I did not write this article. I came across it and wanted to share it with everyone. It has some great insight into the lives of foster kids and their families. To view the originial article, click on the title of this post.
Published: August 01, 2008 10:41 pm
Room in the heartBeth StephensonThe Edmond Sun
EDMOND — A little more than ten years ago, several of our friends from church had recently adopted children through the foster care system in El Paso County, Colo. We were interested ourselves, since we had one girl and six boys and there was a four-year space between the last two. If we could help a little girl and fill the hole in the age line up of our children, it would be perfect. We had finished the paperwork and evaluations and were waiting for a placement.
One family of our friends had a boy and three girls and wanted another little brother. They had marked that they were open to the possibility of two little boys and before long, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old were placed with them. They had concerns about reactive attachment disorder with the older boy. I remember taking my noisy child out of the church meeting and hearing a child screaming at the top of his lungs in a classroom. I opened the door to see what was going on and saw the new dad calmly holding his 3-year-old son tightly in his arms while the child screamed and writhed. If I hadn’t known that one of the most effective therapies for attachment disorders is holding therapy, I would have been alarmed.
When a child is neglected or bounced around from one caregiver to another, even left too much in a car seat carrier, they often fail to attach emotionally. They feel unprotected and out of control. Holding therapy is done by the parent holding them tightly in their arms for a specified period of time. The tight holding often brings on a tantrum, but the parent doesn’t relinquish them until they are calm and the time has elapsed. It’s grueling for both the parent and child, but they learn that the adult is in control. They learn to relinquish their self-preservation instincts into the guardianship of the adult and they become emotionally secure.
Another family of our friends had four children and wanted one more. They signed up through the foster adopt program for a newborn, knowing that drugs or alcohol might have damaged the unborn baby. Their little girl was the sixth child of the birth mother who had a drug problem and relinquished her rights easily. She knew she wasn’t capable of caring for the little girl. The child is bright and lively and looks so much like her adoptive siblings that nobody would ever guess that she is not biologically related. She shows no signs of drug or alcohol damage.
Another little girl came into the foster care program at age 6. She had been seriously neglected but at first, the adoption seemed perfect. When she neared her teens, however, she developed serious emotional problems suggesting that more damage had been done to her than first thought. Counseling seemed to ease her pain to some degree.
About the time all this was going on with my friends, I heard a radio show about children waiting for families in foster care. They interviewed a woman who grew up in foster care and she told how she would pack a little brown suitcase and go sit on the curb, watching and waiting for a family to come to adopt her. She would imagine that each car that turned the corner was coming for her. Though her foster family was not unkind to her, she wanted a real home and a real family that she could keep forever. Like a spinster hoping for a husband, she knew that the older she got, the less likely she would be adopted. She never was and became an advocate for the foster adopt program.
I have a friend who grew up in foster care here in Oklahoma. Her mother was dark complexioned with brown eyes and so was my friend’s younger sister. My friend was blue-eyed and blond like her father. Her mother often told her that nobody wanted her because she was so ugly with her white skin. When her father was deployed out of the country, her mother left the little girls in the care of her husband’s parents and moved to another state, never to make contact again. The grandparents moved the children to foster care a little later. The first home lasted about three years but when DHS learned that the foster father had molested the children, they were moved to a new foster home.
My friend is extremely artistic and highly intelligent. She remembers the years in foster care saying, “I remember that my second foster family let me cook once in a while. Sometimes she would let me make a cake. They took me to their church, but they didn’t live their religion very well.” I asked her if she felt that either of her foster families loved her and she said she didn’t think so. She was with them both for several years.
When she turned 18, she was out of the foster care system, but she had no family to launch her into adulthood. She married an extremely controlling and abusive man, had two children that learned from their father and lives in poverty as a widow. She has a master’s degree in fine art, but so little confidence in herself that she can’t seem to break out of the cycle of need she lives in.
Are you the type of person who has enough love to help a child who needs you? Do you have room in your home and heart for a child? The information is online at the Department of Human Services website. It won’t hurt to find out.
BETH STEPHENSON is an Edmond resident.
Published: August 01, 2008 10:41 pmRoom in the heartBeth StephensonThe Edmond Sun
EDMOND — A little more than ten years ago, several of our friends from church had recently adopted children through the foster care system in El Paso County, Colo. We were interested ourselves, since we had one girl and six boys and there was a four-year space between the last two. If we could help a little girl and fill the hole in the age line up of our children, it would be perfect. We had finished the paperwork and evaluations and were waiting for a placement.
One family of our friends had a boy and three girls and wanted another little brother. They had marked that they were open to the possibility of two little boys and before long, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old were placed with them. They had concerns about reactive attachment disorder with the older boy. I remember taking my noisy child out of the church meeting and hearing a child screaming at the top of his lungs in a classroom. I opened the door to see what was going on and saw the new dad calmly holding his 3-year-old son tightly in his arms while the child screamed and writhed. If I hadn’t known that one of the most effective therapies for attachment disorders is holding therapy, I would have been alarmed.
When a child is neglected or bounced around from one caregiver to another, even left too much in a car seat carrier, they often fail to attach emotionally. They feel unprotected and out of control. Holding therapy is done by the parent holding them tightly in their arms for a specified period of time. The tight holding often brings on a tantrum, but the parent doesn’t relinquish them until they are calm and the time has elapsed. It’s grueling for both the parent and child, but they learn that the adult is in control. They learn to relinquish their self-preservation instincts into the guardianship of the adult and they become emotionally secure.
Another family of our friends had four children and wanted one more. They signed up through the foster adopt program for a newborn, knowing that drugs or alcohol might have damaged the unborn baby. Their little girl was the sixth child of the birth mother who had a drug problem and relinquished her rights easily. She knew she wasn’t capable of caring for the little girl. The child is bright and lively and looks so much like her adoptive siblings that nobody would ever guess that she is not biologically related. She shows no signs of drug or alcohol damage.
Another little girl came into the foster care program at age 6. She had been seriously neglected but at first, the adoption seemed perfect. When she neared her teens, however, she developed serious emotional problems suggesting that more damage had been done to her than first thought. Counseling seemed to ease her pain to some degree.
About the time all this was going on with my friends, I heard a radio show about children waiting for families in foster care. They interviewed a woman who grew up in foster care and she told how she would pack a little brown suitcase and go sit on the curb, watching and waiting for a family to come to adopt her. She would imagine that each car that turned the corner was coming for her. Though her foster family was not unkind to her, she wanted a real home and a real family that she could keep forever. Like a spinster hoping for a husband, she knew that the older she got, the less likely she would be adopted. She never was and became an advocate for the foster adopt program.
I have a friend who grew up in foster care here in Oklahoma. Her mother was dark complexioned with brown eyes and so was my friend’s younger sister. My friend was blue-eyed and blond like her father. Her mother often told her that nobody wanted her because she was so ugly with her white skin. When her father was deployed out of the country, her mother left the little girls in the care of her husband’s parents and moved to another state, never to make contact again. The grandparents moved the children to foster care a little later. The first home lasted about three years but when DHS learned that the foster father had molested the children, they were moved to a new foster home.
My friend is extremely artistic and highly intelligent. She remembers the years in foster care saying, “I remember that my second foster family let me cook once in a while. Sometimes she would let me make a cake. They took me to their church, but they didn’t live their religion very well.” I asked her if she felt that either of her foster families loved her and she said she didn’t think so. She was with them both for several years.
When she turned 18, she was out of the foster care system, but she had no family to launch her into adulthood. She married an extremely controlling and abusive man, had two children that learned from their father and lives in poverty as a widow. She has a master’s degree in fine art, but so little confidence in herself that she can’t seem to break out of the cycle of need she lives in.
Are you the type of person who has enough love to help a child who needs you? Do you have room in your home and heart for a child? The information is online at the Department of Human Services website. It won’t hurt to find out.
BETH STEPHENSON is an Edmond resident.
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