Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
I’ve got a reason for you to smile: At an adoption party in July I overheard Gregory talking to some people. When they asked where he went to school, his response was a real conversation stopper.
He said, “I don’t know where I will go this year. It depends on whether my foster mom quits.”
The very next month – Gregory was adopted! Now he doesn’t have to worry about whether this mom is going to “quit” and he knows where he’ll be going to school.
And here’s another one: Cathleen was still 10 years old when told a TV reporter on Wednesday’s Child that she wants to be a cowgirl or a veterinarian. She said, “I want lots of hugs and kisses….to be tucked in at night.”
Several months later Cathleen got her wish.
I know you don’t have time to read about them all, but we have lots of reasons to smile – for Gregory and over 6,000 others.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Listen to the Children
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
What the Children Really Need
Twenty-seven years ago I was the person who answered the phone when people called our office to inquire about children they’d seen on Wednesday’s Child.
“All he needs is love,” they’d say.
I’d respond back with something like, “Well, he sure does need love. But he also is going to need psychotherapy and probably some tutoring and maybe special education….and…..”
Then the caller would usually interrupt me and say, “Yes, but what he really needs is love, right?”
Lately I’ve come to the conclusion that they were right all along. It really is that simple.
It’s love for a child that causes a parent to change jobs in order to be more available. It is love that prompts a mom or dad to find the right school for their children. Or to drive across town and sit in a therapist’s waiting room for an hour two or three times a week while their child is getting much needed help. And love makes them drive back again to meet with the therapists themselves.
Love changes the one who is loved, and it certainly changes the one who does the loving. As the song says, “Love changes everything. . . Love will never ever let you be the same.” Love makes us change the way we do familiar things and makes us try new things we’d never considered before.
It causes parents to accept children just the way they are and then move mountains to get them all of the needed remedial resources so that they can become what is possible for them.
Today, if you ask me about any one of the waiting children, I’ll say, “Yep. It’s pretty straightforward, really. All he needs is love.”
To view recent Wednesday’s Child features click here.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
After Disaster
The sign on Beth’s office door was clear, “Don’t disturb me unless you’re willing to write a profile for one of the children we need to get posted on our website ASAP.”
She was busy, but I tapped on her door anyway. She and others had a deadline they intended to keep. All of the 256 newly referred children would have photographs and profiles on our website within the month.
Writing the profile to accompany each photograph takes time. When they read the stories of the children, staff members often stop and think. Or cry.
Beth reached for a photograph and piece of paper. She read the words of a seven year old girl who desperately needed a family, “I’ve been through the world a lot of times. My heart is crinkled.”
When a catastrophe happens, the news media lead a giant wave of response. One after another we step forward to help bring order. We each do our part to provide food, clothing, water, shelter and employment for the victims.
That’s a good thing. But it isn’t enough. All too soon another calamity will erupt in another part of the world. And before we know it, we’ll be distracted from the heartbreak of the last one while we pour our energy into the next.
Sometimes the tragedies come a little at a time. It may be a series of violent acts putting one family on the front pages. Perhaps years of gross neglect combine with social and behavioral circumstances to come crashing together and a sibling group can no longer live with their birth family. Or it may be a natural disaster that strikes hundreds at one time.
One thing these tragedies have in common is that the real healing and rebuilding takes days, months, years, decades. After the disaster there is work to be done.
For the children who wait in foster care in the United States the crises have passed. Now our staff here at The Adoption Exchange remain focused on their need for homes, as do their caseworkers and the families who step forward to love them.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Happiness
Aurora Mental Health Center (spring, 2009) says:
When those around us are happy, we can feel it. It is like standing near a fire, the warmth spreads to all of those gathered around it. In fact according to a recent study that examined the happiness of almost 5,000 people over 20 years, your own happiness can affect people you don’t even know! The study was completed by the University of CA in San Diego and found that when you become happy, any friend of yours who lives within a mile becomes 25% more likely to also be happy. Amazingly, they also found that a friend of that friend becomes 10% more likely to be happy and a friend of that friend’s friend has a 5% increased chance of being happy.
No wonder the center began offering free “laugh classes” last year.
Lots of people have written books on how to be happy.
I’ve never really thought about pursuing happiness. But I have observed some things about people I know that are in fact happy.
friendship and family.
There are lots of people like that in the adoption community.
Diane is one of them. Since I’ve known her she has mortgaged her house to pay for mental health services for her adopted children, left a high-powered career she loved in order to be available to them, was laid off from a great job when the economy tanked, and has had a few other setbacks. Nonetheless her eyes sparkle, her voice has a lilting tone, her sense of humor is alive, she is a selfless volunteer, she looks as young as she did the day I met her … and she is genuinely happy.
From what I can tell, being happy is not the goal. It appears to be the byproduct.
Those of us who know Diane sure like being around her. We are warmed by the fire within her.
Do you have a story about someone you know who is happy?
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Being In Foster Care
A national survey in 2007 revealed that 45% of the American population thinks children are in foster care due to their own delinquency (AdopTalk, Fall, 2009).
So let’s set the record straight.
It not the fault of the children that their parents and care-givers are too lost in their own dysfunction to care for them. It is not their fault that there is no food, no heat, and no one to take them to school. It’s not their fault when their parents don’t come home at night.
It’s not the fault of older siblings that they are left to raise the babies. It’s not their fault that they have been beaten, pinched, kicked, burned and used.
Having their innocence stripped away from them before they lose their baby teeth is not their fault.
The children are not to blame that family holidays become nightmares of substance abuse and that violence is a daily occurence.
Hello out there – They are children!
It is not their fault.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Kristi’s Untitled Poem
I recently posted a blog about how the past continues to live with us in the present. I think Kristi’s poem expresses that reality in the profound observations of a teenage girl. She wrote it for a school assignment, folded it and gave it to her mom in an off-handed way following a particularly difficult time between them.
I am from adoption
I am from camping, fishing and mountains
I am from my Mom and Dad
Who rescued me when I was a baby
I am from cornflakes and frozen blueberries
I am from ragdolls and stuffed animals
I am from a neighborhood with a fishing hole
I am from five pound fish that we all catch
I am from six dogs playing in the yard
I am from cleaning up their messes
I am from a school that teaches me what I want to learn
I am from brothers and sisters that drive me crazy, but I still love them
I am from the “I love you’s” that my mom always says
I am from the soul of the Lord, and the whistling of the wind
I am from something bad and something good.
Kristi’s past is with her in the beginning of her poem, and it is still there at the end. It will always be part of her.
Nancy Ng wrote, “The miracle of adoption is not cure; it is commitment.” Among the resources available through her support organization, FAIR is a recently released DVD titled Sorta Happy, Sorta Sad.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
The Past is Part of the Present
She is a lovely, down to earth young woman. So I was a little surprised by what she said.
Ellen got married a few months ago, and she doesn’t like her in-laws. “Well, I didn’t marry them. I married Dave,” she said, dismissively.
Oh, oh! I wonder how long it is going to take her to catch on that she married his family, too. The clinging mother, the spoiled sister, the favored brother and the emotionally unavailable father. She gets the whole in-law package. Not just the bow on top.
Sometimes when people think about adopting, they think of the day the child comes into their family as a brand new start. And in a way it is.
But the past walks in the door right along with the child. She brings her memories and attachments to healthy and not-so-healthy relationships. She brings her losses and fears and disappointments. She brings her nightmares and her adaptive behaviors.
You might say that the adoptive family merges with the ghosts of their child’s birth and prior foster families.
That’s why adoption caseworkers insist that families participate in preparation classes. And that’s why friends, family, knowledgeable therapists and community supports are so important.
Nancy Ng, adoptive mother and psychotherapist, wrote “…as real, as indispensable, as vital as love is, it cannot alter reality…The miracle of parental love is not that it makes everything better, but that it allows for all possibility.”
Because we know this life long journey brings the unexpected, along with the usual challenges of parenthood, The Adoption Exchange offers a wide range of post-adoption training and support services.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Justin Shouldn’t Have To Worry
Justin was a little worried when I saw him at our annual summer adoption matching party in Colorado. For some reason our staff didn’t know he would be coming to the party, and so his photograph didn’t get included in the little booklet made up for the event.
Volunteers at the party took a Polaroid photograph of every child in attendance (including Justin) and posted them on a bulletin board to help parents find the child(ren) they wanted to meet. So he wasn’t overlooked.
But he needed a little extra attention.
So Justin and I found his photograph in our big picture book, too. We put a marker there – just to make sure that no one at the party would miss him.
Can you imagine being nine years old at a party and thinking no one will find you and become your parent? Justin shouldn’t have to worry about such a thing. No child should.
A few minutes later a prospective mom and dad stopped to visit with me. They were waiting to hear about their quest to adopt a sibling group from Missouri, and the wait was hard to endure. So they came to the party to be around some of the children and get encouragement from our staff.
Of course – as if doing the job he’d delegated to me – I showed them Justin’s picture. They chocked up as they looked at his photograph and others in the picture book of waiting children.
“These are lives!” they exclaimed. “These aren’t just pieces of paper in this book. . . . these are children who need moms and dads.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
And what about Justin? He has a family now.
But there is another nine year old boy who is waiting to be found. Meet Ramon
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Join Dixie in the Count Up to 6,000 Adoption Placements!
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Growing up is a big job. There are lots of challenges along the way. Fortunately most young people have parents to help them through the tough spots.
But data released by the U.S. government in 2009 tells us:
That seems to be the way it is in America. Young people need parents for a long time after they reach legal adulthood.
So here is my question: If every year 29,000 young people emancipate from foster care at age 18 without parents, how are they going to get through? What are they going to do?
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Join Dixie in the Count Up to 6,000 Adoption Placements!