Class #4: Basic Needs & Our First Appointment

Another class completed Tuesday night, and still– 20 people — 10 couples remaining. We are really starting to interact more with each other, which is great. I like that we are getting the opportunity to get to know each other a little more and people seem to be relaxing more and opening up a bit.

PS-MAPP Class #4 was all about Basic Needs and helping children with attachments, whether it be rebuilding attachments with birth parents, building new attachments with foster or adoptive parents, or sometimes even building new attachments with birth parents because the old attachments were unhealthy or inappropriate.

We learned about Maslow’s Basic Needs of Humans, which start with the basic needs of survival, such as food, water, shelter. When a parent cannot provide these, thats when we start to see such habits as binging, hoarding, and stealing. We also see children start to withdraw, not show emotions, become depressed.

When children are not given the basic need of safety, such as lack of healthcare, lack of supervision, lack of parent involvement, we start to see other issues and behaviors erupt. Basically, it all boils down to them being unable to make their way up the ladder to other needs being able to be met.

We then talked more about attachment. This is probably the most important thing I have learned in these classes so far. Being that I am an impatient person, and that I like things to happen quickly, it is going to take some work on my part to adjust to the fact that foster and adoptive children will not attach quickly. This is a process that moves in baby steps. It takes time, sometimes months– even years– to bond and attach with new parents.

We learned more about the four healing emotions — anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow. It is normal for us to want to keep kids from hurting. We want to try and take away their pain and we don’t want them to be sad. But we also need to remember that part of their healing process is that we need to let them be sad. We need to let them be mad, fearful, sorrowful, and angry. They need to let it out. They need to show their emotions and not hold them in. It’s a healthy process.

What I’m really excited about is that we got to schedule the first of our three homestudy visits with our caseworker. Our first appointment is scheduled for Monday, November 21st.

I simply am in awe how SLOW I thought time was moving along earlier this year, and now I can’t believe how quickly each week goes. We just completed week FOUR, people!