The new year always presents an opportunity to embrace new beginnings, fresh starts, changes in mindset, and other positive things that inspire transformations or healthier ways to approach life.
As a foster parent, you understand how crucial it is to have a positive outlook, especially in a tough-to-navigate situation like foster care. Whether your foster child has been with you for a while now or they are still settling into your home, now is a fantastic time to help your child process the previous year, embrace the new one, and welcome whatever is to come.
To help encourage some positivity for your foster child, your family, and even yourself in the new year, consider these fun ideas you can try together:
Create a Vision Board Together
Creating a vision board (or mood board, action board, or whatever else you want to call it) is a positive activity you and your foster child can do together to inspire focus and motivation in the new year. It’s also a great way to learn even more about your foster child and connect with them in a unique way.
Vision boards can be created digitally on a computer, but they’re best made in real life using a board of any size, magazine clippings, markers and pens, glue sticks, and other similar supplies.
The point of a vision board is to find and collect images that match the kind of year you want to experience. For example, let’s say a person is interested in traveling more throughout the year. Their vision board would likely include images of their dream destinations, beautiful landscapes, airplanes, buses, and similar imagery that would motivate them to save up for the trips they want to take.
The benefits of creating a vision board and having it on display are numerous and include:
- Goal-setting—Sometimes, it’s hard to really understand what you want to achieve in the year. Creating a vision board can help you define and clarify each goal.
- Focus—In addition to helping clarify a goal, a vision board helps you stay on track with pursuing the goals you want to achieve in the new year. It’s too easy for goals to be “out of sight, out of mind,” but having them on display through your vision board helps keep your goals in focus.
- Motivation—When your goals are always on display and something you can visualize on a regular basis, it better motivates you to work toward them.
- Creativity—The simple act of finding inspiring images and words, arranging them in a way you like, and attaching them to a board gets your creative juices flowing, which can lead to even more imagination, inspiration, and positivity.
Creating a vision board with your foster child can be an enjoyable way to promote positive thoughts and can-do attitudes for the new year.
Share a “Highlight of the Day” Every Night
Foster care can have its really good days and its really bad days, too, for both the parents and the children. Regardless of what kind of day either of you had, recalling and stating a highlight of the day with your foster child each night is an excellent way to promote positive thinking, help shape perspectives, and give voice to whatever is good on both the easy and hard days.
As people, we all experience a wide range of emotions that are driven by our experiences. For children in foster care, their experiences can often lead to feelings like sadness, loneliness, fear, confusion, anxiety, grief, and others that are equally unpleasant. And on top of what your child is going through, you have your own experiences shaping how you feel at any given moment. Naturally, some days are just easier or harder than others.
To help end each day on a positive note, whether it was a good day or a bad one, ask your child to share a highlight of the day. And you can share your highlight with them, too. Not only does this exercise help shape the brain to identify something good, even in the bad, but it also inspires more connection between yourself and your foster child, which is a great thing to carry into the new year.
Pro tip: Write down your and your child’s highlights so that you both can go back and read them. Having a record of highlights can remind you of good memories, help you identify highlight patterns, and provide other positive benefits!
Are you interested in kicking off the year by making a positive impact on the life of a foster child? Contact Generational Child Care about becoming a foster parent today!
The team at Generational Child Care would love to talk with you about how to begin your journey in foster parenting. We become your partner in foster parenting and provide you with the tools and resources you need to register as a foster parent and begin making a positive impact in the lives of foster children in Georgia.
Learn more by calling 478-477-1289 or emailing us at info@generationalchildcare.com.
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