The Lost Boy

YOU!

Alice Turnbough
    Foster Mother

    Dave came to us when he was 13 years old. I guess I’m still his foster mom. At first I think he was a combination of scared and defensive. He was a little wild and extremely frustrated, but for the most part did what he was told.
    At the time Dave came to us we had all teenage girls. He drove them a little crazy, following them and tattling on them all the time. Plus, Dave was a neat freak, and the girls weren’t. He didn’t have much, but what he did have he treated like gold. And everything needed to be in the right place. A lot of foster children are like that.
    Dave never acted his age, period. He always tried to act older, staying busy and finding work. He was 13 going on 20 and was always thinking ahead.
    I have been a foster parent for 30 years, fostering approximately 75 children. It all started when a gentleman introduced me to two children who needed help.
    We never got into morals. These children were just like other children – except for the treatment they received from others. For the most part, foster children need someone to talk to. As a foster parent, I would like to see improved screening processes in order to better place children in the right homes, rather than dropping them off and hoping for the best.
    One of the rewards of being a foster parent is seeing the kids turn out the way you had always hoped they would.
    I always knew that David would make it. One of the most memorable moments was when David joined the Air Force. He had a devil of a time enlisting. I had to get used to him always flying away. Harold and I were very surprised and proud that he took it upon himself to carve out his future. Many foster children don’t have the motivation.
    Although I always knew that Dave would do all right, I never thought he’d go as far as he has. The day I found out that he had received the Ten Outstanding Young Americans ( TOYA ) award was one of my proudest days as a foster parent. Foster children hardly ever achieve that kind of status because they allow the prejudices of our society to hold them back.
    Dave was the last foster child to leave my home. I’m proud to be Dave’s mother.

Dennis Tapley
    Teacher

    I have been teaching for more than 20 years. When I was a freshman teacher at San Bruno, “special education, ” as we now know it, had just received major support from the federal government. The special education program recognized that some children with minor learning disabilities had not been receiving an appropriate education. Children who had difficulty in learning basic skills were to be given special instruction to remedy those weak or unlearned skills.
    There was talk about teachers being aware of some negative emotional concerns among these students. Some families produced schoolchildren who brought their family confusion with them to school. The confusion was evidenced in schoolyard social difficulties or classroom learning problems.
    Teachers were as aware as we could be in working with the parents of these children. But this was two decades before Dave Pelzer published his book,
A Child Called “It”
(and Jane Smiley her
woo Acres,
and Susan Griffin her
Chorus of Stones).
We did not know – and were cautioned not to know – too much, for fear of being accused of interference.
    From the 1970s point of view, foster care was not accepted. For a child to go to foster care meant there was something wrong – a complete failure in parenting. This was a failure that society did not want to face, even when given details of some drastic home situations. Because of this, foster care was twisted into something very negative. Individuals involved in foster care – both parents and children – were seen as second-class. The viewpoint even went so far as to believe that foster children had done something bad – unlike an orphan who was an innocent victim, for example. It has taken, and still takes, a long time to come to grips with what foster care, and the parents involved, can accomplish.
    Today, child-rearing dynamics, awareness of the dysfunctional family, and direct evidence of the product of loveless or abusive parenting are matters of public record and psychological and educational research. Teachers and counselors are being trained to manage, test, evaluate and intervene.
    I have been teaching special education now for 12 years. I have seen learning disabilities and delays in learning in specific areas. But family dysfunction