Back to Adoption & Foster Care. After getting some perspective, you’ll notice how very few things end up worth stressing over. I have a little brother who was a foster kid. Plus, they had 3 kids of their own. Their tales give us a true glimpse into the horrors of the foster care system. For example, they made my sister and me sit on the grass and watch their bratty kids jump on the new trampoline they bought (I assume with the money they got from us). She used to force us to do things we didn’t want to and tell us “If you don’t, I’ll have my grandpa shoot you”, at that age, you tend to believe anything is possible. Like, nobody knew where she went. I feel that’s important to note. The one client I had was actually bad in the legal and moral sense of the word. Some I have bonded too and would love to take most of them home with me. A foreign adoption seemed our … The third and final foster care was the best one out there. Community Rules. The amount of emotional trauma I endured as a child from having to repeatedly testify against my own mother in court still haunts me to this day, but at least I turned out okay. Growing Up in Foster Care: Carolyn's Story By Carolyn Johnson, as told to Jennifer Hall-Lande. We have adopted 7 from foster care and recently added an 8th who is 23 and aged out of care with no permanent family. Also, being unsure about everything having an unstable mom didn’t really help either. I can honestly say that out of the 10 or so kids I have fostered and the nearly 100 kids in a care I have represented as their attorney, one placement was "bad" and one client was "bad." I remember being six and moving from my first ever foster home where I had lived for two years. I don’t want to go into detail, but it was awful. I remember she also didn’t speak English well but told me she was my mom after two days of knowing her. I tried to cry in the bathroom at first, but with seven people in the house, I couldn’t stay there very long. It also sounded like there were more negatives than positives. When stressing over something, use the 10-10-10 rule. My worst experience, if I had to name one, was when a four-year-old that was a foster sibling of mine dragged me by my hair across the living room, giving me carpet burn and a bald spot that lasted a few years. These older children in the foster care system are there for a reason. They’d make jokes or just comments about how I was a moody and mopey person. I honestly don't remember how many foster homes I was in over the years, but more than 15. I think times may have changed since then (it’s been over a decade), but it deterred me from coming back to Korea to visit until recently. I do remember thinking if I ever had to go through that again, I would just run away. The bullying from other kids and at school was awful just because of my negative background. I was small enough that no one messed with me really, but I missed my mom a lot and didn’t understand why I couldn’t go back home with her. I just remember lots of fake smiles from them at first. They have had months or years of being neglected and abused (even a newborn inutero), have been ripped from their families and homes, often have had multiple people fail to provide safety and stability for them, the SYSTEM often fails to provide safety and stability for them. We moved back to bio dad’s when I was 12. I was only in foster care temporarily when I was three (I’m 17 now). Girl X was only three months old when she first came to the attention of Family and Community Services in 2001. Our DCFS foster care worker changed three times and all three women were professional, courteous and conscientious. Everything felt very impersonal and distant. I’m deaf in that ear as a result of it. I know of more horrible foster parents than horrible foster kids. I was forced to do manual labor for them and hardly had time to do homework. I had to walk on the freeway to school and it rained a lot in the town so my shoes smelt bad and my toes kinda pushed together where the shoes got smaller. I kind of forgot about her for a couple of years, and then I have one of those moments where a random thing hits you out of nowhere. He had a lot of strange food things for a while – like finding it weird that all the kids in the house would just help themselves to food if they were hungry – even fruit, like ‘woah you’re just going to eat that apple?’. Foster Kids Share Their Worst Orphanage Horror Stories. hide. Most certainly all foster kids are not bad. I shared a room with four other children. Some have anger/defiance issues but wouldn't you if you were abused/neglected and then moved about? No one is saying the case proves that Pennsylvania relies too heavily on foster care. 3.7k comments. I will say it’s made me who I am today. 5) I got lice at school and instead of the family spending money on lice remover, they used Lysol drain cleaner on my head. These stories are coming out in the wake of a damning letter from the Foster Family Coalition of the Northwest Territories to the N.W.T. I instantly knew Eve was in harm, so I ran to the staff that worked there to see if she was ok. When I was in foster care both me and my little sister were beat up by other foster kids and biological children to the multiple foster parents we stayed under. I had to sit there and watch him open them and express his happiness. I’ve tried talking to the social workers there, but they just didn’t take it seriously. He then had to spend four months in rehabilitation. I have an awesome best friend whose mom begs me to come for holidays, but I usually choose to work because it just feels weird. She refused to go. Z, the infant, was placed in foster care. Then we learned about the realities of adoption. I lived with them for the rest of my childhood, but I spent every Sunday at Momma’s. These stories are supposed to help you decide if adoption is the right fit for you and your family. That family also secretly didn’t send me to school at six years old. I discovered foster care when I was four. Hell, I’m 49, that stuff is not going away….ever. For Christmas, another family made us watch their kids get awesome presents while my sister and I got their secondhand clothes as gifts. My first foster home when I was six years old was filled with church nuts. I really do. There are a lot of short stays with unfamiliar, unfit people trying to feed you as little as possible so they can maximize their earnings. It was full of insects, spiders, and even a snake. All in all, I don’t remember a ton from that two-month period, maybe because I don’t want to. That was probably the worst I was treated during this whole period. If you can, I highly recommend volunteering with foster kids in some capacity. She was into anime and came to school cosplaying every once in a while. They all were so nice to us, we didn’t stay there long. I only chose to stay because if I left for another foster house, I wouldn’t be able to go to the same school, and while they were few, I made some really good friends I wasn’t willing to give up. If you have considered foster care/adoption because of what the kids can do for you, make you a mom, complete your family, strengthen your marriage, give you happiness, etc., etc., etc. She would lock me in the basement and I wasn’t allowed out of my room during the night, so if I had to go to the bathroom, she made me go in a bucket. The three boys have three different fathers. Foster care is arguably one of the most broken systems in our country. From hitting me to calling me names; all that fun stuff. I became a crown ward within the system at a young age, essentially was that the government was my ‘legal guardian’. I ask some friends and they tell me all the horror stories about the awful things her family did to her. The woman wasn’t always too nice to me though. But my biological mom fought it… for five years. Over and over again. This happened a couple of times. On those days, hygiene is all of a sudden a priority, rehearsed speeches and quizzing are the most attention received to date, and the home is filled with the smell of a slow-cooking stew. Of course, the great state of Kansas put us in different homes. We were welcomed by two different support groups for fost-adopt families. A lot of us lead nomadic lifestyles because we’ve become so used to the constant shuffling. I have endless stories, but these are just a few. 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