What If We’re Overprotecting Our Children?

It’s natural for us as parents to want to protect our children at all costs. But what if we’re overprotecting them? What if foster care is actually the cure for the entitlement, selfishness and isolation that plagues many children today? It’s true, fostering will change your family and everyone in it forever. But maybe that’s the point.

The Cost  

Being a sibling in a foster/adoptive family is complicated. Living day in and day out with children who have suffered abuse and neglect can bring challenges our kids have never faced before.

They’ll have to share their parents with brothers and sisters whose complex needs demand a lot of time and attention. They'll have to share their space and possessions with kids who don’t always understand or respect boundaries. They’ll have to learn to accept that the same rules and expectations may not always apply to everyone in the home the same way. And inevitably, they’ll have to grieve the loss of the siblings they come to love who leave.  

You may be tempted to fear, avoid or grieve all that your children could lose or have lost through fostering and adoption. But God didn’t call just you as a parent into foster care or adoption. He called your kids too. Through this mission, God will teach your children lessons they may never learn any other way. He is shaping and molding them into people who will look different than their peers, people who will look more like Him.  

The Reward

1. Compassion

The most prominent virtue I’ve witnessed Christ teach through my own family’s foster care journey and others’ is compassion. Compassion is love in action, the ability to empathize and care for someone despite the cost. Compassion moves towards brokenness, not away.  

Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:30-37. Christ names three people who passed by the broken, wounded man on the road. Two of them, the priest and the Levite, had led lives of pious privilege, yet felt no compassion for their fellow man. They stepped over him without a second thought. But the Samaritan saw, stopped and helped. This, Christ says to those listening, is the man we are all to emulate. And the type of men and women we should strive to be raising.

2. Endurance

The second virtue I’ve seen foster care produce in biological children is endurance. Yes, a parent’s job is to keep their kids safe. But we can also do them an injustice by preventing the very experiences from which they might gain the most. What if God wants to expose your kids to loss, frustration and disappointment in order to build resilience, perseverance and self-confidence? He may just plan to use the trials they go through early in life to prepare strong, faithful followers He can use to change the world.  

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5 ‍

3. Christian Love

The third virtue foster care/adoption cultivates in children is true, Christ-like love. A Christian life isn’t self-centered, guided by decisions made to prevent discomfort and inconvenience. The love Christ exalts above all others is that which lays down its life for their brother.  

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

Children who grow up in families that foster/adopt eventually leave home knowing that life isn’t all about them. They’ve been given the gift of witnessing and giving self-sacrificing love. These children go on to become adults who honor God by the way they live and who lead their own families and communities to do the same.

No, your family will never be the same after foster care/adoption. But that may be God’s very purpose for calling you to this mission — to mold each member of your family into the man or woman He designed them to be. Maybe your children are being called even now to a higher purpose and prepared for the future God has for them.

Want to learn how fostering can impact your marriage and strengthen your bond as a couple? Read our blog post Protecting Your Marriage through Foster Care for practical tips and inspiration.