JJ. That’s what everyone called him. He had a much longer name, though, that I am unable to share with you because he was a foster child.

We met at ten o’clock at night on a weekday.

When kids come to our home in the middle of the night, they are scared.

They have just experienced the trauma of being taken from everything and everyone who is familiar to them. They come to us with just the clothes on their backs, and we ask them to come into our homes and follow our rules and eat our food. If they want to play with a toy, it belongs to someone else. Nothing is theirs.

No one asked these children if they wanted to be taken by child safety officials. They didn’t get a vote. Seven year old JJ wasn’t like this. The night that he walked into our home, he took a big breath and walked right over to me. He had these huge brown eyes that just melted my heart. He was not afraid. Not one little bit.

He grabbed my hand and thanked me for letting him spend the night.

I showed him where he would be sleeping, and he went off with a couple of our kids to get settled in. I asked the CPS worker what the story was. He had been living with his grandmother who had nine children of her own living in a two bedroom apartment. Apparently his mother had left him there months before and had not returned. The grandmother called CPS to come and get him because she no longer wanted to care for him.

This child safety worker was an investigator, and she told me that, in her opinion, JJ would be with us for quite a while.

JJ was pure love. That’s the only way that I can describe him. He loved everyone and was so happy to be in a safe place.

When I took him to his first doctor visit, we noticed a great deal of scars all over his body.

When the doctor asked where he got the scars, JJ matter-of-factly told us both that his grandmother and mother would beat him regularly. It broke both of our hearts. The doctor took pictures and notified the CPS investigator.

JJ wanted to go to school. Apparently, he had never attended any school, and I signed him up for kindergarten.

When we first meet older kids they have always called us Richard and Paula. Unless we are adopting them, that’s what we go by. JJ was different. From the first day, he would call me mama. I can’t describe the way that he said it. The word would just come bubbling out of his mouth with so much love and joy wrapped around it that my heart would sing every time that I heard it. JJ felt safe and was thriving in our home.

A couple of months went by and we heard nothing from CPS at all. No one came to check on JJ. No one asked for him to go on a parent visit. Not one word.

My sister Carla and I took all of the kids to the giant carousel in our mall one afternoon to ride it. JJ raced up to the front of the line and waited with great anticipation for his turn on the ride. Finally we were up and he jumped on a big horse. As Carla and I snapped pictures, the ride began to turn. Each time he passed by me on the carousel, JJ yelled out, “I love you mama!” “This is the best ride ever!” When it came to a stop, I paid the worker, and they went again. And again. Three times. Then, we got ice cream and we all went home. JJ talked about that mall trip for days.

My dad and I made all of the kids’ blankets, and JJ’s was a Star Wars quilt. He loved that quilt. He would wrap himself up in it and haul it all around the house. This child was just soaking up even the smallest gesture of love and kindness in a way that I had never seen before and have never seen since.

He also loved to tease my sister Carla. One afternoon after JJ had lost a front tooth, he was playing around with Carla. They were going back and forth with each other and at one point my sister looked at JJ and asked him about his nasty old tooth that fell out. He looked right at her and said “oh yeah, well why are you over there looking all Raggedy?!” Carla laughed so hard she just about fell off her chair.  She loved that little boy just as much as I did.

As his third month in our home approached, we had parent teacher conferences. Because we had two that were double booked, my sister attended JJ’s while I attended our other sons. She was cracking up when she got home. Apparently, the teacher and principal loved our little JJ. Each day, when he arrived at school, he would go into the office and tell the principal about his previous day. He would tell her things like “My foster mama made me meatloaf!” or “My foster mama reads me books at night.” The school staff loved how much JJ loved us. His teacher told Carla that JJ was a joy to have in her classroom.

As we were talking, JJ was in the living room playing a video game. The doorbell rang. It was a new CPS worker. Apparently she had just recently started. She told me that she was there to pick him up to return him to his mother.

I was in shock. Why hadn’t she called ahead so that we could prepare him? Why were they returning a child that hadn’t even been checked on in three months? Where had his mother been? Had she passed some drug tests?

She assured me that she had talked to JJ’s mom on the phone one time and that she seemed like a very nice lady who didn’t sound like a drug user to her.

I asked her about the photos that the doctor had taken of his scars. She wasn’t even aware that they existed. I thought that I was going to vomit when I had to tell him who she was and why she was there. He started to cry. He begged her not to take him.

She was in a hurry and seemed far more upset that she was keeping JJ’s mom waiting at home than she was at this child’s reaction to going home. This was NOT a normal reaction. Kids love their moms and dads. Not matter how unsafe a home is, the kids want to see their parents. Not JJ. He was terrified.

One minute he had been sitting with our son playing a video game, safe and secure. The next he was returning to a nightmare. I raced around the house trying to gather all of his things as fast as I could. He cried. I asked the worker if she had maybe noticed his reaction and that maybe she should consider taking this a little slower. Nope. She was angry that we were taking so long to load him up. It was five o’clock by now, and she wanted to get home.

My sister ran to her house next door and grabbed his little remote control car that he had left there. JJ and I were standing in the drive way by that time. He was holding on to me so tight, begging not to go. My heart was shredding into a million pieces, but I was trying make it better for him. I told him that it was this lady’s job to check on him and to make sure that he was being taken care of.

She came over and told me that she planned to let JJ’s mom know what his reaction had been to going home. I asked if she was trying to get the kid in more trouble. She agreed that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

I hugged JJ and looked into his eyes. “It’s going to be okay JJ," I lied.

JJ knew that I lied. I swear that I could see right into his soul, and it was broken. What did JJ do? He tried to make me feel better. He looked at me and told me that it was going to be okay. JJ knew that there was nothing that he could do to change what was about to happen. JJ knew that those few months of peace that he had found with us were over.

JJ was a seven year old little boy who had no hope at all that things would be okay.

As he started to get into the car, he dropped his little car on the ground and a wheel came off. He started to sob. He loved that little car. I reached down and picked it up and Carla ran and got some glue. By this time his worker was getting quite frustrated. Too bad. We fixed his car and sent him on his way.

I still cry when I think about JJ. I wonder what happened. Was it as bad as he thought it would be? Or did a miracle occur and his mom had really changed? My heart wants desperately to believe that he is okay, but I know that most likely he is not.

What I wonder most though, is if he has ever forgiven me for betraying him and placing him in that car?

Click here to help protect children like JJ: Sign the petition demanding transition planning procedures be followed for every foster child.