Chastity Elizabeth Hayden: A Short Story

In the memoir Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Ashley did an outstanding job at showing me the challenges of foster care that I was not aware of. Throughout the whole memoir, Ashley has difficult things thrown at her that a girl her age shouldn’t and wouldn’t have known how to handle on her own. Ashley was taken away from her mother at only 3 years old, spending almost 10 years inside Florida’s foster care and was shuffled between 14 different homes, some quite abusive, before she was adopted at age 12 from a Children’s Home.

Many children are suffering due to various complications in their life. Children of all ages end up in the foster care system year after year. Their hardships influence them to feel really depressed and stoic. Many people do not read autobiographies, but the book, Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter teaches people about the complications of a first-hand foster child, how the foster care system is, and book reviews of famous authors and well-known magazines, as well. The story gives hope to people who believe there is no way out anymore, and it influences upon the world’s culture greatly.

Unfortunately, to reach the answer we seek, we need to answer other questions. For example, how are orphans affected by being orphaned? Next we must ask how does one achieve success, and what is it? And lastly, does this mental “programming” from being orphaned carry over into the orphan’s adult life? Our quest for truth cannot be achieved in one leap, but rather is accomplished by one small step after another.

How would you feel if one day you were taken away from the only family you had left, then you were bounced around from one foster home to another? Well that’s how it was for a young child named Anne and her two siblings. Based on a true story The Suitcases, written by Anne Hall Whitt took place in North Carolina. Anne and her two sisters were taken away from their father and were sent to many foster homes. Wherever the girls went they always thought of their father, because they’re family. In The Suitcases, Anne Hall Whitt uses atmosphere and conflict to explain Anne’s relationship with her family.

The foster parents couldn’t keep me forever, so every day I waited for my chance to have a stable home, but as each year went by with no calls or visits hope began to vanish.

Ashley is a young woman like many in today’s society born in 1985 to a single, teenage mother. However, her story is a success story. Therefore, she survived, although all odds were stacked against her. Due to her mother’s inability to provide for her, the Florida Foster Care System was her home from the tender age of 3 until her adoption at the age of twelve. During that decade, she resided in 14 different foster homes along with her brother. During this period, her brother and other children endured an abusive life which included beatings with a wooden paddle, starvation, made to drink homemade hot sauce, molestation and verbal abuse which led Ashley and her brother to attend a different school each time their foster home changed. She witnessed the tragedy of her uncle being shot and she experienced her own tragedy when thrown from a moving vehicle.

Some individuals, however, did opt to share their experiences in the foster care system and lives post foster care system in the exhibit “Aging Out: The Lives of Former Foster Kids.” The exhibit, which was on display at the Long Island Children’s Museum, showed in photographs and a display of a black duffle bag what life is like for those in foster care and after foster care. The duffle bag showed the symbolism of the “get the ready bag,” which housed the essentials for those in foster care, such as a toothbrush, identification, and personal items, who could be moved at any moment (Khan, n.d.). The photographs showed more insight of their lives after leaving the foster care system, with their own stories of either aging out to a family, or aging out to absolutely no one, nowhere, and

Sonny has a “rough” time where he finds himself in “jail” for “narcotics trafficking” (208). Skloot reveals how not having a guardian and guidance leads someone to turn to occupations they would have never committed to before. Also, she emphasizes how authority is needed in a child so they may stay in the right path of life. Also, Deborah becomes so upset she cries out for help: “‘...Just being sad and crying to myself..Why, Lord, did you take my mother when I needed her so much?’” (218). Deborah changed from a happy child to someone in desperate need of a parent when she lost her mother. Skloot reveals how the requisite fostering of a parent lifts the children up in awful

I made my way to my aunt’s house. Her home smelled of fresh cut pine, and she offered me a cup of coffee with a cinnamon stick in it. I accepted, and we went to the kitchen table and discussed our week. As she talked, I looked out her kitchen table. A small oak grew in the front yard. Snow capped the birdfeeder beside her bird bath.

Lee cites the stories of three foster care children; Elisa, who has been in foster care over a decade, has been abused both mentally and physically and had two adoptions fall through; Three year old Thierry who the courts have yet to determine whether he should have been separated from his mother eighteen months ago; and Alexandria, wasn’t cleared for an adoption by her foster parents of four years and remains a foster child.

According to author Susan Egbert Cutler, “foster care provides children, youth, or adults with supervision and a place to live outside of their usual home setting” (Cutler). Typically, a person gets placed in foster care because they come from an unsafe home environment and are unable to care for themselves on their own (Cutler). The experiences of every child in foster care are different because there are so many variables that contribute to whether or not a particular foster home is a good fit for the child: the biological parents, the foster parents, the circumstances of the placement, and the foster child themselves. For example, Wanda Corley, who was a child placed in foster care during the 1950s, has her own unique perspective on foster

With my reading of Three Little Words: A Memoir, I was lucky enough to have an audiobook companion that allowed Ashley Rhodes-Courter tell in her own voice her whirlwind story of her time in the foster care system, in which, she stayed in fourteen foster homes, and nearly one hundred and fifty individuals coming in contact with her file. Ashley takes on her role fully, giving her first hand account in each chapter, so that the audience may better experience the often-frightening and always unpredictable ride that the foster care system takes so many children on. My initial reaction to the book was sadly a reaction of fatigue, as I was in anticipation of another heart breaking story. After reading the book, I earnestly feel a sense of shame

This question brings the flawed foster care system to the surface, and stories such as the Scheers’ identifies the need for change. Foster care is supposed to be a fresh start or even a new life for children, but for some, it is the exact opposite. Many kids, through the foster care system, are eventually adopted by families that love them unconditionally; however, things need to improve for those children who fail to find forever families and homes that every human being

Today, the orphanage remains common and essential in most parts of the world, even if the term has changed to such softer language as ”social institution”, "group home," "children's home," or "rehabilitation center." Such institutions are widely common in the third world and not common in the European community.

Being born to a drug addict mother, she’d been abandoned at a young age and grown up being bounced between various care homes, never truly seeming to settle into any of them. While generally well liked and mild mannered, as a child she had been disinterested in the doings of children her own age, preferring to engross herself in reading. By her teens this trait had subsided a little, but only to be replaced with a burning curiosity that often led the young woman into