Читать книгу If Only He’d Told Me: A foster family pushed to the limits - Mia Marconi - Страница 6

Just over four months had passed and Lottie had become part of our family. The children absolutely adored her and her visits were like a ray of sunshine. Screams of excitement would always fill the room when Lottie arrived, and we talked often of Brody’s family. I was beginning to fill in the gaps.

Those first few months were relatively smooth, and to outsiders it was like he had always been there. His family visited once a month and Brody was always pleased to see them, but you could tell that he was disappointed too. He had his own fantasy of what family should be like, and he could see that his fell short.

When I finally met his parents I tried hard, but I never built up a relationship with either of them. To be honest, I was struggling to be civil to Brody’s dad, knowing what he was like. I found making polite conversation with them difficult and they never seemed that interested to hear about Brody’s achievements. No wonder he always craved attention, I thought. Their visits seemed like box ticking to me, something they had to do if they were to have a chance of getting him back, but there was no real concern for his welfare. The truth is that they didn’t seem to think much of me either. To Brody’s mum and dad, I was always going to be the enemy – the reason their son was no longer living with them.

School was always an issue for Brody and he found it hard to fit in, but I believed I would be able to work closely with all his teachers to make it a positive experience rather than a negative one for him. Success at school is partly about teachers’ and pupils’ expectations, and Brody seemed to be stuck in a vicious cycle of being labelled the worst-behaved boy in the class.

We all know from experience that school does not suit every child, and the way the system currently stands it will fail some children from the very start. It was failing Brody, and to turn that around was going to be a massive task. We needed him to be seen as a positive role model in class, and I could see this was going to take a lot of work, with nurturing at home as well as at school.

Although Brody found school a problem, at home he had found a soulmate in Alfie. They became so close they were almost like brothers. Alfie was so used to being surrounded by girls it was a breath of fresh air for him to have someone to play football with, build dens at the bottom of the garden with and ride his bike with in the local wood. It all seemed pretty perfect, a match made in heaven, a proper bromance.

A carer’s children are key to helping a foster child settle in, which not everyone realises. Quite often when new children arrive the older ones are withdrawn and sullen, while the younger ones can be screaming, spitting, kicking, throwing themselves on the floor and making themselves sick. It’s all fear about what will happen next, but you can see them calm down really quickly once they realise that there are other children in the house.

It’s not nice for my kids to see another child hit and kick their mother, so when there’s an ‘incident’ I make sure they’re out of the way and always explain why children are acting in this way. It is still frightening, as life is sometimes, but I know my son and daughters are prepared.

I have no doubt that the fact there was a boy of a similar age to Brody in the house gave him confidence and helped him feel at home. I had seen it a hundred times before and thought back to the time when we had a two-year-old girl here called Bethany, who was very uncomfortable around bath time. Most toddlers reach up to you to be lifted in and out of the bath, but she would freeze if I tried to touch her. My girls instinctively sensed that they could help and, without me saying a word, one of them would lift her out of the bath, wrap her in a towel and give her a big cuddle. She felt comfortable with them doing it rather than me. Bethany had been badly abused by her mother, so why should she trust another female adult? But why should she miss out on one of the best things about being a child – being cuddled in a towel after a nice warm bath – because of this trauma? For weeks Francesca or Ruby would gently lift Bethany out of the bath until one day, without thinking, Bethany lifted her arms towards me. At that moment I knew we were making progress. I smiled at Francesca and Ruby to let them know that this breakthrough was thanks to them and that it might never have happened if it wasn’t for their caring.