Teenagers Will Rebel

At the IFCO seminar in London, early December, Jackie Sanders of the Fostering Network made an interesting remark. She mentioned speaking to a young adult who had been in foster care, who told her that at 16 years old, she had told her social worker that she wanted a different foster family, because she could not stand her foster parents, and the social worker had said ‘okay’, and the girl had been moved. Looking back as a young adult, she realised that this was crazy, that teenagers will all at some point feel that they do not want to live with their parents (regardless of whether they are her foster or birth parents) anymore and that this should never be allowed to lead to a placement breakdown. Yet, it did.

Later on in the seminar David Graham, from the Care Leaver’s Association refered to this too, the need for foster care to have an unconditional element and helping foster carers understand that the natural rebellion of teenagers is not a sign of failure on the part of the parents. It is a simple fact that adolescence is a turbulent time and that the gradual transition towards increasing indepence generally involves teenagers pushing back against parental supervision and authority. And this often includes telling them ‘I hate you and I don’t want to live with you anymore.’

I ended up in a discussion with Jana Hainsworth, Secretary General of Eurochild, about this. During this, I posited that we should really have a similar kind of support and information sharing for people caring for teenagers as is available for people caring for children in the first 1000 days. Right now there is a lot of – very essential – focus on early childhood development and helping parents understand how they can best meet children’s needs in the first years. However, there is no such focus on older children. In a way, this is odd. Because just like parents are made aware that a two or three-year-old will from time to time have a tantrum and that these are ways to deal with it positively, it would be useful to help them understand that a 15 or 16-year-old will from time to time have tantrum and these are ways to deal with it positively.

This is not a simple thing, of course. As Jana Hainsworth put forward: who would organise it and fund it? It will not be easy to convince organisations or state departments to do something like that. However, I do firmly believe that if it was done, it would in the end save money. If there were parental support groups for teenagers like there are for toddlers, or things along similar lines, I think it would not be hard to show the benefits with regards to reduced juvenile delinquency, fewer school drop-outs, possibly also fewer teenagers ending up in care due to being considered ‘unmanageable’, and fewer placement break-downs of teenagers already in care. All of which have financial benefits down the line.

However, some organisation would probably have to set up a pilot programme and fund and run it for some time to be able to prove this, before anyone is likely to take it seriously enough to consider investing in it. And who would put up their hand to run that initial pilot?

Still, I do believe it is something that is important to keep in mind. And even if we do not advance to universal support for parents/carers of teenagers anytime soon, we can think about making this kind of support and awareness raising part of the training provided to foster carers.

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