Let's Get Rid Of The Term Foster Kid

I hate the term "foster kid"; it's really alienating. Whenever I hear it, I get a visceral response. How about if we say "children in foster care" instead? Unfortunately, this isn't merely an issue of political correctness, though I wish it were. "Foster kid" carries a negative connotation, and if you don't believe me, ask children living in foster care to describe what they think of when they hear the term. Even worse, ask a person not living in foster care that same question. My youngest son Malcolm used to say, "If people think foster kids are no good, imagine what we think."

Malcolm was very sensitive to the labels associated with kids in foster care, and had a hard time overcoming the resulting insecurities. If I were sensitive to the term before being his Mother, I became even more so afterward. When we first moved to Indiana from San Diego, I had an extremely disturbing encounter that all but sealed my belief that "foster kid" should be eliminated from use.

The first winter following our move to Indiana, Malcolm went out for the school basketball team. His first away game was at the public high school where he would have gone had I not sent him to St. Joe. It's worth mentioning that I chose not to send him to this particular high school upon discovering that it was relatively large and attended by mostly affluent White kids. Frankly, I didn't think it had anything special to offer him.

Regardless, upon arriving at the game, I spotted several hundred students wearing bright yellow t-shirts bearing the term "Foster's Kids" on the front and "We don't get beat anymore" on the back. Needless to say, I was horrified.

I worried about a lot of things when we moved to Indiana: would the kids be treated differently because they're Black; how would people respond to me being a young Mother of teenagers; how would we be treated as a multi-cultural family? However, I never-not one single time-worried that Malcolm would have to sit in a gym while two hundred of his peers pranced around in front of him, each wearing a personal billboard making fun of, making light of or however else you want to sugar coat it, the circumstances affecting children in foster care.

After finding the school's principal and asking him about the shirts, I learned that the team had a new coach, Dave Foster, and that despite several years of losing seasons, the team had recently celebrated a series of victories. He acknowledged that the t-shirts were cruel and inappropriate. Further, he indicated that he had already received other complaints and that the school planned to address the issue on Monday. I suggested that he consider some type of diversity training for his students. Admittedly, I also couldn't resist a mini lecture on the value of treating people as you'd like to be treated. Lastly, I threw in a few negative jabs about the parents of the offending students.

Later, my Mom said, "Most of the parents probably didn't even know about the shirts."

"But if the parents were doing a good job, it wouldn't have mattered whether or not the parents knew. Their kids would have recognized that the shirts are evil," I responded.

I mean seriously, how socially inept do you have to be to not realize that the t-shirts in question are, if nothing more, not nice?

And by the way, just because a child is in foster care, doesn't mean they "don't get beat anymore". No indeed, even if parents aren't waging the assaults, children in foster care can always count on kids like these to beat them down.