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This counselor was working with Dianna and her foster parents. He felt Mandy was having the same reactions from her life that Dianna was. The only difference was Dianna was far past the point that Mandy was at. Dianna was worse. He told me " the more red flags she throws up, the more help she needs". Things were to only get worse. And was I ready to deal with them. I had no idea how to handle this problem. But she is a child I needed to love her and help her through this, but could I? Time went by and things just got worse. I called the worker and told her I just couldn't handle Mandy. Her reply was "hang in there for a couple of days." Yeah right I have four kids in my home that at any given moment could kill each other. Well the couple of days extended into a couple of months.
I had come into doing foster care wanting to take care of babies, what was I doing with a four year old? A four year old who was disrupting my whole family beyond control. I kept trying to figure out thing that would help her through her anger.
Then I got a phone call about another child. His name was Michael. . Michael was seventeen months old, He was a Mexican child. His mother, who was on drugs, had neglected him. There were three other siblings, a brother Fabian who was three, and a set of twins who were two. Fabian was in the hospital, they were tying to stabilize his meds. He was hyperactive. The twins were in the same foster home. Michael had been in a Westside crisis center for a month already and needed to be moved into a home. Mom who was only nineteen was in pretty bad shape. She was into drugs and didn't care for her children. Michael was the worst off of the four. They had put him in a sits bath at the hospital for half an hour to loosen the fore skin around his little winky. All the children had head lice pretty bad; they had killed off the live lice and just needed to pick out the dead eggs. Would I be willing to take in Michael? Boy I had a lot going on right then, but the vow to God was never to turn away a child. Yes of coarse I would take in this child.