Author

I cannot remember where I heard or read this, but I have heard it said that adopted children are less likely to leave the home when they turn eighteen. They are also supposedly less likely to leave town to go to college or take a job. Instead, they are more likely to live at home while attending a local college or get a job closer to their adoptive parents' home.

I tried to find this article on the Internet but was not successful, so I must have read it in a book somewhere. I am not saying that this premise is true. I just thought this was an interesting topic to discuss.

The author speculated that adopted children were less likely to move away because of… [more]

When I was going through the home study process, my social worker told me to read several books about adoption. One of these books talked about birthdays being a sad time for adopted children. According to the author, for children placed for adoption as a newborn, a child's birthday is also the day that his birthmother "abandoned" him. The author said to keep an eye out for bad behavior around a child's birthday because this could indicate that a child is struggling with adoption issues. The child might not want to celebrate the day that he was taken from his birthfamily.

I did not know whether to believe this or not. Birthdays are generally happy times for kids, especially when they know that they will be… [more]

My son recently had a birthday. He attends a Montessori school, where birthdays are a really big deal.

Montessori schools have an entire program set up for birthday celebrations. The children sit in a big circle. In the middle of the circle is something to represent the sun. Index cards with the months of the year are placed around the sun. The birthday child holds a globe and circles the sun to represent one year of his life. Meanwhile, the class sings a song about each year. The child stops after each year, and the parent shares stories and pictures of the child from each year of his life.

After this, the teacher reads a book about the birth of a child. The book is age-appropriate… [more]

Last week, I shared about medicating my son for his Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). My son has acted like a perpetual four- or five-year-old for years even though he is now seven years old. Because his behavior was like a younger child's behavior, I modified my parenting accordingly.

Now that my son is medicated, it is as if he matured two years overnight. Suddenly, he is doing things that he could not do before. He is also processing things much better. For the first time ever, I can reason with him. Of course, I am thrilled to have a child who is now acting his age.

That being said, this major leap in maturity has presented some parenting challenges. I have no idea how to parent… [more]

This week, I have been writing about medicating my adopted child for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the emotions that this process has evoked in me. I want to end this series on a positive note.

Yes, dealing with my son's special needs has been hard, but he is much more than a walking special need. He is a great kid. He is smart, funny, warm, loving, forgiving, and incredibly funny. The child is almost always positive and in a good mood.

My son has a great sense of humor that is as warped and weird as mine is. Out of nowhere, he will say something like, "Hey, Mom! Meatball!" It makes me crack up laughing every time because it is so random and wonderfully weird. We… [more]

This week, I have been writing about medicating my adopted child for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the emotions that this process has evoked in me. One emotion I am facing is guilt.

Hub and I had a blow up this week over the medication issue. In the course of this argument, hub pointed out how I always said that I would not feel complete without a child. The reason we even adopted in the first place was because I would not rest until we had a child. All of this is true, and that fuels my guilt whenever I have regrets about the way our adoption turned out.

Let me clarify that I do not regret adopting our son. I love him with all… [more]

As I shared in my last two posts, Medicating the Adopted Child for ADHD and Frustration With Medicating the Adopted Child for ADHD, I have been facing the struggles of medicating my adopted child for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Even though I tried every other alternative I could think of to avoid medicating him, nothing worked, so he is now medicated for his ADHD.

While my son is medicated, things are great. However, the medication has some big side effects (including insomnia and loss of appetite) that are wearing me down as I try to take care of his physical needs while, at the same time, use the medication to help him be successful in his life.

Whenever a person faces a big… [more]

In my last post, Medicating the Adopted Child for ADHD, I shared the positive side of medicating my adopted child for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This post is about the frustrations.

While the first day of my son being on ADHD medication was sheer bliss, the side effects were just awful. Once the medication wore off, he was just as hyperactive as he ever was. It was jarring to have him go from being a rational, clear-heading child to a wild and out-of-control child again. He ate nothing for dinner because he was not hungry (a common side effect of ADHD medication).

The Daytrana patch left a red mark on his hip that bothered him in the tub. (Fortunately, the redness went away overnight and… [more]

I have shared several times that my adopted son Nicholas, who is seven years old, has Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I have been advocating for medication for well over a year, but I have not gotten much support from the doctor or my husband until recently.

The school got involved with a situation that happened on the campus, and my son was referred to the school's intervention team. Long story short, they sent home a bunch of paperwork expressing "significant concerns" and asked us to share the information with our physician.

Hub, Nicholas, and I went to see the doctor last week. We were able to answer most questions, but we had very limited information when it came to his birthfamily's medical history. This was disturbing because… [more]

A reader e-mailed me and asked if I would share more about my personal story with our home study. I am working through a series about each of the interviews we had as part of the home study process.

In my last post, Home Study: Preparing for the Home Visit, I shared my complete overreaction to the social worker's scheduled home visit as our final interview in the home study process. I had spent hours steam-cleaning the carpet in our family room, and the social worker barely even glanced in the room.

When the social worker (C) arrived, we took her on a quick tour of the house. She wrote down the number of bedrooms and bathrooms we had. She recorded where we had fire alarms in… [more]