Caring Heart: Focus?

Foster and adoptive children are far from the only children who struggle to focus for longer than a nano second, but it is certainly common among them.  

Focus

I am so proud of them today.  When they first arrived they could not even sit still and watch a cartoon short on the television without jumping up every thirty seconds to move, or talk, or just wander off.  I couldn't find ANYthing that would hold their interest for even three minutes, literally. Yet, after working with them all this time today I sat with them and we watched a DVD that was almost an hour and a half long! True, I paused it ever thirty minutes to give them a chance to refill their water, go to the bathroom, get more grapes and apple slices. But it worked!  They sat through it, followed along with the story, and actually enjoyed it.  What an accomplishment.  Real progress. It was worth waiting and working toward for so long.  What a difference this will make for them academically, socially, and will make my life easier too!  Chalk one up on the success side!  Thank you. 

Excerpted from "The Caring Heart Speaks: Meditations for foster, kinship, and adoptive parents" by Gail Underwood Parker   Artwork by Anna Parker David from the book cover.