Wednesdays Child: The Kids | Oh My Aching Debts

Wednesday’s Child: The Kids

Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under Foster Care |

If you watch NBC, you will have seen the Wednesday’s Child segments they do on children in foster care who are available to be adopted. Most of these children are preteens and teens who have been in ‘the system’ for years. In a lot of cases these children have been in multiple foster homes. It’s not unusual for a child who goes into foster care at an early age to have been in more than 10 different homes by the time they are 12 or 13.

Love Hurts

Imagine for a moment that you were taken away from everything and everyone you knew and plunked down into a strange place with strange people. No matter how bad it was at home, you want your mother and father. You think it is your fault that your parents abused or neglected you; they must have done it because you were naughty or demanding or ugly. The new people try to help you but for one reason or another it doesn’t work out and you are moved to another home or maybe you get to go back to your family for awhile but then things go south and you are back in foster care again.

Just as you start to care about your new foster family and get adjusted to new schedules, schools, rules and family, you are moved someplace else. It is hard not to blame yourself as children often take on the blame for the adult’s issues. Your self esteem drops a little bit more and you are a bit more hesitant to let anyone close to you.

These children go through more trauma in their short lives than most of us do in a lifetime. They are battered and bruised emotionally and mentally even by those with the best of intentions. By the time they end up in therapeutic foster care, they are afraid to trust and love because they have learned the hard way that love hurts.

Treatment or Therapeutic Foster Care

I am going into foster care with a private agency that transitions emotionally disturbed or physically handicapped children from a group home to therapeutic foster care and then to either adoption or possibly back to their families if they don’t age out of foster care first. These are usually kids who are from 12 to 18 years of age.

To become a therapeutic or treatment foster parent, you have to go through extensive training to be certified plus a home study. By the time I am done with the initial training, it will be about 43 hours of classroom study. They spend a lot of time going over things from the child’s point of view and what these kids go through.

Attachment

Last week our class centered on attachment disorders and what causes them. Picture for a moment a newborn baby. The baby cries and Mom or Dad rush to pick it up. They cuddle it, change it or feed it. They smile while they feed it and the baby spends hours staring into it’s parents eyes. The baby learns to trust that it’s needs will be met. It’s called bonding and it’s very important to a baby’s development.

In a home where there is trouble, the baby cries and the parents may not come right away. For whatever reason, they don’t meet the babies’ needs. They prop a bottle on a pillow instead of holding it and bonding. The baby never learns to trust that someone is going to take care of them. Instead of trust they feel rage and that they need to take care of themselves. As they get older they learn that sometimes the world is a hurtful place and they might learn not to venture out to quickly.

Even those of us who have had a good and loving home and had parents who met every need, may have had a bad relationship in our adult lives that made us cautious about opening our hearts to another person. Breakups hurt. It’s hard to let someone get close again for awhile because you are afraid of getting hurt again.

Children in the foster care system have often had break up after break up after break up. They want to love and to be loved but they are afraid to try. As they feel themselves getting closer to you, they start to push away or test you. They don’t know how to deal with the fear or the feelings and it’s up to the foster parent to teach them how to cope.

The following excerpt is from Multiple Transitions: A Young Child’s Point of View on Foster Care and Adoption.

“I want to talk to you about what it feels like getting ready to be adopted, when you are a little kid who has already had about a hundred mothers. When you can barely remember what your first mother smelled like. When everyone spoke a different language in the place where you were born than in the place you are now. When some of the people who took care of you were called “foster parents” and you didn’t know what that meant except something about they weren’t going to stick around.

When, in the process of being moved all over the place, you lost some of your brothers and your sisters and a particular pair of shoes that felt just right and your absolutely most favorite cuddly, and a certain place on the inside of your last crib where you used to scratch with your fingernail to help yourself go to sleep.”

If you are feeling brave, read the entire presentation. Our class listened to it being read by small children. It is heart breaking to think what these kids go through.

I will be doing a weekly article on Foster Care as I go through training. If you would like to learn more about foster to adoption, therapeutic foster care or even traditional foster care, I invite you to check out these links:

Child Welfare/Foster Care Statistics

Foster Care and Adoption Blogs

Foster Parenting

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Comments

8 Responses to “Wednesday’s Child: The Kids”

Lynnae (Being Frugal) (6 comments.) on April 22nd, 2008 8:20 am

Great post! I have a foster sister. My parents took her in when she was 16 (I was already out of the house, so I’m the one member of the family that doesn’t know her well).

She’s now in her 20s and married, and she’s still very much a part of our family.

I look forward to your updates.
Jungleswife (4 comments.) on April 22nd, 2008 2:42 pm

A good friend of ours did therapeutic foster care for several years. He kept two boys until they graduated from high school. He taught them so much about goal setting and self improvement that the judge who oversaw their cases applauded his efforts.
squawkfox (8 comments.) on April 22nd, 2008 11:49 pm

You are amazing. I will be following.
cindys on April 22nd, 2008 11:53 pm

Squawkfox, I don’t know that I am amazing. After tonight’s training I am questioning quite a few things about myself and my ability to take on this challenge. On the bright side, I think it’s good to explore the doubts now rather than later.
Mrs. Micah (19 comments.) on April 24th, 2008 7:11 pm

That you are even working on it and taking the classes is amazing. I’m sure you can make a real difference.
Weekend Roundup: Paper Clutter Edition | beingfrugal.net on April 26th, 2008 7:01 am

[...] This last post isn’t personal finance related, but I think it’s well worth highlighting. Cindy at Oh My Aching Debts is going through the process to become certified as a foster care provider. She’s doing a series on foster care, and the first post is right here. [...]
Christine on April 26th, 2008 9:59 am

This is wonderful! My husband and I went through these classes to adopt our youngest child– there are so many more kids than there are qualified (and willing) foster parents. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Libby on April 27th, 2008 10:44 pm

Thank you for sharing this. Foster care is something that I have considered but have some doubts about my (and my husband’s) ability to cope with all of the challenges while our three children are still very young. I really admire you and look forward to learning through your experiences!