I wasn't in the system, but my parents were foster parents. They took in a large number of children over the years and my sister and I were always excited to have new children to play with. We lived in the country so we were always having the new children come and play at our tree forts, show them the trails we made and introduce them to the general country kid stuff we did.

There was a reason my parents stopped being foster parents as the last set of children they took in were absolute monsters. I mean, literally - they were terrible.

As I said, my sister and I were country kids and every new arrival got a huge tour from us. First the bedrooms - then the rest of the house, then we moved on to the property and showed them all the cool stuff we could do. These 3 kids did not want any part of it.

We went to show them the bedrooms and immediately the oldest kid walks into our bedroom and proclaims it 'their bedroom'. My mother sorted that out after hearing some commotion upstairs to which she sees the kids piling things out of our room. We were already distraught and she tried to calm things down - 'No, guys. Your room is over here. See, look! It's a-' was met with immediate screaming and cursing that lasted the better part of the afternoon.

• I remember showing them our tree fort and then a few days later (the kids were still not registered for school and were at home) we went to go play at the treefort only to find the windows broken, the door pried off and someone had used an axe stolen from my Father's garage to chop holes in the walls. Mysteriously no one "knew" what had happened..

• Our bikes were thrown in the creek and someone had broken the spokes on both our bikes.

• Our board games had someone out of the three, or maybe all three participated, in being cut up with scissors.

• We had a small library/playroom in the basement...someone smeared poop over every book, every coloring book and broke all the crayons.

• I got punched in the face when I (11) found the kids watching television when we weren't allowed to and asked them to shut it off so we didn't all get in trouble. That ended up being a principals office visit the next day and a call to the parents because the school wanted to know why I had a huge bruise on my face and they didn't believe me that the foster kid had done it.

  Through all of that the kids were with us for about 6 months and went so far as the school requiring a security guard on the bus because the 3 were so out of control that the bus driver didn't feel safe. The agency would not listen to anyone about the behavior even though it was thoroughly documented through the school and my parents which resulted in the children being forced to be driven to school because they finally got kicked off the bus route.

  So, out of 10 years of foster parenting that last group was the straw that broke the camels back. My sister and I experienced a whole lifetime's worth of emotional abuse at the hands of these kids and were bullied at every point.

  I mostly feel bad for my parents because they loved having foster kids. We had kids with cerebral palsy, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities and just general wards of the province but these kids were truly terrible.

  I happened to meet one of the kids (now 24 years old) at the grocery store last year. Happily married and expecting her second child - gainfully employed and overall a super pleasant person but damn those years ago when I remember them making us prisoners in our own home.

  You don't need to be a foster kid to be part of the foster care system. I'm just happy they came out of that alright after everything we learned about their home situation.