Sue Cornbluth - Building Self-Esteem in Children and Teens Who Are Adopted or Fostered

Building Self-Esteem in Children and Teens Who Are Adopted or Fostered

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Building Self-Esteem in Children and Teens Who Are Adopted or Fostered

Dr. Sue Cornbluth

Foreword by Nyleen Shaw

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

Transcript in Foreword is reproduced with kind permission from Brad Segall from CBS Radio, Philadelphia.

First published in 2014

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

73 Collier Street

London N1 9BE, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright Sue Cornbluth 2014

Foreword copyright Nyleen Shaw 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Cornbluth, Sue.

Building self-esteem in children and teens who are adopted or fostered / Sue Cornbluth ; foreword by

Nyleen Shaw.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84905-466-9 (alk. paper)

1. Adopted children. 2. Foster children. 3. Self-esteem in children. 4. Self-esteem in adolescence.

5. Child psychology. 6. Child rearing. I. Title.

HV875.C676 2014

155.4182--dc23

2014001036

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84905 466 9

eISBN 978 0 85700 844 2

To Darrin, Jacob and Lindsay, my life and my world.

And to my mother, who taught me the meaning of the importance of being an advocate for others. And to my father, who taught me never to give up on myself.

To Nyleen, for teaching me through her inner strength that a child can heal from abuse.

And to every child throughout the world who has been in foster care or adopted. You have the right to feel wanted, needed and loved. Every child should grow up in a forever home and every parent and professional caring for these children should be given the tools to help fostered and adopted children succeed in a world where they have been dealt extremely unfair circumstances. This book is my gift to all of you.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Nyleen Shaw and Sue Cornbluth

I finally got my chance to tell my truth one night on the radio. Dr. Sue told me that someday I would be able to tell my story about growing up in foster care and what Dr. Sue says, she delivers. It was a cold night in December of 2011 and I met Dr. Sue at the CBS studio in Philadelphia. She looked exactly as I remembered, and greeted me with a big smile on her face. I had not seen her since 2000, when I went off to college, something I never thought that I would accomplish, coming from where I came from.

It had been 11 years since Dr. Sue and I had seen each other but it felt like yesterday. Throughout those 11 years, she would often check in with me by email to see how I was doing. I really appreciated it more than she will ever know. Dr. Sue helped me to believe in myself when no one else did. She told me I could be someone in this world, no matter what happened to me. She taught me to have inner strength and gave me the ability to trust and believe that not all people would hurt me.

When Dr. Sue asked me to write the foreword to her book, I was shocked but so grateful. This would be my second chance to share our interview with other people and let the world know that foster children are not damaged children. In fact, we are just like other children who often do not understand why we are treated in ways that we do not understand. We are looking for love and compassion just like all children. What we dont want is to be labeled and stigmatized because we grew up in a system that we did not deserve to be in.

I hope that what I am about to share with you changes your view about abused and neglected foster children and gives you faith that the work you are doing with us makes a big difference in our lives if it is done right.

This is the excerpt from my interview on CBS Radio:

I was six years old and up to that point my mom was off drugs. We would play, go to the zoo. We were a family then. Life was normal for me at that point. When I was six my mother was also introduced to drugs, cocaine and basically from there things went downhill. There were times when our aunts and uncles would give us presents and the next day they would be gone and my mom would sell them. There were times when we would get beat for what we thought was nothing. We would say, Mom we are hungry, and the next thing you know we would get beat. Any little tiny thing at school, we would get beat. It became a normal thing for us to get beat. We knew depending on what kind of mood my mom would come in the house what was going to happen that day. I didnt have a dad and there was five of us kids in the house. I was the third child of five children. My mom mentally and physically abused all of us.

Me and my siblings were not placed into foster care until I was nine. But starting at six my school started making reports to the department of human services because we would go to school and we all looked neglected. We were hungry all the time and we wore the same clothes a lot and our hair was a mess. Neighbors too were making reports and our relatives. My brothers and sisters and I were not removed from my mom right away. It takes time when youre dealing with the system.

There was like a system going on in my house with my mom and the world needs to know about it. Parents and families that know that they are doing wrong try to cover it up. There is a secret society going on within the household. You just know not to speak about the abuse to others. So when the case managers were coming to check on me and my siblings, we all lied about my mother abusing us and not taking care of us. For me, it just got to a point where I just could not take it anymore. I felt like I got it worse from my mom than my siblings and I just wanted out. A couple of times when the caseworkers came I told the truth because I wanted out. My mom beat me for that. I just figured if I kept lying to the caseworkers they would never help us. So to me telling the truth was my way out of the situation and that is how I got placed into the foster care system. However, we did not go to foster care right away; my brothers grandmother stepped in initially and took all of us in. They call that kinship care. Her and her husband did not have enough money to care for all of us as time went by. I was about eight at the time. Eventually we were all split up, except for my youngest brother who stayed with his grandmother.