Discussion: View of the Foster Child

“The eyes of strangers

Are cold as snowdrops […]”

Philip Larkin, from his poem, Strangers

AS I WAS WALKING AND THINKING OF DISCUSSING THESE THREE papers, I realized I had lost track of what I wanted to say. Instead, I found myself thinking of the papers having been presented together last spring (2007) with a different discussant, other than myself, at a conference in Toronto. I wondered who that discussant was and what she said about the papers. Would I be able to do as good a job? Would the authors like my discussion? Would they like me? I thought about the three authors and imagined finding out who their discussant had been. I could even request a copy to give me guidance on how to fit in. Then I realized that the anxiety driving these fantasies, the anxiety of coming as a newcomer into a group, paralleled the foster child's anxiety about entering a foster family, that is, Will I fit in? Will I be liked? Will these be my real parents? Will I be good enough? In a small way, I was given an opportunity to experience the anxiety of the child being delivered to the foster family, a child who has to live through the anxiety of entering her assigned foster family.

As I read these papers, I began to feel as if I was witnessing a construction, a construction of a symbolic home, that reflects in a deep way what we who work with foster children believe is needed, “a home within.” In Klein's

language, children need a good object securely installed in the internal world. For Klein, that good object becomes securely integrated into the internal world through repeated good experiences with the “real” (in external reality) parents (Klein, 1963). In our clinical work we hope both to connect to the child's prior good experiences with others and to add to those good experiences through our steady, predictable contact. I do believe even small good experiences can, over time, help a child become receptive to and able to make use of any good that may be offered from the ou