Why Foster Children Are Soooooooo Successful
In a way, I feel sorry for the children with early development advantages, lacking character-building experiences.
As a foster child, I speak from personal experiences but I am sure almost every (adult) foster child would concur with this idea of the foster child advantage.
For now, I’ll not go into what got me to the foster child days. Eventually, I was taken in by a relative- after having spent over five years in foster care- with five different families during that period of time.
Somehow I made it to college, earning much of the college costs by working various jobs - house painting, peddling milk, bucking hardwood lumber, peddling newspapers, shoveling snow, working some summers as a lifeguard, mowing lawns and even playing in a little dance band.
Right from the start of college, I began building a reputation as a super jock, which I mention because it was that reputation as an athlete that got the attention of one of my college professors. Let me explain.
One of the courses I was required to take had to do with psychology. A requirement of that course was to write a paper on how I got there (college), more or less.
The professor for that course seemed to read between the lines and detected something in my self-evaluation that she felt should be dealt with. In my writings she observed an attitude of deprivation, an expression of inferiority having written that I never had extra funds for purchasing nice clothes, no spending money, always having to purchase used books, running out of gas, buying used tires for my really old banged-up car, etc.
Her openers to me, as I recall it, were, do you know why you are such an outstanding jock and tough competitor? I had no idea where she was going with that but I soon got the message, which has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
She explained that because of my past adversities, disappointments and seeming disadvantages, I had developed a very high tolerance level, resulting in a very competitive attitude that was not and is not limited to athletics. I could site many examples of this throughout my life, including the toughness endured on my way through the Marine Corp officers program, building a good-sized real estate and development business, successfully hunting tennis trophies in many tennis tournaments, etc. I mention this to make the point that my successes have been built on the high tolerance level pointed out to me way back in that psychology class.
Now it seems appropriate for me to pass this on to the up-and-coming successful guys and gals who are now a part of the foster care experience. I feel a need to pass on this idea about high tolerance levels as a result of adverse experiences.
Perhaps contemplating this idea will give others the competitive edge it gave me - and you don’t have to be a jock to develop that edge- just knowing you are special will do it. Otherwise, one could go through life feeling deprived and looking for sympathy and handouts, expecting others to help whereas the reverse is true. You can be the one achieving and able to help others.
Don’t get me wrong, no one can do it on their own. We all are products of many helpers out there at all levels - educators, spouses, children, co-workers, friends, coaches, relatives and many others we encounter along the way. But achieving is mostly an attitude adjustment we all must make somewhere along the way, a need to understand that we are a sum total of all our experiences and how we react to everything.
If we develop an attitude that our adverse experiences and hard times have prepared us to have the advantage in almost every situation we will find the good in every encounter and build on it.
