anxiety

What to Expect If Adopting

January 19, 2016 By Linda Russell Leave a Comment

Adoption offers a new life in a new family. New beginnings offer hope for a new future. Adoption indicates a wonderful beginning and time for healing of a child who needs a family. Most of the time adoption includes a wonderful answer for both the parents and the child.

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Human beings strive to get needs met. Sometimes meeting needs takes longer than expected. When it takes too long (according to expectation) to get the need met one way, ingenuity or opportunity may be used to get the need met a different way. Just as Abraham and Sarah experienced with the birth of Ismael through Sarah’s servant (today her servant would known as a surrogate). We know how that turned out. In the case of a child whose parents or family need rehabilitation, financial assistance, or stability, adoption is a common intervention. In the same way when an infertile person exhausts attempts to become fertile, adoption is a common intervention. Adoption, the panacea for the unmet needs of an “orphan” and infertile person. Not to minimize the amount of money, time, and emotional roller coaster that the adoption process typically entails, this sounds a little too good to be true.

How can meeting the needs of a child through the adoption process be anything but good? How can making parents of someone who has been told they will not be able to conceive or have anymore children be anything but good? When it isn’t good, that’s when. As an adoptive parent shared the other day, “we need far more education than we receive” before completing an adoption. Commonly, adoptive families second guess themselves on whether or not the adoption was a good decision, after the adoption is completed. Second guessing happens when a child doesn’t “feel” like their child; when a child doesn’t behave in a manageable way as a toddler, adolescent, tween or teen; when the realization arises that the child has attachment challenges. Or even when, in an adoption where the information has been shared between the biological family and adoptive family, the adoptive family no longer wants contact. Biological mothers may drop from sight after agreeing to stay in the child’s life. So many variables exist in adoption, and absolutely no guarantees (as with all of life).

How can adoption be a good option when the circumstances require a child to be raised by a nonbiological family? Five ways to know that adoption is a good option.Continue Reading

NOVEMBER – ADOPTION AWARENESS

November 2, 2014 By Linda Russell Leave a Comment

The month of November is Adoption Awareness Month. This awareness theme gets a little old and can be lost on those who might turn away from the truth in adoption. Most of us learned that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Adoption begs for squeaky wheels to step up and recreate adoption to address the appropriate audience, the children without homes.

Following the adoption blogs (just Google for the latest) will educate you on the swell of awareness that has started. Adoptees are beginning to find their voices with help and support. Birth families find it easier to speak up about the difficulty they encounter in “getting on with their lives” after placing a family member. Fathers find themselves in forward motion to claim a stake at parenting versus placing a child for adoption unlike ever before in history. Adoptive parents find voice and something to add when the integrity of adoption is at risk.

The parties whose silence is deafening in helping change guidelines of adoption are the agencies and attorneys who complete adoptions. Anyone who follows the trend of ethics in adoption practice easily understands the reasoning behind the silence of these entities. The “almighty dollar” serves to quiet the disquieted soul of destruction. When did society decide that a price tag could be placed on the life of a child?

Apparent in the voices of all those who must live out the decision of adoption is the common thread of trauma. Trauma in separation, loss, identity, belonging, and family, seep through every pore of those separated from families of origin and grafted into families of strangers. This statement offends none but those who deny the substantive loss of the “other.” Money fails to connect family. DNA and biology came together to fashion an offspring, sibling, aunt, uncle, grandchild, or cousins. Money only buys the paper to make those feigned connections.

Growing up hearing that money cannot buy happiness defies the attempt being made at buying happiness when acquiring a child in exchange for money. The purpose of the exchange is perverted when the attempt is made to create a family (not for the real purpose of offering an orphan a home). Money substitutes for a lot of tangibles these days, children being no less attainable by the same means.

Advertisements, “gofundme” accounts, adoption fund car washes and garage sales, fertility funds, court funds to fight biological parents commonly headline social media sites as well as websites of adoption services. One adoption advertisement site proudly posted a picture of a nice looking young lady with the words: “Will find your baby a good home,” “Will pay living and medical expenses.” Advertising for children would place them in a category of a good piano for sale “will pay moving costs.” How did stooping to the level of offering children as commodities happen in a civilized society? When connected with money, the answer boils down to greed, selfishness, and lust. Harsher words could not be spoken about the evils of humanness and carnality that is disguised as being Christian.

Taking a good, long look at what adoption should be and what adoption really is would behoove everyone because with nearly 70% of the population being touched by adoption, the dilemma will be faced by many. Educate, speak out, find compassion to recognize the trauma that adoption leaves in its wake. Make November a month to become aware of adoption more than ever.

5 Steps to Being Ready to Adopt

September 18, 2014 By Linda Russell 1 Comment

You can know you are ready to adopt when:

1) You don’t have a need for a child but a desire to provide parenting to a child whose parents cannot.

2) You are willing to keep an historical and relational connection to a child’s biological family without conditions. Getting a copy of the original birth certificate is mandatory and can be accomplished at the time of adoption.

3) You recognize the child as an individual whose DNA and biology will not match yours but understand they deserve love as all children do.

4) You are willing to be second. An adopted child has first parents. God loves the first parents as much as He loves the second. Adoption embraces human design not God’s design.

5) Most importantly!!! Love is not enough. Is love required? Absolutely, but as human beings, the love offered falls far short of what will conquer feelings when behaviors become overwhelming, when rejection seems to be all that is offered, when a child whose life was enhanced by being provided a family doesn’t seem “grateful” enough.

Preparation for adoption requires emotional and mental stability that can withstand normal upsets magnified a hundred times. Adoption brings a set of challenges that add a layer of unknown, unfamiliar, unattached feelings. Adoption requires in depth, ongoing support and resources. Adoption hardly represents the wonderful world of an optional way to create a family; “the new pregnant;” or getting a brother or sister for an already existing family.

Remember the old adage “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? I would suggest adoption falls into that category. Is adoption a wonderful option for a child who has no family willing or able to raise them, indeed! Legislation must be designed and implemented to allow adoptees to obtain their original birth certificate with “required” accurate information at the age of majority. No reason exists for an American citizen to be denied their original birth certificate into perpetuity.

Read and be informed on all the issues in adoption. One reason for failed adoptions and unhappy adoptive situations is because the information was lacking and decisions made about adopting were founded on that information. Be wary of the “wonderful” stories and testimonies on adoption sites and the “happily-ever-after” testimonies by agencies or adoption agents who profit from making adoptions happen.

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The Practice of Adoption

September 8, 2014 By Linda Russell 3 Comments

“Are you pregnant, scared, with no one to talk to? We can help you with finances, medical expenses and secure a great home for your baby. There are many loving families who can provide a stable home with all the advantages for a child.”

This message simulates the messages that lure mothers who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. A “loving and right” choice offers the mom a way of “redeeming” herself in this untimely circumstance. Unfortunately, while the websites and billboards of adoption agencies make adoption sound like a panacea for solving the dilemma of an unplanned pregnancy, the details of the future fail to surface in the information before a decision is made.

A family is chosen and programming reinforced of all the “right and loving” messages that follow such an “unselfish” decision. While these statements ring true before all the negotiations have completed and before the baby has been born, it is the time after the birth that has not been truthfully and forcefully presented in concert with the other information given.Continue Reading