We recently participated in a Foster Parent meeting. Prior to the meeting we were asked to watch a video. The second we started the video we regretted it. I seriously wanted to turn it off. By three minutes in, we had tears running down our cheeks.
The video was a story of a little boy's journey before foster care all the way to reunification with his mother. It was extremely legit. And we were completely drained by the end.
During our meeting we talked about how so many of the children have no idea that their life is considered “unusual”. We've seen this multiple times with our foster children. Four out of our nine foster children so far have lived out of their cars with their parents. And they think nothing of it most of the time.
REMINISCING...
One night I was pondering the situation of our current foster children at the time. While doing the math I realized that they had been living in their car during the “storm of the century”. Literally, it rained for over 40 days straight here in Northern California. It was miserable for us. And we live in a warm comfortable house. The thought of them all living in their car, and likely always being wet, was too much for me. I just sobbed at the thought. But when I asked the oldest about the situation and what it was like; the child was completely baffled at why I was so upset about it. As I saw how nonchalant the child was I knew that I needed to calm down. So I just asked one last question: What do you remember? "It was cold" was the reply.
We fostered two children for several months. During the first half of the placement we were unable to get very deep into any stories about their life before foster care. It was so interesting though; because the only time they seemed to feel comfortable sharing stories was when we were driving around in the car.
Their stories were as fascinating as they were tragic. I say "fascinating", only because I am very interested in behavioral psychology. Otherwise, their stories would be the ones from the movies. Things that you think really don't happen.
As the months went on, the children were finally able to trust us and feel close enough to share more stories; and questions that they wanted answered. Something we've seen multiple times is that the children almost always have no idea why they've been removed from their parent(s). For some children it's never clarified to them.
During a late night talk with the children, it became apparent to me that they didn't understand that when mom was, what they thought, "asleep”; she was really passed out from drugs. That night I helped them piece together the truth. The response was a flash of compression and the look that resembles a deer in the headlights. It was connected in an instant. And immediately the subject was changed. A life changing explanation made. And filed aside in the brain. Surely to be processed more later.
Also during this conversation they shared that when younger they lived really close to their school. Often, they would try and try to wake their mom up to take them to school in the morning. But she just wouldn't “wake up”. Again, mom was so strung out she was unable to respond. So, they missed a lot of school. This line of conversation trailed off with the perplexed question, "why didn't she just tell us to walk to school?”
