#aging out of foster care | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

onceuponafosterkid · 8 months ago

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I moved in with my foster parents when I was 15. I don’t live with them anymore, but my apartment is five minutes away from their house and I still see them all the time. I don’t always vocalize to my foster mom when I’m struggling because I know she has a house full of kids to worry about, and I don’t want to burden her. I swear she has this sixth sense though, because whenever I start spiraling it’s like she knows. If it’s been a few days since we’ve talked, she’ll call me and check on me, or invite me over for dinner. She’s even driven over here to pick me up to run errands with them and get lunch, just us. Sometimes I look through our texts and it’s impossible to not see how much she loves me, just from those texts. The other day I finally told her and my foster dad a little bit about what I’ve been struggling with, and they just listened to me vent, and they reassured me, and gave me advice. I’m not her blood, but she knows me better than anyone and I think that’s how she always knows, even without me telling her. I don’t know how she does it, but I’m so grateful for both of them. I know that no matter how messy my life gets, I can always come home to them, no questions asked. This is what foster care is supposed to be. I moved out almost three years ago, but they still save my seat at the dinner table. They don’t adopt kids, they never wanted us to feel like some of us were better than others, and they can’t take all of us. In the 39 years they’ve been foster parents, they’ve raised over 300 kids, but they make sure that I know I will always have a place in their lives. So when I think about what love looks like, that’s what I picture, them.

#mental health #foster care #mentalheathawareness #ptsd #ptsd recovery #trauma #foster kids #fostercareawareness #childhood trauma #aging out of foster care

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ex-foster · 2 months ago

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Mood.

This is so relatable and I want to share it on my Facebook profile but honestly the stigma of being a former foster kid is just too much sometimes. People have never responded to any of my posts about foster care, not a single reaction, "like", "share", "care". It's like I make people so uncomfortable they just run away and it makes me feel so alone and weird.

I'm not homeless but I think people's stigma towards former foster youth is similar. It's like people avoid eye contact with you as if you are a begger. I have a white collar job and I'm salary. I am a foster care success story and although I'm so proud of my achievements, people often treat me with such an uncomfortable pity and social ostracization that I just no longer want to socialize at all.

#foster care #foster kids #aging out #Aging out of foster care #Foster kid voices #Group homes #Adoption and foster care #FFY opinions #Aging out statistics

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fokikowest · 6 months ago

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These L.A. foster kids defied the odds when they aged out: ‘This isn’t the end of my story’

#aging out of foster care #foster care #personal stories #dickensian #in the U.S.#american exceptionalism

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mtsu4u · 1 year ago

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#mtsu4umisc #child welfare #foster care #aging out of foster care #aging out #extension of foster care #juvenile law center

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tiffanybluesclues · 6 months ago

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Every week someone makes a post about how annoying it is that Dick Grayson fans don't acknowledge his flaws, and every week someone replies with an explanation that the flaws OP listed are entirely fanon and inconsistent with canon as it actually happened and at this point I have to assume that none of those explanations are ever going to stick because clearly some people just want the fanon to be true.

Anyway, I'm just putting this here for me to edit and add relevant-to-the-topic links later so I'll have them nicely at hand to read and sooth my frustrations when it gets real bad out there. (Echo chambers are good when we use them to drown out character mischaracterizing fanon.)

#dick grayson #canon vs fanon #yes this is about 'dick was a bad brother to jason' yet again #😮‍💨#super problematic how dick didn't pack up his life & become a devoted big brother to the new son of a man who had already disowned dick #like in-universe he is respectfully supportive of the kid who's wearing his name and uniform #but he was also a 19 year old living in a different city and not given any indication that he was a member of bruce's family so...?#dc comics #this fanon tendency to try to cram nuclear family dynamics and angst onto relationships that do not fit that mold arghhh #add to that how real-world knowledge makes it extra ridiculous to act as if 'omg dick was such a jerk for not being there for jason!!!'#yes their interactions were minimal - I'm pretty sure that keeping dick as a titans character was the entire reason jason existed!#let's be real about jason: his character & what led to him being robin were completely different pre-crisis + his post-crisis run was brief #understandably there are 'flashback' stories to flesh out his time as robin. the worst of these disregard characterization from that time #but even with flashbacks the worst that canon actually shows would be that they weren't close? which...okay?#idk what kind of expectations some people have for the former-ward so sort of foster kid who was explicitly kicked out of bruce wayne's lif #apparently he should've 1) begged his former guardian to acknowledge him as family & 2) assumed the role of bestest big brother either way #i'd ask people to stop and really think about the 'family' structure that existed in this time period where they insist dick was the bad gu #but at this point it's clear that people who want him to be the bad guy truly don't care about why we think it's absurd #anyway i'll end this with a reminder of what I'm pretty sure were the ages etc of the parties involved:#jason (12) gotham. adopted son of bruce.#dick (19) nyc. former ward of bruce. fired from role as partner to batman.#bruce (30+) gotham. raised dick as his ward → fired dick as a partner → never indicated dick still had any place in his life → adopted jaso #oh so my tags just cutting off the final letter like that? i will not be correcting them 😡

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hazel-callahan · 1 year ago

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Ruby Cruz in AGING OUT (2018) — dir. Chester Milton

#i watched this and was just heart eyes for her the whole time #but YES the film in itself is great and has a good message about the difficulties of the foster care system #filmedit #filmgifs #minimalistsource #femalegifsource #userlgbtq #userriel #userisaiah #userbess #antlerqueen #aging out 2018 #ruby cruz #lover!#gif #*mine

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snufkinsnogger · 1 year ago

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Does anyone else have like, a "real world" version of their FO? Like, how'd they look if they existed in our world and how their lore would translate into our reality?

#my snuf would probably be a couch surfer or live out of a van and would have aged out of foster care #his mom wouldn't have thirty children but something more like two before snuf and three or four after him #shes nice and also a stereotypical Too Many Kids and Not Enough Fucks sort like shes not a bad mom just sort of really loose with parenting #his dad is an absentee father #nice and all but not really father of the year #he basically was raised by his best friends parents who adore him #they also adopted another friend of theirs #Billy is a texan who also had a trouble childhood #orphaned as a teen but he eluded the system #he got by doing crimes mostly burglary a d fraud and stuff #he also does rodeo but it doesn't pay enough #his parents were also into crime and thats how they died #also where he learned it from #selfshipping #selfship #self shipping #selfshipper #self ship #imagine

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welcometogrouchland · 1 year ago

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idk how I developed the hc that Raine and Darius were briefly foster siblings in their last year of highschool. But I did. And now I think about it 24/7

#ramblings of a lunatic #the owl house #toh #darius deamonne #raine whispers #raine was the one being fostered btw #I've already hinter a few times that due to convoluted narrative parallel reasons #i hc raine as coming from a Not Great home situation #just like. parents with wayyy too high expectations for them and way to controlling (kinda paralleling the later parts of their arc-#-where control is a Big Theme. i know it might make the whole 'IFWOT-moving schools' incident seem ooc-#-but you can easily interpret that line as being like. raines parents only indulge them when it also suits them (gets then out of the cold))#and plenty of rich and talented kids still go to hexside so i imagine it's still decently respectable #anyway yeah one day raine was like. oh i can't take this anymore actually #and through a series of events i haven't bothered to conceptualise gets put in foster care and taken in by the deammones #they mostly foster in the hopes of being a forever home for kids (darius has a lot of siblings both bio and adopted)#but raines gonna age out of the system in a couple months anyway so might as well stay somewhere vaguely familiar #(raine and darius but heads all the time at hexside tho so like. first few weeks are rough)#but this is my incredibly long-winded and unrealistic take on why their dynamic in s2 reminds me so much of sibling/familal bickering #(TO ME BTW. THAT'S JUST MY OWN INTERPRETATION FEEL FREE TO LET THEM FUCK NASTY OR JUST BE PALS)

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rosykims · 4 months ago

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ik the implication of the von valancius succession is that our RT is just some random fucking 7th cousin twice removed but i actually think its so funny if leda is theodora's daughter.

#oc: leda #or granddaughter maybe . w the anti-aging shenanigans in this universe i have no idea how old anyone is #except for leda is who is a tiny baby infant 34 year old <3 #sorry this is so unhinged upon rereading but #shes a psyker and she was unsactioned until caught when she was abt 21 or so . WAY older than most who survive the sanctioning process #and i was thinking abt HOW she couldve even survived that long and since the inquisition do routine scans #but i guess it makes sense if she was in the same boat as idira . best way to hide is to be on a ship thats constantly moving lol #anyway i think she literally grew up on theodora's voidship lmao. bc if theodora wanted to protect her ace-up-the-sleeve psyker heir #without actually caring abt her OR drawing attention to her. itd be pretty easy to just um send her downstairs lol #i just think it works! she has pretty radical views on technology bordering on heresy already #so expanding on that.. where else better to have fostered that curiosity than on theodora's own ship lmao #and bonding so quick with nomos too.. bc shes always loved the ship and she sees him AS the ship. like a big brother she always wanted lol #i also just think its funny imagining leda getting the call years after leaving the voidship + serving as a sanctioned psyker and being lik #''oh i wonder if that cafe on level IX is still there. the one next to the puppy incinerator and the Death-Gamma-Beta-Murder-XIV machine''#and she checks for sure. she goes down to the lower levels routinely i think. not that she has any friends down there lol theyre all dead <#but she likes to people watch <3 and feel like a human being again for once . not just a psyker or Her Ladyship yknow #but anyway. she absolutely has no clue who her family are which is why she answers the call. finding out she is a von valancius isnt so muc #her seizing a power grab . more just her wanting to find people to help ... navigate her way out of the dark i guess.#will expand on That later when i have brain cells. to my audience of like 2 people who care <3 JKFDGJK

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featherymainffins · 5 months ago

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I think it's a hatecrime against me that there aren't any slugs as big as the giant African snail. Why do the snails get to have all the fun I just want a giant slime noodle.

#I don't want to keep a snail as a pet because theyre kinda prone to shell injuries #and then they die. id be in a constant state of stress #i can't have tarantulas even though i really want to for the same reason - spiders molt and they can actually fuck up #and they fuck up kinda frequently. and if they fuck up they die #because they either tear off their organs in an attempt to free themselves or they essentially turn themselves to stone #or they suffocate. i know that I'd be extremely stressed every da #id be like 'what if it happens what if they fuck up molting i have to stand here on guard in case they start molting and mess up'#because sometimes if you're really fucking lucky you CAN manage to save them. but you have to #be there on time and you have to pray. because its much easier for you to kill them than save them #and i would never forgive myself for that #in general it's very stressful for me to keep pets who don't have very clear signals of joy and displeasure/pain because i #constantly worry about possibly taking bad care of them and them being unhappy #i loved my hamster but i did breathe a breath of relief when she died of old age because every day with her was just #so unbelievably stressful for me. i wouldn't help but be preoccupied with trying to figure out if i was doing something incorrectly #if i was a bad foster parent to her if she was content etc etc #she was a great hamster but the experience was very much 0/10 for me i would never own a hamster again #in the same vein i probably couldn't have a tarantula due to this as well.#plus tbh I didn't even want a hamster my parents got her for me because they wanted me to feel obligated not to kill myself #they said that if i killed myself they wouldn't care for her and she'd die so i had to stay alive.#a part of me knew they were bullshitting but it still freaked me out super hard and made me unimaginably anxious about #getting run over or anything happening to me and paradoxically that made me even more suicidal and depressed #didn't help that my mother didn't even believe in her own plan and accused me of planning to kill myself AND my hamster #she accused me of that several times. I've always had a lot of intrusive thoughts about hurting animals so it #made me break down and self harm every time. obviously that made my mother even angrier and many a time it led to #her accusing me of being a danger to her and others #if she felt particularly hysterical she screamed i was just like my father and that she feared me as much as she had feared him #when he still had a gun. you can imagine how that made me feel considering i jsed to have nightly night terrors about my father #killing my mother.

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givemewallywestorgivemedeath · 2 years ago

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your tags on parenting make me super emotional <3 that's exactly the kind of parent I want to be one day

Thanks! I feel the same way honestly. I have a lot of opinions about parenting and I can't say that I will be the perfect parent because that doesn't exist. I can't even say that my hypothetical future kid/kids will be perfect because children don't grow in a vacuum. I can only control what I do and say and try to be the best version of myself and hope for the best.

#i often hear people say that involved parenting is too difficult to be realistic or that modeling behavior is too hard #and yeah. yeah it is. it is one of the most difficult things a person can do. but who the fuck has a kid thinking it'll be easy?#kids are hard work and commitment. they should never be something done on a whim. you should never half ass raising a kid #and not to say that people should be perfect all the time or that people shouldn't have 'me' time #its just that i genuinely don't understand people who shove their kid into as many activities as possible to get away from them #or put all their hopes and dreams and expectations on them. if it's so easy and attainable to live up to your expectations as a parent #then do it first. you want your kid to have straight A's? great. show me your report card at that age #im just... kids are just people. and they just want to hang out with their parents and receive love and attention #and anyway ive lost my point im just very passionate about this topic #very passionate #when im older and financially stable I want to foster teenagers i think. i want to be there for them and model healthy adult behavior #and help them make that transition. i want to be that person for them. because everyone needs help and love and family #and honestly? my parents fostered kids my entire life. THEY MODELED THAT BEHAVIOR #i understand that family is not a given. i understand that family is above all else forged. and that applies to everyone #not just found family or fostering. if you don't know your bio child then can you really call yourself family?#family is *forged* regardless of the context. and if it isn't? if you skip that step with your bio kids? well thats a major fucking issue #anyway nothing but respect for my parents who bought groceries for my foster sister when she was out of care. FOR MONTHS #nothing but respect for my parents who took me with them to give my foster sister their old stroller when she needed it #nothing but respect for my parents who take in my old foster brother every weekend to 'babysit' because they know he isnt in a loving house #nothing but respect for my parents who adopted my siblings without a word when they asked #honestly they are why i am who i am today. i was a kid with adhd and learning disabilities who hated school #and now I'm an honors student and getting my doctorate. because they did the academia with me #and im not saying they did my schoolwork. im saying that they assigned books to read over the summer and we would read them as a family #and we would discuss the literary concepts and themes together as a family. i love dissecting media! and thats because of my parents!#it was a family activity! same goes for science and art and music #and coding and history ect ect #anyway im going off on a tangent but basically what im saying is that my parents didn't ship me off to camp every summer #we just did things as a family together. i remember the time and bonding with them. and i modeled that behavior #and not to brag but i think I turned out alright #anyway tangent over!

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onceuponafosterkid · 1 month ago

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Every now and then I am reminded how hard it is being an adult foster youth. I’m only 21, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. This week was really hard. I got sick on Monday while I was at work, but I have this fear of letting people down so I toughed it out. I got home and I had a fever of 103. I took some Tylenol but I can’t afford groceries right now so I don’t have any cold medicine or anything. I took Tuesday off of work thinking I needed a day to just recover. I mean, I’m working full time, taking three classes one of which is a two and half hour in person class twice a week after work so I thought maybe I was overdoing it right? But I’m pushing myself physically to avoid what’s going on mentally and yes I’m in therapy I know that’s not good but it’s what’s keeping me alive for right now. Anyway I go back to work on Wednesday but I have a cough and a headache and I just don’t feel great but I already took a day off I don’t want to make my boss mad. After work I take an at home Covid test my foster mom gave me and it’s negative, so I go to urgent care because day three of having a fever that’s now reached 103.5 and I don’t know what’s wrong. Urgent care does a Covid test that I know is going to be negative because I just took one, and they send me home. So if they sent me home I must just be overthinking this right? Maybe it’s not that bad. But I can’t work until the fever is gone and nothing is making the fever come down the cough is triggering my asthma so on Friday my foster mom takes me to the ER and there I find out I have pneumonia. They rehydrate me because I have been unable to keep anything down and sweating so much that water does nothing for me, and they give some antibiotics and I’m able to go home while they send meds to the pharmacy and finally I’m feeling like it’ll be okay. But the Walgreens they sent the meds to is closed on weekends, and I’m not supposed to wait until Monday so I call and ask them to send it to a different location which I find out halfway through Saturday the pharmacy is actually closed. So I call back again and ask them to send it down the street to Walmart but then they never call in the meds. So I ask my foster mom to call them for me and ask them to send the meds because it’s almost Sunday and I’m starting to feel like crap again and the fever is gone but I can’t breathe and my inhaler is expired and they were supposed to send a new one. She called and they said they would send them and she said she’d pick them up so I spent today cleaning in preparation for feeling better once I get my meds and once I’m done cleaning I sit on my floor and I start crying because I feel so freaking alone. Which is stupid because my foster mom has been taking care of me this whole time, sending me food and taking me to the ER but I can’t help but feel guilty because it’s not her job anymore to take care of me and she’s got a family at home, six kids counting on her but I don’t have anyone else to go to for help. I’m 21, I’m single, my bio family has left me again and it’s just been a really long week you know? It’s not like I have friends I can’t talk to, I lost them all when the assault at Wendy’s happened so I’m just sitting here fucking crying because I’m tired and it sounds very stupid but I’ve realized that it’s nobody’s job to help me. I’m in this alone and usually I can pretend that doesn’t hurt but not this week, not right now. But that’s just what happens when you age out. You’re alone unless you can find people and apparently I’m not very good at finding other people and I don’t know why. Anyway, I just needed a moment I guess. I feel like 12 year old me sitting outside my cottage at residential wondering if I’ll always be alone. I wish I could tell her the answer is no, but at this point in time I don’t have the answer she needs so for now I’m just crying with her.

#mental health #mentalheathawareness #foster care #ptsd #ptsd recovery #trauma #foster kids #fostercareawareness #childhood trauma #aging out of foster care

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ex-foster · 14 days ago

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I think this podcast series is really great.

#foster care #foster kids #aging out #feminism #social work #Ffy #Former foster youth #Former foster kid #Aging out of foster care #Crown wards #Wards of the state #Spotify

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queerstudiesnatural · 11 months ago

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google search what to do when your student calls you their best friend and wants to hang out with you during recess instead of their peers

#this kid has been coming to my classroom any chance she gets #she says she gets bored during recess and would rather hang out with me #but like i don't want to foster an unhealthy relationship with a student like #obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with a kid wanting to hang out with an adult but at this age she really needs to socialise with #her peers #also if i say yes to her staying with me during break every other kid is gonna ask to do so as well #and 1. i can't take care of that many kids all in one room during free period/recess #and 2. i need a break too like kids i love you but you gotta let me breathe lol #so yeah #but like she's so sweet and i love her!#i just don't want her to get unhealthily attached to me #rain.stuff #chronicles of a teacher

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