I am now on day four of my shift this week and it has honestly been a pretty rough week. Most of which started last night. One of our girls is struggling with making up her make up work within the next two weeks before school is out. We have been of course having her work on a lot of it each day and night during free time, which of course she hates and never fails to complain about it. I want to encourage her, but at the same time it is frustrating because she just processes things differently and slower and it is hard to keep her motivated when she wants to complain. The best I can do is do what I am doing along with my other staff members in encouraging her to keep at it. Advice is always recommended! Then to top that off, yesterday another one of our girls had a major attitude and my other staff sat down with her to discuss her attitude which ended up in a huge blow up. Which, we also got after her for changing into Capri shorts at school when we told the kids they couldn't wear them because it wasn't warm enough, and so she changed at school...which of course we noticed after she returned home and told her she had a consequence for that. This in turn caused another blow up between her and my fellow staff. Which, I tried to do the best I could in supporting my friend with our decisions, especially after she had to talk to the mom of the child, which was fine until the child got the phone and turned the tables. I just wish I could support her more, perhaps that is something I need to work on more. But at the same time I hope she knows that I do support her and want to make it easier on her in anyway possible, especially since this had been a rough week for her and was a half rough week for me since it was only day 3 yesterday. So I ended up staying back from an event last night for the one girl to work on her homework, and the other one throwing a fit because she was in no way earning to go out. I am totally okay with staying with those two, I mean if Becca can take the brunt of the blow with parent conversations and yelling, then I can take the after math at least. In the end it just ended up being a long night, with both of us extremely exhausted. I went to bed drained and hoping that tomorrow would bring a great day...

Wrong again, it hasn't been completely horrible with the kids really. I mean yes the same two are upset about having to work on consequences and homework, but that I can handle. But I had my foster parent training class again today, and this was an extremely hard day. We ended up having to share some personal stories that are heavy on our hearts and I shared some stuff that has been going on with my mom and those situations. Well I won't tell you what that is because it is super personal but it has definitely been heavy on my heart. Sharing it is class was extremely difficult and it wasn't even all that I had to share but what I did share has just sat with me throughout the rest of the day. It is hard to processes it as well when you hate crying and sharing emotions with others. It obviously is something I need to work on but it is still hard. It just is really hard to try to process your own emotions while trying to handle the kids and their emotions, complaints, etc. I thankfully have some great friends down here to process with, but at the same time I just hate having to burden my problems on them....I don't know maybe another thing I need to work on? I hope tomorrow and the rest of my week plays out okay but as of right now I am not super positive, just down in the dumps.

Love,
Ashley