Christmas Presents

[riveravon23]

Seeing the piles of presents underneath the tree (and frankly across the whole room) something occurred to me, and wondered if anyone else could identify.

In terms of actual presents the foster children have more. Obviously we treat them the same as ours, and thankfully so do any extended family. And they all buy for each other. However, the foster children I have at the moment also have piles of presents from each side of their families too, and hence have a lot more than our own. None of my children/grandchildren have ever been concerned, and thankfully are all generous and grateful...but one foster child has just been counting and said "we've got loads more presents than you". And for a moment I felt rather guilty.

The problem we have is not knowing what family have bought and whether we have any duplicates!!

My fosling is 2. She got 3 presents from her nan. 2 of which aren't age appropriate so SW agreed for us to store them until a later date. Her mum got her some disco light thing which was brought home broken from contact today, intervention said "i'd bin it if i were you"

So she will have the same amount of pressies as my two, can't predict these things.

The child I had last year got nothing from birth family. The children I had the year before got a mountain of junk from the pound shop that ended up in the bin before the end of the week. This year I've been given 2 car boot fulls of probably the same presents I've spent weeks buying.

I have no birth children but always encourage foster children (when I have non siblings) to share as much as possible - some years I've had one FC getting lots from birth family whilst another FC got nothing.

It's such a tricky time of year as emotions are already riding high.

Just wanted to add River, if your birth children are old enough and if they do have an understandable moment of jealousy you could (tactfully) remind them that they have the best present of all - you - whereas the FC can't be with their own family at Christmas.

Crikey I could open my own branch of Toys r us with the amount I've got!!

After 2 weekends of Christmas contacts (we have 4 foslings) I've spent sleepless night working out who's got what, what's duplicated and where the hell we're going to store everything afterwards.
Fortunately my own children are all adults but I completely sympathise with those of you with your own young children in having to somehow explain the disparity.

I'm sure some birth families manage to find the middle ground but in my experience LAC get nothing or the family go completely overboard. I'm beginning to think that it would have been far better for me bank the money for the children.........

Anyway a HUGE happy Christmas to all you lovely Foster Carers, hope you all get a chance somewhere amongst it all to take some time for yourselves. xx

Scarlet5tyger what a brilliant idea!