How To Be a Village

I found a great blog post about how to support others who are adopting.  It has many truths in it that extended family and friends should know. 

I especially like that the author tells others that the transition for the whole family is very, very, very, very, VERY hard.  That doesn't mean anything is wrong or that things aren't working.  It just very hard.  Even after two years Little Bear struggles with emotional regulation and over stimulation.  By the way, it is never helpful to express the opinion the "You asked for it" or "Maybe you shouldn't have adopted him" which at least one person has said to me. 

The author also reminds others that parents may put up boundaries that seem unreasonable, but are important  to create a cohesive family.  Boundaries like not visiting often at first or not kissing the newly adopted child are very hard to understand.  There are good reasons and they help a new child bond to the rest of the family.  When you respect these limits you show a great deal of love and respect for the new child and his family.

Enjoy!

http://www.jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/11/02/how-to-be-the-village

Orphan Sunday

Ok, I know it's not Sunday, but I've been busy.

I am totally taken with this young lady and hoping that someone out there is ready to be her mommy and daddy. 

"Dawn" is 12 1/2 years old and has Spina Bifida.  I know that sounds scary, and I'm not making light of it, but there is so much more that she can do, than she can't.  She uses a wheelchair, but can get in and out of her chair and can go up and down stairs on her own.  when asked she said that she knows that being adopted and moving to another culture would be hard, but she wants a family and she is willing to work hard.  She also knows that she will have many more educational and job opportunities her than in China where wheelchair use is not as common. 

"Dawn's" personality just shines and I can tell  shat she will grab any opportunity and run with it.

"Dawn" must be adopt by her 14th birthday.  After that she is not eligible for adoption.  She is on the shared list which means that ant agency doing adoptions in China can request her file and facilitate her adoption.  She is also special focus so you can get permission to adopt before you even have a homestudy.  Her birthday is Feb. 6, 1999.

Note:  The name Dawn is merely a pseudonym.  All you should need is her birthday and special need to get things going.  On the shared list her special need is listed as "bilateral paralysis of lower limbs."

Why We Didn't Choose Domestic Adoption

One of the criticisms that international adoption gets is that we should take care of the children in the United States first.  Some go so far as to say things like this:

"As someone who has been adopted, I am offended that you would not first look at adopting a child from here at home in the US,  . . . .

What about the 15 year old here at home who needs to be adopted but isn't because he/she has medical issues? For you to bypass your fellow citizens makes ME sick.  . . .

I feel that you are part of the despicable "baby market". It disgusts me that instead of adopting a sick child from here at home, that you essentially BOUGHT a child from abroad."

(You can see the whole post here.  http://fiveofmyown.blogspot.com/2011/08/sick-of-ia-critisims.html  It is in one of the comments.)

Pretty harsh, huh?

     We wanted to adopt from the US.  We looked into it.  We were told that the children in our state that needed to be adopted were over the age of eight with traumatic pasts.  Since our oldest was six at the time and our youngest was only 18 months we decided that would not be a good idea.  Too many chances that an older child could abuse the kids like he had been abused before.  Plus the older boys had pretty strong ideas about remaining the oldest.  More recently we checked into it again.  No one from the agency bother to respond to my request for information.
     When we did explore adopting a waiting child from the United States, we were told we could become foster parents and then IF our foster child became available for adoption we could apply to adopt.  We wanted to be parents and could not really commit ourselves to reuniting the birth family.  (We would have never undermine a reunification plan, we just had a different goal.) 
     Frankly, the foster care system did not need the kind of adoptive parents that we were.  Our kids were too young, especially when you consider that many social workers advise adopting in birth order.  There are plenty of people to adopt the youngest children.  We would have waited ages before getting a placement.  There is not need to demonize people who examined their options and decided that they would not be good parents for a certain type of child.  Not everyone can parent every child.  I know tons of people who would not have wanted to adopt a child with sever limb differences, but that was fine with us. 
     So keeping in mind that a) we wanted to adopt an AMERICAN child in need but b) were not good candidates we proceeded to international adoption.  Children in other countries deserve a family just as much as American children.

     By the way, I did not buy a child.  No one ever promised me a child.  In fact there were heaps of warnings that a child was not guaranteed.  People can and do go home empty handed.  I paid social workers for a home study.  I paid  doctors.  I paid notaries.  I paid the US government for fingerprints, visas, apostilles, and FBI background checks.  I paid lawyers fees.  I paid an orphanage fee for food, clothes, speech therapists, medicine, and  caregiver salaries.   I paid the driver and the translator.  I did not buy my son. 

P.S.  The "Baby Market"--  Yes there has been and still is corruption in the adoption world.  We are a fallen people and we sin.  Everyone in adoption should be working to protect the innocent children and families, but  it is becoming nigh on impossible to adopt a young healthy child from any country.  The last I heard in the US there are 10 prospective parents for every newborn to be adopted.  The wait for a "healthy" Chinese baby in 4-6 years, and many agencies do only special needs adoption.  The Philippines and Bulgaria are the same way. 
     Special needs children can spend years unwanted.  My son did.  They are seen as defective or cursed or their birthparents are unable to afford medical care for them.  People in their country usually do not want a child with expensive-to-treat medical condition who will not be able to go to school or get a job later in life.  They will be institutionalized for life.  They are "the poorest of the poor," as Mother Teresa put it.  The unloved.  The unwanted.  There is no "market" for these children and they deserve a family as much as any child from this country.

The Face of God

Every now and then we are blessed to see God's love at work in the world in a very tangible way.  I was so blessed when I hear about a family from Pennsylvania and their adopted daughter from Bulgaria.  Little Katie is nine and a half years old.  She has Down's Syndrome.  At her adoption she weighted 10.5 pounds.  Really.  Her family's story is one of great love and compassion, and I want to share it with you. 

Please visit  theblessingofverity.blogspot.com

You will never be the same.  I know I won't.

Adoption myths debunked

I was reading an article online about an international adoption and there were a lot of really negative comments at the end. They were so upsetting that I thought I would comment on common misperceptions about international adoption

Myth #1. There are tons of kids in the United States. People should adopt those kids. The fact of the matter is that at first we looked at adopting a child in the US. As we spoke the agencies, though, we found that most children that are available for adoption from the foster care system (at least in MI) are over the age of 8. Wonder Boy was 6 at the when we started our adoption journey and he wanted to be the oldest. Adoption professionals agree that it is usually best to keep birth order. In addition, most children in foster care enter because of abuse and neglect. We weren't certain that we were equipped to parent a child with those challenges. Not every family is right for every child.

Myth #2. People are buying babies. No. No. No. Adoption is expensive, no doubt, but we have not been buying a baby. We have paid our agency for their expertise. We have paid our homestudy agency for a homestudy and associated paper work. We paid our driver and translator. We paid our in-country coordinator. We will pay court fees. We have paid notaries and appostille fees. In no way has there ever been a "If you give me $X, I'll get you a baby." Honestly, until we have custody, I will be worried about losing Little Bit. We could still lose him. There are no guarantees.

Has there been corruption? Yes, I am certain there has been, but not by most people.

Myth #3. People don't want to adopt from foster care because they only want Caucasian infants. Yup. That why they are adopting all those Chinese and Ethiopian toddlers.

Myth #4. People who adopt internationally are going overseas because it is easier to get approved. We have been examined by a social worker, physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, the county police, and the state police. We've had child abuse and neglect clearances, blood tests, and an accountant has reviewed our finances. We've had to submit letter from our mortgage company and our health insurance provider. When we go back to Russia we will have to be examined by 8 specialists in addition to all the work our doctor has done. No one is being lax.

Terrible News

We began this adoption journey nine months ago, and when we did we always knew that there was the chance that something would happen and we wouldn't be able to adopt her, but I never really believed it. Today our wonderful social worker called and said that she had just been informed that Sweet Pea had been moved into a specialized Baby home and was no longer available for adoption. She went on to say that usually this happens when a child is seriously sick although the agency had no indications that this is the case. I asked if this was something that was likely to change, but she said no. It seems that we will have to abandon the dream of bringing this child into our family.

She was never officially ours, but I am mourning the loss of our Sweet Pea.

Adopting the Waiting Child

Waiting Children at Kids to Adopt

My adoption agency, Kids to Adopt, has the most beautiful waiting children available for adoption. You can read about them at their website and they would be happy to send you more information about any of them.

http://www.kidstoadopt.org/waiting_children/photolisting.htm

Imagine That!

(CNN) -- For years, Candace Eloph searched for her half-brother, who was given up for adoption in 1977. She found him -- living across the street.
"I never thought it would happen like this. Never. Ever," Eloph of Shreveport, Louisiana, told CNN television affiliate KTBS.
Three decades ago, Eloph's mother gave birth to a boy at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. She was 16 and gave him up for adoption.
"They took him from me," said Eloph's mother, Joellen Cottrell. "I only got to hold him for a split second."
Cottrell searched for her son over the years, without success.
She eventually left Louisiana and had other children. But she did not keep her son a secret.
"My girls always knew they had a brother," she told KTBS. "I always told them. They knew it from the very beginning. And I've always looked for him."
Fast forward three decades.
Eloph moved into a house in Shreveport. Across the street lived a 32-year-old man named Jamie Wheat.
"We were sitting one day, talking, and she said, 'You know what? I had a brother born January 27, 1977, that was adopted,'" Wheat said. "I was like, I'm adopted."
Surprised, Eloph mentioned that her mother was 16 at the time. His mother was 16, too, Wheat replied.
All the details fit, and Cottrell and Wheat decided to take a DNA test.
The results: There's a 99.995 percent probability that the two are related. Watch family open DNA results for first time »
Wheat's adoptive parents are excited about this new stage in their son's life.
"It just almost knocked me out for the joy," Wheat's adoptive mother, Ann, told KTBS.
Added his adoptive father, Ted Wheat: "It was just surprising that they lived across the street from us for two-and-a-half years. When they told us, we said, 'This is the greatest news it could be.'"
Reunited with his birth mother, Jamie Wheat plans to make up for lost time.
"I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me," he said. "I can move forward. Like a new beginning."

Adoption is an Act of Love

No, I'm not talking about adoptive parents. I'm speaking of birth parents. We don't know anything about Sweet Pea's biological parents. I hope we will someday. The information that we have coupled with some guess work suggests that she has been in the orphanage most if not all of her life. Why is she there? Could her parents not afford to care for a child with special needs? Was there a social stigma surrounding having a child with physical disabilities? Did they not want a child that was not "perfect"? Maybe one day we'll know so that we can help her understand her past when she asks us.

What I do know is that her mother loved her enough to give her life. This gift cannot be understated. Russia currently has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. In 2006 (the most current statistics available) Russia reported 1.5 million births--- and 1.6 million abortions! No matter what we discover, I will always try to remember that abortion in Russia is affordable, common and acceptable. It could have been her. I don't know if Sweet Pea's mother knew about her legs before she was born. Prenatal care is not as common in Russia as it is here. If they did, I count us doubly blessed and doubly thankful that she is alive. Even in the US, where those with physical disabilities have the opportunities to be educated, have jobs, and recreation just like the able bodied, some doctors will still suggest abortion to the parents of those with limb differences.

It would be easy to think poorly of birth parents. Some are drunks and drug users. Some are child abusers or neglect their children. Some simply abandon their children when it gets to be too much. But they chose life, and they didn't have to.

So thank you, and Happy Mother's Day!