If you choose to tell your adopted child that he was conceived through rape or incest, you will need to proceed with caution. This kind of information has the ability to set off an emotional explosion for your adopted child. Before discussing this information, consider the following issues:

1. Decide when to tell your child this information.

Rape and incest are difficult topics for adults to discuss, and they are even more complicated to discuss with a child. This is not information... more

I wrote yesterday about steps being taken in Kentucky to improve the lot of children in foster care in the state, and added a suggestion for urging your state to follow suit.

Today, it's South Carolina in the spotlilght, as Gov. Mark Sanford appoints people to his Children in Foster Care and Adoption Services Task Force, a group he created to find ways to improve the foster care and adoption systems in the state.

If you're in South Carolina and want to get involved, write... more

Starting with the concept of international adoption, stretching it like silly putty, then taking it out for a very long walk, you could come to this story out of India that describes a scenario that's becoming increasingly common.

It's about a 45-year-old acupuncture physician in Miami, Nicole Brown, hoping to hear she's in the process of gestating a baby created... more

I have one of those small world things possibly going on now that has me amused at possibilities, so I'd like to share.

One of the regular readers here on the blogs, a geezer dad of teens adopted from foster care named John, has clued me into the fact that he's on a fishing trip in Oregon at the moment. Since fishing trips now come with WiFi, apparently, he's in blog contact even as he relaxes in the crisp mountain air ... I can almost smell the piney-woodsy tang from here ... and letting me know the fish are few and far between.... more

When adoptees find their birth families and things to do not work out this is a statement that they may hear a lot. While no one wants to be rejected or find a disastrous relationship it is more than that.

Knowing what I know would I do it again? Yes, I would try and have contact with my birth mother and sister even knowing that things would not work out. I made the choice to have contact for myself, not for others. I had questions that I needed answered that only my birth mother could answer.

While no adoptee searches, or goes into a reunion... more

Continuing from the last post of Kacy’s story of being both a birthmother and an adoptive mother…

Kacy and her husband now reside in Florida. They tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child for four years. When she initially brought up adoption, Kacy’s husband shared that he feared he might not be able to love that was not his biological child so she just put the thought on the back burner to give him time to think about it and they continued to try and... more

Foster Children Living Years in the System

I had a case of a baby that the biological parents were asked about family members at each visit, they responded there was not anyone, but after a year when the termination of parental rights went to court they start throwing names of cousins, sister, aunts, etc that could be an option for the baby. Funny thing is, I do not think these family members appeared overnight.

What made it okay for this baby... more

There is an article about a 12 year old foster boy that has spent nine years living in foster care trapped in the system with no hope for a forever home. After nine years in foster care he was placed into an adoptive placement with members of his birth family. Sadly the adoptive placement fell apart and the boy was returned to foster care.

This case brings up a lot of issues of how things could have been different in this case and how to keep other foster children... more

As we waited for our newest daughters to come home, we did a lot of thinking about their names. Since they are older girls, we decided we'd really like to keep their Ethiopian names as their first names. After all, they've had the names for a decade each, more or less. It seemed rather presumptuous to bring them home and start immediately calling them something else.

However, we did think we might like to choose them each a middle name that is more Americanized, so that they might have another legal name to use at some point if they chose to. We tossed around lots of ideas. But again, since the girls are older, it really seemed like they should have input regarding even the... more

Clear out your TiVos: There's a program on Russian culture to record tomorrow night.

On Wednesday, August 29 at 9 p.m. eastern, the PBS series "Great Performances" will air a documentary on the early years of the great Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. Using archival footage and KGB files, John Bridcut, the film's writer and producer has come up with a portrait of the dancer prior to his defection to the West in Paris in 1961. Nureyev's dancing gave new importance to the roles of male dancers in classical ballet, and his off-stage socializing with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Andy Warhol paved the way for dancers... more