Why do some children just seem to bounce back, unscathed from some terrible ordeal? Sometimes you look at a child and wonder, how could anyone survive that, let alone a small child. When I think about the abuse some of our foster children lived through, I’m filled with awe, when I see them laughing and playing.
I read an article in the newspaper the other day about a little girl’s will to survive. She wasn’t a foster child, but it reminded me of what some of them go through and survive. It happened in Momence, Illinois around June 14. A five-year-old girl was apparently in the river with her grandfather. When neither returned a search party went looking for them.
When the search party located the body of the grandfather, they were certain the little girl had perished as well. How could a five-year-old girl survive two nights alone in the wilderness? How could she get out of the river alone?
However, that is exactly what she did. The current carried her close enough to shore that she was able to pull herself from the water using a branch. Then she wandered around the eastern Illinois forest trying to find her way back to her grandparents’ house.
While researchers were looking for her, she emerged from the woods, naked, scratched, and holding raspberries. The searchers were slightly bewildered about the appearance of such a child, wondering who she could be. Upon questioning, they were all elated to realize that it was the little girl for whom they were searching. The one they didn’t expect to find alive.
How did she do it? What is it about her that gives her an incredible will to survive, alone, and scared? What gives her the intestinal fortitude to pull herself out of a river at the age of five?
Why do some children who enter foster care never lead a normal life because of the abuse and neglect they have experienced? Why do some children not only survive, but excel after years of abuse and neglect?
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