Growing Up as a Foster Child

Written by Althea, Content writer, Citizen Diplomat Blog Tales
Anabelle* (20) has been living with a foster family for 15 years. Here she explains how this came about and how strangers became family.

There are many prejudices against children and young people who grew up in a home or, like me, in foster families. Boys, in particular, like to be pushed into the criminal corner, according to the motto: They are in the home because they have beaten up others or are addicted to drugs.

That's often wrong, it's not the children's fault if they were brought up wrong or not at all and the parents don't care at all.

Even teachers think so. At school, they sometimes spoke to me in a funny way because I live in a foster family and not in a "normal" family.

Once, a teacher asked me in the corridor during a short break amid hordes of students: "I heard that you live with a foster family. Why is that?" I answered curtly, "that's just the way it is" and cut the conversation short.

Should I begin to tell her between math and chemistry classes that my dad was an alcoholic and my mom always had borderline personality disorder (BPD) and after the divorce, she completely lost the groun...