Matthew never really unpacked.
Before he was adopted by Lee and David Nelson when he was 15, he had officially been in 16 foster care placements.
Unofficially, Matthew, who is now 19, thinks it was more than that — closer to 27.
He said he always left some clothes in his bag because he wanted to be ready to leave at any time.
“You got to be quick on your feet,” Matthew said in a recent interview at the family’s Northridge home.
•VIDEO: Foster child Matthew finds a home with the Nelson family
Lee Nelson said there are holes in Matthew’s Department of Children and Family Services records, which fill two large folders. Certain times in Matthew’s 15 years in foster care are unaccounted for.
“I have a feeling someone got passed around a lot,” Lee said.
“Bleak. There’s just no other word for it,” Lee said of Matthew’s experience in the system. “It’s a story of misjudgments and misplacements and people giving up.”
What about Matthew?
The Nelsons didn’t think they wanted to adopt a teenager when they went to an adoption fair six years ago. They were looking for children who were younger, but not babies. Maybe siblings.
They met Matthew, who was 13, but looked younger because he was small.
“We felt tugged,” Lee said.
Unlike some of the other foster kids at the fair, Matthew wasn’t “putting on a show” for the Nelsons, Lee said.
“He did say some things that he hoped would resonate with us, but at the same time, I don’t think he thought he was going to get placed,” Lee said.
“He had so much baggage and knew it. You’re 13 years old and you know you’re a mess.”
Their social worker had found a set of siblings that matched the Nelsons’ initial ideas of who they wanted to adopt.
But the Nelsons kept thinking: “What about Matthew?”
•PHOTOS: The Nelsons and their adopted foster son, Matthew
Matthew was featured on “Wednesday’s Child,” a Fox 11 program that features a DCFS child who is ready to be adopted. William Wong, who coordinates that program for DCFS, said the Nelsons “truly wanted to be parents to children who have a history of abuse and neglect.” They aren’t in it to be called heroes, he said.
Lee was curious about adoption from an early age. When she was in the fourth grade, a friend’s parents died. Lee remembered her mother explaining to her what being an orphan meant.
“I always thought, well, she’ll come back,” Lee recalled. “She’ll be adopted and she’ll come back to school.”
But her friend never came back to school.
At that young age, Lee decided at least some of her family would be adopted. When she couldn’t get pregnant, Lee and her husband decided they would adopt their entire family.
“Wednesday’s Child” usually features older children, children with special needs or siblings, who are the hardest kids to place in forever homes.
When prospective parents are reluctant to adopt older children, Wong said, he asks the person to think about when they were 17, 18 or 19 and asks, “How realistic would it be for you to be completely on your own, without any connections?”
He said a family brings accountability for young adults.
Lee said teenagers like Matthew just need someone to believe in them.
“If someone early on would have hung in there with him, I think it would have been a very different story,” Lee said.
Matthew was living in a group home when he found out a family wanted to adopt him.
He said he was in denial and confused.
“I was like, that’s not possible,” he said with a smile. He couldn’t express his excitement at the time, though, because he said, in a group home, “You can’t act like you’re happy,” Matthew said. “In that environment, you have to keep your image strong.”
Problems with his older brother also may explain why Matthew was moved around so much. The boys, who were two years apart, didn’t get along, but social workers wanted to keep siblings together.
Matthew said he was taught that he couldn’t cry, so he manifested his emotions into anger. He would get into fights.
“I was angry at the world,” he said.
Mini bull terriers
Matthew moved in with the Nelsons in August 2010.
“When Matthew moved in, we felt like he’d been here forever,” Lee said. Matthew and Lee are a lot alike, they said. They finish each other’s sentences, laugh at the same YouTube videos and know where the other person is going when they start to tell a story.
But the transition still wasn’t easy.
“Breaking through 14 years of bad habits and problems and issues, and just I always thought of us as little mini bull terriers holding on and not letting go,” Lee said.
At the time Matthew was adopted, Lee was a physical education teacher. She and David also worked with youth from their church, so children had always been a part of their lives even before they had any of their own.
The Nelsons became foster parents this year to two girls, who are 4 and 6, so Matthew has taken on — if sometimes reluctantly — a big brother role. He has been spotted laying on the floor and playing Lego with the girls.
But when Matthew is being mean, the girls do have permission to poke him, Lee said.
Testing boundaries
Shortly after Matthew moved in, the Nelsons moved into a new house, which was difficult for Matthew, who had just gotten used to the old house.
The new family had what Lee described as a “big blowup.”
Matthew went to his room and started packing. Lee went to the telephone to call a social worker.
“This is how it starts. This is how it starts. This how it starts,” Matthew kept saying.
Lee asked the social worker what that meant.
“He thinks you’re going to get rid of him,” Lee said the social worker told her.
“Well, that’s not what we do,” Lee replied.
Matthew had been moved around so many times. The first foster parent he felt close to packed his stuff up and drove him to his first group home when he was 8 years old.
He was continuously questioning the Nelsons’ trust.
“Each kid has their own way of testing boundaries,” Lee said. “The only way that Matthew really knew how was to push as hard as he could to see what would happen. There are times where we thought, ‘He did this to see if we were going to kick his ass out.’ He didn’t trust that we weren’t going to give up.”
Lee said when things got tough, it was important to fall back on her support system.
“Hang on, get through it. When you get out on the other side, it’s so much better,” she said.
To become a foster or adoptive parent, please call 1-888-811-1121 or visit www.shareyourheartla.org
