I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [22]
I realize now that I was not alone in running away. The number one reason for why kids run was to get back to their biological family, even if they know that life at home was not a good situation. The study says, "Many youth equated being around a biological family with being 'normal,' and their desire for a 'real home' (which foster care was not, in their minds)." That was definitely my mind-set.
My situation was actually pretty close to what the researchers recommend to help cut down on kids leaving care on their own. I was placed with a sibling, Carlos, and I got to visit with my family regularly. But I still had that desire to run, partly because it felt like I was getting a say in my own life when I did that. That is also a common reason for why other kids leave.
I think it is important for any adult to understand that a child's reasons for wanting to get away from foster care might be a lot more complex--or a lot simpler--than they imagine. My social workers always seemed a little confused that I would want to leave a house where I had regular meals and was making good progress in school. What I couldn't make them understand was that I knew where I was living was just a temporary situation. As I said before, I didn't believe that anyone other than my family could love me and I would rather be hungry and sleeping on the floor so long as I knew that the people I was with would always be looking out for me. As much as Velma cared for me, I never could believe that she loved me.
Even though we never talked about love in my family, I felt it. Love is important in every little kid's life. The teachers at school often seemed frustrated by me, and Velma was a strict task master. Whereas at home no one got mad at me, no one cared if I struggled with reading. All my brothers cared about was that I was with them. That was all I wanted--to feel like I belonged, instead of feeling like a burden. Running wasn't a way of acting out, it was a way of coping with the way that my life had been turned inside out. The study talks about that, too, explaining that running is a coping method for a lot of kids.
What is scary, though, is realizing how many kids who are habitual runners end up in terrible situations. If they don't head home, a lot of them end up as victims of abuse or hooked on drugs. It's incredibly dangerous to set off on your own as a kid, going into the neighborhoods where a lot of runaways go.
I don't talk about my running to glamorize what I did. I was really lucky that nothing worse happened to me while I was out by myself--just about eight or nine years old--looking for my mother. It's actually pretty amazing that I ended up okay.
AFTER ABOUT TWO YEARS in Velma's care, the state finally moved us to another home. It was too bad that we had to leave her home because Velma had invested a lot of work in both Carlos and me. She had a basketball hoop back behind her house and would let us play for hours. She also took us to neighborhood games of football sometimes, and always said the two of us would be going pro someday. She fought for me in school, too. When I had a 17 percent average in school and they said I wasn't going to get moved up to the next grade because I hadn't been showing up, she worked with me and met with the teacher and principal. Within a couple of months, my average had jumped to 62 percent and I was promoted at the end of the year.
She wasn't perfect, of course, but Velma worked hard to be a good foster parent. With as much as I was running, though, I guess it was decided that I would be better off farther away from my mother's home so that I couldn't get there as easily. Carlos and I ended up getting bounced around to three or four other homes over the next year. That was when I learned firsthand that there are two very different sides to foster care.
There are people who become foster care parents because they want to make a difference in the lives of children who have been taken from bad situations. There are other people who become foster care parents