Helping foster & adopted kids through food scarcity issues.

Our family got acquainted with behavior issues linked to food scarcity really quickly when we became a foster family overnight. We had already witnessed food hoarding while trying to help kids in need, along with malnutrition and developmental delays caused by lack of caloric input. But we got a crash course when both our now adopted kids were initially diagnosed with “failure to thrive” upon entering foster care. This is a blanket diagnosis, often used to cover things like neglect, lack of consistent meals and even abuse by intentionally withholding food.

I decided to share our unique perspective as a family because this is a growing problem in our state, and almost all of the issues we are working through for our family stem from lack of care to our adopted children before they came to us. I’d love for some compassion and empathy to result from putting this out there, and I truly hope if you are reading this and need these tips, they can bless your family!

So here are some things we’ve learned through the various struggles we’ve overcome as a family to help our kids feel loved and connected…

Have a reliable meal & snack schedule! We learned through trial and error that the deprived brain, even when cared for fully, still reverts back to that scarcity mode. Access to food sometimes needs to literally include visible food access. We start every morning off with an immediate snack, because one child will start to meltdown if food isn’t immediately supplied! We’ve managed to reach an independence level where it isn’t always immediate anymore, and the child can get a snack on their own, thankfully. When we were a foster family though, half our Amazon Wishlist was snack items, because they allowed us to start our days a lot smoother! We have also learned having a fairly strict schedule for food helps them know what to expect, and we always have a fruit bowl out on the table do they can help themselves, if the need strikes. We also have learned to pack twice as much snacks as we ever think we will need while traveling! When I give them bags of individual snacks for road trips, one of our kiddos will often eat all the snacks in it before we ever leave the driveway!

Sometimes you just need to offer familiar or “comfort“ type foods! This really goes for a lot of children. They have so little control over their lives at times, and so a familiar meal or snack can help in that respect. With kids in foster care or adopted children, a certain food or meal may be their last link to their first family. When our son came to us as a 17 month old, terrified and not capable of understanding what was happening in his life, the doctor wanted us to immediately wean him from the bottle, which was his only way of eating at that point. Thankfully I questioned that, and some very wise & knowledgeable parents told me to let him keep it while he navigated his new life, because it was one of his last links to “normal” for him. We’ve learned to have to adjust even now, what we order in restaurants, because the unfamiliar can quickly lead to them not being able to navigate life- what we call disregulation, in that they feel under attack and can’t access a part of their brain that allows them to reason. They can feel in danger over not being offered chicken and fries! We’ve also learned a variety of snacks helps in addition to volume, because it allows them a choice (if they need one).

Feed for the emotional age. This is a great conversation to have with your therapist, but finding or assessing their emotional age or developmental age, can be very good for assisting in ways to bond with your child, or even calm them. For one of our adopted children, being treated like a baby, feeding with a spoon, sitting on our laps while eating, being in a high chair and even having a “bottle” has helped them connect to us. Our other child is terrified of not knowing where the next meal will come from still, so serving food (dishing it, preparing their plates, etc) is important because it sets the mind at ease that Mom or Dad is going to fill that need! Our kids have a “fear of missing out” when it comes to seeing food or drinks, and can be easily influenced by what they see around them. We usually remind them they just ate or drank, or are about to, but it’s good to know that’s their primitive reflex of desiring to be fed combined with some immaturity. Makes it easier to live with when we understand the underlying cause, and how it isn’t really just them trying to be difficult or act out, but from a deep seated fear of never being fed again.

After adoptions this spring we took several road-trips, and we learned that the “snacks for days” method served us well, because trips like this road-trip to the Toledo Zoo & Aquarium went much smoother when we kept everyone well fed!

This last tip was the most helpful of all- Recognize how food helps regulate them! I was reading this book recently (I call it a must-read for foster & adoptive parents!) and it helped me really connect how important access to food is in terms of allowing them to stay regulated without our intervention. When we started to make that link, we noticed just how much specific behaviors were actually related to their anxieties of food and being fed. Sometimes when we are working on coregulating them, we need to wait to offer a snack or drink til they’ve started to calm down, but knowing food, or the lack thereof, is the root gives us hope we are on the right track to less stress for our whole family!

If any of these tips have resounded with you, or you have some additional ones to share, I’d love to hear them! These children from hard places truly need a village to support and surround the families working hard to make sure they feel loved. It’s often a hard & thankless job. If this opened your eyes even a little to what the parents of these children work to accomplish, I hope we can start seeing that compassion spread outward! The people working hardest to help these kids are often criticized the most… for doing what many others can’t. If you know a foster or adoptive parent, reach out to them today and let them know you see the positive things they are doing! I can guarantee they need to hear it! ~ Naomi