Fostering and adoption are both close to my heart, because it's something I grew up seeing. My parents were foster parents for a season when I was really young, and though they no longer foster, the passion to foster or adopt has developed within me because I have seen first-hand the good that can come from it.
Let me start this by saying: foster care is not as simple as it sounds. Most people think they just give children homes until somebody is willing to adopt that child. Though this is true to a point, it's also extremely difficult because you grow an attachment to the kids you're fostering, so when they are adopted, it's bittersweet. You're happy they've found a forever-home, but you also wish they didn't have to leave.
When I was in college, I did an informative speech comparing adoption and foster-parenting, and I was lucky enough to interview my mom for it. She told me that one of the things she liked the least about fostering were the visits each child had with their birth parents. "Every
couple of weeks they would peel Jason off me, screaming and crying to go visit
people he didn’t even know. He and his
brother Michael would be gone the entire day."
I can't even imagine how painful that experience must have been. What's worse is when you get attached to a child, are in the process of adopting, just for the system to send them back to the parents. This also happened to my parents. According to my mom, it almost tore our family apart.
I won't go into detail here, but this particular child's home-life was horrible. 6 months after being returned to her parents, she and her new-born baby brother were back in the system, covered in bruises.
I'll be the first to admit that the system doesn't always get it right. If the above case isn't an obvious example of the system getting it wrong, then I don't know what is.
But that's just another reason that I have such a passion for fostering and/or adopting. The system may not get it right all the time, but I could at least help out in some small way by taking kids into my home and showing them the kind of love a child deserves.
I have always wanted to adopt at least one child, maybe even two. There are so many children in the system right now who have no one on their side; they have no advocates fighting for their rights; they have nobody who love them unconditionally. If I could help reduce that number, even by just two kids, I think that's a victory.
No kid should wonder if they're loved. No kid should question if anybody cares. No kid should struggle to find their self-worth because someone else (namely, their parents) thought they were a waste of space, energy or time.
Honestly, nobody in the world - child or otherwise - should feel this way, because it can lead to a world of hurt.
Currently, I don't have the opportunity to foster or adopt. But one day, I hope that I can lean more towards doing one or both of these so that I can help the system get better.
As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
How is the system ever going to get better if good people aren't willing to get involved? I understand that people don't want anything to do with a system that would send kids back into hostile environments where they could potentially be turned back into the system covered in bruises - it's a hard reality to face.
But, rather than doing nothing and complaining about how the system is being run, I hope to be a part of the process of making the system better. I hope that one day I can be involved so intrinsically that I have some influence in changing the viewpoint of the foster-care/adopting system.
And this doesn't necessarily have to change the entire system (though, I would not be opposed to changing it for the better), but if I can change the viewpoint of foster-care and adopting for a single child, then that's enough.
So many kids become bitter towards the system they're in because nobody has adopted or fostered them, that they begin to rebel. They start believing that nobody will want them anyway, so what's the point of being one 'worthy' of adoption?
And isn't that sad? That kids are in the system so long because good people don't want anything to do with a system that sometimes gets it wrong, that the kids believe that there's something wrong with them.
Hopefully this has opened your eyes some. Hopefully this has shown you that though the system gets it wrong sometimes, the kids shouldn't be blamed. They just want to be loved and cherished.
And, honestly, don't we all?
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