Foster Care

   I can say that I have been adopted by the Puerto Rican culture since I was 11 years old. My foster parents were from Puerto Rico and I stayed with them for a whole year. 

    They were nice people who taught me a lot about Puerto Ricans and the foster system. There were 3 other kids staying at the same home, so we had a full-house. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay alongside my brother. There was a teenage girl who also lived there and became a sister to me. She made my stay there ten times better- although she was going through her immature and wild years she was very helpful and was a big sister to me. 

    I visited my angel aka my mommy every two weeks in the beginning and later on it was increased to once every week for 2 hours. The first few visits were monitored and slowly progressed from one hour to two hours without direct supervision. The hardest part was watching my baby brother who was only three years old start crying when the visit was over. 

    The lady taking care of us was a great cook, but she wasn't very loving and the kids called her grama. My brother had real hearing problems and it wasn't diagnosed at the time so the lady yelled at him a lot and wasn't very considerate of the situation we personally were facing. I definitely saw some discrepancies in their way of care towards the children. They used their money unwisely by saving money on the food they provided for the kids. For example, instead of buying fresh fruits and vegetables, she would buy boxes of macaroni and cheese and dry soups to make for them on a weekly basis. The kids were malnourished from their day to day meals. The food they were given were 90% all processed and in small amounts. 

    They spent about $300.00 in just meats of which the kids only got maybe a piece or two a week when they ate it daily. Also, they were both somewhat chain smokers and smoked inside and outside the house. When the summer time came she would not bathe the kids on a basis that they were already getting wet outside in the plastic kids pool she filled up every day. The kids had fun splashing but they still needed a real bath, and she skipped that daily care quite a few times. 

    Overall, it was an experience I would never want to repeat and it's sad to see people take care of kids in need only for the money. I have always wanted to adopt a child, but after that foster care living arrangement I want to adopt that much more and become a foster parent myself. 

Thank you for joining me along in this journey of life via social media. 

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