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Originally Posted by RavenSong
I do know this one thing for a god-given truth, and that is kids get a lot of their identity and self-worth from their parents. If you believe their parents are trash, believe me, those kids will soon think that they are trash, too.
If it's all about the kids, then I think we must bear some semblance of compassion for their parents. For their parents' blood does run thru their veins. It's as simple as that, IMHO.
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i was once a mentor (through Big Brothers/Big Sisters) for a girl aged 12 (was her mentor until she turned 15 and moved in with her uncle, though we still write) who was raised by her paternal grandmother after being removed by CPS. She had "simply" been abandoned in the house for several hours while her mother had gone out and gotten high. She was 10 months old and was learning to pull herself up on things, and tried to pull herself up on a dangling iron cord and pulled the iron down on her head. She wailed and wailed until a neighbor broke into the apartment and reported her to CPS.
Later, her father got his life together somewhat, though her mother never did. Her father got married to another woman in another city and had 2 daughters he took care of with her.
This little girl felt like since her parents were bad people, she must be a bad person. She felt it so strongly and nothing could be done to convince her either that her parents were good people with bad circumstances, or that she would not necessarily turn out like them. Despite the efforts of her grandmother, her church, and her mentor (me), she spiraled down into that abyss and it took going to live with her uncle to snap her out of it. Her uncle was her blood relative also, had been very close to her father, had been friends with her mother, and was as stand-up a man as i've ever met, my own husband notwithstanding. He was an ex-military man with great character and discipline, and he was exactly what this girl needed.
When i was a teen, i was good friends with a girl adopted at birth because her mother was the victim of rape. Her birthparents were honest with her about her origins because they felt that, hard as it was to hear, it was better than secrets that might come out later. That girl felt like every violent thought she had, every sexual thought she had, etc was because she was some kind of deviant because she must have inherited it from her rapist father. Her birthparents tried to overcome this with her, but it took years of counseling for her to find peace.
But, yes, i truly believe that kids get a lot of their self-worth from their parents, or at least their lack thereof. On top of feeling like they aren't good enough for their parents to want enough to kick the drug habits, etc, or on top of feeling like they were the cause of the abuse or abandonment, etc, they feel like they are just as "bad" as their parents. If foster parents don't try to show respect for the birthparents insomuch as possible, try to show that the birthparents are good people in bad circumstances (even if we don't believe it!), and try to honor that part of the foster kids' selves, we can't hope that the kids will love or honor themselves enough to break the cycle of abuse.
Any bad sign or bad feeling that a child gets from a foster parent toward his/her birthparents will only reinforce to the child that he/she is also bad or worthless. Actions to show compassion and actually help the birthparents through mentoring will show the child that he/she is worth a chance.