Around a year ago I was introduced to two little boys. They were brothers who had been put into foster care because of at home abuse. The oldest brother is Colt and the youngest is Crew. Colt has down syndrome and Crew was born with a life threatening tumor in his skull. They are cared for by their foster mother, Nikki. She worked a full time job and needed help taking care of them, so I volunteered to help. Little did I know that a simple babysitting job would change my life.
The first night I babysat the boys, I got into a tickle fight with Crew. The oldest boy, Colt, ran over to me. He covered my entire torso with his by laying on me. I could hear him saying no through his muffled sobs. I was shocked at his reaction to such a harmless tickle
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But now we were focusing on something new, potty training. Colt and Crew’s parents had never thought of potty training them, even though they were far past the age most children are potty trained at. The boys hated using the restroom on the toilet. They would scream and cry and say they did not want to do it. One day I finally got Crew on the toilet, and he went to the restroom. Colt watched and was jealous his little brother was doing something he could not. So faster than Crew could get off the toilet, Colt scuttled on. That day they both learned the toilet was not so scary and we grew another step closer to each other. Each day I loved them more and more. I looked forward to seeing them and helping them experience new things. Then I got some devastating news, their mother was granted visitation at her home. These boys would be unsupervised and not taken care of for 24 hours every weekend. How could the system let something like this happen? I made little shirts for them to take so something would be familiar to them. When they came back they both rushed to me and gave me a hug, like everything was the same. Except, they had bruises on their arms. I was furious, she could not even treat them well for a couple of hours and she was supposed to be their