POSITIVE PARENTING

Being a Positive Parent to the Child in Your Care

As a resource family, you are responsible for guiding and protecting a child in care, while the child resides in your home. This means caring for the child’s physical needs and providing guidance and support for the child’s emotional and social needs. A foster home shall promote the physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional development of a child in care, including helping the child develop age-appropriate patterns of behavior that foster constructive relationships and increase the child's coping skills. 

Positive Ways to Manage Behavior

Besides establishing simple rules for your home, plan other positive ways to parent the children in your care. Here are a few examples:

• Model desired behavior: Remember, children imitate the adults around them. Set an example by the way you act.
• Good communication: Be direct and clear in letting a child know what is expected of him or her. Do not assume that children know what you expect. Talk to children about their behavior. Remind them of rules and talk calmly about concerns.
• Praise, acknowledge, and appreciate a child’s desirable behavior: Give praise and let children know how you feel when they do well. This encourages and reinforces the behavior.
• Practice! Practice! Practice! Don’t just tell—show! Teach a child how to do a chore or complete a task by showing him how to do it. Role-play situations and have the child practice using words to deal with her/his feeling.
• Make a list or chart of what you want children to do: This is a good way to encourage self-care habits such as routines for getting up in the morning or going to bed at night. Providing stickers for young children or a point system to earn a special privilege for older children provides extra incentive for learning new behaviors.
• Reward good behavior: Rewards provide motivation to help children improve behavior. For example: watch a late TV show, play extra games together, read an extra story, or have special treats.
• Prepare children for changes and transitions: Children will cooperate and feel better about themselves if they have time to adjust. For example, “In 10 minutes we’ll be leaving for the store. Let’s put these toys away and get ready.” “This weekend you will be going to visit your parents, so let’s think about what you will need to take along.”
• Consequences: Help children learn to take responsibility for what they do. Consequences teach children that they need to accept how their actions affect others.

• Natural consequences are great teachers. For example: If a child doesn’t bring his toys inside after playing with them in the yard, they might be stolen.
• Logical consequences are tied directly to the misbehavior or action. For example: If a youth fails to get up for school in the morning, the youth may receive a detention, suspension, or other consequences from the school. If a child does not take care of their bike or toys, the child will lose the privilege to play with them.

• Pick consequences carefully. Remember, you need to live with it too!
• Redirect: Redirect the child to an activity that is acceptable without making an issue of the negative behavior. If a child is being destructive with a certain toy, it can be suggested that he play outside for a while or come help you. Refocusing the child’s interest and energy to an activity or behavior that is acceptable can be a simple, yet effective way to stop what might otherwise develop into a major outburst or destructive action. By decreasing the frequency and intensity of the undesirable behavior, new patterns of behaviors and habits are formed.
• Call a time-out: Time-outs help children (and parents) get back in control. Time-outs are intended to give either the child or parent a chance to calm down, relax, and think about some alternative behaviors. Put the child in a time-out chair where you can see the child as you go about your business. Keep time-outs brief. Generally, a time-out should last one minute for each year of the child’s age. Once the time-out ends and the child is quiet, talk with the child about what happened and how to deal with the situation next time.
• Contracting: A useful strategy to use with youth over 8 years of age is contracting. This strategy involves writing up a contract between you and the youth in care. The agreement states what rewards will occur if the youth perform specific appropriate behaviors. If the youth does not perform the behaviors in the contract, then do not give the reward.

Supervision

Supervise the children in your home according to their age and needs. If the child in your care has special needs or requires individualized care, you may need to limit the number of children in your home to provide an adequate level of care and supervision. If a child is emotionally delayed, immature or aggressive, you may need to provide closer supervision regardless of the child’s age.

Set clear limits about expectations and avoid leaving children unsupervised for long periods. For older children, ask the child to call you when they arrive or leave events. This may be stricter supervision than you are used to giving to your own children. If you have questions about supervision, talk with your assigned worker.

Your supervision plan needs to include a designated adult who is available to help in case of sickness, accident, or other emergencies. Notify your licensing worker if your emergency caregiver changes.

In addition, foster parents will need to identify alternate caregivers for periods of time the foster parents will be away from the home for more than 24 hours. Please consult with your assigned Licensing Specialist on required background checks for alternate caregivers.

Plan to spend time with the children in your care. You may need to stay close to and watch a child with difficult behaviors and offer support. Children need to feel the support of the adults around them.

Visual and/or audio monitors may only be used when a child in care has extraordinary medical needs or for a newborn child. Discuss with the assigned worker when there is a need to use a monitor for an older child.

Types of Discipline Not Allowed for Children in Care

Alaska state regulations 7 AAC 67.240 direct what types of discipline are not allowed for a child in care. These restrictions are designed to keep the resource family home a safe and positive place for children. 

No spanking or corporal punishment may be used on a child in care. That means no hitting, slapping, pinching, hair pulling, hand slapping, ear pulling or other physical actions that cause pain or discomfort to a child. 

Additionally, a child in care may not be:

• spanked with a hand or object, or be subjected to any form of corporal or physical punishment, including biting, jerking, kicking, hitting, pulling the child's hair, or shaking or throwing the child; 
• assigned strenuous exercise or work as a form of punishment; this excludes age and developmentally appropriate chores or exercise;
• threatened with physical harm;
• threatened to be expelled from the foster home or intimidated;
• subjected to verbal abuse and derogatory remarks about the child or the child's family characteristics, physical traits, culture, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, or traditions;
• placed in a locked room;
• placed under a cold water shower;
• forced to eat or have hot sauce, soap, or other burning or foul tasting substances placed in a child's mouth;
• subject to the use of a physical restraint, except when necessary to protect a child from injury, or to protect property from serious damage; a physical restraint permitted under this subparagraph may be passive physical restraint only; the resource family shall report the use of any physical restraint to the department;
• subject to the use of a mechanical restraint, except for a protective device such as a seatbelt;
• subject to the use of a chemical restraint; or
• disciplined in a manner that is cruel, humiliating, or otherwise damaging to the child.

A resource family may not use methods of behavior modification that interfere with a child's basic needs, including:

• depriving the child of sleep;
• providing inadequate food, clothing, living space, or shelter;
• withholding food or other items essential to the protection, safety, or well- being of a child or young adult;
• restricting a child's breathing;
• forcing a child to shower or bathe as a form of punishment;
• interfering with the child's ability to take care of their own hygiene and toilet needs; or
• providing inadequate medical or dental care.

A resource family may not deprive or deny a child of necessary services or contacts, including

• the child's caseworker or assigned legal representative;
• the child's parents or other family members who are identified in the family contact plan; or
• individuals providing the child with therapeutic activities as part of the child's case plan.