By May, 2003, my wife and I had taken into our home two foster children, ages two months and 30 months. We had met their two other brothers, ages four and a half and 18 months, at the twice a month family visits with their mother. We had indicated to the state and our adoption agency that we would also take the other two boys. All of us were worried that the foster home that had them was not meeting their needs.
On May 5, the state worker called to say that she would bring the boys to our house that afternoon. When they arrived, Walter came running up the sidewalk. We were relieved that he seemed to be excited about the move. He was dressed in dirty, ragged clothing and was wearing an old pair of house slippers that were much too big for him. The foster family had not used the clothing vouchers that the state provides to buy him clothes.
Jacob came next. He was a bit chubby. He waddled up the sidewalk a few minutes later. His hair had never been cut. It was very long and matted. He quickly became very demanding about being held. Within a few hours, he was screaming a lot. He was obviously in very bad shape emotionally.
Meanwhile, Walter was trying to familiarize himself with the house and yard. It was wonderful for us to see all the brothers brought together to stay. We naively thought that it would be a wonderful homecoming for them. We were soon to be proved wrong.
Tommy was very excited to see Walter, but it was obvious that he was not happy at all to see Jacob. Very soon they were constantly fighting. Tommy would be very aggressive with Jacob and Jacob’s answer was to bite. Someone was crying almost all of the time. The situation was to get much worse pretty quickly.
Later in the day, Walter got into Nancy’s lap and asked her if she would be his Mommy. Without hesitation, she looked him in the eyes and said that she would.
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