For those of us who grew up in stable households, it’s hard to imagine the life of a foster child. Constantly moving from home to home, not knowing what the future holds, searching for love and stability, and owning only a few items that you carry with you in a trash bag might sound impossible to fathom. And yet, for more than 400,000 kids in the U.S., this is their reality.
Rob Scheer from Darnestown, Maryland knows first-hand just how hard it is; he entered the foster care system nearly 40 years ago after leaving his abusive home. And it’s the lingering memories of that painful childhood that has led Rob to not only be a foster dad himself, but to go one step further in helping foster kids feel some comfort as they search for their forever home.
“We never say never in our house,” says Rob and his husband Reece, who’ve been married for seven years. “We were told we’d never be married. We were told we’d never be parents.”
And now, they are the proud parents of four beautiful kids. As they shared with Ellen Degeneres just this week on her show, “People say all the time our kids won the lottery. We won the lottery.”
Still, the journey has not been an easy one, as Rob and Reece’s kids come from abusive homes and painful pasts.
“We have a daughter who was hoarding food in her bedroom because she was scared she wasn’t going to eat,” Rob tells Babble. “We have a son who couldn’t talk and couldn’t walk and another child who didn’t know what it was to hug.”