Tired of boring lunches? Picture this. You're at Chipotle ordering the same old burrito bowl.
But wait, there's more excitement in store than just guac. Introducing DROP, the ultimate rewards app. Just link your card, dine at your favorite restaurants, and you'll learn points to get free gift cards from tons of brands.
It's like getting paid to eat. Hungry for savings? Download the DROP app now and use code DROP44 to kickstart your rewards journey with $5 in points. Hey there, it is Ryan Seacrest with you. You want to make this summer unforgettable? Join me at Chumba Casino. It's this summer's hottest online destination. They are rolling out the red carpet with an amazing welcome offer just for you. So don't wait. Dive in now and play hundreds of social casino games for free. Your chance to redeem real prizes is just a spin away.
Care to join me? Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group.
Voidware prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.
Hi, this is Nikki Glaser from the Nikki Glaser Podcast. Say yes to summer and get cash back on many of your favorite brands with PayPal. Which, let's face it, comes in very handy during the summertime. Say yes to brunch with the girls. Say yes to new dog poop bags that are the kind of the cute ones. You can also send money to friends with PayPal, which means going halfsies when your best friend visits the summer.
Saying yes to summertime fun just got a whole lot easier. Make sure to download the PayPal app. An account with PayPal is required to send and receive money. Redeem points for cash and other options. Terms apply. You know that feeling when you walk into your home, take a deep breath, and feel new? Well, that's what it's like to use Clorox Sentiva. Because Clorox Sentiva smells like coconut, cleans like Clorox, and feels like energy. It'll elevate any cleaning routine to not just clean, but also make every room smell like a tropical coconut getaway. Discover how Clorox Sentiva's powerful, clean, and refreshing scents can transform your space.
Get yours in coconut or other fabulous scents at a nearby retail store. And we continue with our American Stories. And up next, we have Dr. John DeGarmo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute. Dr. John has also written several books on the subject of foster care.
He and his wife have had 60 plus children come through their home from the ages of just 27 hours to 18 years old. Here's Dr. John with his own story. I met my wife from Australia. We traveled the globe singing and dancing, performing across the world in a supergroup called Up With People. And fell in love during that year. In fact, during the year, she was dating a guy from Germany, and I was head over heels with a girl from Sweden. And we often joked that we both spoke the same language, English, so we thought it'd be easier if we got together.
So we did. And we got married, lived in Australia. Our first child died of a condition called anencephaly.
Some pronounce it an-ah-keh-faly. It's a condition where the brain or the skull never truly forms. And my wife was in labor for 92 hours.
92 hours. The baby died upon oxygen. I'll admit I went into a very, very dark space at that time. There was a time during my grieving process.
Again, I really was denying my grief. My wife and I were beginning the foster care process, and I had this nightmare. Well, you know, it really wasn't a nightmare. I remember waking up, screaming. My wife tells me I screamed for five minutes, but she was shaking me and shaking me and shaking me, and she could not get me to stop screaming. Finally, when I broke out of it, she asked me what it was about.
I have no recollection of what it was about. I just felt that I was encompassed, if you will, in a cocoon of evil. It's the only way I can explain it. I was in a womb of just evil. And I was so scared. I was so afraid. I was enveloped in fear, if you will, of absolute fear.
Maybe evil wasn't the right word. Of fear. And the next four days, I was just afraid. I was afraid to go to work. I was afraid to go to the grocery store.
Everywhere I would turn, I was looking behind my shoulder, afraid. So, at this point, my wife said to me, you need to go talk to a minister. We had been attending this church, but at that point, I had turned my back on my faith. Because again, the death of my first child, and I really turned my back on a lot of things, including my faith. Because here we were, my wife and I had never taken drugs or alcohol, never smoked, yet our first child died, and we knew people, were laid to people who had taken drugs and alcohol and had healthy children. I just thought the irony was too great.
There's no such thing as a God. So, I was just filled with that negativity, that distrust, if you will. So, I went to the minister. We had been attending a church. I was going just for my wife's sake.
Her faith was very strong. And for my children's sake, I felt the need to be in a church. But I was going through the motions. And I talked to this minister, and he said, John, it seems as if you're at a point in your life where you're going to turn over and start helping children. And it's as if the devil is trying to lure you back in one more time, try to take you back in one more time.
And he's trying to prevent you from doing this. And that led me to a lot of reflection. It led me to a lot of time and prayer. And now I couldn't do foster parenting without my faith. It wasn't until a few years later when we moved back to the United States, had three healthy children, I was teaching in a rural high school setting, in the area that was filled with a lot of poverty and a lot of apathy. And I had some kids coming through my classroom, lots of kids, actually, who were suffering from issues of attendance, suffering from issues of academics, suffering from issues of behavior. And I kept asking myself, what is it?
What is going on? Why so many children suffering from this? And then I met many of their birth parents and I recognized, aha, starts in the home. So I went home and I told my wife, hey, one of my students, she's a senior, she's pregnant with triplets.
And she comes from a rough environment. I could just imagine that the triplets would be raised in a very, very harmful environment. So I said to my wife, what about these three babies home? And my wife said to me, as long as you change the diapers, I tell you, I wish I had listened to her then because we went 20 years straight, 20 years straight with having at least one baby in our house and diapers.
And my wife does hair. I do the diaper changing. I should have got my doctorate in diaper changing. So that discussion led to foster parenting and that led to us being trained as foster parents.
And since then, I've written several books. I travel the world and I've really devoted my entire life to making the system better. In fact, I'm driven each day to help children who are suffering.
I hear often, Dr. John, I can't do what you do. It would hurt too much to give the kids back. And my response every time is, that's exactly how it's supposed to be.
It's exactly how it's supposed to be. These kids, these kids that are placed in our homes as foster parents, they need, yes, they need the consistency and they need the structure and stability. But what they need more than anything else is for someone to love them with all their heart, give them that unconditional love. So at the end of the day, when the child leaves, for whatever reason it might be, whatever reason they may leave the home, our hearts break.
But I think that's a good thing. I think it's a gift because I might be the first person who's ever loved this child in a healthy fashion. I could be the first person who's ever cried for this child tears of grief and the child leaves. And that's a gift. That's a gift of a broken heart because the end of the day, when the child leaves, they're taking with them my love.
And hopefully my love will help them in some fashion. You know, a foster parent's heart's a lot like a quilt with all these patches placed over it. And I have grieved over 60 different times for children who have come to love as my own, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We had these three boys come to our house, a 10 year old boy, a nine year old boy and a seven year old boy.
And they come to our house with a lot of trauma, a lot of trauma. The 10 year old and the seven year old really gravitated towards my wife and I and our family very, very quickly. They became very attached.
The nine year old did not. He had so much anger with them, as rightfully so. And during the time he was with us, he never had anything nice, anything positive to say to my wife or I, always some type of critical remark. He was either withdrawn or he would lash out again, all in anger. But he was hurting.
He was really, really hurting. And I recognize that the day the three boys were to leave to be reunified with some family members, biological family members, my wife was at home taking care of some other kids. We had at that time nine children in our house and I was packing them up into the car.
I was going to drive them off to their relatives. Of course, there's a lot of crying, a lot of hugs, a lot of tears, a lot of I love yous with the 10 year old and the seven year old. And the nine year old boy just stood off in the corner of the driveway and I kept watching him, watching him. After a while, the 10 year old and seven year old got in the car and my wife is again saying goodbye.
I'm about to drive off and the nine year old walks over to my wife very slowly with his head down, looking at the ground. And I thought, oh no, oh no, what is he going to say? And my wife was looking at him expectantly with a smile on her face and he looked up and he said four words to my wife that just shattered us. He said, Mommy, I love you.
And he started crying. And I recognized at that point that we had been planting a seed in this child, a seed that was growing and blossoming into something that we could not see during this time. And that's what happens when you care for children's foster care in your home. You know, we might not see what is happening underneath, but there's a lot of when you give these children stability and structure and unconditional love, that's where healing begins. And that was a pivotal moment for my wife and I. And of course, my wife just broke down in tears and just made us recognize, you know, this is worth it. And we're listening to Dr. John DeGuermo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute. And my goodness, what a story and what a heart a man like this has when we come back.
More of this remarkable life story, this story filled with love and hope and self-sacrifice and service here on Our American Stories. I'm Victoria Cash. Thanks for calling the Lucky Land Hotline. If you feel like you do the same thing every day, press one. If you're ready to have some serious fun for the chance to redeem some serious prizes, press two.
We heard you loud and clear. So go to Lucky Land Slots dot com right now and play over a hundred social casino style games for free. Get lucky today at Lucky Land Slots dot com. Available to players in the U.S., excluding Washington, Michigan.
No purchase necessary. Have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from NYX.
That's K-N-I-X. Period panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak proof underwear brand in North America. They're comfy, stylish and absorbent, perfect for period protection from your lightest to your heaviest days. They look, feel and machine wash just like regular underwear, but feature incognito protection that has you covered. You can shop sizes from extra small to 4XL.
Choose from all kinds of colors, prints and different styles from bikinis to boy shorts, thongs to high rise. You've got to try NYX. See why millions are ditching disposable wasteful period products and have switched to NYX. Go to K-N-I-X dot com and get 15% off with promo code try 15. That's NYX dot com promo code try 15 for 15% off life changing period underwear.
That's K-N-I-X dot com is getting gas at Exxon burning a hole in your wallet. Get the drop app with drop. You can earn free gift cards just by filling up your tank.
Download drop now. Use code drop 66 to instantly receive $5 in points. High five casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at high five casino dot com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account.
Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at high five casino dot com. High five casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void prohibited play responsibly terms and conditions apply. See website for details at high the number five casino dot com.
High five casino. And we return to our American stories and we've been listening to Dr. John DeGuermo share his story of what it is like to be a foster parent. They have six children, three of which they've adopted out of the foster care system.
Back to Dr. DeGuermo. We've had 60 plus kids come through our home. We've had the blessing to adopt three children and we've had we've experienced four failed adoptions, which means for some reason the adoption did not work out or the adoption was sabotaged or whatever it might be. I never set out to adopt a child from foster care was never our intention to do that. We just felt there's children out there who are in need and that we can help these kids. Now, they are first one that we adopted came to us when she was five days old, five days old.
She could fit in my hand. She was so small, weighed a little over five pounds, and that was never my intention to adopt her. But when her parental rights were terminated by her, by the biological parents, biological parents' rights were terminated, known as TPR. Then there's a search for biological family members in the area, maybe the state, maybe even the whole country, who might adopt a child.
If no one is found, then the foster parents often have the first right to adopt the child. Again, I didn't want to adopt a child. Now, the reason why I didn't want to adopt a child was I felt that if I adopted her, I would be taking her away from somebody who could not have children.
I was blessed with three healthy children. I had lost a child. I recognized the miracle at his birth, and I felt that if I adopted this child, who was very much a member of my family and I loved her dearly, but I felt if I adopted her, I'd be taking her away from somebody who could not have children. Now, my friends, my family members, those I worked with, those I went to church with, they kept telling me, John, you need to adopt her. You need to adopt her. And I knew that in my head, my heart just couldn't accept that.
Again, I felt guilty. Now, fortunately, we were able to adopt her 22 months later, and what a blessing it's been. The second one that we adopted came to us when she was 18 months old.
18 months old. Her mother dropped her off at a grocery store to a stranger. And she is third generation foster care, which means her family, her parents and her grandparents were also in the foster care system. And she knew one word. One word is all she knew, and that was shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. It's the only word that she would say. She would hit everything in sight.
My wife, my son, myself, the cats, everything. Now she's the most obnoxiously sweet princess you've ever met. She's the sweetest, caringest child, which shows me a lot about environment.
What kind of environment is she coming from? The only word is shut up, a word that we don't allow in the house. Now, again, I didn't want to adopt her because at this point I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, that's five kids and I don't want to be the Brady Bunch. Let me tell you, when you got 11 kids in the house at the same time, you are so far beyond the Brady Bunch level. And my wife and I don't have an Alice. We would love to have an Alice sometimes. So, again, I didn't want to adopt her.
I can attest to too many kids. The caseworker, she came in July. The following April, the caseworker came to us and said, Dr. John, Dr. Kelly, more. I said, Dr.
Nutrition, the mom's going to have a baby more. I said, hooray. I said, no, no. I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, going to be another child to adopt.
I can't, how am I going to pay for this? And my wife said, can we adopt both? I said, and the caseworker said, yes. And I said, no, no, no. And talking back and forth, I finally said, I'm still in the room. I said, no. And my wife said, just ignore him.
He'll change his mind. A few months later, this child came to us 27 hours old, 27 hours old and beautiful, beautiful baby. And I just immediately fell in love with her as I did her sister. And a year later, we were blessed to adopt both of them.
And you know what? I would do it again and again and again. Adoption has made my life so much fuller in so many different ways. One of the hardest parts of being a foster parent for me is knowing these children are going to go back to an environment that is not safe. The end goal of foster care is reunification, which means being reunified with their birth parents or biological family members. Sadly, 20 to 30 percent of the children who do reunify come back into foster care or reenter back into foster care far more traumatized. And there have been those times where I've known without a shadow of a doubt that they're going back to an environment that is not safe.
But the court saw it differently. And that's frightening for me because I lay awake at night thinking, how are these children doing? I lay awake and I pray for these children or even worse, I have nightmares about these children that they're not safe. But I've had to I had to have had to find peace. The fact that I've done the best I can. I've given this child the love, the time being they were with me, that I've been able to provide them that unconditional love that they so desperately need.
Every child deserves to be loved. And yeah, but it's hard. It's hard. Now, we've had times of kids have come back into care and they've come back into our home further traumatized.
But it's hard. It's hard knowing that knowing that sometimes you're going back to an environment that's that's going to be dangerous for them or harmful for them. And all we can do is just be content with the fact that we have given them all that we can and to pray for them.
What it's important to recognize is that for some of the birth parents, for the kids we've cared for, my wife and I and foster parents in general might be seen as the bad guy because those birth parents might not want to recognize the choices they've made in their life. They might not want to acknowledge the fact that they've made poor choices. Maybe they are still suffering from their own pain. Maybe they're still suffering from their own anxiety and trauma, trauma and anxiety that they don't know how to process it because they've never got the help they needed. So they don't reach out to us. We reach out to as many as we can, but sometimes they just won't acknowledge it and they shut us out of their lives. And but I understand why, again, they might be dealing with their own problems. As I mentioned earlier, two of the three we've adopted are third generation foster care, which means their parents and grandparents were also in care and they never got the help they needed when they were children. And that trauma passes down for the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. So many kids in foster care have never had a holiday celebrated. They've never had a birthday celebrated. I recall we had a child who was 10 years old and we had to teach him how to sing Happy Birthday.
It's just staggering. The 14 year old boy who came to our house rough as nails. In fact, he came to us. He was part of a sibling group of five. There was a 14 year old, an 11 year old, a 10 year old, a nine year old and a seven year old. And they came from a house that the sheriff's department calls the house of feces. You could not see the floor in the house. It was covered in human and dog feces. There was no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no heat, no air, no food, no father in the picture.
The mother is running a meth lab with her two teenage boyfriends. And the 14 year old was just filled with a lot of anger. He also filled in a lot of guilt, filled with a lot of guilt because he felt it was his fault that his siblings were being placed in foster care. Because it was his responsibility, it was his responsibility to care for his siblings.
Make sure they were fed, make sure the bills were paid in the house, make sure the kids got to school and learning was taking place. So when he and his siblings were placed in foster care, he considered it his fault. He had a lot of guilt. In fact, when they came to our house, their clothes were stapled together and we had to burn those clothing because the clothes were contaminated with meth and human and dog feces. Well, it was during that time at Christmas.
Again, lots of anger, lots of walls of resentment towards us. And we gave him, he opened up a present from us, my wife and I, and it was a black leather jacket. And he said to us with just a gruff voice, he said, can I keep this? And my wife said, of course, absolutely.
And he burst out in the tears. It was his first real gift, first real gift that anybody had ever given him. When we have Christmas and birthdays, we make a huge release because for some of them, again, they've never had that time. So we really try to make it a very, very special day for them. You know, I often tell people that I can't change the world and you can't change the world, but this is how we can change the world together. Years from now, when that child leaves their home, for whatever reason it might be, years from now, they might not remember my name and years from now, they might not remember my face.
But years from now, they remember one thing, and that is this, for time in their life, and maybe the only time in their life, somebody loved them. And that's how we change their lives. You know, so whether you're a foster parent or whether you've decided you can't be a foster parent, but you can help children in need in your area, because there's kids in every single community in our nation who are suffering from abuse, children in every single community or nation who are suffering from human trafficking, victims of human trafficking. So if you decide that you can't be a foster parent, but you can help these children and you can do that in some way, when we help these children, their world is changed. You can't change the world, but for these children, their world is changed. And that makes all the difference. And very special thanks to Dr. John DeGuermo, founder and director of the Foster Care Institute. And he doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk. My goodness, the number of children that have passed through his home. And it is so true that when you can just love one of these kids, you may not be changing the world, but you're changing a world.
Dr. John DeGuermo's story, so many kids in this world, unwanted and unloved, and his rebuttal to that problem here on Our American Stories. Ever tried to tackle a home improvement project without making 10 trips to Home Depot? What if I told you there's a way to earn cash back while you shop? Introducing Drop, the ultimate rewards app. With Drop, you can earn free gift cards by shopping in-store or online at Home Depot and tons of other stores. Download the Drop app today and use code DROP33 to get an instant $5 in points.
That's Drop, your go-to for shopping rewards. High Five Casino. High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at highfivecasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account.
Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at highfivecasino.com. High Five Casino is a social casino, no purchase necessary, void or prohibited, play responsibly, terms and conditions apply, see website for details at highthenumberfivecasino.com. High Five Casino.
This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. eBay Motors is here for the ride. With some elbow grease, fresh installs, and a whole lot of love, you transformed 100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that's all your own. Brake kits, LED headlights, whatever you need, eBay Motors has it. And with eBay Guaranteed Fit, it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time, every time, or your money back. Plus, at these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash.
Keep your ride or die alive at eBayMotors.com, eligible items only, exclusions apply. Welcome to NFL Flag. In this game, there's a position for everyone.
No matter who you are, just bring it. Get ready to run, throw, jump, and fly. This game is our game. Let's play. Visit nfl.com to find a league and get playing today. And tune in to the NFL Flag Championships, presented by Toyota. Live from Canton, Ohio on July 19th through the 21st on ESPN, ABC, and Disney Networks.
