Chien Hsiu-yun (簡秀雲), 53, is with her family of five, receiving an award for role model mothers at a ceremony in Banqiao. The youngest child in her family, a slim dark-browed boy, is bored.
After they collect the award, he starts to fidget. He and Chien have not known one another for long, but he already knows how to get her to pay attention to him. He leans into her shoulder. She whispers to him and gives him a colorful pamphlet to keep him occupied.
“I saw in a magazine that some children like him need a temporary home. I thought, ‘Well, now that my daughters are older, why not?’” Chien says.
Today, Chien has two teenage daughters and another foster son, placed in her care as a toddler and who has lived with her for over 10 years.
In the months after his arrival, she and her husband realized that he didn’t play and couldn’t talk.
“All this behavior was very new to me and I didn’t know what was wrong. I took him to a psychologist. I didn’t know what else to do,” she says.
Countless screenings at hospitals and a diagnosis of autism were followed by years of special education, counseling and incremental progress.
“He is in junior-high school. He is not the same now,” she says. “He can talk — he is quite fluent!”
But his interpersonal problems will likely follow him throughout his life, she adds.
“He cannot understand the implicit rules of a game that everybody else knows. Some people think he’s weird and sometimes ostracize or bully him,” she says.
“The hardest thing about fostering is when the child is different from others and people do not treat them well, which makes you sad,” Chien says.
“So if I say there is no bitterness, that is a lie. Still, if someone asked today whether I give more or receive more, I would say I receive a lot more. These children are very simple and loving,” she said.
Over the past 12 years, she has raised five foster children, and only two still live with her today.
“I am very sad when they leave. You really are very sad. You miss them very much, but it is something you need to deal with,” she says.
“They come in, we help them, and once the biological family is better, they go back. It is better for them to be with their own family if it is healthy, but until then they can be a part of my family.”
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