The biggest problem of our time.

It’s not what you think.

80% of foster children end up in prison.

We have a culture of individualism and say:

“If you’re not successful, it’s your fault”.

Often times, we blame people for ending up the way they end up.

What I don’t understand is how people can completely blame a kid who has nothing and act surprised when they end up a criminal, dead, homeless, a drug addict, or in jail.

You’re born and your parents abandon you.

You get to foster care. After a while you get placed in a home where you’re neglected and sexually abused.

You go to school and kids bully you for not having parents.

You can’t keep up and fail your classes.

You’re anxious because of your trauma and act out in class continually. The teachers label you a “problem child”.

The principal has a meeting with you and says if you keep acting this way you’ll end up dead or in jail.

One day you get in a fight and get expelled from school.

Your foster parents are frustrated and request a removal. You continue to cycle through home and home without anyone wanting to adopt you.

You have no support system or stable relationships in your life. In the next several years, you cycle through over 20 different homes.

You turn 16 and you can’t take it anymore. You run to the streets and just try to smoke the pain away.

You get into drugs and you live on the streets. You eventually join a gang because they are the only people who accept you for who you are.

Eventually you start selling drugs. Even though it’s risky, you find a sense of purpose in doing so. You failed at school, but you are succeeding in this.

You start by selling marijuana. You do well and they say you can make more money selling heroin, but it’s more risky. You’re up for the challenge and you sell it in loads. After not so long, you sell not only crack and heroin, but also prescription drugs like Oxycodone, Percocet, and Vicodin to richer people.

You earn enough to buy your own sports car. This is the first time you bought something with your own money. You’re so happy. You drive it around all day and go to the gas station to fill up the tank.

While at the station the police run into you and search your vehicle, they find drugs and arrest you. They also tie back your history to repeated violence and drug activity in the area. You get hit with a RICO charge and get sentenced to 20 years in jail.

You spend 20 years in jail and get released. When you get released, you’re lost and overwhelmed. You don’t know how to integrate back in society. You can’t get a job with your criminal record and you live on the streets again. You apply to every job in town and even the fast food places won’t hire you. You apply for public housing and your applied gets denied because of your criminal history.

After walking the streets, you come in contact with the same guy who got you into selling drugs. You think about it and then decide to start selling drugs again. You sell your way into living a bit more comfortably. This time you’re more careful.

One night you get caught during a transaction by the police and run. You drive away in your car and can’t shake them. You drive to the top of the mountain and you reach a dead end. They are about you catch you and you have a choice to either get arrested and sent to prison again or drive off the cliff. You drive off the cliff and fall to your death.

Don’t get me wrong. This person’s circumstances DON’T justify their criminal acts, but it’s easy to see why this happened.

Their parents left them. The foster care system let them fall through the cracks. The teachers labeled them a “problem child”. The principal said they would end up dead or in jail. Kids bullied them. No one in the world accepted them from the start except for one group. The drug dealers.

People usually don’t get into crime because it’s fun or glamorous. They get into crime because they see it as the only way to get by. The gang was the only group that accepted that person and that’s the problem. When one person slips through the cracks, it ends up being disastrous for everyone. If you don’t have a family, the gang can become your family.

If you ask “what’s wrong with this person?”, people will answer their choices are bad and that’s why they ended up this way.

If you ask “what happened to this person?”, people will learn about their history of being abandoned as a child and see that only way to save this person is by helping them.

You can’t judge someone until you’re in their shoes.

And more importantly, you can’t do anything alone. We always like to say we are successful because of our own work, but we often leave out the people who invested in us before we had a chance to invest in ourselves. Our teachers, our coaches, our mothers, our fathers, our community leaders. It takes a village to raise a child.

Whether someone ends up to be a violent, abusive criminal, a drug-dealer, unemployed, an addict, or dead pre-maturely, it’s a failure on society. They have to look at themselves in the mirror because they are the ones who produced this person. They are the ones who let this person slip through the cracks and they are the ones who have to pay the price with extra policing, more taxes, more prisons, more healthcare, and ultimately more tragedies.

Tough love doesn’t work because you don’t know what the person has been through and you end up screwing them over even more.

We need to demand a better foster care and child welfare system from our politicians. This is the most important, yet neglected issue in our time.

Imagine if one person realized this kid wasn’t acting out because they were misbehaving. They were acting out because they were in pain and traumatized. They were acting out because they didn’t have anyone. They were acting out because they needed help.

If one coach took them under their wing, if one teacher took them under their wing, if one mentor believed in this kid, if one person looked at them as an opportunity instead of a problem, it would be a success story instead of a statistic.

This goes to show how hard life can be without parents. There is no amount of money that can buy you good parents. There is no prescription a doctor can write for fatherly and motherly love.

If we want to create a better world, we need to invest in our kids and that involves creating better parents. The most important job in the world isn’t CEO or President. The most important job is being a parent because you are directly affecting the next generation. But the funny thing is that being a parent requires no education, no qualifications, no interview, no nothing.

We also need to realize that having a kid doesn’t make you a parent. Raising a good kid makes you a good parent. You don’t need have to be the richest parent to be the best. You need time, kindness and understanding.

If you want to help people, find a kid who needs you and help them as much as you can. Our future depends on it.