They Have Had Over 60 Foster Children Come Through Their Home

“00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American stories. And up next we have doctor John DeGarmo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute. Doctor John has also written several books on the subject of foster care. He and his wife have had sixty plus children come through their home from the ages of just twenty seven hours to eighteen years old. Here’s doctor John with his own story.00:00:36
Speaker 2: I met my wife from Australia.

00:00:38
Speaker 3: We’ve traveled the globe singing and dancing, performing across the world in a supergroup called Up with People, and fell in love during that year. In fact, during the year she was dating a guy from Germany and I was head of the heels of a girl from Sweden, and we often joked that we both spoke the same languish English, so we thought it’d be easier we got together. So we did and got married, lived in Australia. Our first child died of a condition called antisephily, some pronounce a annakephley. It’s a condition but the brain of the skull never truly forms, and my wife was in labor for ninety two hours. Ninety two hours the baby died upon oxygen. I’ll admit I went into a very very dark space.

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Speaker 2: At that time.

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Speaker 3: There was a time during my grieving process again I really was denying my grief.

00:01:31
Speaker 2: My wife and I.

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Speaker 3: Were beginning the foster care process, and I had this this nightmare. Well, you know, it really wasn’t a nightmare. I remember waking up screaming. My wife tells me, I screamed for five minutes, but she’s shaking me and shaking me and shaking me, and she could not get me to stop screaming. Finally, when I broke.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: Out of it, she asked me, what was about that. I have no recollection was about. I just fell that.

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Speaker 3: I was encompassed, if you will, in a cocoon of evil. It’s the only way I can explain it. I was in a womb of just evil, and I was so scared. I was so afraid. I was enveloped in fear, if you will, of absolute fear. Maybe evil wasn’t the right word of fear. And the next four days I was just afraid.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: I was afraid to go to work. I was afraid to go to the grocery store.

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Speaker 3: Everywhere I would turn, I was looking behind my shoulder, afraid. So as at this point, my wife said, to be you need to go talk to a minister. We have been attending this church. But at that point I had turned my back on my faith because again the death of my.

00:02:47
Speaker 2: First child, and I really turned my back on a lot of things, including my faith.

00:02:51
Speaker 3: Because here we were, my wife and I had never taken drugs or alcohol, never smoked, yet our first child died and we knew people laid to people who had taken drugs and alcohol and had to help each other. And I just thought the irony was too great. There’s no such thing as a god. So I was just filled with that negativity, that distrust, if you will. So I went to the minister that we have been attending a church. I was going just for my wife’s sake, her faith was very strong, and for my children’s sake.

00:03:19
Speaker 2: I felt they need to be in a church.

00:03:20
Speaker 3: But I was going to the emotions, and I talked to this minister and he said, John, it seems as if you were at a point in your life where you’re going to turn over and start helping children, and it’s as if the devil is trying to lure you back in one more time, try to take you back in one more time, and he’s trying to prevent you from doing this, And that led me to a lot of reflection, that led me to a lot of time and prayer, and now I couldn’t do quaship parenting without my faith. It wasn’t until a few years later when we moved back to the United States had three healthy children. I was teaching in a rural high school setting in the area that was filled with a lot of poverty and a lot of apathy. And I had some kids coming through my classroom, lots of kids actually, who were suffering from issues of attendance, suffering from issues of academics, suffering from issues of behavior. And I kept asking myself, what is it, What is going on? Why so many children suffering from this? And then I met many of their birth parents, and I recognized aha starts in the home. So I went home and I told my wife, Hey, one of my students, she’s a senior. She she’s pregnant with triplets, and she comes from a rough environment. I could just imagine that the triplets would be raised in a very, very harmful environment. So I said to my wife, what if I bought these three babies home? And my wife said, to me, as long as you change the diapers. I tell you, I wish I had listened to her then, because we went twenty years straight, twenty years straight with having at least one baby in her house in diapers, and my wife does hair, I do the diaper changing.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: I should have got my doctorate in diaper changing.

00:05:10
Speaker 3: So that discussion led to foster parenting, and that led to us being trained as foster parents. And since then, I’ve written several books, I travel the world, and I’ve really devoted my entire life to making the system better. In fact, I’m driven each day to help children who are suffering. I hear often, doctor John, I can’t do what you do. It would hurt too much to give the kids back. And my response every time is, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. It’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. These kids, these kids that are placing their homes as fast friends, they need, yes, they need the consistency, and they need the structure and stability. But what they need more than anything else is for someone to love them with all their heart. Give them that unconditional love. So at the end of the day, when the child leaves for whatever reason it might be, whatever reason, they may leave the home.

00:06:00
Speaker 2: Our hearts break.

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Speaker 3: But I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a gift because I might be the first person who’s ever loved this child in a healthy fashion. I could be the first person who’s ever cried for this child tears of grief, and the child leaves, and that’s the gift. That’s a gift of a broken heart, because the end of the day, when the child leaves, they’re taking with them my love, and hopefully my love will help them in some fashion. You know, A foster parents’ hearts a lot like a quilt with all these patches placed over it. And I have grieved over sixty different times for children who have come to love as my own. But I want to have it any other way. So we had these three boys come in to our house, a ten year old boy, a nine year old boy, and a seven year old boy. And they come to our house with a lot of trauma, a lot of trauma. The ten year old and a seven year old really gravitated towards my wife and I and our family very very quickly. They became very attached. The nine year old did not. He had so many anger with.

00:07:09
Speaker 2: Him as rightfully show.

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Speaker 3: And during the time he was with us, he never had anything nice, anything positive to say to my wife, where I had always some type of critical remark. He was either withdrawn or he would lash out.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: Again, all in anger. But he was hurting. He was really, really hurting. And I recognize that.

00:07:27
Speaker 3: The day the three boys were to leave to be reunified with some family members, biological family members, my wife was at home taking care of some other kids. We had at that time nine children in our house, and I was packing them up into the car. I was going to drive them off to their relatives. Of course, there’s a lot of crying, a lot of hugs, a lot of tears, a lot of I love to use with a ten year old and the seven year old and the nine year old boy just stood off in the corner the driveway, and I kept watching him, watching him. After a while, the ten year old and seven year old got into the car and my wife is against saying goodbye, and I’m about drive off, and the nine year old walks over to my wife very slowly, with his head down, looking at the ground, and I thought, oh, no, oh, no, what is he going to say? And my wife was looking at him expectantly with a smile on her face, and he looked up and he said four words to my wife that just shattered us. He said, Mommy, I love you, and he started crying. And I recognized at that point that we had been planning a seed in this child, a seed that was growing and blossoming into something that we were not We could not see during this time.

00:08:41
Speaker 2: And that’s what happens when you care for children’s f lost care in your home.

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Speaker 3: You know, we might not see what is happening underneath, but there’s a lot of When you give these children’s stability and structure and unconditional love, that’s where healing begins. And that was a pivotal moment from my wife and I and of course my wife just broke down.

00:08:58
Speaker 2: In tears and.

00:09:00
Speaker 3: Just made us recognize, you know, this is worth it.

00:09:03
Speaker 1: And we’re listening to doctor John de Germo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute, and my goodness, what a story and what a heart a man like this has. When we come back more of this remarkable life story, this story filled with love and hope and self sacrifice in service here on our American stories, and we returned to our American stories, and we’ve been listening to doctor John de Germo share his story of what it is like to be a foster parent. They have six children, three of which they’ve adopted out of the foster care system. Back to doctor de Germa.

00:09:57
Speaker 3: We’ve had sixty plus kids come through a home. We’ve had the blessing to adopt three children, and we’ve had we’ve experienced four failed adoptions, which means for some reason the adoption did not work out, or the adoption was sabotaged, or whatever it might be. I never set out to adopt the child from foster care. Was never our intentions to do that. We just felt there’s children are out there who are in need and that we can help these kids.

00:10:20
Speaker 2: Now. They are first one that.

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Speaker 3: We adopted, Kye to us when she was five days old. Five days old, she could fit in my hands. She was so small, weighed a little over five pounds, and that was never my intention to adopt her. But when her parental rights were terminated by her by the bigeal parents, the bosical parents’ rights were terminate him known as TPR.

00:10:41
Speaker 2: Then there’s a.

00:10:42
Speaker 3: Search for biological family members in the area, maybe the state, maybe even the whole country who might adopt the child. If no one is found, then the foster parents often have the first.

00:10:54
Speaker 2: Right to adopt the child.

00:10:56
Speaker 3: Again, I didn’t want to adopt the child.

00:10:58
Speaker 2: Now.

00:10:58
Speaker 3: The reason why I didn’t want to adopt itild was I felt that if I adopted her, I would be taking her away from somebody who could not have children. I was blessed with three healthy children. I had lost a child. I recognized the miracle at his birth, and I felt that if I adopted this child, who was very much a member of my family and I loved her dearly, But I felt if I adopted her, I’d be taking away from somebody who could not have children. Now, my friends, my family members, as I work with, and those were to church with, they kept telling me, John, you need to adopt her, you need to adopt her. And I knew that in my head. My heart just couldn’t accept that. Again, felt guilty now. Fortunately we were able to adopt her twenty two months later, and what a blessing it’s been the second one that we adopted Kynos when she was eighteen months old. Eighteen months old, her mother dropped her off at a grocery store to a stranger. And she is third generation fosterre, which means her family, her parents and her grandparents were also in the fosters. And she knew one word. One word is all she knew, and that was shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. It’s the only word that she would say. She would hit everything in sight, my wife, my son, myself, the cats, everything. Now, she’s the most obnoxiously sweet princess you’ve ever met. She is the sweetest, caring at child. That shows me a lot about environment. What kind of environment is she coming from? The only word is shut up, a word that we don’t allow the house. Now, again, I didn’t want to adopt her because at this point I’m thinking, oh, my goodness, has five kids, and I don’t want to be the Brady bunch. Let me tell you, when you got eleven kids in the house at the same time, you are so far beyond the Brady Bunch level. And my wife and I don’t have an alice, and we would love to have an Alice sometimes. So again, didn’t want to adopt her. I can test too many kids. The case working she came in July. The following April, the case for cocaine to us and said doctor John. Doctor Kelly Morey said, doctor Nutrician, the mom’s gonna have a baby.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: More I said, hooray.

00:13:01
Speaker 3: I said no, no, I’m.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: Thinking, oh my gosh, to me, another child will adopt. I can’t. How am I gonna pay for this? And my wife said, can we drop both?

00:13:09
Speaker 3: I said, and the case worker said yes, and I said I no, no, no, and they’re talking back and forth.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: I finally I said, I’m still in the room. I said no, and my wife said, just ignore him. He’ll change his mind.

00:13:21
Speaker 3: A few months later, this child came to us twenty seven hours old. I’m twenty seven hours old and uh, beautiful, beautiful baby, and I just immediately fell in love with her, as I did her sister. And a year later we were blessed to adopt both of them. And you know what, I would.

00:13:38
Speaker 2: Do it again and again and again.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: Adoption has made my life so much fuller in so many different ways. One of the hardest parts of being a Fosher parent for me is knowing these children are going to go back to an environment that is not safe. The end goal of Fausa care is reunification, which means being reunified with their birth of parents or biological family members. Sadly, twenty to thirty percent of the children who do reunify come back into foscare or re enter back into foscare far more traumatized. And there have been those times where I’ve known, without a shadow of doubt, they’re going back to an environment that is not safe.

00:14:21
Speaker 2: But the court saw differently.

00:14:23
Speaker 3: And that’s frightening for me because I lay it awake at night thinking how are these children doing. I lay away at night praying for these children or even whoras I have nightmares about these children that they’re not safe. But I’ve had to I have had to find peace the fact that I’ve done the best I can. I’ve given this child the love, the time being that were with me, that I’ve been able to provide them that unconditional love that they so desperately need.

00:14:53
Speaker 2: Every child deserves to be loved. Yeah, but it’s hard. It’s hard.

00:14:59
Speaker 3: Now we have had times if kids have come back into care and they’ve come back into our home further traumatized. But it’s hard. It’s hard knowing that sometimes are going back to an environment that that’s going to be dangerous for them. Or harmful for them, and all we can do is just be content with the fact that we’ve given them all that we can and to pray for them. What it’s important to recognize is that for some of the birth parents or for the kids we’ve cared for, my wife and I and foster parents in general might be seen as the bad guy because those birth parents might not want to recognize the choices they’ve made in their life. They might not want to acknowledge the fact that they’ve made poor choices. Maybe they are still suffering from their own pain. Maybe they’re still suffering from their own anxiety and trauma, trauma and anxiety that they don’t know how to process it because they’ve never got the help they needed, so they don’t reach out to us. Rereach out to as many as we can, but sometimes they just won’t acknowledge it and they.

00:15:59
Speaker 2: Shut us thought of their lives.

00:16:02
Speaker 3: But I understand why. Again, they might be dealing with their own problems. As I mentioned earlier, two of the three we’ve adopted our third generation’s fostercare, which means our parents and grandparents were also in care and they never got the help they needed, and they were children and that trauma passes down to the next generation. In the next generation and the next generation. So many kids in foster care have never had a holiday celebrated. They’ve never had a birthday celebrated. I recall we had a child who was ten years old and we had to teach him how to sing Happy Birthday.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: It’s just staggering.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: The fourteen year old boy who came to our house rough as nails. In fact, he came to us. He was part of a sibling group of five. There was a fourteen year old and eleven year old, a ten year old, a nine year old, and a seven year old, and they came from a house that the Sheriff’s Department calls the House of pieces. You could not see the floor in the house. It was covered in human and dog bc. There was no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no heat, no air, no food, no father. In the picture, the mother is running a meth lab where her two teenage boyfriends and the fourteen year old was just filled with a lot of anger. He also feel in a lot of guilt, filled with a lot of guilt because he felt it was his fault that his siblings were being placed in foughtscare because it was responsibility. It was his responsibility to care for a siblings, to make sure they were fed, make sure the bills were paid in the house, make sure the kids got to school and learning was taking place. So when he and his siblingsok place in Foscar, he considered it his fault.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: He had a lot of guilt.

00:17:38
Speaker 3: In fact, when they came to our house, their clothes were staple together and we had to burn those clothing because the clothes were contaminated with meth and human and dog feces. Well, it was during that time at Christmas again, lots of anger, lots of walls of resentment towards us, and we gave him. He opened up a present from us, my wife and I and I was a black leather jacket and he said to us with just the gruffest voice, he said, can I keep this? And when I said, of course, absolutely, and he burst out into tears. It was this first real gift, first real gift that anybody that I’ve given him. When we have Christmas and Birthdays, we make a huge for these kids because for some of them, again they’ve never had that time, so we really try to make it a very very special day for them. You know, I often tell people that I can’t change the world, and you can’t change the world, but this is how we can change the world together. Years from now, when that child leaves our home for whatever reason it might be years from now, they might not remember my name, and years from now they might not remember my face. But years from now, they’ll remember one thing, and that is this, for a time in their life, and maybe the only time in their life, somebody loved them. And that’s how we change their lives.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: You know.

00:19:05
Speaker 3: So whether you’re a foster parent or whether you’ve decided you can’t be a foster parent, but you can help children need.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: In your area.

00:19:11
Speaker 3: Because there’s kids in every single community in our nation who are suffering from abuse, children in every single community or nation who are suffering from human trafficking, victims of human trafficking. So if you decide that you can’t be a foster parent, but you can help these children, and you can do that in some way. When we help these children, their world is changed. You can’t change the world, but for these children, their world is changed, and that makes all the difference.

00:19:42
Speaker 1: And very special Thanks to doctor John Degermo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute. And he doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk. My goodness, the number of children that have passed through his home, and it is so true that when you can just love one of these kids, you may not be changing the world, but you’re changing a world. Doctor John de Guermeaud’s story so many kids in this world unwanted and unloved, and his rebuttal to that problem here on our American Stories”