Garden Variety Family

still chasing my tail

continued from previous post...

Since we live in such a small town, we don't have our own police department.  The next town over covers our town as well.  I have to get a police letter that states that we have been good citizens, no arrests etc.  So I was instructed to go there to get my letter, which will be a while-you-wait-proposition.  Great, one more thing I could knock off in the couple free hours I had. 

I go there and of course they tell me, "we don't do that." So if I was bad they would arrest me but they don't keep records of that.  So what the heck do they use all their computers for and hold in all those filing cabinets I saw in their plush office?  That makes sense.  You have to go to the county sheriff's office--of course, a much more detailed proposition which wasn't going to happen that day.  So, I decide to visit their web site--virtually no information regarding the subject.  Now the county is quite large, I'm sure they have encountered these requests yet there is no information on their site. 

I wonder if I'll be able to catch my tail by the end of the week.  I'll let you know if I do.

chasing my tail

Yesterday was a good day.  I felt like I got a lot accomplished in just a couple hours of paper chasing, however a bunch of it was unnecessary.  I was putting together my passport renewal--I have to renew because of my name change.  I keep telling people that next time I get married I am not changing my name.  It is one of those things that I have "learned from doing", unfortunately I'll never get to use my experience for my own good. 

I used the U.S. Department of the State website to create a downloadable form to do the renewal.  I successfully filled the form out on-line with the help of my buddy Autofill.  I printed out a nice clean form with everything filled in because you have to mail it.   If you do this read everything carefully because sometimes the wrong stuff was filled in the wrong places.  Autofill was so zealous that he wanted to leave no blanks unfilled.  He wanted to put my new name in where my pre-married name was supposed to be!  Luckily I caught that! 

Now, I wonder if our Town Clerk's name is Autofill. I had to include my marriage certificate with the application, luckily I looked it over before putting it in the envelope and the darn Town Clerk put my married name in wrong--again.  She did this twice on our first marriage certificate, here she did it again!  She has now spelled my first name wrong, then spelled my maiden name wrong and my married name wrong 3 times!!!  She managed to do this all times with the form I filled out right in front of her.  When I checked over the form myself I scanned all names for correct spelling but somehow I missed that my new last name which is a hyphenated last name without a hyphen was missing half of the name!  Partly my fault but in my defense the form is so faint I was checking for spelling I didn't really check if names were in the correct spaces!  UUUGH!

This is only half of the day's experience.  More to come....

what not to say

OK, now I know I will probably be speaking to the choir but if you want you can forward this as an indirect way to inform people of what not to say to you when you announce you will be adopting a child.

•    now that you've started an adoption you'll get pregnant, that happens all the time!
•    have you considered surrogacy?
•    you don't know anything about that child
•    keep trying to get pregnant
•    can't you have your own/natural children?
•    oh....
•    how much is that going to cost?
•    that'll take a long time
•    you'll have to do lots of paperwork

Instead you can try some of the following:

•    Congratulations!
•    When will you bring your bundle of joy home?
•    Is there anything I can do to help?
•    We'll have to plan a shower!

If you have questions, and I encourage questions because I want adoption to be on everyone's radar:

•    May I ask you some questions?

On the Evan B. Donaldson Institute on Adoption  website I found the abstract of a study (by Susan Kline, Amanda Karel, and Karishma Chatterjee was published in the October issue of Family Relations (Volume 55, Issue 4)) who's findings concluded that 66% of all adoption news stories carried stigma towards the 3 parties directly involved in adoption, the birth mother the adoptee and the adoptive parents. Below is a direct quote.

It found that media coverage of adoptive parents was more positive than that of adopted people or birthparents. The authors recommend education of prospective adoptive parents to counteract stigmatizing messages in the media and more adoption education of journalists.

We have conditioned responses to many events in life but there don't seem to be any for adoption, so many reactions err on the side of the negative.  As we know the media affects us all very much no wonder conditioned response can be negative.  Let's be positive a family is being formed or added to, what a wonderful thing!  We can create a positive conditioned response to adoption.  Check out my newest t-shirt design to help people learn what to say.  Click on the image above.

three cheers for adoption!

There is an international adoption blog that I frequent all the time.  The author, Sandra Hanks Benoiton is great.  She must have these special virtual nets that catch all the current events in the adoption world on the internet. I spotted the following on her blog.

Recently the findings of a study financed by the esteemed John D. & Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation, they sponsor all my favorite NPR programs, were released about the positive effects of foster and adoptive families on young children in orphan institutions.  The article appears in the Boston Globe on line. 

The study, conducted in Romainia, began in 2001, so after 5 years they have drawn the conclusion that children under the age of 24 months respond amazingly well to having family care after living in the orphanage!  Wow!!  It doesn't seem like rocket science to me, but it is nice to have a large study like this that legitimizes the power and effectiveness of adoptive families on a child's ability to thrive and prosper intellectually. 

They also concluded that prolonged stays in even "good" orphanages do damage to children.  I guess, in the past, these types of delays in children have often been attributed to lack of proper nutrition.  Once again, HELLO, loving care!!!  There are anti-adoption advocates out there who believe that children are better off in their birth countries no matter what.  What kind of advocacy is that?

They even touched on Madonna's adoption in the article.  The conclusion: stop worrying about one lucky child who made it out of an orphanage into a family and start worrying about the millions of children all over the world who are orphans now, and not matter how the "demand" for adoption rises they will never all find families. 

thanks anne tyler

I recently finished Anne Tyler's latest book Digging to America.  The story follows two families as they become linked during the adoption of their daughters.  The story is a great example of the kind of garden variety I addressed in a previous post.  The novel addresses the question of what it is to be an American and a family.  Being and outsider "watching" the lives on the page it can be at times funny and poignant, suspenseful and ridiculous.  As always Anne Tyler captures humanity so well in written form.  I haven't even adopted yet and I related so well to this book. 

I have many other books that I hope to read that convey the adoption experience in one way or another.  I'll pass them along as I finish them.

on our way

We have sent our adoption agreement to  Great Wall, and they have received it!  We are on our way to growing this family!  I really feel like we are "in" now.  We've got a bud!  They have sent us links to yahoo groups, passwords to restricted areas of their website which is a gateway to tons of information.  They are  processing our paper work and we will hear from our assigned social worker in about 5 days!  This is getting REAL! 
We have contacted Hillside Family Services and AdoptionStar about home study information.  We have to be certified as a adoptive family in New York State.  So we have to not only have our home and our backgrounds looked at but we have to have parenting classes.  Imagine that! How many parents do that?  Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone had to be deemed "ready" before having a child!

love without condition

Although the focus of National Adoption Awareness Month is on adopting teens this year, any awareness on adoption is good.  I am passing along this post  I found during some blog research, it is long but it definitely should be read.  It is important to remember that many of us who are adopting will bring our children home from orphanages.  There are many things to keep in mind.  Our children had a life before us and without us at one time, whether is was a few months or years.  The affects of institutional care are a reality for many children and thier adoptive families.  I urge anyone who is adopting to learn as much as you can.  This is an exciting time for us but it is good to be aware of issues that will face our little ones and ourselves once we bring them home.  This  was written by  Amy Eldridge from Love Without Boundaries.

I have been so saddened by this situation. I most definitely wish there was a way to educate ALL adoptive parents about the truths of institutional care, however I have come to realize in my daily work that there are just as many parents who are not online reading everything they can find on adoption as are.

There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents out there who have no idea what life is like for a child in an orphanage, and who head overseas to pick up their "China doll" only to be handed a baby who is unresponsive, thin, unable to eat..and on and on and on. While adopting my son last month, I walked several times over to the White Swan to talk to parents, and over and over I spoke with moms and dads who had no clue whatsoever about the issues their kids were having. I heard so many times things like, "she won't eat solid foods" (oral aversion), "she has no muscle tone" (muscle atrophy from lying in a crib all day), "she won't smile" (pure grieving from being taken from her foster mom). I guess since I live China 24/7, I assume everyone adopting does, too, which is not the case.

I talked to at least a dozen parents who didn't even know their child's orphanage name, and while I gently said "you might want to memorize that for your child's sake", at the same time I was trying to process how many parents get all the way to China without ever reading about post-institutional issues. It was sobering to me.

Babies in the NSN as well as the SN path can have issues with attachment, motor skills, emotional issues and more. I think all of us on the WCC list acknowledge that, while also acknowledging that all children (whether bio or not) can have these same issues. Living in an orphanage of course increases the odds.

For the rest of the article please click here.

Thanks Amy for saying things that need to be said, thought about, considered and heeded.