Adoption Journey to China

Top 5 Myths About Adoption

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

shared post from rainbow kids.com

Written by Melissa Rush on 01 Feb 2017

Adopting a child is both an exciting and at times overwhelming journey. However, miscommunication and asking the wrong questions can make this life changing decision even more stressful than it needs to be! We’re busting the top 5 myths about adoption to help make the process a little easier.

1. The children shown in photo listing are the only children that an agency places.

This is one of the top mistakes that families make when deciding to begin their adoption journey. Often, families feel discouraged because the children they see on these pages do not feel like a good fit for their family. The reality is, most children on waiting kids sites are there because when they became eligible for adoption, the agency did not yet have a family identified to match them with. These children are a very small percentage of the children that an agency places—many children with minor special needs never even appear in photo listings. Most of the children adoption agencies place are not considered waiting children. Many younger children, or children who have what is considered a minor special need, are often matched with families already in the adoption process. The main goal for any agency is that children are united with their family as quickly as possible and reduce the time a child is in an institution.

2. The more partnerships an agency has, the better.

In this case, the old adage of quality over quantity is true. While it may initially seem as though an agency with a larger number of orphanage partnerships will provide families with more opportunities to be matched with a child, this is rarely the case. Instead, pay attention to the quality of an adoption agency’s partnerships. Ask how often they visit the children in these homes, if they have up-to-date photos or videos, and what their relationship with orphanage staff is like. Often times, agencies with fewer partnerships will have a closer relationship with the home, will be able to gather more information on your adoptive child, and in some cases, will have personally met your adoptive child multiple times.

In addition, close partnerships also allow for training of caregivers, developmental toys, medical evaluations and the elevation of the overall care these children receive. Additionally, close relationship with the directors allows for medical updates, updated photos and videos, and additional tests for children who are being placed with families.

3. If many families are enrolled in an adoption program, it must be fast moving.

The number of families enrolled in a program can impact wait time. Always ask an agency what the most recent timelines in a particular country program have been. While these can often change due to unforeseen factors, they are the best estimate of what your family’s wait time will be. As always, your family’s openness to special needs, older children, and sibling groups can greatly expedite the adoption process.

Smaller program sizes allow for close, personal relationships with each team member and for agencies to get to better know their families and to make better matches. Case workers quickly become your advocate and “family”.

4. Adoption support isn't necessary. I'd rather handle everything myself.

While a can-do attitude is essential to becoming an adoptive parent, there’s no substitute for an agency and caseworker that are experienced and truly understand what you’re going through. Your adoption isn’t over once your child is home; it’s a lifelong journey with it’s own set of joys and challenges. Working with an agency that will support you through the ups and downs of the waiting process, in-country travel and the questioning teenage years on the horizon is not just helpful; it’s essential. Long past the “gotcha day”, your adoption agency can put you in touch with counselors, educational tools, and other families that have adopted from your child’s birth country to help make your child’s transition home smoother and happier.

5. There aren’t really any grants or financial resources available to adoptive families.

Agencies are committed to minimizing fees whenever possible. AGCI also works to be truly transparent about fees and structures all fees to be flexible so that families are able to pay over time.

Additionally, there are so many adoption grants and financing options that can help make adoption possible for your family. In the last two years alone, $760,608 in adoption grants were awarded to AGCI families. The Special Treasures Fund, Brittany’s Hope Grant, and the Moriah Fund are all adoption grants available to help families with adoption costs. There are also dozens of other organizations that provide adoption grants and aid to adopting families, as well as tax credits and military subsidies.

Post From Rainbow Kids

Monday, November 21, 2016

Mending a Broken Heart: Anxiety in the Adopted Child

Written by Doris Landry on 07 Nov 2016

I knew how to treat Eastern European adoptees and American foster children. Actually, by 1996 I was considered an expert with quite a few years of clinical practice under my belt. But, the new little ones I was beginning to treat, the ones from across the other ocean, were giving me pause. Each toddler or young child from China that walked or was carried into my office had incredible anxiety. It was pervasive. I had a sense that behavioral treatments were not going to fix the symptoms and most certainly not the problem, whatever it was. Even the usual relaxing effects of play seemed ineffective, provoking more stress in some cases.
Anxiety, of course, is a part of life. At one end it can be performance enhancing, at the other incapacitating. The anxiety of adoption is also a normal part of every adoptee's life; the "wondering" itself causes anxiety. But, the children from China that I treated seemed to be anxious far beyond those proportions, and at times it was heartbreakingly debilitating. The need to control, the need to check and recheck on mom and/or dad, difficulties with sleep initiation, night terrors and painful separations were the usual worries and complaints that led parents to my office.
I wrongly concluded that a child who was brought to treatment automatically fell into a special group, the 10 percent of adoptees that do not adjust to their new homes and are in need of psychotherapeutic interventions (The therapeutic world now knows this number is inaccurately high, since the study was based on abused and neglected children who entered foster care.)
The children I was seeing fit into their own classification. There was something different in these young children from China.

What we all seemed to be overlooking was the idea that these babies and toddlers had experienced real abandonment. These children didn't just perceive abandonment; they had lived abandonment.

In the United States we are not accustomed to "finding" babies on street corners or in parks, a tiny baby, a newborn, left alone in the elements. It seemed a different kind of abandonment, one I call real. Each child was living in her new, loving family with this deep-seated fear. And their anxieties were thought to be common adoption adjustments, not fear! There was a notion that the Chinese adopted baby girls didn't know or remember anything of their past, since many had been adopted before the age of one. Not many adults, prior to the 90s, had yet come to see that a baby could have a broken heart, let alone experience an underlying fear that it would be broken again. Parent-talk of forever families and "I will love you forever" didn't seem to fix the problem for these children.
One day, out of compassion for all the tears I saw at work, I sat down and wrote a story about a baby that was abandoned, describing how I thought she might feel. It was raw. It was graphic. It was heartfelt. It gave reason for the tears, for the anxiety, for the fear. I then discussed this story with each of my little clients' parents and talked with them about their child's own story. I asked that they tell their child's story, confront the anxiety and address the fear. After processing this request with horrified parents (remember this was over six years ago) they agreed it was worth a try.
It was unearthed that one child believed her birthfamily lived in a nearby city. When told her story of abandonment she was so relieved that she was indeed in her "forever" family that she never experienced night terrors again. Another child who needed to play act her abandonment did so with her mom, using the story as a springboard to the whole truth piece this child didn't know, that there was a second mother, a foster mother, who cared and loved her. And then there was a toddler who stopped the rages to listen to this story. It must have felt so true to her experience that she grieved, along with her mother, giving closure to all those angry days and nights. There were others and the effects were the same.
The anxiety needed to be addressed with words and with truthfulness for the children from China. The anxiety needed a name and the name needed a story. The story explained the purpose for some of the behaviors, as the past seemed to drive the present, which certainly now made sense.
Sharing stories with other adoptees opens a dialogue to an adoptees own story. Broken hearts begin to mend.