Sweetheart, honey, kiddo, baby, sport, and buddy. These are just a few of the nicknames, and terms of endearment that parents, all over the country, call their children each and every day. Usually starting at birth, where ‘baby’ becomes a term of endearment for the new addition to the family, the terms, and names for the child continue to grow and change as the child does, but the love, and the special meaning behind those little names are not lost on the child.

In most cases of stepparent adoption, unfortunately for the stepparent, he or she has come... more

Today I sat reading through some of my neighbors' blogs and a rush of emotion flowed out of me. I sat with warm tears running down my face because I felt the words I sat there reading.

For the first time in weeks my memories flowed back to a time when I went from super mom right down to almost lifeless.

I had a wonderful family but as most adoptive moms, I had doctors appointments, therapist visits for the kids, and school agendas all to balance. In the meantime we had decided to sell the house and move to a little home town in mid-Michigan.

The house was bigger and it was a lot more room for the kids to stretch out and have space. The town had a little ice cream... more

It’s often said that "adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." Will this be true in your case? I hope not, and I encourage you to begin thinking about this seriously.

Your biggest task right now is to separate which of your problems are temporary and which are ongoing or chronic. In other words, which of your problems are for right now, and which seem likely to be with you throughout your life? Which of them could be fixed with a little help, and which are things that only you can address? I’ll give a few examples below.

Bad reasons for choosing adoption:

You don’t have much money. (Assistance is out there, and financial situations... more

Do you ever think that it’s precisely the people who ought to choose adoption that don’t do it?

I’m talking neglectful or abusive parents, or the self-absorbed, or the very young.

It’s almost as though, if you have the presence of mind to think of your child’s best wishes ahead of your own, you probably also have it in you to be a good parent. The people who never even consider adoption in the first place...those are the same ones whose children would benefit most from being raised by another family.

I am thinking of a birthmother I know...we’ll call her Caren.

She was never in any doubt that she loved and wanted her baby, and she desperately... more

In the closed adoption era, I think that the one life event for adoptees that has no age requirements or timing requirements is when an adoptee finds out he or she is adopted. When this happens, we adoptees suddenly find out that everything we have been told about ourselves is not true and sets up insecurity and a need to find out where we came from. There are times that I think many adoptees, including myself, think or thought that a search may be able to replace the quicksand the past suddenly became For that reason, a search can occur at any age.

I have helped many... more

Fairly early in the adoption process you’ll want to pick up a copy of the I-600A. This is a BCIS form requesting advance permission to bring an orphan into the US. You can pick it up at your local immigration office--locations listed here. You can also print it off at this website. If you print it off the internet, it is a good idea to print it on salmon-colored paper if possible, since the special color of this form reminds the BCIS office to give it top priority... more

A family we met through our agency travelled last winter to Petroplavsk, Kazakhstan to adopt a five year old boy. When they returned, we took some time to compare our respective adoption trips. While they adopted from a northern region, and we adopted from Kyzylorda, a southern region, our processes were more or less the same. We had many observations to share, but the observation we centered much of our discussion on was the extreme poverty in Kazakhstan, and especially that of orphanage children.

The poverty was easily identified... more

I woke up tired this morning… tired and with a headache. It might have something to do with all the miles I have been walking… trying to get slimmer for this big wedding event in May. It doesn’t take much for me to get a headache. I have been a migraine sufferer since college days. I take a daily med to stave them off, and have an armament of drugs for when they come anyway.

As I lay in bed this morning wondering if I would have to dip into that armament to function, I was thinking about all the physical reactions my body... more

> [A major agency] has notified families that the stork has
> flown the coop and is
> heading the the US. [This large agency] is expecting 90
> referrals
> and includes all
> of May 17.

Do I need to translate this one?

No. I only hope (and kind of expect) "includes all of May 17" also includes beyond May 17 to the 25th.

I'm finally delving back into the Massachusetts Advocates' report of the Impact of Trauma on Learning. This is a long document and it may take a while to digest it all. But there are some important things just in Chapter 1.

It explains the basic trauma reaction to violent events and that trauma is not an event-- but a response to the event. For children who have been traumatized -- fear becomes a way of life. They see any and all events through "trauma glasses". "Unable to regulate heightened levels of arousal and emotional responses, they simply cannot turn off the survival strategies that their brains have been conditioned to employ." And the report cites that childhood trauma... more