For foster child, Glenforest School becomes true family

She was 3 when her parents divorced, 4 when her grandparents adopted her and 12 when her grandmother was charged with killing her grandfather.

Four years ago, she was tossed into the foster care system.

Now 16, “Selena” has lived with more than a half-dozen families in her short life. But last month, she moved into what she expects to be her forever home – her teacher’s home.

Part of Selena’s family of support at West Columbia’s Glenforest School – the family that has been constant and comforting through many of her trials – became her literal family just before Thanksgiving, when Kristen and Chris Boomhower took Selena in as their foster daughter.

“I used to run away from foster homes. I didn’t like them, and I knew that was the only way to get out of them,” Selena said.

There were two foster homes after her grandfather’s death. She didn’t care for them, she said.

There was her third foster home, which she loved.

Then one morning, a 13-year-old Selena woke up late for school, wondering why her foster mother hadn’t come to get her. She knocked on her foster mother’s door to find she had died of a heart attack in her sleep.

The very next day, she was back in school and back on the move to another home.

She moved in with her grandmother, who was not prosecuted in the case involving the death of Selena’s grandfather. That situation lasted about two months.

“She ended up calling the cops on me in the middle of the night because I didn’t respond to her calling my name when I was asleep,” Selena said. “I chose to go back (into foster care) because I didn’t want to be in that environment.”

Then there were two more foster homes before, now, one last home.

“Not everyone at 16 has a life story to tell,” Terri Rivera, a teacher at Selena’s Glenforest School, recently said to her.

“I’m sad that I do,” Selena replied.

‘We didn’t want to get her hopes up’

Kristen Boomhower was adopted as a child. She and her 29-year-old husband, Chris, have always known they, too, would adopt, specifically through the social services system, she said.

“After working in a public school system, you can’t deny how many kids need – and I mean in every sense of the word – a home. Not just a house. A home,” said Boomhower, 28.

The Boomhowers started the vetting process through the state Department of Social Services in January, finished in August and were just waiting for the right child or children to bring into their home.

But the right child had been in their lives for years.

The Boomhowers have known Selena for about five years as one of Kristen’s students at Glenforest School. They’ve known her story and know her challenges.

“We both just looked at each other and said, you know, we’ve talked about (Selena) for so long,” Kristen Boomhower said. “We need to act. Now’s the time.

“We’re looking at kids, and we have a need right here that we interact with on a daily basis.”

Boomhower had talked openly with her students about going through the adoption process and had said they were considering a sibling set of boys under 10 years old.

One day, Selena asked Boomhower if she’d ever considered taking in a teenaged girl.

“And, of course, I’m totally tearing up,” Boomhower said. “We’d already made the decision to start pursuing her.”

But she didn’t tell Selena that.

“We didn’t want to get her hopes up.”

‘A village...that has really looked out for her’

Since the time Selena was a new student in third grade, Glenforest School has been the most stable, comforting part of her life.

“This is the only consistency she’s known (since her grandfather’s death), is this school,” Boomhower said. “She may not know where she’s going home at night, but she knows in the morning she’ll be coming here.”

Glenforest is a small, private K-12 school that specializes in teaching academics and social skills to students with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other learning disabilities.

For Selena, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when she was younger and has struggled to cope with anger and other emotions, Glenforest not only provides an alternative classroom environment, but gives her lessons in managing her emotions and behavior.

“A lot of times when people have things happen to them, they feel a loss of control,” Glenforest headmaster Susan Thomas said. “One of the things that we try to work with her on is she’s got to have control of the things she does have control over.”

The Glenforest community has done much more for Selena, giving her comfort, counseling, distraction and physical provision. Thomas often drove Selena to and from school over the past year or two when her foster family couldn’t transport her.

“It is a village here that has really looked out for her best interest,” Thomas said. “She has told me before, ‘I don’t know where I’d be if it were not for Glenforest.’”

Selena candidly says so herself: “I’d be in a totally different place. I’d probably be in jail.”

‘Our home will always be her home’

Once she and her husband decided to make Selena a part of a their family, Boomhower started noticing Selena differently at school – her strengths, the things that made her happy or set her off, her smile.

“I was more aware of her than of her behaviors,” Boomhower said.

It was a Friday about a month ago when Selena’s social worker gave her the news that she would be living with the Boomhowers.

“I just started bursting out crying,” Selena said, a wave of emotions having washed over her – excitement and joy about becoming a part of the Boomhowers’ family, yet some sadness about having to tell her foster mother and her own grandmother that she wouldn’t be living with either of them.

Though it would be at least a couple weeks before she would move into her new home, Selena arrived at school after the weekend announcing that she was all packed and ready to go.

She started calling Boomhower “Mom” in the hallways at school. “I quickly had to be like, dude, you can’t do that,” Boomhower said.

It’s been a smooth adjustment since Selena moved in.

Selena is in charge of feeding the family’s two Boston terriers, Abby and Geo. She gets Chris to giggle over silly YouTube videos. The Boomhowers cheer her on at basketball games.

“It’s like I literally am her child,” Selena said, looking at Kristen Boomhower.

“She really has just fit right into our family,” Boomhower said. “It’s like she was always there.”

And the plan is for her to always be there.

“For us, this is not a temporary thing,” Boomhower said. “Whether we adopt or whether she remains in foster care with us until whenever, our home will always be her home.

“Whether she’s 16 or 40, she will be a part of our family.”

This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 8:55 PM with the headline "For foster child, Glenforest School becomes true family."