Why adoption?

I am often asked why we adopted. The usual follow up questions is why did you adopt kids with disabilities, weren't there any healthy kids? I am also asked why I did not adopt from foster care.
So here is the truth. I have always known I would adopt kids. When my siblings and I were younger we had those fisher price little people. Do you remember those? They were wood, and later plastic. The had cylindrical bodies and little balls for heads with plastic or painted on hair. No arms or legs. Well we had a bunch of these. We would set open books up to make rooms for our houses. I remember that my brother would always choose the dresser or a bookshelf, whatever was the highest point in the room and build his home on a mountain. He would have a mom and a dad and a boy child. My little sister would always have a mom and dad and a boy and a girl. I would take whatever was left over. This would include the broken ones, and often I would add bottle caps, rocks, washers, erasers or whatever else I could find. My brother would tell me I could not do that. I would explain that the rocks and bottle caps and such were adopted. I would then name all my "children" often I would have 20 I would also tell him the ages and which ones were twins. So as you can see adoption was something that was always in my heart. By the time we set out to adopt, we had three children in our home. My two bio boys and my baby sister (who was a teenager not a baby) We had a pastor doing mission work in Russia. He told me about the special needs orphanages. This broke my heart. My youngest brother was born with angelmans syndrome which left him very disabled and cost him his life. I loved my little brother very, very much. So we decided we would look into adopting from Russia. That story is posted elsewhere on this blog. Anyway, when things did not seem to be working, I contacted social services. I told them we already had a homestudy and wanted to adopt a child with special needs. I figured I had already done the baby thing and would leave the babies to those who had not yet gotten to have that joy. (not kidding here, I love babies)I wanted the kids no one else wanted. Social services informed me that they would not talk to me unless I was willing to take a child over the age of 7. Except that our homestudy specified we should adopt a child younger than our oldest bio son. He was only 5 or 6 at that time, so they would not even talk to us. Well, eventually we did adopt our daughter and later another son. They have made our family better and stronger. My boys have learned so much from them.

Look at the videos below, look at my daughter's smile at the end of her solo. Now I want you to realize that had we not adopted her, at the age of four she would have been sentanced to an asylum. Most kids don't live to be 16 there, because the strong ones get the food. The ones who do live are thrown out at 16 to make thier own way begging. She would not have gone to school or had proper medical care. My daughter is beautiful and talented. She is in fourth grade. The government does not support her in any way. We get no government money. Someone accused me of adopting my son for money. I want to know where this money is? We paid 3000.00 out of pocket for his wheelchair, we had to buy a van to haul the wheelchair, we have paid for counseling for him and other things. We get no money from the government. We have not applied for disablity or SSI for him. We expect to come up with the money for him to go to college and expect him to get a job just like our other children. Several other adoptive parents have also lately been subject to rude comments. I think this is sad. People just don't understand. My personal theory is that they feel guilty because there are millions of children in the world who need parents and they are not willing to step up to the plate. So to make themselves feel better they have to come up with a reason why adoption is a bad idea. It's sad really. With the downturn of the economy, our retirment fund may not be there when we retire. That money we invested may just be gone, just like that. However, the time, money and love we invested in our children will pay eternal dividends. I am so glad we chose to invest in a sure thing. LOVE

Marceli's adoption story

As promised here is the story of how we got Marceli.

It started with an e-mail. The social worker who had done Paulina's post placement years before had heard from a domestic agency that there was a child soon to be born who would be born without arms. The parents had decided that they were not prepared to raise this child and so wanted to place the child for adoption and contacted the agency. None of the waiting parents on file with the agency were interested. I called and got some information and talked to Bob. By some mirical he said yes. So we rushed a new homestudy, paid a fee to the agency, wrote a letter to the birth family and waited. We were assured that we were the only interested family and that it was just a matter of time till the birth mother officially chose us. As the due date drew near I started to worry. Especially since I heard the agency was still looking for families. Several other families who had adopted limb different children were approached. Some turned it down becuase of the cost. Others worried about other things. I asked the agency what the issue was. I told them that if they told me, I could either drop out or perhaps address it. For instance if it was that the birth family wanted the child raised Jewish, I could not do that, though I could promise to teach him of his heretage and do the circ and such. I specifically mentioned that if she wanted him to be an only child I would drop out since that was not something I could control. If they would only tell me the issue, I could address it and know if it was something we could work with or if we should just back out. Well, she kept saying no, we were perfect. Finally the day came when she called to tell me the mother had chosen another family. Turns out she wanted to him to be an only child. Had they told me that in the first place, I would not have even put our name in. I would not have paid the fee to the agency (non refundable of course) or gotten my hopes up. So then I was left with a homestudy and my heart set on another child and no child. I knew that we wanted another limb different child since this was a special need we knew a lot about. So I began looking for our child. We started the procedure for a boy in Russia, only to be told that he was no longer available. Finally we gave up, and decided it was not meant to be. A week after that I got a phone call. An agency that works with Guatamala had recieved a letter and a photo in the mail from Poland. A charity in Poland that works with disabled children had decided that he needed to be adopted so they had sent letters to agencies all over the world. They never heard from most of them. Others told them they could not help. This particular agency, did not even work in Poland so the lady opening the mail was getting ready to throw it away. At that moment the owner of the agency walked by. She saw the photo. Marceli's Romani blood gives him coloring that could pass for Guatamalan. So she was intriqued. She asked about the photo and the lady told her. She remembered my asking about limb different children and dug out my phone number. She told me that they could not help me adopt him, but would send me the letter and photo if I wanted it. She also read me the letter over the phone and described the photo. Also in the letter was a website. The site was in Polish but I was able to click around till I found the same photo she had described. I told Bob and showed him the photo. We both knew this was our son. It took a lot of paperwork and waiting and searching to find an agency to help us and they were delays and issues, but in the end we were able to bring him home to our family and the rest is history. We are grateful for the all the God-incidences that brought him to us. (we dont' beleive in coincidences). He is a blessing to our family. Here is that first picture we ever saw of him.

RAD, to get help or not?

I was chatting with a friend today and she wanted to know why Marceli is not currently in counseling. I have had a couple of people ask me about his problems and what we are or are not doing and of course I have had lots of people offer me advice. So let me explain a few things.

1. His diagnosis. He has been diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder. This basically stems from the fact that over the years he had several caregivers, those caregivers always left. This led him to beleive that love was not safe. If you love someone and they leave it hurts. We all know people who have had a bad relationship and avoid more relationships after that. Well, this is the same thing. He and I have discussed it. He knows we love him, he has tested that love. One of the sweetest things he ever told me was "Man, mom your love is so strong, nothing I can do will break it, I tried and tried." This many not sound sweet to some, but remember this kid had the attitude that he would "break up with me before I broke up with him". Forming a relationship is hard sometimes and it requires risk. He was afraid of that risk. He did not trust us not to send him back, so he didn't want to get attached. He has now given up on that. This does not mean he doesn't have fears, but that he is now willing to take that risk. Also a part of this, the reactive part, is the skills he learned that helped him in the orphanage. He learned how to get attention, he learned that being cute, and loud and smiling got him attention. He learned that repeating everything he heard got him laughs and attention when he was little. He had to compete with other children for attention and he was very good at getting the attention by doing whatever it took. He no longer needs those skills, but many of them are habits now. He learned that telling people at school he was mistreated in the orphanage got him extra attention at school and allowed him to get away with things he might not have otherwise. He learned that telling the caregivers at the orphanage that he was mistreated at school got him attention there, he even played caregivers against each other, telling one shift the other one was mean. He felt like he had to control his environment to be safe, but conversely he did not respect the adults he could control. To complicate things more, when a caregiver could see through his acts, that also frightened him and he would do what he could to get rid of that person. So when asked a question, instead of answering honestly he answers with what he thinks the person wants to hear, truth has no bearing on it. He has gotten so much better! He has truly come a very long ways and is opening his heart to us more every day.

His other diagnosis is an eating disorder. This is not a case of him being a picky eater, or not liking American food, or me trying to make him eat too much. This is a problem he had before he was adopted, though we were not told about it. There are several reaons, which I won't go into because they are very personal to him. However, what is important is that this is getting better too. He is still underweight and his health is in danger because of it. He will go days without eating or drinking if I let him. He has been hospitalized in the past for this. We have tried letting him pick whatever he wants to eat, he wants to eat nothing. He does not enjoy eating or drinking, it's all a chore. He used to throw up daily and hide food and do anything else he could to get out of eating. He has gotten better. He still had issues when schedules change. He lost three pounds over the two weeks of Christmas break recently. He is 8 years old and only weighs 30lbs. Even accounting for missing legs and arm, this is not enough. He was 26lbs when we got him two years ago. He has gotten himself as low as 23lbs (he was dangerously sick then and sleeping most of the time) He has never been above 32. Right now our goal is to not loose weight. We would love to see him grow and gain weight, but for now we are happy with maintaining. We have tried many, many things to help him, but the truth is the only thing that helped was him deciding he wanted to be healthy.

2. Medication: We have tried a few medications. I don't like the idea of giving him medication, but we were desperate to keep him alive. I do think medications are over prescribed. I think things like ADD and possibly even RAD may be over diagnosed. However, for kids who have real problems the medications can be a godsend. I have me children who truly could not concentrate and for home ADD medication was a life saver. These children were so much happier with medication. I have also met children who were just normal active kids who were medicated to make life easier for thier parents or teachers. The medications did help some with Marceli, but not enough to really make a large difference so we have taken him off of all medications. I beleive that as parents we are the experts on our own children and we need to advocate for them and see that thier needs are met.

3. Counseling: Counseling has it's place and we have seen several counselors. However, some counselors can do more harm than good. For instance a counselor who did not want me in the counseling sessions, told Marceli that he needed to learn to spend time away from me. She did not get that he had spent six years without a mother, what he was learning about was accepting a mother. He did not need help learning to seperate from me, but rather to attach to me. She also did not back me up when I explained to her that we were working on honesty. She did not think this was something to work on, I disagreed. He was having trouble separating fact from fiction and I wanted him to have help with this, but she made it worse by allowing him to tell her things that were obviously not true and not call him on it. He had no respect for her becuase he felt she was not smart enough to know when he was telling her a lie. So we left. I dealt with a social worker who felt it was my parenting that caused his eating issues. Um, they started before I met him, so I don't think I was the cause! We have also met with some wonderful specialists who did help. Right now, I think we are doing well on our own. I am in support groups where I can get advice when I need it. I have made it a point to study my son (all my children really) and work hard to give him what he needs. Some things that work for other parents who have kids with similar issues work for him, some don't. Every child is so unique and each has thier own individual set of needs. I think parents really need to be students of their children. This takes time and love, and listening.

Anyway, if someone has a question about these issues please feel free to ask. I don't know if I covered everything my friend wanted me to cover or not.