I asked myself that same question Mosh, when I read about the Ruwandans slaughtering each other, with Hutu mothers throwing Tutsi babys into the river while babysitting for their Tusti mother "friends". People hacking women and children to pieces with machetes, etc. I ask myself many times when I read of these types of cruelties; "What planet are these people from?!
I can only conclude that these people must be posessed by evil spirits that drive them to do these inhuman things, for, it is so beyond the pale of sanity, that this is my only conclusion.
I don't expect you to agree with that, but this is my conclusion. I just read that story about the Tennesee couple doing that to those kids, and what they did is just plain unconscionable. I imagine their initial interest in having those foster kids was so that they could suck money off of a government program, and as their power grew, so grew their corruption, for as the old saying goes:
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
I guess their crime is their form of the "absolute corruption" that they succumbed to. Thank God that they were caught, and now may face an equally harsh punishment for their crimes. At least no kids died, that we know of... :(-->
I am glad that I come from a culture where wholesale slaughter is "frowned upon". Personally, I think that any other culture that embraces such is just plain WRONG, and their "culture" therefore stinks...
I agree with what Galen says about other cultures, but these "humans" (and I use that term loosely) were from here... sick and twisted. They deserve the same treatment.
I saw a show on 20/20 or some simular show about a family that had adopted 22 (>or
These people in the news today on the other hand, are sick and poor excuses for human beings.
I'm sure they were abused as children themselves. It is alarming how much physical and sexual abuse goes on in the world....and we only know the stuff that is reported or we hear about thru acquaitances. But it is a vicious cycle. It's not an excuse, but it is not unknown that victims of abuse many times become abusers themselves.
The old saying that VPW used to say "you can only go as far as you've been taught" is only half true, but it certainly gets the ball rolling for many people and the feeble minded can't make it stop on their own.
Nazi is too kind of a description for these ###@@+^&*$%#@
quote: Posted by Tom:
I agree with what Galen says about other cultures, but these "humans" (and I use that term loosely) were from here... sick and twisted. They deserve the same treatment. (bold, my emphasis)
Since I work at a group home, I hear of things similar to this. Nowhere near as bad as the story posted here, but similar none-the-less.
Johnny Lingo is probably correct, these ***@@@**###**** (wish you could read that in the original), are most likely taking on the kids to get money from Uncle Sam, and then doing the power trip thing. Obviously, their real intent is NOT giving them a good home.
On one hand, we as a society desperately need more foster families.
One the other hand, most states ignore the needs of foster families, refuse to train them, and ignore their pleas for therapy for the children.
I was at a support group meeting last night; a friend of ours had a new baby. Each month she never brings in the same baby, each time it is a different one. This one is one week old and addicted to crack. She has 7 foster children in her home. They just have a hard time saying no to these kids, abused, addicted, neglected and twisted.
Most of these children will go right back to there bio-parents, as soon as the bio's get out of prison or treatment. At least for a while, until the children get removed again.
These children should truly be loved and cared for and understood.
It is hard sometimes to love them; it is way difficult to understand them. Many times I see behavior that I am sure we will never understand. Did this come from a previous rapist? Did it come from someone leaving him in dirty diapers? And the state will not tell us when a child has already been convicted of being a predator.
We have been foster parents since 1992, but what we have learned has been learned by doing. Social workers dont care and they dont help. If a child is not hurting others (and they can't dump him on an un-suspecting foster placement) then he will not receive help from the system.
Nobody should ever treat children the way that those parents in the story appear to have treated theirs. However we have seen ourselves at near break-down because we are surrounded by out-of-control hell-spawn. Were those parents getting any support? How many months does it take to get children into medical care? How many years to see a shrink? Each time a child needs stitches how long is the investigation?
I have a boy now that loves to ride a bicycle into on-coming cars, he loves to fly in the air when they hit him, he loves the attention he gets in the ambulance, and everyone insists that it was not his fault the car hit him, each time one hits him. He has been hit in such a manner three times since he has lived with us. But can we get him to see a shrink? The state wont allow it.
At the support group last night, they said that they had a new babysitter and to bring our kids. As it turned out it was two college girls watching the kids, so we left 4 of ours during the meeting, after a 2 hour meeting, they quit, they wont be watching kids anymore. :-) I can guarantee it, we have seen it before.
I don’t know what the answer is. Many of these kids need full-time residential care. I write this sitting in a chair, in front of my computer, blocking the bedroom door of our boys. In a few hours Bonnie will get up and relieve me, so I can get some sleep. I spray salt-water into all the door hinges so they do squeak louder, so we can monitor their movements. In the bathroom, the soaps and towels and toothpastes are all locked up. We un-lock and allow out one bar of soap at a time. Each child takes a towel into the bathroom with them, they come back out with it. Otherwise chaos reins.
Yesterday I had to re-wrap one of the mattresses with plastic, the previous wrapping had been ripped off, so he could urinate onto the mattress. As it turned out, we had not been watching close enough, and he piled up all the clothing of all three boys, into a pile in their bedroom and he urinated on the pile. Marking it.
Reading that story, no child should ever be treated like that.
I also have seen a very large amount of abuse in the name of state care... it is not just children it is the disabled as well housed and fed worse than animals for a life time.
behaviours I am trained to modify behaviours YET as I may not have to tell you it is not a thinking game .
people do not get it they really do not they cry and scream abuse yet never realize the type of life some of these folks have lived from birth and now a good or bad foster home is suppose to stop all the evil ingrained and learned?
open your doors to "children" who have learned to cope the only way possible or have a yet undiagnosed mental or personality disorder go to a day treatment center for the handicapped that is state funded and volunteer.
then scream about how to save the world for the rest of us.
and do it while pleasing the taxpayers and keeping a budget .
my point? yes they should not abuse and they got caught but the system we have is geared towards "keeping the family together" that is the purpose and agenda so by the time a child is released from a system they are 18 years old and probably having children to try to make the family they never had and it starts all over again with another generation.
who eles would do it? sure many claim they would and could be better YET they are not in the trenches of real life with the system or these real live people and their behaviours.
I have no solution , I have done my best as have many others to make changes in a very complex and sorry state of affairs.
they are wards of the state , think about that just for a moment , it feels good to say you care and want to do something and scream injustice to those who can hear the cry and screams of many generations of abuse and just horid circumstances . Yet that cry you feel in your bones for the victims has been controlled and fed and housed and the responsibility of "the state" "the people" like a massive invisable butch that claims to want action done when the news flash of the story may appear, yet in the day to day and often life time to life time care "the system" can in reality do nothing at all to help these souls.
In reality neither can anyone eles.
If you feel Im wrong and bitter and whatever judgement has you ready to attack then I thank God for that and say use that energy that passion and be the one who can and does try to help .
I just wont forget the hundreds before you that today sit with the wide eyes of the actual doing of it and the storys we can tell that will never be read by those who can still feel angry and injustice about the only solution we have .
The Amalekites of the OT were like that. That's why God wanted them destroyed. "Hewed in pieces before the Lord" doesn't quite sound so harsh anymore. I agree with def that anybody is potentially capable of becoming sick like that.
"I also have seen a very large amount of abuse in the name of state care... it is not just children it is the disabled as well housed and fed worse than animals for a life time."
True.
"my point? yes they should not abuse and they got caught but the system we have is geared towards "keeping the family together" that is the purpose and agenda so by the time a child is released from a system they are 18 years old and probably having children to try to make the family they never had and it starts all over again with another generation."
Also very ture.
"who eles would do it? sure many claim they would and could be better YET they are not in the trenches of real life with the system or these real live people and their behaviours."
I see many around me (includig my own relatives) who would rather spend $40k - $65k to purchase children overseas and bring them to America, neglecting those products of the American system.
"I have no solution , I have done my best as have many others to make changes in a very complex and sorry state of affairs."
I only wish that I knew of a workable solution.
". . . . "the system" can in reality do nothing at all to help these souls."
Yeah.
"If you feel Im wrong and bitter and whatever judgement has you ready to attack then I thank God for that and say use that energy that passion and be the one who can and does try to help"
I truly did not mean any insult to you, nor any attack. You are wonderful, thank you.
I know that in TWI it got to be empty saying, however I still feel it:
"You are god's best. In the situation wherin you find yourself, You are likely to be the Best person available to help those around you. If there is ever going to be a 'Man of God' to bless those around you, it is going to be you. If someone else is in their dark-hour, you are there and ready to be their ministering angel."
Hey, this topic has become quite interesting. I am glad it came up. I for one have never considered being a foster parent, but as a regular parent, I have at least wanted to put duct tape on my kid's mouths when they wouldn't stop running their yap. Never did it though.
Galen, I really hadn't thought about how a person could be tempted by these potentially unruly kids who came out of terrible situations and then became very hard to handle as you have explained.
It certainly does not excuse these people's behavior in that story, but it is possible that they were tempted into it by "crazed little crack kids". I guess if this was the case, then maybe they should not have taken on so many foster kids? How many foster kids do you have Galen? Seems like a rough situation. I think that if I were doing such a service, I would cut back on the amount of foster kids so that I could be as effective as possible with just a couple of them. Too many would make it harder to deal with, at least for me anyway...
Obviously any adult in charge of children should try their best to maintain an adult decorum and mature attitude at all times, and the handle their children with care, love and honesty.
"Galen, I really hadn't thought about how a person could be tempted by these potentially unruly kids who came out of terrible situations and then became very hard to handle as you have explained."
While I dont thnk that I have any REALLY BAD children. I have attended post-licensing training courses, and have sat alongside other foster-parents who have been placed with sexual predators as young as 8 (those kids had to be trained to be that way), Arsonists, and a real problem has been HIV posetive kids. The state workers claim that only select care-givers and state authorities can be legally told when a child has one of these conditions; since we foster-parents are not on 'their team' we are not told. Social workers routinely claim that to tell us about these conditions would be in violation of federal law. Of course we argue that as primary care-givers, we are the primary team for that child and need to know. It is bad when the state knowingly puts other children at danger.
"It certainly does not excuse these people's behavior in that story, but it is possible that they were tempted into it by "crazed little crack kids"."
I have picked up the phrase (from social workers and foster parents alike) "Demon spawn" or "Hell Spawn". Either phrase usually gets a chuckle from DCF.
"I guess if this was the case, then maybe they should not have taken on so many foster kids?"
True.
Certainly the hardest thing to say, the most difficult phrase to pronounce, when a social worker calls you at night saying "we have a little 6yr girl, just got her from the police station, we just need a home for her for probably 1 month maybe 2, as we find relatives for her, I am calling from my car, I just turned onto your street, I am one block away, can you take her?" And the hardest phrase to pronounce is: "No".
"How many foster kids do you have Galen?"
We adopted one in 1992 (FAS), he is 14 now. We currently have a sybling group of 3 (11yr girl (sexual abused and parentified (she was the custorial parent to her younger brothers for 5 years), 10yr boy (ADHD, ADD, RAD), 8 yr boy (Bipolar, RAD)).
We have had various others placed with us over the years. Here in Conn, and in Washington State, and while overseas.
This sybling group we hope to adopt. The courst had terminated all bio-parental rights before they were placed with us. Then after coming to us, the courts voided the that and re-established the bio-parental rights. So we had to re-initiate weekly visitations with each bio-parent and grand-parent. Bio-mom is mentaly institutionalized, 3 bio-dads are incarcerated for felonys (one of whom was the abuser of the girl). But the courts know best so mandatory visits were done, even over the protests of the children. Now the bio-parents rights have been re-terminated (due to further causes), and we precede with the adoption. But in the mean time, whole new cans of worms have been re-opened mentally for each child.
"Seems like a rough situation. I think that if I were doing such a service, I would cut back on the amount of foster kids so that I could be as effective as possible with just a couple of them. Too many would make it harder to deal with, at least for me anyway..."
Good idea.
With 135,000 children awaiting placement in America, How about giving us a hand?
Just wanted to say that I truly respect and admire what Galen and his wonderful wife do for children. I don't think I could. So, my hat's off to them.
Ditto. :)-->
I have sometimes thought about fostering short-term, but I work full-time and don't feel I could give the necessary attention to a young child, particularly the kind of attention these kids would need.
Yup. I still canot find any excuse for those people down in Tenessee. I mean, digging their own graves?
Galen-
Well Galen, thanks for the response there. I have the utmost respect for you. However, as a father of four, and husband of one wife, I have what seems to be to me, a very full plate. It seems as if our entires days an nights are filled with the chores of raising up our younguns, complete with all of the emotions, heartaches, and thrills and such. And the expenses. Two of ours are still young at eight and twelve (boys), and then, we have two teenagers that never fail to keep us A.) out of money and B.) Always on the edge with concern and yes worry, as they go about their young lives. One son is seventeen, and is more concerned with being a "funny guy" and a "ladies man" than he is concerned about grades and responsibilities and such, while our daughter, the more responsible one is off to a maritime school down in Astoria, Oregon to become a US Merchant Seaman like her daddy. But she does party a bit and, only a couple of months ago, on a dare, jumped off of some bridge and plunged forty feet into some tributary of the Colombia River. She was fine because she is an excellent swimmer, and used to jump off the cruise ship dock here where we live, but the Police still busted her for it and of course these things are enough to keep us on our toes to the max.
Ahh, but the kids you speak of certainly are in need aren't they. Maybe when our kids are all out of the nest we could attempt such a thing. But not for now. At any rate your wife and yourself are providing a wonderful service. Thanks bruh..
My wife and I are planning to have at least one if not two of our own children, but we'd probably adopt a third in that case just to take in someone who needs it. After taking care of the whole "passing on genes" thing, of course.
Thanks for taking on such a huge responcibilty. I work at a residential and believe me our goal for the kids, is placement in a foster home.
One child was on his way to town to get a blood draw and ask the transport tech if he could stop at a church to pray for a family. One month later he asked his favorite staff why God was angry at him. She asked "Why do you think God is angry?" He replied, "Because I don't have a family yet." This child had been at the facility for 18 mos. and was 6 when he spoke his truth. He eventually was adopted and his personal sadness deminished.
Galean, you and your wife are special. I understand your fustation. It's crappy when the State takes a child out of our facility and places in a group home or shelter because it is cheeper. The kids are placed right back into a horrible living situations and there is nothing anyone can do. The group homes on the reservations are gang controlled and abusive.
So, for me ...I make each moment count when I am with them.
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J0nny Ling0
I asked myself that same question Mosh, when I read about the Ruwandans slaughtering each other, with Hutu mothers throwing Tutsi babys into the river while babysitting for their Tusti mother "friends". People hacking women and children to pieces with machetes, etc. I ask myself many times when I read of these types of cruelties; "What planet are these people from?!
I can only conclude that these people must be posessed by evil spirits that drive them to do these inhuman things, for, it is so beyond the pale of sanity, that this is my only conclusion.
I don't expect you to agree with that, but this is my conclusion. I just read that story about the Tennesee couple doing that to those kids, and what they did is just plain unconscionable. I imagine their initial interest in having those foster kids was so that they could suck money off of a government program, and as their power grew, so grew their corruption, for as the old saying goes:
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
I guess their crime is their form of the "absolute corruption" that they succumbed to. Thank God that they were caught, and now may face an equally harsh punishment for their crimes. At least no kids died, that we know of...
:(-->
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Galen
Our world is certainly made up of completely different cultures, many of which are in direct disagreement.
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J0nny Ling0
Well,
I am glad that I come from a culture where wholesale slaughter is "frowned upon". Personally, I think that any other culture that embraces such is just plain WRONG, and their "culture" therefore stinks...
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imbus
Not having read or heard the story yet, makes me want to hurt someone. Just what little I have read on this post infuriates me. AAAhhhhh!
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Tom Strange
Good tactic MasterP! Dis-invoke Godwin first!
I agree with what Galen says about other cultures, but these "humans" (and I use that term loosely) were from here... sick and twisted. They deserve the same treatment.
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def59
All of us are capable of atrocities.
Sin has a way of wrecking one's life and others.
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Tom Strange
well def... I'd agree that all of us are capable of "evil"... I don't know about "atrocities" though...
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imbus
Just saw CNN with the story.
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lindyhopper
I saw a show on 20/20 or some simular show about a family that had adopted 22 (>or
These people in the news today on the other hand, are sick and poor excuses for human beings.
I'm sure they were abused as children themselves. It is alarming how much physical and sexual abuse goes on in the world....and we only know the stuff that is reported or we hear about thru acquaitances. But it is a vicious cycle. It's not an excuse, but it is not unknown that victims of abuse many times become abusers themselves.
The old saying that VPW used to say "you can only go as far as you've been taught" is only half true, but it certainly gets the ball rolling for many people and the feeble minded can't make it stop on their own.
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dmiller
Nazi is too kind of a description for these ###@@+^&*$%#@
Since I work at a group home, I hear of things similar to this. Nowhere near as bad as the story posted here, but similar none-the-less.
Johnny Lingo is probably correct, these ***@@@**###**** (wish you could read that in the original), are most likely taking on the kids to get money from Uncle Sam, and then doing the power trip thing. Obviously, their real intent is NOT giving them a good home.
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Galen
I don’t know.
On one hand, we as a society desperately need more foster families.
One the other hand, most states ignore the needs of foster families, refuse to train them, and ignore their pleas for therapy for the children.
I was at a support group meeting last night; a friend of ours had a new baby. Each month she never brings in the same baby, each time it is a different one. This one is one week old and addicted to crack. She has 7 foster children in her home. They just have a hard time saying no to these kids, abused, addicted, neglected and twisted.
Most of these children will go right back to there bio-parents, as soon as the bio's get out of prison or treatment. At least for a while, until the children get removed again.
These children should truly be loved and cared for and understood.
It is hard sometimes to love them; it is way difficult to understand them. Many times I see behavior that I am sure we will never understand. Did this come from a previous rapist? Did it come from someone leaving him in dirty diapers? And the state will not tell us when a child has already been convicted of being a predator.
We have been foster parents since 1992, but what we have learned has been learned by doing. Social workers dont care and they dont help. If a child is not hurting others (and they can't dump him on an un-suspecting foster placement) then he will not receive help from the system.
Nobody should ever treat children the way that those parents in the story appear to have treated theirs. However we have seen ourselves at near break-down because we are surrounded by out-of-control hell-spawn. Were those parents getting any support? How many months does it take to get children into medical care? How many years to see a shrink? Each time a child needs stitches how long is the investigation?
I have a boy now that loves to ride a bicycle into on-coming cars, he loves to fly in the air when they hit him, he loves the attention he gets in the ambulance, and everyone insists that it was not his fault the car hit him, each time one hits him. He has been hit in such a manner three times since he has lived with us. But can we get him to see a shrink? The state wont allow it.
At the support group last night, they said that they had a new babysitter and to bring our kids. As it turned out it was two college girls watching the kids, so we left 4 of ours during the meeting, after a 2 hour meeting, they quit, they wont be watching kids anymore. :-) I can guarantee it, we have seen it before.
I don’t know what the answer is. Many of these kids need full-time residential care. I write this sitting in a chair, in front of my computer, blocking the bedroom door of our boys. In a few hours Bonnie will get up and relieve me, so I can get some sleep. I spray salt-water into all the door hinges so they do squeak louder, so we can monitor their movements. In the bathroom, the soaps and towels and toothpastes are all locked up. We un-lock and allow out one bar of soap at a time. Each child takes a towel into the bathroom with them, they come back out with it. Otherwise chaos reins.
Yesterday I had to re-wrap one of the mattresses with plastic, the previous wrapping had been ripped off, so he could urinate onto the mattress. As it turned out, we had not been watching close enough, and he piled up all the clothing of all three boys, into a pile in their bedroom and he urinated on the pile. Marking it.
Reading that story, no child should ever be treated like that.
In theory.
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mj412
Galen
I agree.
I also have seen a very large amount of abuse in the name of state care... it is not just children it is the disabled as well housed and fed worse than animals for a life time.
behaviours I am trained to modify behaviours YET as I may not have to tell you it is not a thinking game .
people do not get it they really do not they cry and scream abuse yet never realize the type of life some of these folks have lived from birth and now a good or bad foster home is suppose to stop all the evil ingrained and learned?
open your doors to "children" who have learned to cope the only way possible or have a yet undiagnosed mental or personality disorder go to a day treatment center for the handicapped that is state funded and volunteer.
then scream about how to save the world for the rest of us.
and do it while pleasing the taxpayers and keeping a budget .
my point? yes they should not abuse and they got caught but the system we have is geared towards "keeping the family together" that is the purpose and agenda so by the time a child is released from a system they are 18 years old and probably having children to try to make the family they never had and it starts all over again with another generation.
who eles would do it? sure many claim they would and could be better YET they are not in the trenches of real life with the system or these real live people and their behaviours.
I have no solution , I have done my best as have many others to make changes in a very complex and sorry state of affairs.
they are wards of the state , think about that just for a moment , it feels good to say you care and want to do something and scream injustice to those who can hear the cry and screams of many generations of abuse and just horid circumstances . Yet that cry you feel in your bones for the victims has been controlled and fed and housed and the responsibility of "the state" "the people" like a massive invisable butch that claims to want action done when the news flash of the story may appear, yet in the day to day and often life time to life time care "the system" can in reality do nothing at all to help these souls.
In reality neither can anyone eles.
If you feel Im wrong and bitter and whatever judgement has you ready to attack then I thank God for that and say use that energy that passion and be the one who can and does try to help .
I just wont forget the hundreds before you that today sit with the wide eyes of the actual doing of it and the storys we can tell that will never be read by those who can still feel angry and injustice about the only solution we have .
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johniam
The Amalekites of the OT were like that. That's why God wanted them destroyed. "Hewed in pieces before the Lord" doesn't quite sound so harsh anymore. I agree with def that anybody is potentially capable of becoming sick like that.
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Galen
mj412:
"I also have seen a very large amount of abuse in the name of state care... it is not just children it is the disabled as well housed and fed worse than animals for a life time."
True.
"my point? yes they should not abuse and they got caught but the system we have is geared towards "keeping the family together" that is the purpose and agenda so by the time a child is released from a system they are 18 years old and probably having children to try to make the family they never had and it starts all over again with another generation."
Also very ture.
"who eles would do it? sure many claim they would and could be better YET they are not in the trenches of real life with the system or these real live people and their behaviours."
I see many around me (includig my own relatives) who would rather spend $40k - $65k to purchase children overseas and bring them to America, neglecting those products of the American system.
"I have no solution , I have done my best as have many others to make changes in a very complex and sorry state of affairs."
I only wish that I knew of a workable solution.
". . . . "the system" can in reality do nothing at all to help these souls."
Yeah.
"If you feel Im wrong and bitter and whatever judgement has you ready to attack then I thank God for that and say use that energy that passion and be the one who can and does try to help"
I truly did not mean any insult to you, nor any attack. You are wonderful, thank you.
I know that in TWI it got to be empty saying, however I still feel it:
"You are god's best. In the situation wherin you find yourself, You are likely to be the Best person available to help those around you. If there is ever going to be a 'Man of God' to bless those around you, it is going to be you. If someone else is in their dark-hour, you are there and ready to be their ministering angel."
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J0nny Ling0
Hey, this topic has become quite interesting. I am glad it came up. I for one have never considered being a foster parent, but as a regular parent, I have at least wanted to put duct tape on my kid's mouths when they wouldn't stop running their yap. Never did it though.
Galen, I really hadn't thought about how a person could be tempted by these potentially unruly kids who came out of terrible situations and then became very hard to handle as you have explained.
It certainly does not excuse these people's behavior in that story, but it is possible that they were tempted into it by "crazed little crack kids". I guess if this was the case, then maybe they should not have taken on so many foster kids? How many foster kids do you have Galen? Seems like a rough situation. I think that if I were doing such a service, I would cut back on the amount of foster kids so that I could be as effective as possible with just a couple of them. Too many would make it harder to deal with, at least for me anyway...
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Tom Strange
Just wanted to say that I truly respect and admire what Galen and his wonderful wife do for children. I don't think I could. So, my hat's off to them.
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Galen
Jonny Lingo:
Obviously any adult in charge of children should try their best to maintain an adult decorum and mature attitude at all times, and the handle their children with care, love and honesty.
"Galen, I really hadn't thought about how a person could be tempted by these potentially unruly kids who came out of terrible situations and then became very hard to handle as you have explained."
While I dont thnk that I have any REALLY BAD children. I have attended post-licensing training courses, and have sat alongside other foster-parents who have been placed with sexual predators as young as 8 (those kids had to be trained to be that way), Arsonists, and a real problem has been HIV posetive kids. The state workers claim that only select care-givers and state authorities can be legally told when a child has one of these conditions; since we foster-parents are not on 'their team' we are not told. Social workers routinely claim that to tell us about these conditions would be in violation of federal law. Of course we argue that as primary care-givers, we are the primary team for that child and need to know. It is bad when the state knowingly puts other children at danger.
"It certainly does not excuse these people's behavior in that story, but it is possible that they were tempted into it by "crazed little crack kids"."
I have picked up the phrase (from social workers and foster parents alike) "Demon spawn" or "Hell Spawn". Either phrase usually gets a chuckle from DCF.
"I guess if this was the case, then maybe they should not have taken on so many foster kids?"
True.
Certainly the hardest thing to say, the most difficult phrase to pronounce, when a social worker calls you at night saying "we have a little 6yr girl, just got her from the police station, we just need a home for her for probably 1 month maybe 2, as we find relatives for her, I am calling from my car, I just turned onto your street, I am one block away, can you take her?" And the hardest phrase to pronounce is: "No".
"How many foster kids do you have Galen?"
We adopted one in 1992 (FAS), he is 14 now. We currently have a sybling group of 3 (11yr girl (sexual abused and parentified (she was the custorial parent to her younger brothers for 5 years), 10yr boy (ADHD, ADD, RAD), 8 yr boy (Bipolar, RAD)).
We have had various others placed with us over the years. Here in Conn, and in Washington State, and while overseas.
This sybling group we hope to adopt. The courst had terminated all bio-parental rights before they were placed with us. Then after coming to us, the courts voided the that and re-established the bio-parental rights. So we had to re-initiate weekly visitations with each bio-parent and grand-parent. Bio-mom is mentaly institutionalized, 3 bio-dads are incarcerated for felonys (one of whom was the abuser of the girl). But the courts know best so mandatory visits were done, even over the protests of the children. Now the bio-parents rights have been re-terminated (due to further causes), and we precede with the adoption. But in the mean time, whole new cans of worms have been re-opened mentally for each child.
"Seems like a rough situation. I think that if I were doing such a service, I would cut back on the amount of foster kids so that I could be as effective as possible with just a couple of them. Too many would make it harder to deal with, at least for me anyway..."
Good idea.
With 135,000 children awaiting placement in America, How about giving us a hand?
:-)
Then there would be less needed to be done.
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The Girl From Oz
Ditto.
:)-->
I have sometimes thought about fostering short-term, but I work full-time and don't feel I could give the necessary attention to a young child, particularly the kind of attention these kids would need.
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valerie52
I think these people are decendants of Hitler.
Either physical or spiritual...
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J0nny Ling0
Valerie-
Yup. I still canot find any excuse for those people down in Tenessee. I mean, digging their own graves?
Galen-
Well Galen, thanks for the response there. I have the utmost respect for you. However, as a father of four, and husband of one wife, I have what seems to be to me, a very full plate. It seems as if our entires days an nights are filled with the chores of raising up our younguns, complete with all of the emotions, heartaches, and thrills and such. And the expenses. Two of ours are still young at eight and twelve (boys), and then, we have two teenagers that never fail to keep us A.) out of money and B.) Always on the edge with concern and yes worry, as they go about their young lives. One son is seventeen, and is more concerned with being a "funny guy" and a "ladies man" than he is concerned about grades and responsibilities and such, while our daughter, the more responsible one is off to a maritime school down in Astoria, Oregon to become a US Merchant Seaman like her daddy. But she does party a bit and, only a couple of months ago, on a dare, jumped off of some bridge and plunged forty feet into some tributary of the Colombia River. She was fine because she is an excellent swimmer, and used to jump off the cruise ship dock here where we live, but the Police still busted her for it and of course these things are enough to keep us on our toes to the max.
Ahh, but the kids you speak of certainly are in need aren't they. Maybe when our kids are all out of the nest we could attempt such a thing. But not for now. At any rate your wife and yourself are providing a wonderful service. Thanks bruh..
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Mister P-Mosh
My wife and I are planning to have at least one if not two of our own children, but we'd probably adopt a third in that case just to take in someone who needs it. After taking care of the whole "passing on genes" thing, of course.
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imbus
Galean,
Thanks for taking on such a huge responcibilty. I work at a residential and believe me our goal for the kids, is placement in a foster home.
One child was on his way to town to get a blood draw and ask the transport tech if he could stop at a church to pray for a family. One month later he asked his favorite staff why God was angry at him. She asked "Why do you think God is angry?" He replied, "Because I don't have a family yet." This child had been at the facility for 18 mos. and was 6 when he spoke his truth. He eventually was adopted and his personal sadness deminished.
Galean, you and your wife are special. I understand your fustation. It's crappy when the State takes a child out of our facility and places in a group home or shelter because it is cheeper. The kids are placed right back into a horrible living situations and there is nothing anyone can do. The group homes on the reservations are gang controlled and abusive.
So, for me ...I make each moment count when I am with them.
GOOD BLESS YOU GALEAN!
:)-->
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