In my most recent post I wrote about the abused child who became an abuser. When my wife and I decided to become foster parents, we opened our home to children of any age. Now we take only babies. Why? Because the odds are much higher that abused children older than a few months will themselves be abusers. We will no longer expose our own children to abuse.
Let me tell you about one of our experiences. We took in a sibling group which included a six-year-old girl, a five-year-old boy, and a three-year-old girl. The six-year-old girl molested our four-year-old son and her own sister. We filed a report, in hopes that we could get appropriate treatment for the little molestor. The caseworker assigned to investigate called us on her cell phone to get directions to our house, and oh, by the way, informed us that we were the focus of her investigation, and if she did not like what she saw, she would close us down as foster parents! We survived that investigation, and the girl never got treatment specific to her offense. All she got was a naive graduate student therapist who spent the entire time trying to get this little manipulator to like her!
The boy was the angriest little human being I think I have ever known. The mother was an alcoholic, who was utterly undependable. The fathers finally got custody of the children.
2 comments:
Would you consider older children again once your own kids are out of the house?
My sister endured exactly what you are talking about for a few years before burning out and dumping the job at the cost of loosing their home to save the family. Her kids are old enough to protect themselves but the other kids in the house had to be protected from themselves much less the victimizers who would trail in and out of rescue homes. She could not get the support of the organization she served after surviving several investigations herself. She now has two adopted daughters aside from the three nearly adult boys of her own. The house they bought for the purpose of serving as a home for rescued kids is being forclosed on and she is looking for any other kind of work she can do at home so she can be with her adopted daughters.
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