Posted on 03/15/2013 11:35:58 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A 32-year-old San Diego man and his one-time foster mother are headed to a courtroom to make their family connection official.
Lisa Godbold said she and her husband spotted Maurice Griffin at an orphanage near their Sacramento home in the early 1980s and decided to make him a part of their family, CNN reported Friday.
"Interracial relationships weren't as common or accepted as they are today and the fact that Maurice was biracial, and we were a biracial family, made us a great profile, so to speak," Godbold said.
Griffin quickly connected with the couple and their two boys, who were younger than Griffin.
"We were best friends," Griffin said. "We'd run around, we did mischievous things and fun things. It was a good time."
However, a few years later, when the couple was two months away from officially adopting the then-13-year-old Griffin, he was taken away by foster care officials during a dispute about spanking.
"You can't spank foster children. Maurice very much wanted that," Godbold said. "We wanted him to feel like the rest of our kids. And there was a difference of opinion with some of the [child welfare] supervisors."
Godbold, whose husband died in 1998, reconnected with Griffin about six years ago via social media.
The pair are headed to a juvenile courtroom in San Diego Friday to allow Godbold to finally adopt Griffin.
"I just feel like this makes it official," Godbold said. "And we don't have to keep explaining it now."
He wanted to be spanked? Uh huh. Something’s just not quite right here, lol.
I saw that, too!
LOL.
Maybe for him, it was just a symbol that he was fully part of the family, like the other two children.
Nothing against spanking, but if you still have to resort to it at 13, then there are bigger problems. He would already be on the precipice of beating up mom, if not over it.
I think he wanted to feel like their ‘real’ kid and he always felt set aside by the lack of discipline that they showed their other kids.
I don’t think he meant like in a perverted way.
Article also says the other children were younger. Foster kids often are not allowed to remain anywhere long enough to develop a sense of belonging to anyone. This was something he obviously needed - to be treated just like the other kids in the family. Believe you are spot on. Good thinking.
I agree. I think some children crave more strictness than is offered by their own parents. Many children are able to see that greater strictness is motivated by greater love, and that it stands in stark contrast to neglect, something all too many children experience in bad foster homes.
You could be right. The whole article seemed odd to me, though. It was short and lacking in details.
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