{"id":12555,"date":"2010-12-29T09:23:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T14:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=12555"},"modified":"2010-12-29T11:36:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T16:36:39","slug":"not-invited-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/12\/not-invited-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Invited Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you ventured into Barnes & Noble this holiday season, you may have been asked to buy a book to be donated to foster children.\u00a0\u00a0 The available options are displayed on shelves behind the cashiers: mostly an array of classic picture books for small children, with a smattering of selections for older grade-schoolers.\u00a0 I think this comports with the image that pops into the average person\u2019s head when the term \u201cfoster child\u201d is uttered.\u00a0 We imagine frightened, small children who have been rescued from violent or deprived homes and placed with earnest, supportive foster parents.\u00a0 Of course, we know the reality is more complicated, and that there are plenty of older kids and teenagers in foster care, and that the skills and dedication of foster parents vary considerably.\u00a0 A recent piece in the New York Times<\/em> <\/a>shines a spotlight on another aspect of the foster care system: the children who are in the system not because they were plucked away from their parents by Child Protective Services, but because their parents voluntarily surrendered them to foster care.<\/p>\n

The article, one in a series of profiles of persons who benefit from the NYT<\/em> Neediest Cases fund appeal, gives us a snapshot view of Lydia Monserrate, a 21-year-old\u00a0who recently aged out of foster care.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

One of four children, Lydia entered foster care as a teenager whose mother had filed a PINS (persons in need of supervision) petition with the court.\u00a0 As a teen, Lydia skipped school, drank alcohol and shoplifted with her teen buddies, kids her mother considered a bad crowd.\u00a0 When her mother couldn\u2019t control her, Lydia ended up in foster care, living in 13 foster homes in the past 5 years.\u00a0 While her behavior may not have been perfect, her tales of foster care, replete with dog bites, attacks by neighborhood girls and being locked out of houses when the foster parents were not home, are troubling.\u00a0 Now, thanks to food stamps, charity, and a caseworker who has remained in the picture even though Lydia has aged out of foster care, Lydia has a one-room apartment and is working on her GED.\u00a0 Lydia\u2019s mother would not take her back, even though Lydia says \u201cI asked my mom a thousand times if I could come back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, Lydia\u2019s mom has her own side to this story, and there are certainly things we do not know about this family situation and the mother\u2019s motives.\u00a0 But we need to ask why kicking a teenager permanently out of the home is considered an option by many people.\u00a0 The teenage years can be trying in even the calmest of families, but it is important to remember that rebellion is a normal part of the developmental process for teens.\u00a0 Obviously, some teens rebel by sleeping late and talking back to their parents, while others engage in more serious behaviors such as drinking, drugs, truancy, or stealing.\u00a0 Some parents may try the approach of telling a kid \u201cfollow my rules or you\u2019re out of here,\u201d but what if the teen calls the parent\u2019s bluff?\u00a0 Parents are kidding themselves if they think that throwing kids out will put those kids on a better path, because most of the time the kids end up on a much more dangerous path.\u00a0 Throwaway kids are at much higher risk of being involved in criminal activities, both as victims and as perpetrators.\u00a0 Since drugs and prostitution are high on the list of crimes involving throwaway youth, it is not easy to separate the victims from the perpetrators.\u00a0 Victim, perpetrator, or both, it does seem that Lydia has been let down, both by her mother and by the foster care system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ventured into Barnes & Noble this holiday season, you may have been asked to buy a book to be donated to foster children.\u00a0\u00a0 The available options are displayed on shelves behind the cashiers: mostly an array of classic picture books for small children, with a smattering of selections for older grade-schoolers.\u00a0 I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}