Post by Dabeagle on Apr 20, 2015 10:45:06 GMT -5
This article concerns the gay couple in Kentuckywho is challenging the marriage equality bans in place - theirs coming from Kentucky.
The title of the article caught my attention because it's something that I said to a kid only a few months ago. Last summer we had a foster daughter, and she drove us bonkers. I can't even begin to list the things - although I may have at the time - and we were pretty convinced we sucked when it came to girls. Then, she didn't want to leave and it took 40 minutes to get her into the car with her worker to go home to her parents. I was very sympathetic, I wouldn't have wanted to live with them, either.
A few weeks later we were asked to take a 'long term placement' one for which 'the children would not be going back'. We were given some background info - parents were from India, kids lived with mom who had a mental health condition. For whatever reason, she didn't have medical insurance (her nationality or citizenship status, I was told, played some part in that but I don't know what so I won't go into it) and so, when her samples ran out, she'd have problems again. The county wanted to move the kids, I was told, because the foster parents were the pastor and wife at the mother's church. Not only were the mother and the pastor's family friends, and so mom would stop by for unsupervised visits, but she would get more unsupervised visits at church. (Visitation is set up by the court, so if the court says it's best interests of the child to have supervised/unsupervised then that's how it goes. unsupervised is usually earned and close to going home).
We later found out that the pastor's family just didn't want to hang onto 5 kids, so all the older ones were split up and we got the boy, who was 13 at the time and turned 14 in our care. He was a little jumpy in our home, as most new kids are - it's natural. However, teenage boys and their insecurities are always a challenge. He even stated that 'he'd only be with us for a few days because he was told if he wanted he could go back to the former home'. This was disproved. He certainly thought a lot of things. In his culture, boys are more valued than girls (so I'm told) and the four girls, his sisters, shared a single bedroom while he had a room to himself with a large bed - not that this was his fault. It was a two bedroom apartment and the relationship between the parents was bizarre.
They'd been married in India, an arranged marriage. When the husband came to the US to work, he left his wife behind. By the time she came to the US as well, he'd remarried and had a new family. He didn't tell her and kept making babies with her. So, yeah.
Anyway, I had this conversation with him where I told him he could ask any questions he liked, but I also said to him - 'By now you can see, there isn't anything unusual going on here. We're just an average, normal, boring family like everyone else.'
And, we are. We have soccer practice twice a week and his first game Saturday. We have homework issues, discipline, work, dinner - the same things as anyone else with kids. Granted, our son has more issues than your run of the mill child, but he's making progress and doing okay. So at the end of the day, we're just a household, just like them. They should have the same right to be happy - or miserable - as the case may be, as anyone else. I sure do hope the SCOTUS rules in favor of marriage equality.
The title of the article caught my attention because it's something that I said to a kid only a few months ago. Last summer we had a foster daughter, and she drove us bonkers. I can't even begin to list the things - although I may have at the time - and we were pretty convinced we sucked when it came to girls. Then, she didn't want to leave and it took 40 minutes to get her into the car with her worker to go home to her parents. I was very sympathetic, I wouldn't have wanted to live with them, either.
A few weeks later we were asked to take a 'long term placement' one for which 'the children would not be going back'. We were given some background info - parents were from India, kids lived with mom who had a mental health condition. For whatever reason, she didn't have medical insurance (her nationality or citizenship status, I was told, played some part in that but I don't know what so I won't go into it) and so, when her samples ran out, she'd have problems again. The county wanted to move the kids, I was told, because the foster parents were the pastor and wife at the mother's church. Not only were the mother and the pastor's family friends, and so mom would stop by for unsupervised visits, but she would get more unsupervised visits at church. (Visitation is set up by the court, so if the court says it's best interests of the child to have supervised/unsupervised then that's how it goes. unsupervised is usually earned and close to going home).
We later found out that the pastor's family just didn't want to hang onto 5 kids, so all the older ones were split up and we got the boy, who was 13 at the time and turned 14 in our care. He was a little jumpy in our home, as most new kids are - it's natural. However, teenage boys and their insecurities are always a challenge. He even stated that 'he'd only be with us for a few days because he was told if he wanted he could go back to the former home'. This was disproved. He certainly thought a lot of things. In his culture, boys are more valued than girls (so I'm told) and the four girls, his sisters, shared a single bedroom while he had a room to himself with a large bed - not that this was his fault. It was a two bedroom apartment and the relationship between the parents was bizarre.
They'd been married in India, an arranged marriage. When the husband came to the US to work, he left his wife behind. By the time she came to the US as well, he'd remarried and had a new family. He didn't tell her and kept making babies with her. So, yeah.
Anyway, I had this conversation with him where I told him he could ask any questions he liked, but I also said to him - 'By now you can see, there isn't anything unusual going on here. We're just an average, normal, boring family like everyone else.'
And, we are. We have soccer practice twice a week and his first game Saturday. We have homework issues, discipline, work, dinner - the same things as anyone else with kids. Granted, our son has more issues than your run of the mill child, but he's making progress and doing okay. So at the end of the day, we're just a household, just like them. They should have the same right to be happy - or miserable - as the case may be, as anyone else. I sure do hope the SCOTUS rules in favor of marriage equality.