If you are looking for a cheery, warm-the-cockles-of-your-soul holiday story--just keep going because this isn't one of those. My co-workers seem to think that I am a professional buzz killer and well maybe I am.


Last night after eating my dinner, I was channel surfing looking for something decent to watch and I ran across a show called "A Child to Love." It had me crying like a baby. It wasn't a movie or anything like that. It was a show that highlighted children in the DFW area that were in foster care but were now ready and available for adoption. The show was produced in conjunction with The CW33 and The Gladney Center.


The children highlighted in the show were the "hard to adopt" kids. They were older or had siblings that the agency wanted to keep together. However, there was one little girl who had actually asked to be separated from her siblings because she thought their bad behavior was hampering her chances at adoption. She was only ten.


Some of the kids had been in foster care for quite a few years. One boy was now 13 but had gone into the system when he was 7. He had three younger siblings. Another boy that was highlighted with his younger brother was 14. He had had a twin sister who had been adopted out and separated from him. He said he could still tell when she thought about him.


I can see that I am an emotional person because when I look at the cats on the pet adoption site I always think I want another one. When I watched these young kids who had had such horrific starts to life explain that they just wanted to be wanted, I felt for them. Some had been in six different foster homes in six years. Some were getting close to aging out of the foster care system.


The host kept saying that the adoptions would be funded through federal grants because the children were in the foster care system and therefore the adoptions would be virtually free. She also said that any child over 6 would qualify for medical care and college scholarships.


It takes a very special person to adopt an older child. Everyone seems to want a baby and many people go to great lengths to get a infant from overseas. But there are so many wonderful, loving children right here who desperately want a permanent home and a family that will love them.


There are some really great foster parents in this world but there are also some really bad ones. No matter how good a foster family is they are still just a foster family and not a permanent home for these young kids. In this world where we all have such a need to belong these children's resilience is stregthening for the soul.


Here are a few titles from the FWL about kids in the foster care system.


Three Little Words: a Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Ashley spent nine years in the foster care system. This is her story.




Hope's Boy: a Memoir by Andrew Bridge

Andrew describes his life before foster care and the daunting task of navigating his way through the system. He succeeds in the end.


The Women Who Raised Me: a Memoir by Victoria Rowell

Victoria Rowell is a well known actress who has been on Diagnosis: Murder and has a starring role on The Young and The Restless. She describes her journey as a bi-racial child in the foster care system in Maine, her struggles to succeed at her chosen career and the women who gave her the support she needed to succeed.


On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System by Martha Shirk


Eight accounts of teens who have "aged out" of the foster care system and are now on their own.



One Small Boat: the Story of a Little Girl, Lost then Found by Kathy Harrison

In this book, Kathy Harrison describes the lessons she learned from Daisy, one of her foster children, lessons about resilience after heartbreak, courage after fear, and the power of love to heal even the deepest wounds. Daisy wasn't like the other foster children Kathy Harrison had taken in over the years. Daisy's birth mother wasn't poor, uneducated, or drug- addicted. She just could not take care of a child, and the effects of this abandonment on Daisy were heart-wrenching.



The Heart Knows Something Different: Teenaged Voices From the Foster Care System edited by Al Desetta

More than three dozen former and current foster care kids between the ages of 15 and 20 provide an insider's view of growing up in 'the system.'


For the Love of a Child: The Gladney Story by Ruby Lee Piester

Ruby Lee Piester was the executive director of the Gladney Home here in Fort Worth from 1963 until her retirement in 1983. The Gladney Home specializes in adoptions from primarily unwed teen mothers but also provides adoption services for children in foster care. The Gladney Home started in 1887 as the Children's Home Society. The children who were placed that year had been the ones left on an orphan train after it had made all of its stops. In 1950 the name was changed to The Edna Gladney Home. The Gladney Home was orginally on Hemphill but has since moved out to southwest Fort Worth on John Ryan Drive.


Blossoms in the Dust

A movie about Edna Gladney's life work. The screen writer took quite a few liberaties with the facts of her life. Edna Gladney never had any children of her own and she did not have an adopted sister. Greer Garson plays Edna Gladney.