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About Me
A bit of background from me, I was adopted as an older child (12) to a couple that could not have children of their own. They tried IVF, yadda ya, and nothing worked for them. I was in placement for roughly 5 months before they decided to "foster" a group of 4 very young, very special needs children. As you can imagine, being newly placed in a home is hard enough to adjust to, and then adding 4 more children with insanely high needs to the mix was beyond overwhelming. Come to find out the only reason they took the sibling group was because there was a newborn baby that they absolutely had to have. They then had the state rehome the other 3 children asap. Once this took place I was no longer considered a person in their household. I was a maid and nanny, scapegoat and a burden. My personal needs, my voice, everything was completely taken from me, once again. My caseworker and manager didn't even call to check in on me once I was dropped off.
I didn't hear from anyone whose job it was to advocate for ME.
As children in foster care we know/ accept that there are a variety of foster parents. Some are religious, some are gentle, and some are down right abusive and criminal. Majority of my homes we abusive and toxic. We know that we aren't their children, or grandchildren (you don't have to remind us everyday), we are trash, and in their eyes don't deserve even the slightest bit of comfort or security. We will amount to nothing and will be just like our druggie/ loser/ abusive biological parents. We can't even have a hug when were sad, we don't deserve our own property and anything that is ours, becomes theirs. We are a paycheck, a reason for them not to have a "real" job, children for them to lowkey abuse because they are too much of cowards to treat another adult that way, or a reason for them to get attention because you must be so angelic to take in such terrible children (because its totally our fault our parents couldn't take care of us, or the reason we are in care is because we are bad).
In the beginning of my placement I was already becoming alarmed by my "parents" behavior. They were vindictive, rude, emotionally manipulative. They actually left me with a foster family so they could go on a state funded adoption bonding retreat that we were all supposed to attend. They would purposefully embarrass me in front of my peers/ family. They attempted to control every relationship I had, including my husband that I've been married to for 10 years now. I was cut off my from bio siblings because they didn't want to "deal" with them. They would give me journals to write in, promise they wouldn't read them, and then read them and get mad if I expressed myself in any way they didn't like. To this day I can't keep anything written down and this is the first time I'm telling anyone about my experience. They would call my state provided therapist after my sessions to see what I talked about. They would armchair diagnosis me with things like RAD and ODD, anything they could use to validate their treatment of me. I never had any of those issues. I had depression (I wonder why????), which they refused to treat. They never took the advice from the psychologist they forced me to go to because their idea of a normal child and me were 2 different things. I was actually a pretty normal kid. I did my best in school, I was rarely combative, I kept my room clean and did my chores. I wasn't perfect by any means but I was good for a child that was going through what I had. I was never in any trouble with the law/ drugs, even now I don't have anything on my record.
When you're adopted its supposed to be a special time. It can be scary and nerve-wracking, but there is supposed to be a level of comfort and warmth, all of those terrible things fall away and you can heal with your new family. This was not the case for me.
As an adult, and parent, this bothers me beyond comprehension. At that point it would have been better to have just been left in foster care. My adopted parents disowned me at 16, forced me to marry a friend because they "didn't want to deal with me anymore" (quickly divorced after). I had to drop out of school and work full time on minimum wage. I had to fend for myself. I was no longer apart of their life plan 4 years before that and it was easier to toss me in the proverbial trash than it was to be the parents they promised me and the state they would be. So they basically made my life just as bad as it would have been if I stayed with my biological parents.
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