Mummy Told Me Not to Tell by Cathy Glass Page A

to steal and then rewarded with sweets, but clearly I would have to be more alert in future, because I still had absolutely no idea when he had slipped the sweets into his coat pocket. Histechnique had clearly been well designed and I suspected well practised.
    The afternoon passed with me reading Reece more books and then with me beside him, painting and Play-Doh. This was interspersed with him zooming around when there was a break in the activity. Reece repeatedly asked if he could have his television on and I repeatedly explained that he had lost half an hour of his television time for his behaviour in the car, and that he could have it on at four o’clock instead of 3.30 when the pre-school programmes began.
    When Lucy and Paula returned, I briefly took them aside and, having asked them how their day had gone, told them of Reece’s comment that morning after he’d kissed them goodbye. I didn’t need to say anything more: they knew the implications of having a sexually aware child in the house, and they also knew the guidelines we all had to follow. We followed the ‘safer caring’ guidelines anyway, with any fostered child, but if there were issues over possible sexual abuse or even inappropriate television watching which had made the child sexually aware, we were even more careful. So, for example, bedtime stories were read downstairs, not in the child’s bedroom, and kisses and cuddles were given downstairs, with the child at our side, not on our laps or face to face. It’s sad, really, because we naturally hug and kiss our own children without a second thought, but with a child who has been sexually abused, or has come from a highly sexualized and inappropriate home life, even the most innocent of hugs or kisses (like those the girls had allowed Reece that morning) can bemisinterpreted. Reece would still be having his hugs and kisses — he was after all a little seven-year-old — but there would always be someone else present and we would be just that bit more careful so that nothing could be misconstrued by him.
    Jill phoned just after 5.00 p.m. and I updated her, and before I went to bed I wrote up my log notes. That night I lay in bed contemplating and worrying over the day’s events, and I wondered how well I had handled everything that had happened — from Reece’s hyperactive behaviour, to the stealing, and of course his comments about giving the girls one. Foster carers are plagued by analysing and self-doubt, even more so than when raising one’s own children; for when all is said and done what greater responsibility is there than bringing up someone else’s child?

Chapter Six:
Kids in Care
    O n Sunday evening, as we were approaching the end of our first weekend together, I was feeling quite positive. Although it had been hard work, with Lucy and Paula home for the weekend the three of us had been working together and continually reinforcing the expected standards of behaviour. Perhaps it was my imagination, but Reece now seemed to be cooperating more readily than he had done during the first couple of days. I was still having to resettle him regularly in the morning, but it was taking only half an hour rather than the hour and a half when he’d first arrived. He slept well each night and because Lucy and Paula had helped, the task of caring for Reece’s many needs had been split three ways and hadn’t been so draining on me. We’d had only a couple of incidents over the weekend when he’d tried to head-butt and none of him biting.
    It was seven o’clock. Reece had had his bath and hair wash and was downstairs in the living room in his pyjamas, dressing gown and shark-shaped slippers.Paula was reading him some bedtime stories. We had all been sitting together in the living room to begin with; then Lucy left to watch a television programme in her bedroom and I slipped into the kitchen to clear up. I had purposely left the living-room door open — this was one of our safer caring policies