Saving Grace
“Without our foster parents, our children would remain locked in old hurts and patterns of self-defeating behaviour.”
- Kevin Sullivan, Treatment Foster Care Program, Cobourg.
Denise Waldron

The sleeping baby girl was placed in her foster mother’s arms at midnight on a sweltering August night. Her tiny hand desperately clutched a grimy baby bottle filled with water. Baby Grace’s feet were filthy and bare and her tiny body was clothed in a thick wool sweater, jeans and a swollen soaked diaper. Grace’s contented face belied her inner rage and hostility. Sleep was her only escape.

Grace’s evening had started out like many others. Baby bottle in hand, she had navigated through mine fields of dog waste, bleach bottles, butane lighters, drugs, a blur of cigarette smoke and disorderly adults gyrating to ear-splitting music. Without a bedtime or routine of any sort, Grace had finally passed out, exhausted, on a dingy, soiled, sheetless mattress on the floor.

When she awoke, Grace was not only in a crib with clean sheets and blankets, wearing pyjamas and a fresh diaper, she was also in foster care. Like thousands of other Canadian children in the foster care system, Grace had been taken from an unsuitable home.

While some admissions to foster care are planned – for instance, when parents voluntarily place their child in care for reasons of illness, scheduled surgery or for the purpose of adoption – the vast majority of children in the system are there because they have been neglected and/or sexually, emotionally or physically abused. Some have the distinction of suffering every type of abuse.

Samantha Cooper, Grace’s Kingston-area foster mother, didn’t need an alarm clock the morning after Grace arrived. The sound coming from her foster baby’s room at daybreak was unlike anything she had ever heard. “It was a guttural, angry, primitive, never-ending scream,” says Cooper.

The scream did not abate even when Cooper scooped up the distraught baby in her arms. When she put the agitated tot in a high chair and offered her a bowl of cereal, Grace immediately threw the bowl to the ground and continued her tirade. After offering Grace other breakfast foods and discovering that nothing calmed her down, Cooper placed a call to the social worker at the fostering agency to get some background information. It wasn’t difficult to find – Grace’s four-year-old brother Robert had already been admitted to foster care three times and social workers had been keeping their eyes on Grace.

Cooper was shocked to learn that even though Grace was 18-months old, she had never been offered any solid food – all of her sustenance had come from a bottle. This explained her diminutive size and sunken eyes. Grace weighed only 15 pounds – the average weight of a six-month old. Grace’s resistance to the high chair, car seat and crib were easily explained – her biological mother, Andrea, had left her strapped in her high chair in the backyard for hours on end. Her brother, Robert, had been regularly locked in a closet.

Although foster mom Cooper felt anger towards Andrea, she knew she had to put it behind her. “It is important to let go of your feelings about the biological parents and put your energy into healing the child,” explains Cooper. Foster parents get training, counselling and support from the fostering agency to help them deal with the challenges of fostering.

A week after Grace’s arrival, Cooper took Robert into her home – he had been tracked down at an acquaintance of his mother’s. Grace’s screaming and agitation grew worse when her brother arrived, usually lasting for several hours each day. The social worker explained that Robert’s presence reminded Grace of the trauma bond she had developed with her biological mother.

An infant or toddler who is traumatized lacks a sense of normalcy and the necessary skills to cope with adversity. Because of this, the child’s relationships and coping skills are often compromised, says Kevin Sullivan, program manager of the Treatment Foster Care Program based in Cobourg.

How are trauma and bond related? A child raised in an abusive environment is dependent on the adult for basic survival. The bond that the child develops with an abuser is called a trauma bond. Since the child’s survival is dependent on the behaviour of another person, most often an adult, who is bigger and stronger, she attempts to form a bond that best protects her life. Trauma bonds in an abusive situation usually have life-long negative repercussions for the child.

For the first few weeks in her new home, Grace’s nose oozed green continually, thanks to her previous heavy exposure to cigarette smoke. She constantly sneered and seemed to hate everyone and everything. She looked like “a rabid animal,” as one observer put it.

Although Grace could understand things that were said to her, she did not speak at all. When she wanted something, she would point, yell, scream and stomp, Cooper recalls. Virtually invisible in her biological mother’s home, Grace had learned to scream for her very survival. But two weeks after her arrival at Cooper’s home, Grace had an amazing breakthrough. “One day, Grace flew into her usual rage, pointing to a jug of juice,” says Cooper. “So I stooped to her eye level and said, ‘Grace, you don’t have to scream when you want something. Just say please.’ I watched as a calm came over her and she spoke her first word – ‘Pease’.”

It was the ‘light bulb’ moment and the start of Grace’s healing. “ Our eyes met and I could see her responding to me positively for the first time.” says Cooper. Grace proudly showed off her newly-acquired skill to Cooper’s kids when they got home from school. Grace had quickly learned that “Pease,” was the magic word – in more ways than one.

As time passed, Grace began developing coping skills and was much less agitated. But she still would not let anyone pick her up, cuddle her or touch her. Grace was displaying an avoidant-type attachment disorder. Attachment disorders occur when the child’s needs are not met and are characterized by the child’s inability to establish a nurturing relationship with an adult caregiver. Grace’s disorder caused her to raise her tiny fists and scream when anyone in her foster family tried to comfort her. The good news for Grace; if a child with an attachment disorder can form a healthy attachment with an adult before the age of six, the disorder can usually be reversed.

Both Grace and Robert, who also had an attachment disorder, shared a shocking trait – they were unable to play.

It’s hard to believe that children don’t instinctively know how to play, but Robert and Grace had spent their first few years learning how to survive. “When I invited other kids over for a play date,” says Cooper, “Grace and Robert would sit amidst piles of toys, staring blankly.” When the two did start to play, their games were dysfunctional, involving violence, blood and death. Instead of “hide and seek”, they played, “hide; the cops are coming.”

Grace’s play skills and ability to attach to an adult developed quickly when she and Cooper were able to spend every other day alone – Robert had started junior kindergarten and Cooper’s biological children were in school full-time. At age two, Grace began discovering books, playing games of peek-a-boo and learning nursery rhymes and songs.

At Christmas, five months after Grace’s arrival, Cooper gave Grace dolls and a baby carriage. She then watched with joy as Grace hugged and kissed her new brood and gently walked them in her stroller. Even more importantly, Grace’s scowl had been replaced with a smile and she would break out in full belly laughs when she was cuddled. “Being able to embrace baby Grace was the best Christmas gift of all,” says Cooper.

Three years later, Grace began another journey – this time to live with her new adoptive family. The Cooper family shed many tears of sadness that day. But there were also tears of joy, says Cooper. “This baby who came to us with such anger and sorrow left us as an out-going, loving, well-adjusted girl. Could there be any better reward?”

Becoming a Foster Parent

Are you interested in becoming a foster parent? The best place to start is to speak to a foster parent. She will be able to give you invaluable insight into what it takes, what’s involved, as well as the rewards and the challenges of foster parenting. The next step is to contact a local foster parenting agency. Along with the Children’s Aid Society, there are hundreds of private agencies in Ontario. Again, speaking to foster parents will help you decide which agency you want to foster with. They all differ in their approach to fostering.

In the application process, you will be asked to provide information on past residences, people you live with, reasons you want to be a foster parent, medical information, references, how your home is set up, where the foster child will sleep, your education, job history, credit and much more. After you attend an orientation program, the fostering agency will complete a home study. During this process, you must decide your preferences in terms of the child’s age and sex and the level of difficulty of care.

Once a child is placed in your home, you must be available for visits to the doctor, dentist, social worker, biological family, therapist, training, school, court, probation officers and lawyers.

Denise Waldron is a freelance journalist, a broadcast journalist and a film producer. She has produced three government films on the subject of child abuse and the child protection system. Denise lives in the Kawarthas with her husband and three teenagers.