If Only He'd Told Me

by Mia Marconi

  Lottie wouldn’t have the full facts about what had happened with the previous carer until she’d had a chance to visit, but she warned me, looking subdued, that I was enjoying the honeymoon period with Brody.

  ‘His behaviour can be extreme,’ she said. ‘He’s already broken a teacher’s arm and smashed up his classroom, and he has caused serious damage in all his foster carers’ homes.’

  I poured more tea and looked out of the window at this tiny little kid jumping up and down on the trampoline. I felt uneasy and wondered momentarily if I should refuse to keep Brody.

  ‘Just look at him,’ I said to Lottie. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Who would have thought someone that small could cause such havoc?’

  ‘Lottie!’ Brody shouted. ‘Watch me! Watch me!’

  Lottie stopped and looked just as Brody executed the perfect back flip. He stood up, waited for the applause and wasn’t disappointed.

  Lottie sipped her tea. ‘You’re an experienced carer, so I’m sure you will be fine,’ she said. And I thought she was probably right, so in that split second I decided to welcome Brody into our home.

  Chapter Two

  Just over four months had passed and Lottie had become part of our family. The children absolutely adored her and her visits were like a ray of sunshine. Screams of excitement would always fill the room when Lottie arrived, and we talked often of Brody’s family. I was beginning to fill in the gaps.

  Those first few months were relatively smooth, and to outsiders it was like he had always been there. His family visited once a month and Brody was always pleased to see them, but you could tell that he was disappointed too. He had his own fantasy of what family should be like, and he could see that his fell short.

  When I finally met his parents I tried hard, but I never built up a relationship with either of them. To be honest, I was struggling to be civil to Brody’s dad, knowing what he was like. I found making polite conversation with them difficult and they never seemed that interested to hear about Brody’s achievements. No wonder he always craved attention, I thought. Their visits seemed like box ticking to me, something they had to do if they were to have a chance of getting him back, but there was no real concern for his welfare. The truth is that they didn’t seem to think much of me either. To Brody’s mum and dad, I was always going to be the enemy – the reason their son was no longer living with them.

  School was always an issue for Brody and he found it hard to fit in, but I believed I would be able to work closely with all his teachers to make it a positive experience rather than a negative one for him. Success at school is partly about teachers’ and pupils’ expectations, and Brody seemed to be stuck in a vicious cycle of being labelled the worst-behaved boy in the class.

  We all know from experience that school does not suit every child, and the way the system currently stands it will fail some children from the very start. It was failing Brody, and to turn that around was going to be a massive task. We needed him to be seen as a positive role model in class, and I could see this was going to take a lot of work, with nurturing at home as well as at school.

  Although Brody found school a problem, at home he had found a soulmate in Alfie. They became so close they were almost like brothers. Alfie was so used to being surrounded by girls it was a breath of fresh air for him to have someone to play football with, build dens at the bottom of the garden with and ride his bike with in the local wood. It all seemed pretty perfect, a match made in heaven, a proper bromance.

  A carer’s children are key to helping a foster child settle in, which not everyone realises. Quite often when new children arrive the older ones are withdrawn and sullen, while the younger ones can be screaming, spitting, kicking, throwing themselves on the floor and making themselves sick. It’s all fear about what will happen next, but you can see them calm down really quickly once they realise that there are other children in the house.

  It’s not nice for my kids to see another child hit and kick their mother, so when there’s an ‘incident’ I make sure they’re out of the way and always explain why children are acting in this way. It is still frightening, as life is sometimes, but I know my son and daughters are prepared.

  I have no doubt that the fact there was a boy of a similar age to Brody in the house gave him confidence and helped him feel at home. I had seen it a hundred times before and thought back to the time when we had a two-year-old girl here called Bethany, who was very uncomfortable around bath time. Most toddlers reach up to you to be lifted in and out of the bath, but she would freeze if I tried to touch her. My girls instinctively sensed that they could help and, without me saying a word, one of them would lift her out of the bath, wrap her in a towel and give her a big cuddle. She felt comfortable with them doing it rather than me. Bethany had been badly abused by her mother, so why should she trust another female adult? But why should she miss out on one of the best things about being a child – being cuddled in a towel after a nice warm bath – because of this trauma? For weeks Francesca or Ruby would gently lift Bethany out of the bath until one day, without thinking, Bethany lifted her arms towards me. At that moment I knew we were making progress. I smiled at Francesca and Ruby to let them know that this breakthrough was thanks to them and that it might never have happened if it wasn’t for their caring.

  Some social workers show little interest in the children who help in foster caring, which saddens me. Thankfully, they are outnumbered by those who go out of their way to make these children feel important, so that they realise how important their contribution is.

  I experience it every day, and it’s lovely to watch Francesca and Ruby help our foster children with their homework. The kids always want the girls to help them, never me.

  They help with more than just homework, though. I remember overhearing the girls talking to one foster child about problems at school. Martine was six at the time and she told Ruby: ‘My friend’s been horrible today. She said that I haven’t got a real mummy.’

  Quick as a flash, Ruby told her: ‘Just tell her that you’re luckier than everyone else because you’ve got two mummies and they’ve only got one.’ Within minutes, Martine was smiling again. It’s that kind of great advice that really helps these children, and it is so much more convincing coming from another child.

  Watching my children follow their daily routine helps foster children learn about a normal home life. They see me reading them a bedtime story and tucking them in and kissing them goodnight and it gives them confidence that the same routine is right for them. They might not want me to be too involved, but they will happily allow my girls. Lots of foster children find that bedtime is a problem. Some find it frightening, but after Francesca or Ruby have read them a bedtime story they find it much easier to settle.

  Then there’s dance, which is always an ice-breaker and a bonding tool in my house. My girls love dancing to pop music and make sure they pass on their ballet and street dance skills to any child who is interested. I’ve lost count of how many dance shows we’ve had in our house.

  Clothes for foster children are always a big factor too. A lot of them have never had a choice about what to wear, or any clean clothes for that matter. I’ve seen countless photos of children’s bedrooms strewn with piles of dirty clothes. Consequently, as long as it’s clean, they just pull on whatever they can find, whether that’s a summer T-shirt and a pair of shorts in the middle of winter or a jumper and jeans in summer. Francesca and Ruby have always made sure they know what the right clothes to wear are and have helped them develop a sense of pride in looking clean and tidy.

  The children who went to the same school as my kids saw them as positive role models there too, and they picked up their good eating habits at home, sitting down for a proper meal instead of having a bag of crisps or a bag of sweets. They watched my kids play sports, learned what it was like if someone was kind to you and how to be kind in return. I could teach them some of these skills, but watching other children was always a much more po
werful lesson.

  All sorts of combinations of children have lived with me: babies and toddlers, only children, single siblings and sibling groups. A major lesson I have to teach groups of siblings when they come to live with us is that the older one doesn’t have to take on a parenting role for the younger ones any more. It’s really hard for them to let go, because they have grown up believing they need to protect the younger children. I remember Louisa, a six-year-old girl, and her four-year-old brother Billy. Louisa did everything for Billy, including making his food. When I explained that she didn’t have to look after her baby brother in that way any more, that I would do it, it was hard for her to take. Every time we went to the supermarket, if I took my eyes off Louisa for a minute she would steal a pram or a buggy. She thought all babies in prams were vulnerable and needed to be looked after in the way she’d looked after her brother. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to a distracted parent that I was sorry, that Louisa had just made a mistake.

  One solution would have been to let her push Billy in the shopping trolley, but if I had done that she would never have learned how to be a child. It was awkward, though, and she kept trying to steal babies for about two years, the last time being when we were in Italy on holiday. We were all walking single file down a narrow street, with me leading, and when I looked back Louisa was pushing a pram.

  ‘Louisa, where did you get that from?’ I cried. She looked guiltily at me and before she could answer I saw a mother outside a bar, completely hysterical.

  I had told her hundreds of times not to take prams, but this time I really had to shout at her – something I hate doing, but drastic action was needed. It worked, and thankfully that was the last time she did it.

  So many children who come into care have big voids in their lives. If you think of growing up in a functioning family in terms of drawing a map of childhood where you need to get from A to Z to fully develop, it might help explain what happens to these children and why so many become feral. You can’t get to Z unless you follow the right path, and if you don’t follow that path you end up in dark, scary woods.

  As a parent, if you don’t respond to babies when they smile or cry – the two simplest social interactions that are a baby’s main form of communication – they don’t know how to respond when someone smiles at them or is in distress. They will struggle to communicate for the rest of their lives unless they learn how, and in Brody’s case smashing up the place was his way of attracting attention and saying, ‘I really need you to listen.’

  Brody was a feral child because his parents really didn’t care. No one went to him when he cried as a baby or whined as a toddler, so his behaviour became extreme to help him get the attention he needed.

  He was manipulative too. To everyone on the perimeter of our family Brody was a charmer, a friendly lad who was the first to offer help at parties. There was Brody, folding up the tables and chairs, taking the rubbish out to the bin. He made a career out of people-pleasing – the comments I heard most about Brody were: ‘Isn’t he helpful?’ ‘What a lovely boy,’ and ‘Thank you, Brody, you are so kind.’

  I would smile weakly because I knew that Brody was a boy whose map was full of dead ends and missed turnings.

  With pretty much all foster children you need to work out where the voids in their childhood map are so that you can go back and fill them in, and my own children played a really big part in this as well.

  I had fostered around a hundred children by the time Brody stepped through our front door and was confident I could deal with most situations. I looked at Brody and Alfie and was convinced that I was right. They were happily playing football in the garden as though they had known each other all their lives. I smiled to myself, quietly confident that things seemed to be going in the right direction.

  Chapter Three

  Everything was going so well – it was the end of term, our holiday to Spain was booked and everyone was excitedly packing their suitcases. The girls’ beds were strewn with bikinis of all colours, while shorts, flip-flops and sun hats littered the floor.

  Holidays were was a new experience for Brody, and Alfie was helping him get ready. I caught some of their conversation and heard Alfie earnestly explaining to Brody what happened when you got to the airport.

  ‘You have to give your passport to a man to check that it’s you, and then you go to a place called Duty Free where you can buy lots of stuff cheap,’ Alfie said, adding, ‘Do you like planes?’

  ‘Never been on one but I’m not scared,’ said Brody, who had just celebrated his seventh birthday.

  When we got to Gatwick, I looked at Brody and could see that being in an airport, with all its hustle and bustle and Tannoy announcements, was freaking him out a bit. He could explode at moments like these and I hoped the bag of colouring books, word-search puzzles and sweets I’d brought with me would be enough to distract him.

  I tried to think back to the first time I went on a plane so I could relate to what he was feeling. I remembered the excitement and fear as you take off, and that feeling when your stomach drops ten inches as you climb steadily into the air.

  ‘It’s a bit like being on a roller-coaster ride,’ I said to Brody.

  He went quiet.

  ‘Have you ever been on a roller-coaster,’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘It gives you an excited feeling in your tummy. Scary but fantastic at the same time.’

  Brody nodded, but I was not at all sure he could imagine what I meant.

  Once we had boarded and found our seats, I looked over at Martin, who winked at Brody as he tried to work out his seatbelt and lent over to help him.

  I smiled and said, ‘Honestly, it is fun.’

  He nodded, but still didn’t look that sure, and he closed his eyes as the plane’s engines began to roar and we taxied down the runway. He didn’t open them again until the plane had lifted off the ground and we had levelled out. Only then did he look apprehensively out of the window.

  When the meal arrived in its little tray I could see Brody’s nerves ebbing away and that he was starting to enjoy it. The flight went without a hitch, and when we landed the excitement was wonderful. I love that look on children’s faces when they can’t express how happy they are. Brody’s face was just like that when he walked out of the cabin door. As the hot air hit him like a hairdryer, it was delightful to watch. I wished I could capture that feeling of excitement and keep it in a glass jar. I get butterflies even now just thinking about it.

  The beach was right next to our apartment, so the first thing we all did was rush to our rooms, change into our swimming things, grab our towels and run down to the shore. I was sweaty from the journey and could not wait to dip my whole body into the tranquil, turquoise sea.

  Brody excelled at all sports, so I assumed he would be an excellent swimmer. He ran straight into the sea, copying the other kids, so he gave me no reason to think otherwise. I was not prepared for what was about to happen, though. Suddenly, slicing through the laughter came the most piercing scream. I stopped – along with every other adult near me – to see where it was coming from, because whoever was screaming must be seriously hurt. There was no other explanation.

  I saw Alfie’s face and he looked horrified as he stared at Brody. It was Brody who was screaming and I tried to run through the water towards him, the sea pushing me back with each step. By the time I reached him Martin had lifted him out and was running up the beach with him. I followed, wondering what the hell had happened. Everyone had been happy and laughing one minute and then screaming and shouting the next.

  ‘Did something bite you?’ I said as I looked at the concerned circle of adults surrounding us. Brody was still screaming out of control and couldn’t talk.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  After a few minutes Brody managed to splutter, ‘My body’s on fire.’ His eyes were wide and scared.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Just help m
e, help me,’ was all he could say.

  Martin and I exchanged confused looks and Alfie sat on the sand crying, not knowing what to do. The other children looked like they had seen a ghost.

  Suddenly, I remembered India, our former foster child who had no experience of the beach either and had been frightened by the feel of the sea. I realised that the salt on his skin was a sensation that was totally alien to him.

  ‘Quick, Martin, put him under the shower.’

  People were still staring, and if we’d been in Italy I could have explained in Italian what was happening, but I knew barely any Spanish and there was no way I could explain this, so I just said, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

  I started to wash the salt off him, and the burning sensation gradually subsided. He slowly calmed down and eventually I wrapped him in a towel and took him back to the apartment while Martin tried to explain to Alfie what we thought had happened.

  It had all become too much for the fiery little boy with his tough-guy exterior. All his bravado had melted away like chocolate in the hot sun and all that was left was a frightened lad looking at me for reassurance.

  The problem foster carers face sometimes is that in the day-to-day drama of looking after these damaged children we’re so wrapped up in the big stuff we forget to ask the simple questions. In this case, it was: ‘Can you swim?’ I hadn’t even asked if he had been to the seaside before. Now that I thought about it, Brody would have already told me he was the best at swimming, because he always said he was the best at everything, even if he hadn’t tried it. Back at home I had been so focused on trying to sort out Brody’s school life there hadn’t been much time for anything else.