pair you with one of our compassionate therapists.