Adoption Is a Picnic

Well, not the process — that can be stressful and thorough. But last weekend adoption was kind of a picnic because Steve and I went to an adoption picnic. It was an adoption-themed picnic attended by many adoptive parents and their adopted children from all over Delaware. And we all had a picnic. (Yes, I was trying to mention “adoption” and “picnic” as many times as possible in one paragraph.)

We’re glad we went because we got to talk to all kinds of parents and caseworkers and ask them questions. It was encouraging that many of these people sought us out to talk (we were the only people without kids so I guess it was easy to spot us).

It was also good to go to an event and see happy families and one couple who was in our class who had adopted their child in the last few months, to see more examples of the process working out. Yes, we know happy adoptive families and have heard plenty of positives for adoption but the last official thing we attended showcased some videos of an older child with fetal alcohol syndrome and other adjustment problems spitting at his mother and punching holes in the drywall so it was good to have a positive balance. I still have concerns since this is the biggest thing we’ll ever do but I am feeling positive about the process in general (which is kind of a shock because I am a worrier).

One of the things people asked us that I wasn’t sure how to answer was the question of what kind of child we’re looking for. We know we want a young child, infant or toddler, since there would probably be less chance of the child having severe problems that come from being in foster care for years. We are clear-eyed about the fact that our child will probably have special needs but we are of no good to that child if we are in over our heads as far as special needs. Plus, we’re beginner parents with even the everyday stuff and we don’t feel ready to deal with a teenager (I think it’s good that the teen years happen later in life so parents can get a warm-up period to deal with those issues).

I just told people we’d want as happy and healthy a child as we could get. It felt odd to answer these questions because I felt like I would say the wrong thing. Our thought process has room to evolve and I feel like we’d need to sit down with the people from the agency to make a decision. I know this will work out how it works out and the goal here is not to find kids for us but to find parents for a kid and hopefully that will be us.

So that’s what’s been going on. We’ve worked our way through most of the stack of paperwork and have just a few more items to complete and then I guess we’ll be moving on to the next step. DFS cleared us as far as a background check, so we have that going for us.