“Little boy, 6 years old

A little too used to bein’ alone

Another new mom and dad, another school

Another house that’ll never be home

When people ask him how he likes this place

He looks up and says with a smile upon his face

This is my temporary home”

These words are from a song by Carrie Underwood.  They describe not just one boy but over 3,310,000 children in the United States alone that do not have a permanent home.  These are the foster kids; these are the homeless kids; these are the orphans in our midst.

Foster kids move around alot, they go from homes to programs to group homes and sometimes back to homes again.  Some of them can live in upwards of 21 different places by the time they are 15.  They get used to being in “temporary homes”. Why do they end up in so many different places?  There are a lot of reasons but in the end the foster parents, and the program and group home directors decide they cannot take care of these kids anymore.  Then off they go again to yet another place to live.  Some, like the little boy, just smile; others are angry, they either don’t understand what is happening to them or they resent it.

Homeless children live where they can.  It may be in cars or shelters or even on the streets.  Many of them are still with their parents who are homeless as well.  Some of them are alone.

Some orphans are foster kids, others live in institutions.  And whether they are orphans or foster kids when they reach adulthood they are moved out of the system to fend for themselves.

People are choosy when it comes to taking in children whether fostering or adopting.  I work part time for an organization called suitcases4kids.   This gives me an opportunity to meet foster parents. They love the work they do.  They are here for the kids.  Most of them feel blessed to have the opportunity to help them.

But I was talking to one woman the other day who wants to be a foster parent and she has conditions; she won’t take a child over 3.  Her reasoning is that before this age the kid isn’t “damaged”.  But you know what?  A child needs love no matter what age or condition.  I have also spoken to foster parents who specifically look for “damaged” ones because they know these kids need the most help.

The system works the best it can; its social workers are trying to help but it breaks their hearts to see what these kids go through.

Our kids need help!  As we move through this “Great Recession” these numbers are expected to rise and it is for many reasons such as parents finding they cannot support their own children anymore.

Okay, so you are being affected by the economy too so you cannot afford to take in a child or you are worried about their possible mental issues.  But there are other ways to help.  You can volunteer at a shelter.  You can donate money, clothes, or other items.  Give them love and give them support in any way you can so that our kids don’t feel abandoned!

And maybe they will be able to find something more than just “temporary homes”.

Foster kids are the ones that fall into the cracks.  Though the foster care system does a good job tracking them, the rest of us don’t seem to notice them at all.

Have you ever met a foster kid?  He’s the one that has been moved from home to hospital to program and back to another home.  She is the one that finds a lot of difficulty bonding with a family because she knows she will be uprooted and moved again.  They are the ones that have lost their self esteem.  What can we do to help them rebuild their confidence?We received a letter written by one such foster kid who has been shuffled around all his life.  In it he describes being taken away from his parents when he was only 2 years old and in the process he and his brother were split up.  He was placed into a foster home for only a short period of time but was then moved to several other places; he has forgotten how many.

This boy, CJ, talks about the first time he went into a program; he was 7 years old and very frightened.  He was carrying everything he owned in garbage bags and he says, “Someone must have thought it was trash and one of the bags that had my toys in it got lost”.

From here he moved to another foster home and then another.  Every time he used trash bags to carry his belongings and in the process pictures of his real family were bent or torn.  He believes that in the next two years he was moved 8 times and still with those trash bags.  Today he is in a home with a loving and caring family and he hopes that he will be there for a long time.

As the letter goes on it describes his emotional pain, the different medications he is put on, and the homes he is placed in and subsequently pulled out of.
CJ is quiet and reserved.  In big groups he will sit in a corner by himself or stay very close to his foster dad.  He doesn’t form attachments very easily and it took him a long time to even be willing to call this man “Dad”.  In school he, like other foster children, is drawn to those like himself.  He senses they will understand who he is and where he is at.

There are 500,000 foster kids just like CJ in the United States alone.  Each and every one of them is crying out for help.  There are many reasons why they end up in the foster care system.  These include:

• No parents

• One or both parents has problems such as drugs or alcohol

• The child may have a disorder that the parents cannot handle that result in explosive tantrums, physical violence towards themselves or others, or something else

• Child and/or sexual abuse

A lot of foster homes find themselves unprepared or unwilling to handle tougher cases so, like CJ, these kids move around a lot.  They go to places that try to help like hospitals, group homes, and special programs and each time there is a breakthrough foster families are tried again.  But in the process these kids lose their self esteem and they are afraid to bond with anyone because they don’t want to experience the pain of losing yet another loved one.

What can you do to help?

• Learn more about these kids

• Mentor a child

• Befriend one

• Volunteer at a program or group home

• Welcome a child into your home

My son and I spend a lot of time with several kids.  There is a foster family not too far from us and we witness first hand how the parents interact with them.  We have been swimming, mountain climbing, and just plain barbequing with the boys.  They thrive on the interaction with us especially since my son has some of the same issues that they do.

There is also another way you can help.  An organization called Suitcases 4 Kids has a mission to provide each child with his or her own suitcase, backpack, or duffel bag.  They rely on kind hearted people in the community to donate them.  Foster kids, like CJ, generally move around a lot.  I have known some that have been put in 14 to 21 different places by the time they were 13 years old.  And each time they move with their belongings in trash bags.  Talking to social workers I have found that this is very common and they find it heartbreaking.

I have been working with Suitcases4kids for awhile now and I always find it gratifying when I drop off suitcases.  There is always at least one foster child around who will take them from me and bring them into the office.  And their eyes grow big as I hand each to them and they are always very surprised and grateful.

What are you doing with that extra suitcase, duffel bag, or backpack?  Send it to one of these children. Go to Suitcases4kids to find out how.

I stopped at my Mom’s this morning.  As usual she had a lot of suitcases for me; I left with over a dozen of them.  Ever since she heard about this organization, Suitcases 4 Kids, she has made it one of her missions to collect as many as she can find.  I pick up 4 or 5 whenever I stop in.  Today was the mother lode!

Why does she have so much interest?  The organization’s goal is to supply suitcases for the 510,000 children that are in the foster care system in the United States.  These are the kids who are constantly on the move from hospital, to foster home, to group home, and hopefully to a family that keeps them.  And they move with all of their belongings stuffed into garbage bags. This is their life.  Suitcases help to boost their self esteem; they are not throw away kids!

Mom finds it amazing that there are so many children like this; and this number doesn’t include those that are homeless.  In her day these kids would have been absorbed into their families  She herself had several cousins that grew up with her when their parents could not take care of them anymore.  As a result I also had cousins living with us when I was growing up.

There was a time when families could do this.  Hillary Clinton once said that “it takes a village to raise a child”.  In those days  people could take care of their own.  Grandparents, parents, and children lived in the same home.  Uncles, aunts, and cousins lived next door and down the street.  Today no one lives close.  I have two friends that live in Massachusetts but each has family in California; a lot of my wife’s relatives are in Canada.

So where do these children go?  To state facilities; as more and more families break apart more buildings spring up to take care of them.  Just today Mom was telling me that her town is trying to build a small mental hospital just a couple of doors from her house.  The neighbors are up in arms about this and they are trying to fight it.  So again, where will these kids go?

The interesting thing is that this hospital will replace several Section 8 houses that no one even knew were there until now.  These are government-sponsored affordable homes for low-income families and individuals.  The neighbors are using horror stories that they’ve heard about these homes to try to stifle the hospital.  They are fighting to keep these places even though they hate what they’ve heard.  As I said to my mother, “they want to keep the devil they know rather than the devil they don’t.”  I don’t know who originally said this but it really fits here.  But don’t get me wrong I am not saying I believe the hospital is bad; the neighbors are afraid their property values will go down.  Apparently this is more important than our kids!

On a side note, Eunice Kennedy Shriver just died.  Today the Kennedys are having a public wake on Cape Cod today.  No matter what people’s personal or political thoughts are about them no one can deny that the Kennedys have done a lot for the disabled, homeless, and other disadvantaged people.  For example, Eunice started Special Olympics in her back yard.  Maria Shriver, besides being the First Lady of California works with Alzheimer’s.  Caroline Kennedy works with the homeless.  Ted Kennedy has sponsored many bills to help the disabled.

And now we have this small foundation, Suitcases 4 Kids who is looking to help foster care children as much as possible.  They would like new or lightly used suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags.  Every day in her travels my Mom keeps looking.

If you have any please don’t hesitate to help these kids out.  The website gives locations where to send them.  Mom has it easy, she finds them and loads them into my car, and then lets me worry about how to get them to the foundation.

It has been a mixed bag of a day today. It has had its ups and downs and we have a long way to go before it is over. It started out like any other Thursday. We got Max off to school and then I went over to my mother’s house. Every Thursday I do the work that she needs to have done. I washed the shingles on the roof; there has been a lot of mold this year. I also trimmed back her bushes. Then after that it was time for a road trip.

Several weeks ago I put up a guest post from my friend Rich Mountain regarding an organization called suitcases4kids. Its goal is to replace the garbage bags that kids in foster care use to move their belongings with suitcases. Ever since I told her about it Mom has been searching out and giving me 3 or 4 suitcases a week to give to the charity. Today when I arrived she handed me 2 but then she wanted to stop at a couple of places where she has had good luck finding them.

We found 1 suitcase at our first stop but then saw a beautiful one at the second. As we entered the place a gold Mercedes Benz pulled in behind our car. A fiftyish man got out dressed in expensive clothes. He was wearing a tight v-neck jersey with black chest hair pouring out and gold chains around his neck. He followed us inside.

This is an interesting place. Residents of this town drop of items that are in good condition that they don’t need anymore. If they or someone else sees something they like they can just take it. There is no rhyme or reason to the place. People drop their things anywhere they find a space so as a result rather than having a clear path to move through quite often we have to step over things to get to another spot.

Mom has had good luck finding suitcases here. She has a system; move through the place once to see if she finds anything she wants. Once she completes her first circuit anything she has picked up she hands off to a companion, me in this case. She then makes a second run because she finds that she always misses things the first time. Depending on her mood she may make several more trips after this.

It was during the second pass that I saw the beautiful suitcase; some child would love this. As I moved towards it suddenly out of nowhere appeared that gentleman who had also discovered it. He scooped it up before I got there and examined it to see if it was in good condition. I was amused that he was even interested in it; even more so when I found out that he was going to sell it in a yard sale. When I approached him and suggested he donate it to the kids he shrugged me off; apparently the money was more important. No matter, Mom had found 3 so far this week for me.

When we were done I dropped my mother off at her house and headed home. My wife was waiting for me at the door; she was unhappy. She had been sick for some time and had finally been able to see her doctor. After he tested her he gave her some not so good news. He said that she had parasites, a yeast infection, and a tape worm; he prescribed some medicines for her. He also suggested she stop eating wheat because of all the gluten and chocolate because of the sugar. He said that she was feeding the parasites, the yeast, and the worm.

She won’t have much of an issue cutting out wheat; she has been slowly working on doing that for some time now. It is the chocolate she will have a problem with. As she puts it, she’s been eating it since she was a baby. She calls it her addiction. I believe it; I have seen her kneeling on the floor in store candy aisles pulling bags of candy off the bottom shelf just so she can find the ones that she loves. We will be working on this one for awhile.

And guess what? Max got home from school on time but then had a meltdown. Why? He didn’t know; he just knew that he was upset. I convinced him to sit quietly on the couch until he could get it together. When he recovered we told him he could have his best friend over. This was a big deal; they haven’t been together for 3 weeks. Separating them started out as loss of privilege, or punishment, or whatever you want to call it. Max had taken issue with something his friend had said and started hitting him. We took Bobby home and told my son that he couldn’t play with him for a few days.

But when we gave Max back the privilege of seeing his friend, Bobby had disappeared. Turns out he and his mom went on vacation and when they got back she was very sick so we weren’t able to communicate with them. 3 weeks later the boys are back together and as I write they are having a ball. They are dividing their time between playing indoors and outside. It’s about to rain so I expect they’ll be camping out soon in front of my office door.

Even though the day is far from over it has certainly been a mixed day of successes and upsets. I’m hoping for a quiet relaxing evening tonight. Oh wait, probably not. The “So You Think You Can Dance” result show is on tonight and I know my wife will be terribly upset at whoever is cut. It has been whittled down to 4 girls and 4 boys and unfortunately my wife loves all of them.

Did I say I was hoping for a relaxing evening?

Traveling the road to glory is never easy. It will be full of pitfalls waiting to snare people and preventing them from reaching their goals. Now I’m not necessarily talking about President Obama glory or Michael Phelps Olympic gold though they surely went through a lot of pain to get to the top. Even regular people following their dreams can reach road blocks too.

Some people will take issue with the idea that Obama and Phelps are not “regular” people that are accomplishing their goals. And they would be right. One homeless person which is certainly a “regular” person struggled to write a book while living in the back of a car. She would steal time in corners of cafes and libraries to put her words down on paper. When it was finished she shopped it around to dozens of publishers before one decided to take a chance on publishing it. Today, next to the queen J.K. Rowling is the richest woman in England. Her Harry Potter exploded into our homes and continues to reach new heights. Any one of the barriers she met on her path could have stopped her; and have stopped others.

I am not trying to gloss over the accomplishments that people like these have made. My point is that everyone around us has much smaller dreams and goals that they are working towards and they run into pitfalls too. I think “smaller” is not a good word either. My dreams would put me on top of the world but you may think that I’m not reaching high enough. Who’s to judge?

Recently I included a post from a friend of mine regarding an organization called suitcases4kids; established to provide suitcases to children in foster care who only have trash bags to carry their belongings. The founder, Ron Nickerson, would not consider his goals as lofty. He takes in the foster kids that no one else wants, the hard cases. He has been very successful in turning them around making them productive members of society.

He came across the idea of giving suitcases to these kids from an article he read. He did some research and found that nothing like this was happening in New England. He jumped at the chance to help them. He put together a team and to date has brought in over 1500 suitcases just for the pilot program.

He also coaches parents on how raising their “incorrigible” kids.

None of this was all smooth sailing for him. He lost a few kids that couldn’t be turned around. There have been towns that don’t want to help the kids. And most recently he has found in the midst of all of this he may be losing his house. He doesn’t own it so it may be easy to find another rental. But with all the boys in the home it might be difficult to find a suitable place. But this is not stopping him; he has his road to glory and he is continuing to travel it by resolving his issues not letting them stop him.

The front page of his site has a letter written by a child that is moving through the foster care system. He talks about the trash bags and ruined family pictures. What is his goal? “I am in a new home now and I really want it to work.” I have met C.J. and he seems happy and adjusting well. His foster parents would love to keep him but they are waiting to find out if this is working for him. It appears he is well on his way.

And then there is my son Max. He has a lot of 8 year old dreams. He wants to be a soldier, an inventor, and an engineer to name a few. Recently he was not only promoted to third grade but he was also promoted to sixth grade reading. Major accomplishments (I didn’t even know he liked to read, he never does at home). But he also has personal goals too, like expressing his anger in less destructive ways. Hey, he’d even like to find out why he gets angry so easily!! Will he become president? That is a subject that is now less important to him than why he is so explosive. The anger and destructiveness are two of his road blocks. Once he gets through these he will be able to look forward to new dreams and new heights to reach for.

Everyone is on a road to glory, their own glory. It is up to them to get passed the pitfalls and even though a child needs to learn how to do it it’s up to the parents to guide them.

Following is a guest post by Rich Mountain of Suitcases 4 Kids which helps foster kids.  He is a friend who’s son is the same age as my son Max.  We are all looking to get the word out about the Suitcases 4 Kids goal.  Connect with them, get on their list, donate suitcases and money, or help out.  Everyone is needed.

Suitcases 4 Kids held their pilot program event on Saturday, June 13, covering the Haverhill Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) district.  People lined up to give us their new or slightly used suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags.

Our organization was formed to provide suitcases to kids who are moving through the foster care system.  On average each child moves 3 to 4 times but I have met a few that have gone through 14 to 20 different homes, group programs, and hospitals.  These kids only have trash bags with which to carry their belongings.

“We want to make this project special for the children. The message we hope to send is ‘You are important. You are valuable.’ We believe that the love, care, and commitment from this Haverhill area project will light a fire of inspiration and spread Suitcases for Kids across Massachusetts and beyond.” said Donna White, co-chairwoman of Suitcases for Kids, and a mother of two.

There are 700 children in the Haverhill system.  Our goal was to bring in 1000 suitcases to make sure we covered all of them.

I have been involved with the program almost since its inception a few weeks ago.  My primary duties have been to develop and maintain its website.  I also do some of the research.  It is our awesome team that gets the word out about the kids and the need for suitcases.

I mentioned the drive for suitcases to my 8 year old son.  He is a hoarder from way back.  He still has his first pair of shoes.  Like his dad he has never found a book that he doesn’t like to squirrel away.  To even suggest getting rid of something will cause him to run kicking and screaming from the room…just like his dad.

But today was different.  Just the mention of foster care kids and suitcases had him scrambling for whatever he could find.  You see, several of these kids are his friends and the idea of them being without was enough for to get him moving.  In the end he came up with a suitcase, a backpack, and a duffel bag.

He didn’t just hand me his finds; he insisted that I drive him to one of the drop off sites so that he could contribute.  He chose the Triton High School location in Byfield Massachusetts hoping that he could spend some time with the co-chairman Ron Nickerson’s boys.  And yes they were there but when he saw all the suitcases and the work that needed to be done he pitched right in.  And rather than stand around and wait until he was done, dad joined in too.

There were many wonderful people working along side of us inspecting, cleaning, and stacking the donations.  At the end of the day there were still more waiting to be processed.  At our location we filled one trailer to overflowing.  Luckily we had a truck in reserve which took not only the extras  but also the unfinished ones and the trash.

By Sunday we realized we had received over 1300 suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags and more are still coming in.  The response from the community has been overwhelming.  I can understand it seeing how my son, the hoarder, reacted.

But we aren’t finished.  Yes, there is still the job of distributing the suitcases to the Haverhill DSS area, but there is also the state of Massachusetts, New England, the East Coast, and, and, and….  With everyone’s help we can provide suitcases to all the foster care kids in the United States.

And when my son and I went home I was ready for a nap but that didn’t happen.  For the rest of the day he worked on his bedroom either throwing away or giving away most of the stuff he had piled up in there.  He now has a bedroom and closet!!

When you give from the heart wonderful things can happen.