Beth

The last year in Iowa we took in a foster child. Her name was Beth and she was 7 years old, with a developmental age of 3 and a condition known as hydrocephalus. The farmhouse we lived in was an old school house with 4 equal-sized downstairs rooms and an unfinished attic. The first year in the farmhouse my older brother and I had lived upstairs with bunk-beds placed in the center to divide the space into two rooms. Dad had attached a piece of plywood with wood screws to one side of the wooden bunks and my older brother had exited the bed on the tall side with a ladder and I from the bottom bunk on the other side. Our two younger brothers, born in 1958 and 1959 had a downstairs bedroom. The other three rooms consisted of a utility room with a bathroom in the corner, an eat-in kitchen and the living room, where my parents slept on a convertible davenport which folded in on itself to serve as a couch in the daytime and pulled out and unfolded at night to serve as their double bed. When Beth arrived, this arrangement changed so that all three boys were upstairs and Beth and I shared the downstairs bedroom.

I was, understandably, resentful at first. The family dynamic had changed and I was no longer the only girl. Beth had arrived with a bunch of worn-out hand-me-down clothes, and since she had a clothing allowance, my parents immediately went shopping and bought her new clothes. They had surmised that her previous foster families had used her clothing allowance for their own children and passed the used clothing on to Beth. This was unethical and their decision to buy her a new wardrobe and spend her allowance on her each month meant she was the best dressed kid in the family.

Beth also arrived with a pair of leg braces intended to improve her gait. She had terrible balance and coordination, trouble feeling hot and cold, and digestive issues. She didn’t wear the braces for the first few days, but one morning I unilaterally decided she should wear them, so I tried to help her put them on. She protested and called out to Mom in the kitchen. She had been in so many homes, she was already calling her new foster mother Mommy, but she skipped the second set of consonants, so it sounded like “Mahee.” Mom came into the room and made a command decision. She did not have to wear the braces, since playing outside with the other 4 kids would surely improve her coordination and gait.

There were a couple of other peculiarities shared with my parents by the social worker. She hated going to bed and she would not allow her hair to be washed. For her first bath Beth and I were plopped in the tub together and Beth watched as Mom washed my hair, then sat quietly as Mom washed hers. There was no protestation, no tears and never an issue after either. The bedtime issue was not cleared up quite so easily. Fortunately, the children’s bedtime was consistent and non-negotiable. At 8 pm, after juice, and teeth brushing we were told goodnight and all went to bed. The first night Beth went to bed, but got back up and went out to the living room where my parents were watching television. She was whining that her head hurt and that she needed a cool washrag. Mom prepared it for her, handed it to her and sent her back to bed. She ran in the room crying, got in bed, whimpering for 5 or 10 minutes and went to sleep. The next night she pulled a similar stunt only this time she was sick and had to throw up. Dad said, “OK – go to the bathroom, throw up and get back into bed.” The following night she said she had a fever, so Mom took her temperature, declared it normal and sent her back to bed. Having exhausted her repertoire of bedtime excuses with no success at avoiding the inevitable, she became one of 5 children who went to bed at 8 pm, and there were never any other problems. The family rules were her rules, and just as my older brother and I had to keep an eye on the younger brothers, we too had to keep an eye on her. We all soon learned to love Beth, even making sure she wore a sweater and/or jacket when it was cold and was not over-dressed in the sweltering Iowa heat and humidity, because her inability to judge hot and cold could compromise her health.

Although we only had her for a year, and we had to ‘give her back’ before we could make the move to New Hampshire, she seemed unaffected by the separation, telling us to have a good time in New Hampshire. The shuffling from home to home must have somehow made her resilient to separations, but it affected us kids and we questioned Mom and Dad about what would happen to her and would we ever see her again. The answer was probably not.

The social worker did an evaluation and shared the results with us before we left. In one year her verbal and motor skills had improved significantly with a subsequent increase in her mental age of nearly two years, which had been assumed to have reached a final plateau. Dad credited it to socialization and physical activity (but then again, he was a sociologist).

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