Foster Care, a child's perspective
I was introduced to the cruel realities of the foster care system at the tender age of nine. It's something no child should have to understand. I remember it being explained to me in terms like "sometimes our mommies and daddies can't take care of us very well, and we have to go somewhere else, love with someone else, while they learn how to be good moms and dads." I can remember repeating those words calmly to my friends, like they were normal things for a nine year old to say.
The difference between my story, and the stories of the millions of children in our country in the foster system, is that when my mom explained foster care to me, I couldn't fathom how someone wouldn't know how to be a good parent.
Because, you see, I grew up in a home with two loving parents who never made me feel unsafe. At nine years old my mother was explaining foster care to me, because our family was opening our home to one of these many children who needed a place to stay while their parents learned to care for them.
And so I saw foster care through the lens of a child, not one who was scared and in a new home, living with strangers, but as an older sister to a temporary sibling. As a little girl who could see that my new brother's mom was different from my parents, but couldn't understand why.
I remember watching as my parents struggled to care for the frightened, sick, and lonely boy that shared our home. Watched as eyebrows rose at the supermarket, when people saw my mom walk in with five kids, one of whom was a different color.
I listened as my parents talked about my brother, and his parents, and what they had done wrong.
I watched as the fought for him, to give him the best life that they could.
I watched as the fought for his mom, doing everything they could to give her the skills to be reunited with her son.
And I cried the night we found out that he was leaving us. Knowing even at ten years old, that he would not remember the family he had lived with when he was a baby. And trusting my mom when she explained that this was for the best. That he wouldn't remember not being able to live with his family, and that we would remember for him.
And I do remember, everyday I live my life striving for the selflessness that my parents showed each day they cared for a son who they knew they would not be able to keep.
So when you tell me you would foster, but you worry about your own kids, I want to say that you are right to worry.
Worry that they will grow up taking what they have for granted.
Worry that they grow up learning only to give when it will be recognized, and rewarded, and remembered.
Worry that they will wake up one day, after they are grown and set in their ways, and realize the horrors of this world, and that they will be too shocked to do something about it.
Sincerely, the child of a foster family.
