Five Common Parenting Messages That Do Not Fit Foster And Adoptive Homes

Five parenting “truths” get repeated so often they start to sound like gospel: let them be bored, they should sit through church, eat what I make, obey right away, and don’t worry because kids are resilient. But when you are fostering, adopting, or parenting children impacted by trauma, those messages can pile on pressure and leave you wondering why your home feels harder than everyone else’s. I share why that disconnect is not proof you are doing it wrong. It is often proof the advice was not made for your child’s nervous system, history, or needs.

We talk about why boredom can feel like a lack of safety, how structure and predictability can reduce chaos, and what scaffolding unstructured play can look like in real life. We also dig into faith spaces, including the unspoken expectation that kids should “perform” in big church. I explain why church should be a place of connection, how movement breaks and gradual exposure can be wise, and how spiritual formation happens far beyond the sanctuary. You will also hear a personal story that reframes what growth and sanctification can look like over time.

Then we move into two everyday battlegrounds for many foster and adoptive parents: food and obedience. We explore why food is often about trust, control, and sensory needs, plus practical ways to offer safe foods without turning dinner into a war. Finally, we challenge the idea that resilience is automatic and replace it with a trauma informed view: resilience is built through consistent care, safe relationships, and support. If you are craving permission to parent differently and still feel confident you are doing good work, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more foster and adoptive parents can find this space.

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Transcript

Five Parenting Narratives To Rethink

When Boredom Feels Unsafe

Church Is Connection Not Performance

Food Battles And Building Trust

A Baptism Story And Meeting Kids

Regulation Comes Before Obedience

Resilience Is Built Through Support

Final Encouragement Review Request And Prayer

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the Foster Parent Well Podcast, where we have real, candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption, and trauma. I'm your host, Nicole T. Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach, and an adaptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance, and joy. I want you to foster parent well. So let's jump in. I've missed a couple of weeks here on the podcast, and if you've been around for any amount of time, you know that's not something I love to do. But it has been that season over here. So flu season hit our house, and I feel like we just kept passing it around like a little unwanted gift that nobody asked for. Um, so if you've been in the thick of sickness, kids at home, schedules off, you know, just surviving on the bare minimum, just know that you are not alone. We have been there right there with you. Um, I am really, really glad to be back though. I've missed this space. I've missed talking with you guys. And honestly, I feel like I have a lot stirring that I want to share. So I'm really glad that you're here today. Today's conversation is one I think that is going to feel both freeing and maybe a bit challenging in the best way because we're gonna talk about something that we are all navigating, whether we realize it or not. And that's the messages we hear about what good parenting is supposed to look like. And specifically what happens when those messages don't actually fit your child or your home. So today we're gonna gently push back on some of the things that culture says, especially Christian culture, and talk about what might actually be true for you. If you're parenting kids from hard places, kids with trauma, loss, disrupted attachment, some of those narratives that are in culture, Christian culture, just do not help. They can actually create more stress, more shame, and more disconnection in your home. So today we're gonna gently push back on five common things that culture says about parenting that might not apply to you. And if you've ever felt like, why isn't this working in my house? I just want you to hear this right up front. It's not because you're doing it wrong, it might be because the advice wasn't made for your child. So let's start with the first one. Let your kids be bored. I don't know how many times I've heard this. And I think back to my own childhood when we just kind of used to be like sit outside for hours on end, and our our parents didn't even really know where we were, right? And and so I lean into that and go, yeah, I can see where it is good for parents to let their kids get bored. Um, and this one gets said a lot. But for some kids, boredom um doesn't actually lead to the things that we want it to lead to. Um, for some kids, boredom can lead, it can lead to creativity, independence, imagination, all great things. But for other kids, especially kids with trauma, boredom doesn't feel like a blank canvas. It feels like a lack of safety. Because when there's no structure, when there's no predictability, no engagement, their nervous system doesn't go, oh fun, I'll build something creative. It goes, hey, something's off and I don't feel safe. So play and fear are on opposite sides of the spectrum. So you can't be in a mode of play if your nervous system is in full survival mode. So what does it look like when our kids don't feel safe but are given all this freeze time, right? A lot of times we're gonna see escalation, we're gonna see dysregulation, we're gonna see them picking fights, we're gonna see chaos. Y'all, and this isn't because they're bad or needy, but because their body is trying to solve a problem. So instead of asking, like, why can't they just go outside and play? We need to shift to what kind of structure helps them feel safe enough to rest or play. So for some kids, that might look like more guided activities, um, you know, things that you're actually giving them to do, whether it's an art project or coloring or play-doh or whatever. Um, for some kids, it may mean more connection. So really playing with alongside of you or with somebody else, um, maybe it looks like modeling play. So for you to sit down with them and show them what it looks like to play together. Um, and some more predictability. So for my kids when they were younger, they were more likely to be able to play outside or have more unstructured playtime if I let them know that it was for a set amount of time. It gave them a little bit more of the structure that their bodies needed and added a little bit of felt safety. And it allowed them to start to scaffold that skill a little bit, to build that skill of being able to play an unstructured play. Um, by scaffolding those skills and building that felt safety first. It's not that you're doing too much, you guys. It's that you're meeting the needs of the child in front of you. Sometimes our kids don't have the skills that are needed to be able to be born and be creative. They need us to help them build those skills to get there. And a lot of that comes with felt safety as well. All right. Number two, the number two narrative that I hear a lot, um, I guess in my community is that kids should be able to sit through big church. So, okay, let's talk about that one. Because that's not a reality I see with a lot of our kids. In fact, some of our kids have trouble even being in kids' church, right? Um, and I think this one carries a lot of pressure, especially in faith spaces. There's this unspoken expectation that if your child can't sit quietly through a full service, that something's wrong. But let's pause for a second. We are asking kids who may already feel overwhelmed, hyper-aware, and dysregulated. We're asking them to sit still, to stay quiet, to process language, to manage sensory input, to regulate their bodies for a very extended period of time. That's a lot, you guys. And for many kids from hard places, that environment can feel very overstimulating. It can feel unpredictable and feel very unsafe. So instead of being a place where they encounter peace, instead of a place where, you know, we want to meet their needs so that they're best set up to learn about the gospel and the love and the hope of Jesus Christ, it becomes a place where they're just trying to survive. It becomes a place where they are destined to screw it up and fail, honestly. So here's the thing: church is meant to be a place of connection, not performance. If your child needs breaks, if they need movement, if they need a quieter environment, um, or maybe they need to be in kin's kids' ministry instead. Or they need to slowly build tolerance to sit in service over time. You guys, that's not failure. That is wisdom. Jesus didn't call for the kids to come to him perfectly polished and poised. He tells them to come. And he gives a very strong warning to those who create obstacles in them coming to him. I really think we need to normalize this. Spiritual formation does not only happen in the sanctuary, it happens in the car, it happens at bedtime, in the middle of hard moments. Y'all, my my child that um came to saving faith and was baptized first out of my little kids was the one who was actually the hardest in the beginning and had a lot of hard times where we were teaching her the gospel. We were teaching her about the love and hope of Jesus Christ. And she was getting that messaging more than anybody else. And I think that that gave her the opportunity to really understand it that Jesus meets her where she is. Um, your child doesn't have to look like everyone else to be growing in their faith. This really hit home for me this week, not just for our younger kids, but for our teens and young adults too. Uh, one of my kids has some pretty severe diagnoses, so severe that she has been uh placed outside of our home for most of her adolescence. Um, and that has continued as she has become a young adult. But y'all, this past weekend she got baptized. And this is quite possibly one of the biggest miracles that I have ever seen. But I can already tell you that her Christian journey is probably not going to look polished and put together. Y'all, I can see a joy in her face and in her voice that I have never seen in her before. So I see the work of Jesus, but at the same time, sanctification is a process and she has some different challenges than other people. Y'all, and God knows that. God knows that about her, and he chose her anyway. He is there for her, he has shown up for her anyway. He has called her to him anyway. Um, and y'all, the goal for our kids, big and small, is that they know Jesus and that they trust him. And we are called to disciple them well. And that means meeting them where they are, not expecting them to jump to where we want them to be. Thankfully, Christ did that for me. He came to me in my mess and didn't expect me to be refined and polished before I came to him. Um, and so we need to think about things in the same way for our kids, not making them be perfectly polished and sitting in in church service for an hour and a half, quiet and still, in order for them to learn about Jesus. Okay, many rant over, but y'all, I'm super passionate about that one. Um, all right, number three, you eat what I make or you don't eat. Uh, this one is like deeply ingrained in me. Uh, I think that's true of a lot of us. Um, and for some families, you guys, it works fine. But for kids with trauma, food is often not just food. It's control, it's safety, it's sensory stuff, it's history that they've experienced. And some of our kids have experienced some really hard things: food scarcity, um, being forced to eat, or, you know, only being fed junk food or stuff out of a vending machine that doesn't really satisfy their bodies, or not even having access to consistent meals. So when we say you eat this or you don't eat, what they may hear is, I'm not being taken care of. And their body responds accordingly, not with compliance, but with resistance, with anxiety, or with shutdown. Food is one of the primary ways that we teach our kids to trust us and to go through that attachment cycle with them. And I will say this it's not just uh for kids from previous trauma. I experienced this with my biological child when he was like three or four, he would only eat peanut butter and jelly, nothing else. Didn't matter what meal it was, he would not eat anything else, like literally nothing else. So I tried the eat, you eat what I make or you don't eat bit. And y'all, he started to lose weight because he would choose not to eat. And the pediatrician said, just make him the peanut butter and jelly. Uh, this phase won't last forever. And she was absolutely right. In fact, now as a 22-year-old adult, he won't even eat peanut butter anymore. Um, but he's not a uh picky kid, he is fully nourished. Like this was not a phase that lasted forever. Um, but instead of engaging in that power struggle, we need to shift to offering safe foods alongside of new foods. So, really giving our kids some choice in some things, removing the pressure from it all, and really bring building and bringing a trust around the topic of food. Because the goal isn't just they ate broccoli. The goal is that they feel safe around food, that they trust us, that they trust that their needs are gonna be met consistently, and that they trust that they will be cared for. Safety always comes before expansion. So if we want them to expand their palate to like new foods and all of those things, we have to build that safety first. All right, number four, obedience right away. Uh, this one feels especially important because it sounds so right. Have you heard delayed obedience is not obedience? Or obey with a happy heart. And listen, in many ways, we do want our kids to listen, to respond, and to follow direction. But here's where we need to zoom out a little bit. For kids with trauma, their system is often operating in fight, flight, or freeze. So when we give a direction, their body may not be able to process it quickly. Not because they're being defiant, but because they're dysregulated. And if we interpret every delayed response as disobedience, we can miss what's actually happening underneath. So instead of asking, why aren't they obeying immediately? We ask, are they regulated enough to respond? Because regulation comes before obedience. And y'all listen, this one's hard for me. I am a very task-oriented person. If you know anything about attachment styles, I am dismissive for sure. I work at a fast pace, uh, and I like for others to keep up so that we are efficient. Um, I like things to be efficient, but that's not always a fair expectation to put on my kids. Adults were not always safe for them. Sometimes the directions that were given to them by authority figures put them into danger and cause them direct harm, right? And so it's not easy for them to just trust that my directions for them are good. And yes, we're always working towards that trust and regulation and obedience the first time. But I have to be realistic in that that is a skill that we are working on, not something we have already achieved. So sometimes the most effective thing we can do is to get low in their eyesight, to make eye contact, to use a very calm tone, and then to offer co-regulation and then give the direction. Y'all, you're not lowering the bar, you're building the foundation that makes obedience possible. So figure out what is it that helps build that felt safety for your child when you give them direction so that they can obey. All right. The fifth one is it will be fine because kids are resilient. Y'all, I don't know how many times I have heard this, but it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. It sounds encouraging, right? Um, and there is some truth in it. Kids can be resilient, but here's what I want us to understand resilience is not automatic, it is built, and it's built through safe relationships, consistent care, having support from nurturing loving adults, and healing environments. And a lot of times that's not what our kids are coming from, and so their bodies have not been built up to be resilient without these things. Kids don't just bounce back, they actually adapt instead. And sometimes those adaptations are what we later might call things like uh anxiety or control or aggression or withdraw, right? It's not, it doesn't look like they're necessarily responding to direct stress, but that is the overload of stress in their body. Um, so when we say they'll be fine, we can unintentionally minimize what they've been through and what they need from us, honestly. One of my kids that looks the most strong and resilient on the outside has started having something called pseudo-seizures. Basically, when her body experiences stress that gets to be too much for her, she passes out or has a seizure-like experience. Uh, she just experienced another one two weeks ago. Her body was starting to get sick. I told you the flu was coming through our house and her physical body started to get sick, and her body overreacted to the stress of that illness. And she had one of these pseudo-seizures where she passed out, had had a seizure-like experience. And y'all, when she passes out, like she's she's out for like two hours. And so uh we ended up calling an ambulance and taking her to the emergency room. Um, y'all, she doesn't, she's not, she doesn't look like a child that struggles. She doesn't melt down, she doesn't have bad behavior, but her stress in her body, the level of stress that she is held on to from her previous history, um, literally causes her body to shut down. Um, that's not resilience, you guys. That's her body adapting to her environment. Um, if you've ever seen a video of um an attachment interview, it's the babies that look the most resilient and independent when their mom leaves the room that have the highest cortisol levels. So in an attachment interview, like you have a baby and a caregiver um, you know, in a room together and the caregiver leaves the room. And it's the child that looks the calmest, looks the most resilient and independent that when they tested their cortisol levels, their cortisol levels were through the roof because their body was spending so much energy to look calm on the outside that it actually increased their stress on the inside. So, what we see as a resilience is actually performance as a way to stay safe. So, a better way to frame this um this topic of resilience is they can be okay with the right support. Um, and you have a part in this, you are part of that support. And I will tell you, you guys, for those of you that are in foster care, especially, I will say that support is so, so, so important. Please don't underestimate your role. I have been watching a child that's kind of going through the system and has disrupted multiple times and literally doesn't have anybody to support them. And That is one of the saddest things that I have ever seen or experienced. And so you stepping into that space to provide support for a child so that they can build that resilience is so crucial. Um, and it's not because you have to fix everything, but your consistency and your care is really what's going to help that child build that true resilience over time. So bringing it all together, you guys, as we look at these five narratives, I don't want this to feel like everything culture says is wrong, because that's not the point. The point is not all of this advice applies to all kids. And you're allowed to parent the child in front of you, even if it looks different, even if it's slower, even if it doesn't fit neatly into what everybody else is doing. Because what your child needs most is not perfection, it's not performance, it's not you getting it right or fitting with culture every time. It's a safe, steady adult who's willing to learn to adjust and to show up again and again. And that, you guys, is exactly what you're doing. As we wrap up today, I just want to remind you of this. If some of these narratives don't fit, that doesn't mean you're failing. It might actually mean that you're paying attention, you're learning your child, you're doing the deeper work. And that matters more than getting it right by the world's standards. This ministry, you guys, is messy. It's messy. It doesn't fit into a box. And that's okay. That's exactly where we're supposed to be. If this episode encouraged you or made you feel a little less alone, I would love if you would take a minute to just leave a review. Not just for me, but because it helps more foster and adoptive parents find this space, find encouragement, and be reminded that they are not walking this road alone. All right, before we go, let's pray. God, we we just come to you today feeling a lot of things. Um, some of us feel tired. Um, some of us feel stretched, some of us are questioning if we're doing any of this right. And Lord, I just ask that you would meet each of us right where we are. Would you remind us that you chose us for the children that are in our homes? This calling was not random and it was not a mistake. Give us wisdom to see our kids clearly, not through the lens of pressure or comparison, but through your eyes. Help us to respond with patience when we feel triggered, to slow down when everything in us wants to react. God, would you strengthen us in the places where we feel weak? Would you fill in the gaps where we don't have what it takes on our own? Lord, and for our children, would you continue to bring healing to the places that we cannot reach? Build safety in our homes, Lord. Restore what has been broken and remind us that you are always at work, even when we cannot see it. We trust you with the outcomes, and we choose to be faithful in what you have placed in front of us today. Help us keep looking to you, God. We love you, we trust you. In Jesus' name. Amen.