Tomorrow – Tuesday & The Tuesday After…Tell Them …
I’ve been away a while, many apologies, life’s been busy…real busy…
I had a few moments & a few thoughts for this week; and want to request from all of you to help make Tuesday’s special each week; in the spirit of healing from abuse in foster care; as the theme of my site would appropriately support… and encourage. …
First, please Email us what you think of It’s Almost Tuesday or leave a comment.then add us to your webpage, email list, favorites, or blog…
I've included a few logos below.
Take the Time Each Tuesday To Tell Others
This Tuesday –
Try to set aside time each Tuesday to share with someone else the story of Its Almost Tuesday. Try to remind someone to tell someone else; and so on;.
Thats not all, also try and do something good that day – each Tuesday…
- donate some old clothes or furniture you’ve had forever collecting dust
- cook dinner for a friend who’s had a hard time lately and deserves a break
- take some food to a homeless shelter
- take a trip to the spca to play with shelter dogs
- call your mom or dad just to say i love you
- give a bigger tip at dinner out
each tuesday, do something extra special – and tell others why –
This is why:::
“My caseworker says that foster homes are to punish the bad parents, but truth is it really punishes the kids… I’m only 8 and I know that…Heck, all the Foster Kids know that… The caseworker must be at least 30, can’t she figure it out too? I mean, if grownups really knew what it was like to be a foster child in there – there would be no more bad foster homes… maybe God will let me go home, and when I do, I’ll tell everyone, so I can save all the foster kids one day… after all, they were my brothers & sisters for 18 months…
Thats what an 8 year old foster boy said after being abused in a Texas therapeutic Foster Camp – Maybe he’s right … This is why…. Now that this boy endured foster care its hard for this 8 year old boy to believe in anyone or anything again, even God. especially himself…and others…
Because now, his world’s been turned upside down so he can’t find faith in something that makes no sense. Imagine being forcibly taken as a child, out of the blue, from your Mommys home…and not ever returned.
Do you remember that feeling you felt as a 5 year old child if you got lost in a grocery store? The aisles were so humongous & grew longer and longer as confusion set in, then terror, right, and panic. Frantically searching and screaming, crying “MOMMY!??? WHERE’S MY MOMMY???” until the nice man in a suit bends over to help & comfort you but you fear him “STRANGER DANGER!” You want to scream but you freeze and shake and cry. Luckily at that moment of indecision and terror your Mommy’s voice comes through “Oh baby, there you are!!” and she scoops you up, and you cry in her comforting arms, sobbing the fear away.
Imagine that – but much much worse
Imagine that feeling but instead of Mommy finding and comforting you, this little boy meets “social workers” who are grumpy, rushed all the time, forgetful, calling him the wrong name, carrying papers & files, and never really looking at him. They tell him that Mommy is bad, but he knows his Mommy wasn’t bad, so he gets confused & is so afraid.
He’s shuffled from home to home, until finally he’s so afraid of life, & he feels so guilty, and hopeless that he considers suicide at age 9. He sees shadow people outside in the bushes at night so he won’t go out and play. He thinks they want to kill him. His worst fear is being kidnapped when at home, the most he feared was spiders before.
He’s angry and he wants to go home, so they drug him with psychotropic medications and suddenly he’s too tired to stand up one day, but can’t stop moving the next, depnding on his new everchanging dosages. His hands clinch and muscles seize. He gets sick because these drugs aren’t meant for kids, or aren’t approved yet, but in testing stages, and he’s the guinea pig. Thats just the beginning part, the easy part, that happens to all the kids pretty much.
Then the abuse begins ….this 8 year old is restrained, beat, stoned with rocks, strangled, and possibly much more – at the hands of some strangers he is forced to call “Mom” and “Dad” and by other ‘mean’ foster kids. (They weren’t always that way, though, foster care made them mean…is what he learns).
What do you think is being created in the mind & memory of this boy during these times? He prays to a God he is losing faith in, as his time in his life to be a kid became the most traumatic time of his life and in the end of it all, he never got a chance to know peace or happiness again, nor for very long to begin with; as it was stolen from him as a young 8 year old child…
He’ll never be the same child again… innocence is lost. Pain is real.
Does he get a feeling of safety? protection? security? i doubt it…and he’ll never forget…
So don’t expect him to “get over it”…(he never will). No matter what these kids do – they aren’t going to forget what it was like… but kicker is, you’ll never really truly know…
you’ll only only what they tell you…if they tell you…or even speak of it…some never do… some don’t get the chance…
So when they do tell you, please listen…
This 8 year old boy deserves to believe again – so lets help make his wishes come true by telling others about his story…
Through your blogs, links, favorites, bookmarks, and sharing this story, help him as his pain and legacy stops the punishing of children for what the adults did wrong or for some mistake an adult made!!
Stop ignoring his truth, because foster children are your children & mine…trust me, i know…
i am the little boy’s mother & i know I never abused him, but was falsely accused in a custody battle gone horribly wrong… & these words were my 8 year old boy’s own words in a case where abuse was ruled out in his natural home & he’d never have suffered abuse had it not been for the foster home(s) he was placed in.
That’s not protection now, is it?
He never should’ve gone in so don’t think yours couldn’t go in one day too, by mistake…and no, its impossible to ‘get over’… Would you forget if it was your child? Don’t forget about them in there…. Would you forget how he was unreachable when he most needed help… for a mother thats a death sentence, self-imposed by guilt, shame, and regret….
Like my 8 year old boy said… maybe … if enough people know… then more people will care & if more people care then … maybe… more people will help.
Then maybe there wouldn’t be any more bad homes… or less of them at least… and this 8 year old boy will have helped make foster homes safer for other kids out there – at least safer than the homes they were removed from!
Then maybe this 8 year old who is not 8 anymore but who will be 8 years old to me forever…. will one day look back & know it was worth it in some ironically disgusting but meant-to-be kind of way, and he’ll begin to heal, and believe again.
He’ll know he helped change things for another child.
Foster care changed his childhood memories forever. It will make it harder to adjust into adulthood; He’ll be less likely to graduate, go to college, earn a stable living or progress through the rest of his life as compared to non-foster children. He’ll be more likely to fall into drug addiction, get arrested, serve prison time even. This is the result of the state’s intervention after his childhood was scarred by their “protection” from his non-abusive mother.
He’ll be more likely to suffer mental illness & emotional problems, not handle interpersonal relationships well, or find healthy friends/lovers/life-partners. He may end up a street person or locked up in an institution. I hope & pray thats not his fate; since he’s my little boy (forever); but statistics say otherwises and they aren’t hopeful either.
His childhood interrupted will always linger in his mind; keep him up at night, and make him cry like an 8 year old child, even as a grown man. Maybe it’ll be worthwhile in time, somehow…
If the kids can figure out there’s a problem, it would seem as if the adults could figure out a way to fix the problem?
(Especially the ones that are “at least 30 years old”)…Unless they don’t want to and If not, what’s really going on then?
If they aren’t protected better than in their natural homes, why then are these children in this system to begin with? Actually, its been proved that even in homes with abuse & neglect issues, the children who are not removed despite the maltreatment, still fare better than foster children.
Why would adults do this to kids then… why ?
Tell others and maybe we’ll all figure it out for this little boy … he deserves to know… I know its hard to hear, read about, and know… It makes you want to close your eyes, turn away, say “I can’t handle that…” And thats your choice… but remember, he didn’t have a choice…. I think he knows alot more about it then he wanted to know … and he was only 8….
If he can handle it, so can we… .I mean come on…. if we don’t like it, make it stop… like the boy says…
It feels like a lifetime waiting from Tuesday to Tuesday…
Think about it this next Tuesday…and tell someone else… They can tell someone else on a Tuesday… and so on and so on…
Til there are no more bad homes…