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
