I became a foster parent to care for one child in particular. While taking the mandatory classes, I learned that Latino kids are overrepresented in the system. At the time, there were less than a dozen bilingual homes in my state. That horrified me. After what was most likely a traumatic experience being removed from their families, these kids were being re-traumatized by being placed in homes that did not speak their language or know their culture. I decided that I would open my home to more than that one child and I learned that love is NOT all you need.
I saw it firsthand when I was called to pick up a 4 year-old from a shelter after he was removed from his parents’ home. In the three days he was at the shelter, he barely ate because he didn’t speak English and none of the employees spoke Spanish. He couldn’t ask about what was on his plate. It was a few days before Christmas and the American holiday food was foreign to him. He was used to tamales, tortillas and rice. His skin was faintly yellow, his eyes were sunken in and he hardly had the energy to tell me about himself when I got there to meet him. The case worker told me that if he didn’t eat in the next 24 hours, I should take him to the hospital for an IV.
It took almost two hours of talking to him in the shelter lobby before he trusted me enough to tell me that he was hungry and wanted oranges and shrimp. Weird combo, but after three days of hunger, I could understand. We went to the grocery store together and he picked out what he wanted. When we got to my house I prepared it exactly as he asked. He ate every last bite and then asked for pancakes. I made them and an hour later he was running around my house, hands together in the form of a gun, saying the only phrase he had learned in English, “Get down.” Said in a rough tone, just as the cops had done when they raided his home before taking him away.
Needless to say, the IV wasn’t needed and when the case worker came for a visit a few days later, she couldn’t believe the child in front of her was the same fragile boy she had seen at the shelter.
On the surface, that sounds like the making of a hero’s story. I saved a child from starving and he thrived and lived happily ever after. What that case worker didn’t see was how the child took to my husband and wouldn’t let him out of his sight. It was cute for a minute, but the separation anxiety quickly became a problem when the child threw tantrums when he had to go in my car to the babysitter’s house. He slapped and kicked and fought me while I tried to buckle him into the car seat. He threw whatever he could find while I drove. At the babysitter’s house he latched to my leg and it took several minutes of bribes and distractions to get him off me so I could go to work. I was late for work almost every morning for over a week and my stress level was through the roof. When it was my husband’s turn to take him to childcare it was even worse. The kid made himself throw up and threw things, one time clipping a kid’s head with a wooden block. Sometimes after my husband left, I was called to pick him up because he wouldn’t settle down. I’d take the rest of the day off work, afraid the little boy wouldn’t be allowed back to that provider while simultaneously worrying about my job.
This went on for a few weeks until he trusted us enough to know that we would come back for him every time. I don’t blame him. His whole life collapsed in front of him. He was tucked in bed when cops busted in his apartment with guns and dogs and turned everything upside down. He saw his parents laying face down on the ground with guns drawn to their heads while his home was ransacked. A stranger picked him up and took him to a shelter full of more strangers who didn’t speak his language. No one could explain what was going on. Before I came along, no one could answer his questions about where his parents were, if they were safe, or when he could see them again. He couldn’t ask to call his mom or his grandmother, acts that when in my home, calmed him, brought him joy, and became a regular evening ritual.
It wasn’t love that got us to a place where the child could sleep without my husband rubbing his back for hours; where he could stay at daycare without a scene; where I could sit next to my husband without him squeezing his way between us and giving me the death stare until I moved away. It was patience, understanding, discipline, routine, and hours of communication with therapists, social workers, other parents, his birth mother, and my support system of friends and family.
When I hear people say that all kids need is love, it angers me because it belittles the effects of trauma and perpetuates a lie that has been harmful to me as a foster parent.
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