[0:00]you can intervene at any point in a child's life, any point. It is not too late. There's no such thing as too late, and you can give them an opportunity to thrive.
[0:15]So for me being a foster parent was a given. I, um, always wanted lots of kids, so my husband and I were blessed with two, one of each, one girl, one boy. And, uh, we took in another over time 44 children. And so for us, house full of joy and chaos was the way it went. Uh, we fostered for 16 years, over 20 years, so took some breaks off when we had our son, things like that. Um, during that time we specialized, we ended up, um, taking kids that were little to start with, and we moved to teenagers. And then our specialty at the very end was boys between the ages of 8 and 12, and that was my niche because I love their energy, I love their enthusiasm. I loved their, um, push back and their arguing. I really appreciated it, and that was my joy with those little boys. I would say every child that comes into foster care, right there, bang, you now have an adverse childhood experience. Because there was things that happened at home, and then coming into foster care is it in of itself an adverse childhood experience because you've been taken away from your parents, whatever that looks like. Um, so every kid came with probably at least three to four adverse childhood experiences. The science tells us if you've had five or more, then you will most likely throughout your adult life, be, um, dealing with a combination of things such as health concerns, mental health, addiction, all of those things start to sneak in. And that was always our big thing is that how can we affect these kids in such a way that they have the skills and the tools to cope, and they have the ability to ask for help when they get there. If the physical symptoms showed up, if the mental health symptoms showed up, and they had strategies that can make a difference, it was making sure that they had those strategies. But we didn't know about ACs then, back then we didn't understand them. You know, so the earlier part of me, this is where my physical conservativeness comes in. Um, but also for the children, the earlier the better, and the better the outcomes. Uh, we had a little girl, who was 10 months, and at 10 months she weighed 12 pounds. Um, mom had basically kept her in a car seat her whole life, so she had no muscle tone, no movement, the back of her head was flat, no hair. And she had, um, pretty horrific beginning, so at 10 months, uh, no milestones, she was failure to thrive. She had no ability to function as a 10 month old, she was more like a two month old. When she was adopted from our home, 14 months later, uh, we had nicknamed her Magpie because she didn't stop talking. She had hit all of the milestones that she needed to. She was a peanut. She was tiny in size, and I don't think she was ever going to be big. But she was developmentally exactly where she needed to be. So in 14 months, we took a child for failure to thrive, to meeting all the milestones. The earlier you get there, the more likely that there's going to be less impact later on. Some other kids we got at five and six, and I know that they have had some challenges later in life, and they've had some struggles. One of my favorite children, we had for four years, he left us at 16. He's now 36, and he struggles with addiction and with mental health, but he's a functional human being. And I believe that he came to us at 11, at that point, it wasn't too late. But what it was was more challenging, even four years of stability for him has he still got some heartache and some issues to deal with, and at least he has the coping mechanisms and he's still in our life. He still reaches out now for support. So working at CMHA, uh, in mental health and substance disorders, we have folks that were supporting, uh, in a variety of ways, and I think we try really hard to create a place where people can come where no diagnosis is required. And that's critical because what we're seeing now is maybe some of those kids that we served in my family earlier on, where life hasn't dealt them a good hand. And circumstances, biology, all those experience have come to a perushion and it's not been a healthy one. And they come in now and I can pick out the ones that if you looked at them, if I'd had them a little bit earlier or some of the other great homes have, um, they might have had a little bit of an outcome. And maybe they wouldn't be struggling quite as much, but again, it's not too late because you can wrap them in supportive care that can be just creating community, belonging, hope, all of the things that we know are necessary to thrive, whether you're a child or an adult. Critical.
