Looking Out for the Little Guy

Welcome back to Taylor Talks!

Like many people, when I first heard about the new series, "Fuller House," I was excited. I had seen random episodes of the original series, "Full House," in the past, and loved the show, and I like the actors who were part of the cast. Since I had never seen every episode of "Full House," I wanted to catch up before watching the new spin-off, and luckily my mom and I were able to figure out exactly when re-runs were starting over at episode one.

This was quite a while ago, and whenever we have some free time, we like to sit down and watch a few episodes. My mom wants to just go ahead and start watching the new series, but I want to finish up with all of the old shows first so I know exactly how it left off. Guess whose plan we went with? Please, no spoilers of "Fuller House" while we finish the last two seasons of "Full House," okay?

Today, it was actually pretty funny because we saw an episode that aired on my birthday. Like, my actual day of birth, where I was born that morning and the show aired that night. It's pretty cool that this show was actually on the day I was born and not just sometime that week.

Another episode that caught my attention was one that dealt with a similar topic to my family's lives... Stephanie Tanner found out that a boy in her class got hit by his father, and she struggled with what to do after promising that she wouldn't say anything about it. Now, *spoiler alert if you haven't seen this episode and plan to watch it in the future,* of course Stephanie ends up telling Uncle Jesse and he reports it. The boy ends up being pulled from his home and placed with a foster family, which makes Stephanie feel horrible . But Uncle Jesse explains that while it's hard to break a promise, sometimes that's the right thing to do because it kept the boy from getting hurt again.

First of all, of course this directly correlates to my family because of the foster care, but it actually reminded me of when I was in college as well. I remember distinctly when we were told about how we would be mandated reporters when we became teachers. I knew this already because my mom had worked as a Teaching Assistant, but both of my parents were mandated reporters since they were foster parents.

Even though I already knew about mandated reporting, it was still a concept that freaked me out. There's that fine line that you need to balance on between sticking your nose in someone else's business and actually looking out for the best interest of the child. Like, if you're a teacher, but you're not in the school, should you still be paying attention to what all parents are doing or saying when you're in the grocery store? As a foster parent, you're not limited to a school; the odds are pretty slim of someone beating their child in your home, so does that mean that you should always be on the lookout for abuse wherever you go? I mean, I would hope that you aren't witnessing abusive relationships wherever you go, but you never know what you'll find. Like, if you think a parent is being too harsh with a child in the mall, are you overthinking it when you suddenly start to pay very close attention to them?

It's really hard to be looking out for the best interest of children everywhere, while not being nosey and jumpy and going overboard. I mean, I have witnessed incidents in stores before that have given me pause, but in the end it turned out that I just needed to calm down and not overreact. Sometimes parents are just having a bad day because their kids are out of control and whiny, and you happen to catch them at a bad time. Just because they're yelling at their child, doesn't mean that they are an abusive parent. It can be hard to walk that fine line, and it's nice to care about the kids that you see out in public (or the kids that you know personally), but you need to be careful not to start accusing parents of something crazy.

Even if you're not a mandated reporter, it's nice to look out for kids who may not be able to speak up for themselves. I'm just glad that I learned more about the reporting in college, even though I'm not working in a teaching position.

Your continued support means the world to me. From foster care to novels, and family to work experiences, I look forward to sharing more of my life with you each day. Don't hesitate to share your own stories with me or ask me questions about my life. Please don't forget to like and share my Facebook author page as well!

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Thanks!
Taylor

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