What a child needs

Hello friends,

Today is about something really important:

-Children and their needs.

It was not until I was 32 years that I seriously started feeling like being a Mom. It could be because I had been a teacher for such a long time then, such a dedicated one that I considered my pupils kind of my own kids and managed to postpone this decision ’till then.

I had already been married for almost 7 years then, we were great together. We have a dog, and the fact that he was so super lovely  to us, that dragged me into actually start to I wonder how it would be if I had a kid that would  be able to hug me as only a child can do and call me Mom…

Years have gone since then, I have my little one now, she is 6 and my dog is 10. They are great! I love them wholeheartedly. After I became a mother I won’t say that my life has changed, it is too little, I feel like another person. A whole new person, a much better now – I guess.

I love the woman I became after she was born.

When I arrived here in Canada I did not expect that for the first time in my life I would be in close contact with kids who live in foster homes. You know I am from Brazil, my parents-in-law both run an orphanage there called, Lar Escola Caibar Schutel, I have been there several times, but it is Brazil and we more and less have tolerance to it. Down there the wealth is so unevenly distributed that people may be really rich, or extremely poor. Sometimes poor kids do go to foster homes, better than staying home and being abused in so many ways by the adults.

I would expect reality here to be way different. But people are people everywhere and as sad as it may seem kids may be abused anywhere.

Then I met these wonderful little ones, two of them are in my daughter’s class, and 2 others are in the class next door. Every day when I pick her at school they rush to me, and because of my Brazilian and motherly nature I hug people a lot!  At first I tried to keep a distant, than I asked the nice care givers:

–Is it Ok if I hug them too?

Immediately the answer was that it was more than OK! Now-a-days I get to hug them, and my little one too, sometimes we make it a “group hug”, as they say it.

Kids need a hug.

That’s what children need, lots of hugs, and some attention. It seems easy, but it makes their days! And mine too, in a sense. Some days I long to see those pretty little faces running to me as the say “-Hi!”  They hug me straight to my waistline and hold on fast! As I hug them back in a way they feel they are loved.

Kids need love.

Sometimes they say they want to go home with me and get to stay forever, I answer I myself won’t live here forever…

Kids need to feel safe.

As I get to know them better, and see how much they get all these things at their foster homes, and others don’t from their own parents and it breaks my heart to say. I see many of them are better off  there!

Kids need respect.

That’s what they need. Someone to make sure they are well taken care of.

I am hoping and counting we are all doing that!

Take care,

Drikka.