- Meg Henderson tells of her time as foster mother to Alan a child with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome
- She had to ask social services to take him away because of his uncontrollable behaviour
Looking at the little boy in front of me, I felt like howling in frustration. A big vacant grin on his face, he was hopping from one foot to the other and singing at the top of his voice, while inanely cracking his knuckles.
He looked so utterly unconcerned, it was almost impossible to believe that, barely half an hour earlier, his headmaster had rung me to accuse him of an act of almost unimaginable violence.
Alan, my foster son, had attacked a little girl in the playground.
She had said something that annoyed him — we never discovered what — so he had grabbed the hood of her coat and smashed her face repeatedly against the wall.
‘It’s a miracle she didn’t need stitches,’ the headmaster said. ‘I’m warning you, Mrs Henderson. You are going to have to do something urgently.’
As I listened to his words, anger boiled inside me. Not at Alan. Despite his terrible behaviour, I never for a second felt angry with him. How could I?
No. I felt red hot anger for the woman who had given birth to him. The woman who had put her own selfish addiction above her baby’s life.
