Practicing democratic procedures in everyday life
The essence of democracy is that we can influence decisions in a group or in a family, and experience that our points of view are heard and respected. This makes it important to create a daily practice where children can be trained as important participants.

Here are some suggestions for practices:

RESPONSIBILITY AND DEMOCRACY ACTIVITIES

Please reflect on these questions before you start a family meeting:

  • Is a foster family a place where the child is because nobody else wants it – just waiting for something else to happen?
  • Or is a foster family a place where the child plays an important part in daily life – where the child is valued, where people listen to its thoughts and ideas and its work is appreciated?
  • Nothing makes children prouder than contributing to the common good!

 
A suggestion for daily life organization, step 1:

    • Discuss

 

Help the children find out what each child must do when working together.

FAMILY DIALOGUES

Planning activities to make children understand their rights. 30 minutes

For this dialogue you can discuss with your spouse, your own children and the foster care child. Please plan for some weeks so that the children are not overwhelmed by seeing all ten rights at one occasion.

How can we arrange that our family is informed about each right and learn to understand them according to the age of the family members? How do we introduce the subject?

What activities can we make (painting, writing, discussing, filming, role playing etc.) for each of these rights?
A suggestion for daily life organization, step 2:

• When you have had a small meeting about the first right on the list, wait for a week and start the next meeting by asking the child if it feels that the right learned is also practiced in the family. Then present the second right. Go on like this until you have worked with all ten rights.

While you work through activities to make the child understand its rights, you can also link rights to responsibilities: you can give the child small daily duties, commend it for resolving them during the week and state that because the child performed these duties in a responsible way, it has earned the right to be listened to in the matter. For example:

• “Last Monday you said that nobody ever listens to you at the dinner table. So we have decided that we must listen to your opinions. From now on when we sit at the dinner table, we will give you two minutes to tell us how your day was and what you think about”.

When you have informed the child about its rights, perhaps the child will start noticing and talking about the fact that its rights are sometimes violated.
For example:
“In school, everybody bullies me because I come from a Roma family“.
If this happens it is a positive sign that the child knows and understands its rights. This will give you the opportunity to talk about the rights as ideals we strive to practice in the foster family but also that fighting prejudice is sometimes a hard struggle. This is why some people from all over the world agreed about these rights.
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