Foster care sometimes dictates that bio-family gets separated – permanently from each other. If bio family is dangerous, violent or has threatened violent behavior then visitation may be ended and parental rights terminated.

Sometimes because of severe violence or threatening behavior, the children are moved out of state and protective measure are taken to be sure bio-family can never find them again.

If siblings are in different foster homes they may get adopted by different families and never see their brothers and sisters again. Extended family, grandparents,... more

I hear a lot of "victimhood and woe is me" in your writing-whose's choice is it to place and whose responsibiltity is it when the adoption is complete? Not society or adoption parents are at fault-IMO it's the bfamily.

The recent reader comment mentioned that she detected a “woe is me” and victim-type attitude in my writing. I did not respond to her comment as I decided that I needed to ponder a response for awhile. I also realized that I probably could not give a two-line response. Brief answers are not something that... more

Click here How to make an Ethiopian quilt to read about a quilt raffle to benefit a family working on bringing home the biological sibling of their already-adopted Ethiopian child. Beautiful quilt. Great cause. Go check it out!!

Ok, this this week's funny really doesn't have anything to do with adoption, but it definitely has something to do with parenting, and I think it's pretty dang funny!

I have one brother and one sister. When we were young and my parents were still together, we often spent Saturdays or Sundays at my granparents' house (my Dad's parents). When I was about eight years old or so, (and my sister was six and my brother was four) my brother went through a phase where he would just eat himself sick every time we went to my grandparents' house.

My... more

After a bad sleep the night before we piled into the van and went back to the orphanage the next morning.

The weather that day was very much like the weather is today: clear, cool, breezy. It made me think of New England, where I spent a lot of my childhood. We were able to enjoy the drive out a little more than the drive the day earlier. We still had some anxieties but my decision, at least, had been made.

Yuri was brought to us outside this time, since it was so beautiful. We played on the playground outside the orphanage. I'm not sure that... more

I know that everyone who has responded that I should give ALL the Units of Concern for school back to my daughter is right. That is classic Love and Logic, and I am a huge fan of Love and Logic. So why is this so danged hard for me to do?

But I did… This morning as Beth and I climbed into the car to head off to school, she said, “Oh, wait, I forgot my tape recorder!” We were just pulling out the driveway so it would have been easy to get it. I didn’t stop, but said, “I have been doing some thinking about that…”

I... more

* Here's an artist from Brazil who has taken the flags of the world and converted them into charts representing something -- some interesting fact about the country. The proportion of colors in the Chinese flag, for instance, represents the number of 14-year-olds at work vs. the number of 14-year-olds in school (the working kids are the red, the schooled kids are the gold). There's an American flag,... more

This was in my mail box this morning....

There are a couple of new tidbits.... Now the dossier updates must be mailed to the SDA. And the SDA will start posting appointments to their web site.

Dear Members of the American Adoption Community Interested in Ukraine:

This information is addressed to the US prospective adoptive... more

I'm beginning a weekly (I hope) feature where I'll share some recent news articles out of Ethiopia. I thought I'd stick the title and the first couple sentences of the story here so you can decide if you are interested in reading further on that topic, and then I'll end with a link to the story for those of you interested enough to read further.

Ethiopia: Restaurants Faced with a Pricing Dilemma Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa) September 24, 2006 Everyone in town seems to be feeling the pain of recent price increases, with the petrol price adjustment... more

As I said in my previous blog, the seven core issues in adoption effect all triad members. This blog is going to focus on these issues and the natural mothers.

The first is loss and this is something that ruminates about the lost child for the natural mother. The initial loss merges with other life events and can lead to social isolation, changes in body and self image. There is also the relationship losses between the natural mother and their child relinquished to adoption and even between the natural mother and natural father.

The... more