Post Movie Screening Reflection by HFG foster parent and volunteer Edmen Leong - "Lost Love"
Post Movie Screening Reflection by HFG foster parent and volunteer Edmen Leong who reflected on how he and his family learnt and overcame challenges and made an impact to foster children!
“Home For Good hosted a private movie screening between the 11th to 13th of May at Eaglewings Cinematics. They screened the movie “Lost Love” which is about how a married couple ventured into fostering and eventually took on several children throughout the course of their lives. Across the 3 days, a total of 172 guests attended the movie screening. My wife Laa Leong and I (Edmen Leong) are glad that we were part of the movie screening as volunteers. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie specifically because we were able to relate to several of the experiences that were represented in the movie.
One experience we could relate to was a scene portraying a conversation between the foster mum and the school principal after a fight happened between the foster child and a schoolmate. Gist of the scene was how the foster child might have been misunderstood because of his family background. He was not given an opportunity to explain himself before he was judged by the school principal. We are thankful to hear from many other foster parents on how supportive schools are in Singapore.
We had one experience when we got to know of rumours in our foster child’s preschool circulating suggesting “She behaves badly because she does not have a mother.” Like the foster mum in the movie, we experienced the same urge and desire to advocate for our child. We feel that the rumours had to do with the lack of awareness of underlying challenges of foster children and the lack of knowledge on how to work with them within a general population of children. We are thankful that the movie, as well as the work the HFG does as it helps to create conducive environments for foster chidlren to grow safely! We were also thankful that eventually we got a preschool environment which provided a caring environment for our foster child and worked very closely with us in bringing her up well.
In the movie, it was also portrayed that the foster mum might have neglected her husband in her busyness after taking on her foster children. In our case, we felt we have neglected our natural daughter since we took on our foster children. Because our foster children had more medical and educational needs, we found ourselves frequently visiting the doctor, attending therapy sessions and tutoring our foster children which took up the time that we used to have for our natural child. We did not realise this until our natural child’s teacher spoke to us and shared about how she started looking more depressed in school. Through our experience, reinforced through the movie, we have noted the importance of deliberately scheduling to spend time and showing affection to our natural family members while caring for our foster children. We eventually scheduled for respite care for our foster children to allow family time with our natural daughter.
My wife and I are very glad to be able to be part of HFG and volunteer at the movie screening. Our fostering journey started not too long ago and it really helped to have peers within HFG who really understood the challenges that we were going through, as well as our desire to serve this community. While this is not an easy road to take, we have gained so much from it.
Fostering brought us much joy and satisfaction! My wife and I appreciated each other so much more after experiencing and working around our challenges together. We also witnessed our natural daughter growing up into a selfless and mature young lady. It was such a joy to see out foster children bloom!
Watch the movie if you have an opportunity to, and speak to us or any representative from Home For Good if you would like to find out more about fostering.”
Audrie Siew @Wong Kuan Ying
