Almost a generation ago, I started to write a book about my experiences as an attorney for foster-to adopt parents, and as an attorney representing children and parents in “Child In Need of Care” cases. I was going to call the book “Broken Babies, Shattered Dreams” – because that’s what I saw all around me.
The book was intended as a call to action, describing the danger we faced as a society because we were raising a generation of children with no conscience, no trust in the future and a compelling need to be violent and destructive.
In the first three chapters, I told the the sad stories of two children adopted out of the foster care system who had been damaged by horrific abuse and neglect. The saddest part of the tale was what happened to them when somebody tried to love them. They couldn’t receive it, not because of the abusive acts of their parents, but because their spirits were ultimately crushed beyond repair by years of suffering at the hands of a stupid and uncaring system and the wrongheaded and inept service providers in its employ.
I wrote the first three angry chapters and then put it on a shelf to gather dust, hoping someday to get back to it. I’ve done a lot of things with my life and career in the intervening years, and now I’ve come full circle to work with the children of those children.
I’m one of those people in charge of the system, directing the work of service providers. Every time we lose a young person to the drug culture or the internal devils that haunt these children, I remember my rage and sense of helplessness from a generation ago.
Still, the knowledge I garnered in my days of advocacy inform the philosophical ideals that I’ve adopted in working within the foster care system. I wish I could say that I’ve discovered that I was young and misguided back then or that society has come to its collective senses and that we’re back on the right track.
Instead, what I have to say is that the situation has followed it’s natural path of increase, and that the damage inflicted, the danger we face and the number of children has grown.
We failed to heal many of the children who were severely injured, physically and emotionally abused and sexually exploited a generation ago. A significant number of them have grown up to become monsters in turn. Moreover, it appears that by the next generation they will have seriously infected the general population with their legacy of indifference to pain, obsession with violence, shallow materiality and need for immediate gratification and constant stimulation.
Indicators like drug addiction, suicide and cognitive behavior disorders are on the rise. Some say that we can attribute the alarming rise in other emotional and cognitive disabilities in part to chemicals present in our environment and in part to the emotional distance and disconnect between children and caring adults. Nowhere is that disconnect more apparent than in the lives of chilren in th foster care system.
Well, that’s my rant. But instead of writing another angry three chapters to gather dust, I’m going to use the wonders of our new techno-enviro world that may or may not be partially to blame for fostering more face-to-face disconnect. I’m going to use this forum to share my stories, my concerns and ideas with others, and try to listen to what those others are thinking. Maybe together we can arrive at a solution. Because, although I am worried, I believe there is a thoughtful, practical and caring real world solution to help this next generation dream new dreams and become happy, healthy and prosperous.