[dtudornky]

My husband and I recently became foster parents and our first placement was a 16 yr old with her 21 month old daughter. We have 2 bio children (13 & 16).

We are having a terrible time with the 16 yr old not mothering her child and not wanting to take direction to help her mother. We respect her right has the mother but our responsibility is for both their safety.

Any ideas, suggestions, thoughts.

[jodyk]

I don't really have any advice, although I have seen some articles & t.v. shows about people fostering young mothers & their babies. I think the foster parents usually decided the best plan was to treat them both as foster children, and as the baby's mother feels more capable, responsible & able, she's gotten more responsibility for her child. In any case, both need to be taken care of.

I think it's wonderful that you're doing this. The biomom of my fs is only 21 now. My fs (20 months old) is the 3rd of 4 children: the first two were taken away & adopted, I have the 3rd, & the baby's still with her (as far as I know). My first reaction when they told me my fs was coming back into care (I originally had him last April 30 - Dec. 18. He came back to me this April 10.) was that, if they'd get the mother some help, this wouldn't keep happening. She's had a bad time, too, and is obviously looking for someone to care for her, as she keeps taking up with older (and harmful) men.

Good luck to you & your family.

[yanknrebel]

I had a similiar situation. I had a 13 year old who came with her 3 month old baby. We had them for a week before they went to live with the 13 year old's father. Anyway, I got these two as an emergency placement . I was attending our monthly foster care association support group at the DCS office the night they came in. While everyone was trying where to send these two, everyone was willing to take the 13 year old but not the baby. Apparently, it's quite common for our DCS (don't know about other areas) to seperate the two. I could not do that, so I took them. The 13 year old was very good with the baby. I had to show her how to wash the baby's hair. I was the one that was always fixing the bottles, running the bath water, fixing the cereal for the baby etc. While the 13 year old was very good at feeding the baby and changing the baby, she absolutely would not move off the couch. I think this was inexperience. Anyway, in these situations, most often the infant is eventually taken away from the mom because she ends up just being too young to parent. The child can go to the **'s family and they can help her with parenting and she can get parenting classes (which are usually mandatory). I can tell you that in the state of TN that if the mother is under the age of 16, she does not have legal custody of this child. She cannot have custody of the child until she is 16. So therefore , both of these were in my home as my foster children. It was my job to help her learn to parent and care for this child, while carrying for her as I do my own bio teenager.