As a part of my ongoing effort to help provide Ethiopian adoptees with a fuller picture of the positive aspects of Ethiopia, here is another installment in my series about notable Ethiopians. In preparing for my older daughters to come home from Ethiopia, I've been interested in the experience of older immigrants from Africa. I blogged awhile back about John Bul Dau, who wrote the book God Grew Tired of Us. Today I am featuring an Ethiopian author... more

Do you remember the mirror in the first Harry Potter book, the Mirror of Erised? The mirror showed Harry what he wanted to see. It was an enchanted mirror that showed the person looking at it what that person most desired (erised is desire spelled backward).

I feel like we have a similar situation with LuLu every time she’s evaluated. She is like this mirror that psychologists and therapists peer into and see whatever they want to see as her diagnosis and problems. And because these folks are human, and have expertise in certain areas and not... more

Going through the adoption process can be is exhausting and time consuming. At times it may seem like you're drowning in paperwork with no end in sight. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel! I promise! But there are a few things you will have to survive first. We - like all adoptive parents - had to have a homestudy as part of the approval process. And, becuase we are an open foster home with the State, we have a renewal inspection yearly, and (theoretically) monthly visits by our resource worker and case worker because we currently have a foster child in our care. And each time someone comes, I remember back to what we were doing in preparation for our homestudy.

How... more

Today I have more from the letter "M" in my Transracial Adoption ABCs, and more to write about on adoption and money.

As I wrote about in my last post, money is a big issue in adoption. In my last post I wrote about the challenges of paying for an adoption, and gave some suggestions on getting the funds together.

In this post I am going to talk about where the money goes in adoption, and the power money can have.

I always tell adoptive parents that when they are investigating adoption... more

1. While at your pediatrician’s office, a nurse asks you to get your child off the roof, and you didn’t know your child had gone outside. 2. You spend more time trying to find your child’s homework, than it takes to finish it. 3. The school has your child call home everyday, asking you to bring gym shoes, because your child has forgotten them so many times. 4. Your child gets a zero on an exam, for talking to others before the exams are collected. 5. Your child always has the last word. 6. If allowed to play with legos while listening to a story, your child can recant the details perfectly. 7. You’re afraid to walk on your child’s bedroom floor because... more

Last night I sat in a room full of hopeful, yet battle-weary parents. I felt completely at home. A couple hundred parents of special needs children had gathered to hear the Georgia Department of Education’s information on how they plan to implement the recently passed Senate Bill 10, Vouchers for Special Needs Students. The line to ask questions of the “Associate Superintendent of Innovative Education” was a mile long. (Side note here: This gal has... more

A final note, perhaps, on the toxic China stories that've been all the rage lately.

China has just had their equivalent of our Food and Drug Administration chief sentenced to death. Zheng Xiaoyu was found guilty of accepting over $850,000 (and maybe ... more

I’m not referring to adult adoptees locating their birth families whom they may have never known. Instead, I’m referring to children adopted through the foster care system, who already knew their birth parents before being adopted. These children lived with their birth parents for a period of time and probably visited with their birth parents, at least once a week for a year or more, after entering the foster care system.

Somewhere in the back of their minds, an idea may exist that a mistake was made in terminating their parent’s... more

One controversial area of adoption is whether or not to adopt out of birth order. I am not an expert on the subject, so be sure to check out the Related Topics that I have included at the bottom of this post.

I know several families who adopted out of birth order and regretted it. The most disturbing stories I have heard came from families who first adopted baby girls and then later adopted older boys out of foster care who had been sexually abused. The older boys sexually... more

I’ve heard a lot of hype about the new movie, Knocked Up, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl (from Grey’s Anatomy) directed by writer and director Judd Apatow.

You can guess by the title that someone is going to be pregnant in this movie. Katherine Heigl plays Allison Scott a twenty four year old television reporter and news journalist who is on the fast track to success and a big career.... more