29. They are not people others can depend on or trust.

This sign begins to get to the nub of your foster child's value problems. When he does not have solid values, it is much harder for you to know how he is going to act and what he is going to do. This makes it very tough to have a good relationship and tougher to live with him.

It is a vicious circle. The child's life-experiences taught him little in the value department. This caused him to be undependable and not trustworthy. Most everyone sees him this way and does not want to have anything to do with him. There is no payoff for him to work to keep relationships he does not have with people who don't like him anyway.

No, he will not work to get better relationships. He does not have any experience telling him he can get relationships or that having them is worth his effort. He does not change. People keep rejecting him. And it gets worse as time goes on and as he gets older. Around and around the vicious circle goes for him.

Logical and natural consequences will work with a couple of exceptions. First, he will usually think they happened because of his bad luck and not because of his behavior. Taking responsibility is not his thing.

Second, you cannot let everyone reject him. If you do, he is lost into the world of losers. You need to hang in there with him, even though you neither like nor approve of his behavior. Just maybe, he might come to value your relationship more than his unacceptable behavior. It is worth a try. Hanging in there may not be quite the logical thing. But if you were all that logical, you would not be a foster parent anyway. For you, love and caring are at least as important as logic.