Being a foster parent or stepparent comes with unique challenges, but it also offers profound opportunities. One of the most critical lessons in this journey is understanding how to set priorities to create a solid foundation for your family. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post about why I think certain priorities come before others. Today, I want to give an overview and explain why I believe children should be last, instead of first in the order of family priorities.
Building the Foundation
Let me first explain that, when I talk about priorities, I’m not talking about what subjectively matters the most to us. We are in these relationships because we care about our children, and parenting always involves a lot of self-sacrifice. Of course, what our kids need come ahead of what we want. But we are not superheroes. We have finite resources, and we have to allocate them to take care of as many people as we can.
To do that, we need to think about priorities as building a solid foundation for our foster or step-family. It’s a bit like constructing a stable building: if the base is strong, the structure can withstand life’s challenges. If it’s not strong, then it doesn’t take much for everything to collapse. So, priorities are not a hierarchy of who we love the most, but a framework for ensuring long-term success and harmony within our families.
With that in mind, we should build our foundation from the bottom up, with the following priorities:
In upcoming posts, I’ll explain what each of those categories means, but for today, I want to explain why I put kids last.
Important Note: Safety Comes First
Before we get into any details, it’s important to remember that safety always comes first. This foundation-building only works for relationships that are emotionally and physically safe for us and our kids. I know that many people who have worked with kids who have suffered trauma have seen far too many parents stick with unsafe relationships and allow further trauma to their kids because they want to keep the relationship together or care more about what they want than what their kids need. So I am not talking about unsafe or toxic situations. If your adult relationships are not safe, just stop here and start working on how to get to a safe place for you and your kids.
It’s also true that younger kids need more care and resources — or at least different type of resources — than older kids and teenagers. You may be at a season of life when the safety of your kids requires a lot of time and energy. I’m not advocating that you ignore your kids’ needs. But understand that needs are not the same as wants, and our kids often can be perfectly safe and healthy with less of our time and attention than we think.
Assuming that your family is like the vast majority — imperfect but not toxic — let’s go on to discuss why putting your kids at the top of the pyramid is the best foundation for them to have for their lives.
Why Kids Are Last
Putting kids as your last priority for founding a family may seem surprising—after all, isn’t parenting all about the kids? While children are incredibly important, there are several important reasons why focusing on the other priorities first allows us to give them the stability, independence, and resilience they need to grow.
1. Kids Don’t Need to Be the Center of Anyone’s World
The most important reason to focus on kids last is that they don’t need to be the center of their world. Yes, they need to know that they are important and valued. But they do not need to be the linchpin around which everything else revolves. Allowing kids to stay there deprives them of learning empathy, cooperation, perspective, and all of the other traits that come from being a part — an important part, but only a part — of a family team.
Putting kids at the center of our world and our focus also puts a lot of pressure on them. They start to feel responsible for our happiness as well as their own. In extreme situations, they start parenting the adults in the family instead of the other way around. Kids are happiest and develop in the most healthy ways when they are one of several important parts of the family, not the most important part.
2. Independence and Resilience
Children need to learn independence and resilience. Making them our primary focus usually leads us to protect them from too many of life’s ordinary stresses. We’re seeing lots of social science research indicating that overly protecting kids leads them to develop anxiety as well as limiting their development of problem-solving skills. We inadvertently teach them that they cannot navigate the world without us. Allowing children to face challenges and learn how to overcome them —with safety and supervision—helps them become psychologically stronger and more self-reliant.
3. Equality Among Children
Finally, if we make our children our primary focus, it will be hard to avoid focusing more on some children — usually our biological children — than others. Our foster and stepchildren are primed to see favoritism, anyway. If we don’t first build a solid foundation for our family, they will sense the insecurity and will never be willing to be vulnerable enough to forge solid relationships.
Final Thoughts
Parenting in a foster or step-family context is not about perfection—it’s about creating a structure that prioritizes stability, love, and growth. By focusing on core values, self-care, your marriage, and finally your children, you can build a resilient family capable of weathering any storm. Remember, children who have experienced trauma—whether through divorce, loss, or displacement—need these priorities in place to learn resilience and trust in the world around them.
By putting these principles into practice, you provide your children with the tools they need to thrive while ensuring you remain a grounded and effective parent.
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To learn more about this topic, check out my online courses about foster and step-parenting at www.YSOAcademy.com.
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