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They came to live with us when I was five. They were natural brothers--one was eight, one was eleven. They had bounced from home to home for years, and we found them because we moved next door to the family who was keeping them. My parents took them in, intending it to be for the rest of their childhoods, and told my younger sister and I to think of them as brothers.
We did. They thought of us, understandably, as the next in the line of families who would eventually abandon them. Over the years the older one began to see that my parents really wanted them, while the younger one saw that my parents would do anything to convince him they were serious. The older brother was a talented storyteller, athlete, and artist. The younger turned out to be a sociopath who lied, stole, and worse, from us. Knowing that my parents were desperate to prove that he was part of the family, he often--for fun, it seems--manipulated everyone into situations where my parents would have to choose him over one of the rest of us. Usually he would break or steal something, or start a fight, then blame it on my sister or me, then force my parents to decide who was guilty. Whenever they chose him, he would say "See, I knew you loved them more." So they began to choose him more, to prove to him that they loved him. He would brag to my sister and I that he could make my parents believe him over us, and he could, so there were many things he did that we didn't tell them about.
Finally, after going to trial for trying to kill a passing motorist when he was twelve, and after stealing and selling my parents' wedding rings, silver, and various other items, my parents could no longer handle him, and my mother begged a social worker to take him away. His older brother also wanted to see him gone. The social worker accused my mother of being heartless and uncaring, so he wound up staying with us. He ran away at times, but always came back when he needed money. By the time he was 18, he had been arrested for statutory rape at least twice, had several illegitimate kids, had been caught robbing a convenience store (and given a mild slap on the wrist--he was a very good con artist), was selling and buying drugs, and had done things I wouldn't tell anyone, much less a national forum like DU. He eventually moved to Florida where he made a living pimping his wife. At one point his natural mother went to live with him, and left when he tried to pimp her. She called my mother and told her she was a saint for having tried as hard as she had with such a worthless person.
Bobby finally died of an overdose a year ago. He was partially paralyzed from passing out in a parking lot and being run over by a garbage truck. He was in constant pain. The overdose was accidental, but it probably improved the world greatly for all involved, including him. My parents had succeeded at one thing--they had convinced me to think of him as a brother, and though I had refused to see him for the last twenty years of his life, that's how I thought of him when he died. I also saw all the pain he had caused the world. It's a complex feeling.
My older brother, after running away several times, getting busted for light crimes, and experimenting too much with pot and a few harder drugs, decided he wanted to be adopted. So, at the age of 18, he became a legal as well as actual brother. Shortly afterwards, he had a nervous breakdown, was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and to this day lives with my parents, unable to hold a job even while on medication. He has tried half-heartedly to kill me twice, apologized for it once. That's my other brother. He's the reason I've never smoked pot.
Being a foster parent is not often easy, and sometimes kids wind up with parents who may mean well, but may be totally unable, untrained, or unprepared to handle them. Some will say it's rewarding--I don't know. I love my older brother, and have learned much of what I think I know from my family. I suspect he would be dead if he had not wound up with someone like my parents, who had the patience to deal with what happened to him. On the other hand, the actions of the younger brother tore apart all of our lives. I blame him for my sister's alcoholism, and because my parents have had to raise her children, for their poverty in their older years. I can think of nothing but a bit of toughness I acquired from that experience. My parents' lives have been much worse because of him, and the only love they were rewarded with was a broken, bitter love of someone who didn't deserve it nor appreciate it. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.
I have no point for this, except to say that there ought to be a better system. Too few social workers are too inadequate to help the too few families who really want to share their lives with kids who have too often been abused. There aren't enough professionals to help all the kids, and often the parents, who need help. Parents with dreams of loving a child and making a difference in his or her life are too often shattered by the experience and give up. People just in it for the extra money are sometimes the only ones with the stomach for it, and they have the least ability at it. Sure, there are many kids who are good, or who can become good with the proper parenting, and wind up with good parents and live a Walton style existence. That just wasn't my family's experience.
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