We took the summer off

Last time you read this we had been told about a couple of Caucasian boys in a very short email.

Following that message, our Government Social Worker emailed us back and asked why we were even requesting a proposal when our home study hadn't been "signed off" yet.

First of all, we didn't request a proposal. We requested information on two girls on the public adoption bulletin following the advice of our Private Social Worker. Second, it was the Government Social Worker who suggested that we find out more about the boys, not us.

I didn't know how to answer this so I called the Private Social Worker who emailed the Government Social worker explaining that we had done nothing wrong. Soon after we signed off on our home study which would be sent to the Government Social Worker and we were to hear from the office within a week with confirmation. Well guess what. We never received confirmation; we never heard from any social workers through the whole summer.

But we're not complaining. We didn't try to contact them either. We took the summer off of "adoption". We went on vacation, we read books, we dreamt dreams, we welcomed our beautiful new God-son, we spent time with family and friends and we didn't try to contact any social workers. We needed some space. Sometimes we have to step back to gain a little perspective.

In mid-September our previous Government worker (the one who had been away on sabbatical) emailed to ask if either of us smoked (even though we've told them multiple times on multiple forms that neither of us smoke). She had some other questions for us as well so we've scheduled a meeting for her to come and see our home this week.

At this point, there is nothing really exciting about this step. We feel that no matter what we say, no one will listen. No matter what questions we ask, no one will answer them. We will have a meeting, show our underwhelming apartment:

"Yes, we know it's not toddler proofed, we will toddler proof if we adopt a toddler"

"No, we aren't planning on buying a house"

"Yes, we will buy a fire extinguisher" (my baking soda trick isn't good enough for the ministry) 

"Yes, if we adopt two siblings, they would share a room (just like millions of kids all over the world)"

Then nothing will happen for many months or too much will happen all at once.

I keep asking myself why we ever got involved in this whole thing. We're happy. We love each other and make a good family, just the two of us. But that is exactly why we're here; we are happy, we have a strong, loving family and we can offer that to someone who needs it. What better way to give thanks for what we have than to share it?

postmaster says undeliverable

With our home study complete and our profile almost done, our home study social worker from the private agency (we'll call her Private Worker- PW) suggested that we follow up on a sibling group that we saw on the on-line adoption bulletin (a website with profiles of "waiting kids"). With an understanding that the on-line bulletin is often very out of date, we tried to email our adoption social worker (we'll call her Ministry Worker- MW- because she works for the government ministry*). Now I will share with you what it is like communicating with an over-worked, under-funded system.

May 12- Send an email to MW. Email gets bounced back (twice) as the email address I was given for this worker is wrong. Try calling the number I was given to reach her. She now works "upstairs". Am given a new number. By some fluke I actually get through. I explain that we wanted to know if certain sibling group was still available and that the email address I had wasn't working. She says that the wrong email was given out to everyone, gives me current address and tells me to email then hangs up. I resend the email.

May 13- Never received confirmation that new email address worked. I send another email asking for confirmation of receipt.

May 15- Receive an email saying, "Are you First Nations?". I email back saying that we are not but explaining that I've completed the course required to potentially adopt First Nations children. We receive a reply saying that she will ask about these children.

May 22- I email to ask if there is any more information.

June 4- Still no reply. I write this because I don't know whether to keep badgering this woman or not and I feel like venting about the whole communication issue.

For contrast, when I email PW I usually get a detailed reply within an hour (sometimes within minutes). If she can't answer a question right away, she emails and tells me that she's looking into it. Sometimes she even calls me on the phone to clarify!

Can we get some money put into the Ministry of Children and Families please? I know that it is important to pay for fancy government ads about how awesome natural gas is and how I should be training to work in the trades but maybe we could also hire an extra social worker or two and get some permanency plans in place for a few kids.


*To my lovely, American readers- a government ministry has nothing to do with religion. It's just our fancy Canadian (British) term for a government department. I just wanted to clear that up for ya'll :)

almost to the day

Our first meeting with a social worker (in our home) should take place in a couple weeks. Almost two years to the date of our original application.

I am not really afraid of a home study. I am not ashamed of any part of my life. I am completely comfortable talking to anyone about anything.

It might be a good opportunity to donate at least two car loads full of clothes that don't even fit anymore. It might also be a good time to clean out some of the cupboards where band-aid boxes and hair gel bottles get stuffed into the darkness so I don't have to see them out on the bathroom counter.

Two years ago we felt excited and nervous. One year ago we felt frustrated.

Right now? Right now I feel a little tender. I feel like I need to re-read the attachment books. I feel like I need to get into this again because after two years of nothing at all, life goes on.

We will eventually complete a home study. Then we will start the waiting process all over again. Life will go on. In two years I will re-read the attachment books.

The thing is, no matter how long we wait, we will never, ever be prepared for what is to come. Some day we will bring new people home and I will feel the greatest joy, deepest sadness and like the most inadequate person in the world. On that day the wait will have been,  all at once too long and too short.

spoke too soon

I did a little poking and prodding today, emailing social workers and whatnot.
When we got home this evening, a new social worker (number 5?) had left a message on our answering machine. She wants to discuss the first steps of our home study. Adam cried. I hugged him.
One step closer.

Since 2012

My advice? If you think you want to adopt "some day" get your application in yesterday.

Seriously.

We decided to start this journey in February of 2012. We are now coming up on February 2014. We still haven't started a homestudy. We have been moved around between 3 different social workers. We will be meeting a fourth (hopefully) soon.

Paper work has been misplaced at the office or by the postal system or left too long by us because we had research to do. Social workers have had files that were more important than ours. Social workers have gone on stress leave. Social workers have gone on extended personal leave. We're not adopting teens or children with severe special needs so our file gets pushed down the list every time someone willing to take on those kids sends in an application.

Our file is now being moved from the government office to a private adoption agency (contracted by the government). They were supposed to receive our file a month ago so they could start our homestudy. We haven't heard from them and when I asked, they couldn't find our name in their system. So back to contacting the government office to make sure the information actually made it to the agency. I will remind you, we're not trying to adopt from another country or even another province. It's just that this system is completely overburdened and a little broken.

So if you're the praying type, please pray for those who work to care for children. Pray for new adoptive parents. Pray for foster parents. Pray for the birth parents. Pray for the government to put resources into a system that may not seem lucrative in the short term but will have an immeasurable affect on lives in the long term. If you're not the praying type, send your happy vibes and good wishes. This whole mess needs a little infusion of love and positivity.

You gotta have faith... faith... faith

Actually, you don't have to have faith.
I do. It's the way I'm wired. I didn't grow up in church. I grew up with pretty liberal parents who created two pretty liberal kids. We didn't memorise bible verses or say grace at the dinner table. My mum was religious but we didn't really practice religion as a family.

The funny thing is, I can't remember a time that I didn't talk with God. I don't mean formal prayer. I just mean chatting and conversing. I think that it is because of this relationship with God that I eventually found more "formal" religion. Religious tradition didn't limit my engagement with the world, it became a way for me to express my relationship with God within a community.

I think a lot about the role that my faith has played in my decision to adopt. Sure, there are biblical teachings about caring for widows and orphans. I hold fast to the teaching that helping "the least" of God's children is a direct link to God. These are the reasons I continue to believe in universal health care, compassionate criminal justice programmes and rights and freedoms for all people regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. But these aren't the reasons that I decided to adopt.

I decided to adopt because I had some really important feelings about how our family should be created and  I felt our home would be the right one for a child already here, on this planet. I decided to adopt because when I talked to my husband about it, he acted like it was what we'd always planned. It was like he had the same feelings, we just hadn't discussed them yet.

I decided to adopt because God and I have been talking about adoption for a long time, I just didn't always realise it. When I opened myself up to the idea, God continued to lead me in that direction and continues to lead the way.

Now, I hope the title of this post has given you all a George Michael ear worm for the rest of the day:

Look at all that sexy chest hair...

Where do I fit?

I tried to find the cheesiest stock image of "the internet"- this will have to do.
The title of the post is "Where do I fit?" Get it? Hilarious...

The internet is a funny place. There are so many people. There is so much information. You would think that the internet would mean that no one ever gets lonely or feels out of place. But that is exactly how I feel when it comes to reading about other people's adoptions. When it comes to foster-adoption/public adoption there seems to be two distinct camps who do a large portion of the blogging/posting/website-ing.

There are those who have adopted children with a severe RAD (reactive attachment disorder) diagnoses or FAS/FASD (and often a combination) who post a lot on a forum that I sometimes read. These parents post about excrement being smeared all over the walls by 9 year olds, children who throw up at the dinner table every night, kids who light the family pet on fire at least once a day. They seem to try to 'one up' each other on the forum. Now these parents are amazing for taking this on. They are strong, loving people with strong stomachs! I am not one of these parents. I'm just not. I still plan to adopt because I know that not every child in the system has RAD or even FASD and not every adoption situation is like this.

The problem is that this forum seems to have been commandeered by one particular group of parents. If you were searching for information on public adoption and came across this info first, you might not continue to lean more.

When I look at blogs about adoption, I often see a different group of parents. There seem to be a lot of conservative, Christian adoptive families with profiles that mention their five children through "the miracle of birth" and their five children through "the miracle of adoption". They usually live on spacious property in an all American suburb or on a sprawling farm. Again, these have got to be some strong and loving people to raise such huge families.But again, they're just not me.

We're city dwellers living in an awesome, rented apartment. I am an ordained Presbyterian elder and we attend church every Sunday but politically we are very liberal. We are planning on adopting a foster child who will have some special needs but we can't handle every kind of special need. We are ourselves and we are not reflected perfectly in everyone's situation.

Big surprise, eh?


Now that I've written all that, I'll let you know that I have found some awesome blogs, websites and resources through sheer determination and luck. I have also found "diamond in the rough" posts on blogs that otherwise don't help me much. There is also great value in reading about different kinds of families and situations even if you disagree about stuff. The information that you need to help you learn and prepare is out there. You just might have to be patient in order to find it. A lot of this adoption preparation seems to be about patience...

Diary

When I turned 5 I had the only co-ed birthday party I would have until I turned 16 (worth the wait because my 16th was a 70's themed fondue party in the basement). If I remember correctly, my fifth birthday was at a bowling alley. I don't remember much of it. What I do remember is that a kid named Dillon gave me a strange and awesome gift. He gave me my first diary.

I guess Dillon and his mom had some idea that all girls, regardless of age, needed a place to put their secrets. Or they had no idea what to get me and watched too much Full House (that Stephanie was always worried about her diary!). This diary was great. It had a puffy plastic cover (like one of those toilet seats that old people have) and it had a lock that could be opened with the two little keys that it came with. At five years old, I already shared a room with my baby sister, had very protective parents and had never seen anything quite as thrilling as a private book with a lock on it!

So what did I do? I locked it and unlocked it every day. I wouldn't dare write in it. A book that special would require some kind of special secrets. I couldn't think of any secrets special enough. One day I bit the bullet and wrote a sentence about picking wild strawberries. After that, the diary lost some of it's appeal. It was like I had tainted it with my crappy story about strawberries.

It was years later before I would have a diary again. This one was filled with boys. A lot of boys. It was basically my record of every time a boy that I liked talked to me, hugged me or said something funny. Kind of like those notebooks that they find in the apartments of stalkers and serial killers.

After those scary years, I stopped writing in a diary. I went to college to try to be a writer but quit when my scholarship money ran out. This is the closest thing to a diary that I've had as an adult and the hilarious thing is that over 1700 people have read it. Not amazing by blog standards but pretty weird none the less.

So I'm going to keep rambling because this helps me organize my thoughts and helps me communicate with lots of family and friends all at once. I also hope that if you're out there and thinking about starting a family in any non-traditional way, you might learn something or laugh at something or just feel a little less alone.

It's hard for me to to feel alone when hundreds of people have snooped through my diary! Thank you!

Hormones

I'm going along, enjoying being young and awesome. Stuff like going to the museum whenever I want, going out for wings and a pint whenever I want, playing Harvest Moon 2 on the Gameboy Colour emulator on my smart phone, making super healthy juice to offset mojitos and nachos for dinner. You get the picture. Awesomeness. Some of this is awesomeness that will probably have to change when I become a parent. Not that I won't still be awesome, I'll just be different awesome.

So I'm going along minding my own business when whammy, every month I get hit with a big truckload of hormones. Hormones that make me think I'm a biological anomaly for not being pregnant, hormones that make me read all the adoption blogs in the world, hormones that make me go back and read all the materials from the AEP, hormones that make me facebook stalk all my friends and acquaintances who have adorable families.

And these hormones are awesome because they help me get stuff done. They help me learn more about adoption and parenting, they help me remember to fill out that form about my mental health (ha!), they help me want to organise the apartment (or at least complain to AH that the apartment needs to be organised).

It's not that I don't want a family every day of the month but I'm glad for those hormones that give me a little kick in the pants.

PS- It's been a year since we took our AEP and well over a year since we applied to adopt. In the last provincial election, funding for the provincial adoption program wasn't in any party's agenda (not that I could see, anyway). The province has re-elected the same government so we're not expecting the situation to change. Our advice? Don't wait to get started if you want to adopt within the next 3-5 years!

The Questionnaire

 We have been sent the questionnaire to end all questionnaires. This reminds me of those email questionnaires that used to go around when I was a teenager (do kids still do those things?) but on steroids!

We're back to more forms where we tick off boxes but this time we're describing our past and current relationships with our parents, describing our parents past and current relationships with each other, describing our childhood memories, how we were disciplined and so much more!

At this time I would like to ask our parents to take a deep breath and remember that we love you all. And just in case you think that you're being singled out, I'll let you know about a few of the questions we have to answer about ourselves.

What were we like as children? Well, that's not so bad. Happy, anxious, nervous, awkward and funny seem to be a good place to start.

How did we behave as teenagers? We get choices like: rebellious, curious, immature, responsible, kind, moody and more. Umm, how about all of the above (sometimes all of the above within the course of an hour...)

But it gets worse. Describe your early sexual experiences with choices like: awkward (duh), loving, shameful, romantic, hurtful, curious, limited and more.

And then it gets even more personal when we get to describe our current "sexual compatibility": Very compatible? Compatible? Sometimes compatible? Not compatible (I have a headache?)...

So we're going to each sit down (with a glass of wine?) and fill out our forms separately and then compare, which should make for a few laughs and some good conversation. Please, don't think that because we are laughing that we're not taking this seriously. This is an important step towards our social worker learning more about us and what kind of people we are/ what kind of parents we'll be.

Luckily we're pretty open and honest folks who talk openly and honestly with each other and those around us so this process doesn't feel scary or too intrusive. If nothing else, it is a great chance to get anything on the table that needs to be dealt with before we become parents.

Soooooo Sloooooowwwwwww

We finally met with a social worker. The same one who taught our Adoption Education Program. After a year (A YEAR!) of waiting to change our adoptable age range, discuss special needs and 'clean up' our application we have finally completed another step towards starting a homestudy.

There is still no telling how long we will wait for a homestudy. We have been told that we seem like great people, that our application looks good and that we'd probably make good parents. So it's not like they have concerns that are holding up the process.

Something really frustrating that we've learned is that any time someone is willing to adopt an older child, they get put ahead of us on the homestudy wait list. It could be that no matter how long our file has been gathering dust, any time someone says, "maybe I'd adopt a 14 year old" they get moved up the line and we get pushed back.

Now, I'm all for teen adoption. But this system seems a little counter intuitive. Wouldn't it make sense to get some of those 6 and 7 year olds adopted before they reach their teenage years and become harder to place? Would it not be prudent to have some workers who specialise in teen adoption and some who specialise in school age adoption?

But alas, we are not in charge of the system (nor would we want to be!). So we wait.

Thanks a lot, newspaper

Most of the time I'm pretty cool with the fact that this process takes a long time. Adam and I eat Thai take-out when we want and go to bed early when we want. We can choose to lay in bed eating chips (crisps, not french fries) and watching Arrested Development on netflix for hours. And we do do this more often then we'd like to admit. We enjoy being a family of two.

Then there are those moments when it just hits me like a truck. Today I clicked on a link to a restaurant review that lead me to the website of our city's largest newspaper. Right there on the homepage is the headline "Adoptions build families, make a house a home". Ok, grammar issues aside, this just kills me. The article is all about adopting older children from foster care. THAT IS WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO! Of course it's great that adoption is in the news. It's great if there are more families out who learn about adoption. But I was told in September that we'd get a home visit (that never happened) and in October I was told we should hear from someone by Christmas (that never happened). I'm not angry. I'm just sad. Some days I get a little sad. But the sadness makes me glad too. I'm glad that my heart and my mind are both edging me on towards the goal of bringing our kids home. I'm glad that this process that is so clinical makes me emotional sometimes. I'm glad that my sadness will make me call and ask where we are on the wait list for a homestudy.

Tonight we will enjoy the bittersweet companionship of netflix and chips and a glass of wine or two. Because we're grown-ups without kids and we can console ourselves with the fact that we can choose the most awesome of pastimes without interruption. Not that the interruption won't be welcome when the time comes.

Road Block

So we had been excited that our social worker was going to come and check out our apartment and discuss our application with us. Kind of a pre-homestudy homestudy.

Well that is not to be as our social worker has informed us that she will be taking medical leave for an undetermined amount of time. She hopes that we will hear from someone by Christmas about where we are on the homestudy wait list.

So we are a little sad. We are sad for our social worker who has had to leave her job at least for now. We are sad for all the children and families who were in her care as they will have to learn to get to know someone new. We are sad for our kids who are somewhere, waiting for stability. And we are feeling a little sorry for ourselves too.

"Avril Lavigne" a parable

So I was reading along in my Aboriginal Pre-Adoption Training materials the other day and I came across this:

"Culture is Privileged: It is important to recognise that non-Aboriginal people may not be privy to many aspects of an Aboriginal culture such as sacred and traditional teachings. They do not necessarily need to have this knowledge for themselves – although the community will ‘privilege’ the adoptive parent with the information they need to know - they only need to ensure that the Aboriginal child has meaningful relationships, support and access to the community, including family and cultural teachings. An important way to facilitate this for the child is through the development of positive relationships by the adoptive parent."

Call me terrible, colonial and ignorant but this made me really defensive. Like, wait a minute, you're telling me that my children should have relationships with random people and go off and do a bunch of stuff that is kept secret from me. Why should culture be privileged? We are all children of this world. I believe in unity. I believe in harmony. I believe in equality. Why should I be left out?
 
Well this seemed like a rather unhealthy train of thought so I got a cup of coffee and went to work and mulled over it for a while. It came to me later when I was thinking about the term "privileged". Privilege is something that can create distance from people but it is also something innately important to all of us. I mean, look at hipsters; I knew ________ before it was cool.

My tie!

As a teenager, my friend gave me the tie that she had worn as a prefect in her private school. It was a great tie. Small, feminine and striped. I wore that tie to my public junior high school with wide-leg jeans, chains, hemp bracelets, black tank tops and bright red lipstick and purple hair (I was the very essence of high fashion). I looked rebellious. I looked alternative. I looked awesome. My outfit was showing the world that I was free and unique.

I wore some form of this outfit to a family dinner one night and my cousin said something that I will never forget. He asked me if I was an Avril Lavigne fan. Was I a what? No way! He thought that I was wearing my tie to try and emulate the singer of 's8er boi'?! I had worn the tie long before Avril came into popular culture. I was so embarrassed and upset and soon after that the tie was relegated to the back of my closet. The tie had lost it's specialness and appeal when it became trendy and everyone and their dog had one.

Now I'm not saying that my children's culture is on the same level as my choice of teenage apparel but it made me think about how hard it was to have something that was a part of my identity shared by the world. This is a small scale parable to help me remember that it is ok for my kids to be Cultural Hipsters. They need to have ownership of their culture and choose what and when to share.

P.S. Shout out to Luke (or your Dad, since I know he reads this). Thanks for asking me about Avril all those years ago!

like a new species

This morning over coffee, AH and I were talking about his future business plans. In a year's time he plans on working for himself, doing what he loves. This would give him more flexibility and a more stable paycheck. But it is so hard to plan a year into the future when we have no idea what will be happening next fall. We could still be going through our homestudy, we could be waiting for "the call", we could be in pre-placement visits and (strangest of all) there is even the (extremely slim) chance that we could have children.
AH commented that if we were pregnant we'd at least have a pretty clear idea of our family's time line. I said that this feels like being some new kind of species with no idea how long our gestation period is. So we're planning on not being able to plan. It's all good.

fall cleaning

Time to do some fall cleaning.
Our social worker wants to meet with us... at our home! She has been very clear that she is not starting our homestudy yet but she wants to go over our file and see our home. To me this sounds pretty promising as she obviously wants to get a feel for who we are and how we live.

Probably best to get our other bedroom ("the closet of hell/storage room of death") in slightly better order. It wouldn't look very good if we have G. (<--- social worker) over and refuse to let her see our second bedroom.

attachment (pt 2)

So how can we combat a disrupted attachment? First, it's important to remember that the emotional age of our children could be much younger than their chronological age. If we adopt a two year old it would not be in his best interest to parent him the way one would parent an attached two year old.
If a newborn baby screams and cries, you don't put him in a time out. You give him loving touch, respond to his needs and he learns how to regulate his own emotions over time.
Unattached children need to be "re-parented" by their new parents to form a healthy attachment. In order for the child to later become attached to extended family members, they need to form a real, healthy attachment to their parents first. For many children this means that only their parents should hold them for the first couple of months. If a child tries to go to another friend or family member, they should re-direct that child to their mummy or daddy.

These are just a few strategies that have worked very well in helping children form secure attachments:

-Holding Time/Close Time - This is therapeutic touch and cuddle time. Children as old as 18 years (and possibly even adults) have found that being rocked like a baby after a difficult situation (such as a temper tantrum) and/or intermittently throughout the day will help them learn how to regulate their emotions.

-Bottles - It may seem strange to bottle feed a toddler or older child but if this child has never experienced having been cared for by just one mummy, taking them back to an infantile stage and teaching them that mummy will take care of them and nurture them might be just the ticket.

-Eye contact - An unattached child will avoid eye contact with their new mummy and daddy. Playing games like peek-a-boo (even with older children) will help them learn to trust eye contact in a non-threatening way.

-Carrying - Yes, that child is old enough to walk but she might need to be carried in a carrier while she learns to attach to her parents.

-Time-in - Children who are already feeling separated from the world should not be given a time-out. Being sent away from the family (even if it's just the next room for just a few minutes) could be very traumatizing. Instead the child can sit with a parent for the duration of the punishment. They can then discuss the behaviour and end with a hug and a kiss. This helps teach a child that even though they have misbehaved, they are still loved.

For more information on attachment in adopted children, check out the website A4everFamily.org
The AEP touches briefly on these things but does not have time to give a lot of information. This website has a lot of stories from real parents and advice from professionals who specialize in post-adoption attachment.

Just reading about all this is exhausting. Sometimes, everything that we need to learn and be aware of seems unimaginable. But the more prepared we are now, the less likely we are to be surprised in the future. I'm sure that we will still make plenty of mistakes but hopefully we'll make a few less because we've done our homework.

attachment... not just putting files on emails (pt. 1)

This week is attachment week at the AEP. I have been researching attachment for the past few months and I'm glad because the AEP didn't have time to get into everything that might have been covered.
What is attachment you ask? Well according to Psychology Today attachment is this important:

"The emotional bond that typically forms between infant and caregiver, usually a parent, not only stimulates brain growth but affects personality development and lifelong ability to form stable relationships"

Usually when a baby cries, a caregiver meets the baby's need and the baby attaches to the caregiver. This is the natural attachment cycle. The problem is that many children in the foster care system have either never been able to attach to a trusting caregiver or have attached to many different caregivers who have come in and out of the child's life. No attachment or disrupted attachments can have huge negative effects on a developing brain. When a child does not have any secure attachments and has trouble making them it is often diagnosed as Attachment Disorder or Reactive Attachment Disorder.

What are the potential causes of Attachment disorder?

•Neglect

•Abuse

•Separation from the primary caregiver

•Changes in the primary caregiver

•Frequent moves and/or placements

•Traumatic experiences

•Maternal depression 

•Maternal addiction - drugs or alcohol

•Undiagnosed, painful illness such as colic, ear infections, etc.

•Lack of attunement between mother and child

What does Attachment Disorder look like? 

•Intense control battles, very bossy and argumentative; defiance and anger
•Resists affection on parental terms
•Lack of eye contact, especially with parents or will look into your eyes when lying
•Manipulative - superficially charming and engaging
•Indiscriminately affectionate with strangers
•Lack of conscience - shows no remorse
•Destructive to property, self and/or others
•Lack of impulse control
•Hypervigilant/Hyperactive
•Learning lags/delays
•Speech and language problems
•Incessant chatter and/or questions
•Inappropriately demanding and/or clingy
•Food issues - hordes, gorges, refuses to eat, eats strange things,  hides food
•Very concerned about tiny hurts but brushes off big hurts

Some of these might sound like normal child behaviours but a child who is unattached doesn't know to go to their parents for help. They don't know how to feel safe and might always be waiting for something bad to happen. They don't understand that you are their "forever family" and might try "mommy shopping" (hugging and cuddling strangers, knowing they have to be charming in order to be protected).  In public, an unattached child might seem cute and affectionate but inside (and at home) they are fighting against attaching to anyone in order to avoid future hurt.

So there you have it. Some tough stuff to mull over. It's not all bad news though. With a lot of patience and very purposeful parenting, many children are able to form very secure attachments to their adoptive parents. More on that next time.

going back to school... adoption style

We have started our AEP (Adoption Education Programme (Program?)).
Why do we need to go to school in order to have kids? People don't need to go to school to have kids biologically (although on 16 and Pregnant they are often in school when they're having kids).
One of the awesome things about adding to our family through adoption is that it is completely different experience than adding to our family through biological methods. We're swapping morning sickness and labor for attachment disorder and a host of unknown issues. Why is this awesome? Well because not only do we get to go through some real personal growth, we also get to help a little person (or people) with some real growth as well.
With all this awesomeness comes a lot of responsibility and a need for preparation in all areas of our lives. At home this means talking about our emotions constructively and taking time for "self-care" (easier said than done with our schedule some weeks!), among other things.
The AEP is just one step in learning about adoption through the Ministry of Children and Families. We need to learn what we can expect, what we can't expect and prepare for the unknown. We need to learn about a different kind of parenting. We need to learn about the perspectives of our future children, their biological parents and their foster parents. We need to hear worst case scenarios and decide what we can handle. We need to be scared. We need to feel lost. We need to wonder if this is really right for us. We need all this to build up our strength and knowledge. We need to prepare in order to provide stability and advocacy for our children. 

So, sorry if we're unavailable for the next 9 weeks, we're busy being terrified about the implications of public adoption. But don't worry, it'll be worth it.

a social worker of our very own

On February 17th we nervously and excitedly handed our adoption application over to a woman at a reception window.

The application requested such information as our names, birth dates and yearly income (gulp). It also requested requested that we share our religious beliefs and values and gave us about two lines in order to do this. Yeah, like the answer to that fits on two lines.

The other part of the application required us to check off little boxes as to what sort of child we would accept. Starting with age (we chose 0-4) how many children we want (we chose 1 or two siblings/twins). Then it asks you what racial heritage you are ok with (we checked them all). It goes on to have you check off various "disabilities" everything from ADD to Cerebral Palsy, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, FASD, cleft palates, sight impairment (now does this mean "needs glasses" or "totally blind"?). This is where things get interesting. It's easy enough to say yes to some of these but so many of them fall in the category of "spectrum disorders" and it is extremely difficult to answer a straight yes or no. Would we happily accept a high functioning child with Downs Syndrome? You betcha! Would we be equipped to raise a child with severe delays caused by that same Syndrome that would lead to major health complications and a life of acute care needs. No, we might not be the right family.

perhaps our feelings towards Social Workers won't
always be this rosy...

The application also asks if you would accept placement of a child who was conceived by rape or incest and/ or has experienced various kinds of abuse (but more on that later).

There is a tremendous amount of guilt when it comes to filling in this form. We are not shopping for a perfect child but ticking off these little boxes makes it feel that way. Obviously we must be honest about what we think we can handle but filling out these forms felt a little like playing God.

So after weeks of research, we handed in a very "soft" application and began waiting the two weeks it would take for a Social Worker to contact us. We looked forward to talking to the social worker and trying to explain all our concerns. Two weeks went by, nothing. Three weeks, nothing. Four weeks and I contact the office, nothing. Then on March 20th an email with the name of the Social Worker that our file has been assigned to. One little sentence and I guess that we're officially on our way!