Jimmy was eleven years old when he was adopted. His mom said that she’d assumed she couldn’t adopt. “I was single, I worked, and I was going to school.” Her friends encouraged her to learn about adopting, and before she knew it she’d met Jimmy and couldn’t get him out of her mind.

It was a relatively smooth adjustment, as big changes go and despite the fact that Irene was in law school.

Irene had raised two children by birth, so she thought she knew what to expect. But the early days brought some surprises for her.

“There were some unsettling things …. I didn’t know what he didn’t know,” she said. “I took for granted that he would have had the same kinds of childhood experiences I did. But he hadn’t been to a circus, he didn’t know what a pineapple was, and he said he’d never eaten peanut butter.”

Jimmy had been in foster care for several years and had taken on a sense of responsibility for himself that no youngster should have to assume. He tried to look like an adult on the outside, but on the inside he was still a little boy.

The time Irene spent with him on her lap in a favorite rocking chair helped release Jimmy from that heavy responsibility and allow himself to be a child with an adult to care for him.

In the early months Jimmy didn’t ask to go outside and play, or to use the telephone to call his new friends. But slowly he began to discover a new role for himself. In time he could be found riding his bike or hanging out with friends he met in his Scout troop. . . coming home dirty, like boys should.

Jimmy thrived, and so has Irene. “You don’t have to be rich, or give them everything they desire…just share with them what you have,” she says.

That’s good advice for all of us – whether we work in adoption, are parents, volunteers, or find ways to support the children and their families.

“My name is Brian and I am fourteen years old. I don’t remember my birth mother because she left me when I was about three years old. That’s okay because I’ve heard that when she left me alone she tied me to a chair and put duct tape on my mouth.”

That’s how he began his speech before 150 friends and child advocates.

“After that when I was living with my birth father. He would leave me home alone. He physically beat me a lot. The trailer was never clean – it was always falling apart. My birth father got drunk a lot and I would be taken out of the trailer sometimes and then go back.

When he tried to kill me with a gun, I was then put in a foster home. That was about five years ago. For about four years I lived in a lot of foster homes. I would say that to move around a lot is not good. It got frustrating because I was always making friends and then I lose them and start from scratch.

Almost a year and a half ago I was placed at a treatment center and was there for a year. There are a lot of staff for each kid and they pay a lot of attention to what we did or didn’t do. There are a lot of rules. You wouldn’t believe some of the things you had to ask for permission to do, like to get a drink of water.

I learned a lot there, but it is a place I don’t ever want to go back to. After five years of being in foster care or residential care my birth father gave up his parental rights. The staff at residential felt I should leave there for a home again.

I could have gone to another foster home but my caseworker felt I was ready to be adopted. I wanted to be in a normal, stable home, like I am now.”

It takes courage for a teenage boy to stand before others and describe his painful journey. But Brian did it for a good reason. This is the eloquent way he ended his speech:

“Adopting is VERY important to me because of the life that I grew up in. I am not the only kid that should get adopted. There are LOTS of other kids that should be adopted too.”

It was a holiday week, and Tommye’s boys came to the office where they were waiting for their dad. He had the afternoon off, and was dropping by his wife’s office where she would hand over the child care for the period of her work day. The boys and their dad had plans to go to a game center.

As fate would have it my brother-in-law was in town and came by to say hello to me, and everyone arrived in our lobby at about the same time. They all made polite conversation when they were introduced.

Later it became clear to Tommye that her adopted sons had limited exposure to people of their own racial heritage. The family belonged to a support group for families who’d adopted children from Korea. So they had lots of friends in their own age group. But that’s as far as it went.

In the literal mind of a child, one of her boys connected the dots as he saw them: I am adopted….my Asian friends are adopted…therefore Asian children are adopted.

What Troy didn’t expect was to meet a fully grown Japanese adult in our office that day. That challenged his paradigm. In fact, it was a sort of awakening. So he had to go back and re-connect the dots. It became something like this: Asian children are adopted…this grown man is Asian…

And that’s where Troy needed help. So he asked his mom, “Is he adopted, too?”

Growing up adopted complicates the many layers of identify formation. Trans-racial adoption adds yet another variance. You can get some tips from FAIR, a great adoptive family support organization. If you are a trans-racial adoptive parent or adoptee and would like to, you can join the conversation with tips of your own.

Click Here for More Information

Yes, girls are dramatic. Their adolescent mood swings can drive their families right up to the edge of sanity. One minute they’re energetic, and the next minute they are just too tired to participate in the world around them. Sometimes you have to wonder how any of us … or our parents… got through it.

And other times girls have insights. Sometimes they know exactly what is happening and can set goals and contribute to their own positive growth.

Stacie shared a heart full of wisdom when she said, “I want to live with a family that loves me.”

We are tempted to see adoption as a very complicated thing. And in many ways it is. But it begins with that simple foundation. All of the complications of raising an adopted adolescent girl should and can flow from that first, and most important place – that commitment to love.

Books are good. But great advice can also be short, to the point, and easy to remember.

In September an adoptive mom had three pieces of advice for newly adopting parents:

• Make use of all of the resources available to you and your family;
• Create time for yourself; and
• Establish the life and schedule you want from the very beginning – don’t wait for everyone to settle in.

For recommended books and articles with more advice, click here.

I can’t count the number of parents who’ve told me that:

• the child who was never expected to speak now talks nonstop; or
• the one who wouldn’t live more than two years is now in her twenties; or
• the boy who won’t be able to walk now runs and jumps; or
• the girl who could not be expected to make a healthy emotional attachment now loves.

It’s amazing what happens when parents simply love and accept a child just the way they are, and then pour all of their hearts into helping them grow into what is possible.

A.R. Ammons, an American poet, expressed it perfectly.

don’t establish the
boundaries
first,
the squares, triangles,
boxes
of preconceived
possibility,
and then pour
life into them,
trimming
off left-over edges,
ending potential:

Working with The Children’s Legacy in a photography and poetry project called Celebrating Life, Rebecca Lee wrote this untitled poem.

Love is a thread from your heart
pulled through a loop in mine,
blessed with the power
to help us remember
the truth we already know:
You and I are one.

Though we are unknown and invisible to them, thousands of children in the American foster care system depend upon us to remember the truth.

It was a twelve year old who was afraid he’d never have a family. He looked at our recruitment staff member and said, “Don’t give up on me!”

After lots of failed attempts to get it right, the child welfare system could have given up on Marcellus. But one mother couldn’t walk away.

If you want to know what happens when we don’t give up, meet Marcellus and his smiling family, click here.

Many, many thanks to all of the caseworkers who don’t give up. Thanks to each of you who believe in the children and helped keep the message alive until families were found for them. Thanks to each of you who stepped forward in 2011 to claim the children.

Imagine being 15 years old and having spent your entire life in government foster care…and then to hear your adoptive mom say, “He belongs here with us.”

Nick’s adoption was final in November. He says he never before had a place that felt like home. “It’s different [here] because I’ll care about her, and she’ll care about me.”

Grab a tissue and watch this short video clip from KSL TV in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Click Here to view Nick’s video.

Arta Banks has had plenty of what she calls “inside-out kind of days.” And she also has plenty of ability to turn those days around. She sees the beautiful things in life, and she shared some stories in a book she titled Wrong Feet First.*

So when Mike called this week to tell me how Arta’s book recently inspired and comforted him, I wasn’t really surprised. When a social worker asked her why she wanted to adopt older children with problems associated with previous abuses, Arta’s answer was, “Why not?”

And she quoted Jan Howard: “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

One of Arta’s messages is that every one of us has something to learn and something to teach. And that’s how she lives her life.

*Wrong Feet First: A Gift of Stories for Your Inside-Out Kind of Day, Lovegifts Publishing, PO Box 201388, Denver, CO, 2001.