Archive for the 'Education' Category
Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Sometimes I Think We Worry About the Wrong Things
Buddy has always made it a point to see to it that his adopted son stayed in touch with his brother, who was not adopted. Buddy has moved with the Department of Defense to various teaching positions around the globe. He used video tapes, telephone, and Skype. The boys spent vacation time together as they were growing up.
Once the decision was made not to place the boys in the same family, I imagine they were in as frequent communication as they would have been if they’d been in foster or adoptive homes in the same city.
According to the International Herald Tribune (July 19, 2004), if you pull into the drive-up window of a McDonald’s near Cape Girardeau, MO, you’ll get fast, friendly service, even though the person who takes your order is not in the restaurant….or even in the state of Missouri. The order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, CO, nearly 1,000 miles away.
And we worry about how a child living in one location can stay in touch with siblings in another?!
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Extended Family
My mother’s youngest sister was living in our home before I was born. We didn’t give a name to the arrangement, but in my heart this aunt has always been my big sister.
Indian child welfare wisdom encourages us to recognize customary adoption* and other legal options that create permanent and safe family bonds without terminating all legal rights of birth parents.
In 2010 the adoption community is treating this as a new discovery, though the established Indian culture has endorsed it for many generations.
There are lots of families of many ethnicities who do this. Some have arrived at formal guardianship arrangements. Sometimes the families simply do it themselves, without arrangements ceremonially established by a tribe or government leader. Aunts and uncles step forward to help raise children who are victims of parental neglect, dug misuse, or incarceration of their parents.
Sometimes close friends of the family who feel like relatives are the ones who step forward to raise the children – as their own, but without denying the ties to birth family.
Many people in their fifties and sixties are raising their grandchildren. A recent news article reported 6,000 such families in Montana alone.
According to the Chicago Tribune, 4.7 million children in the United States were being raised in households headed by their grandparents.
Customary adoption? Modification of parental rights? Co-parenting? I don’t care what we call it. I just think we should allow for cultural and legal avenues that encourage us to do whatever the children need for us to do.
*According to Terry Cross, Executive Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, customary adoption “means a traditional tribal practice recognized by the community which gives a child a permanent parent-child relationship with someone other than the child’s birth parent.” www.nicwa.org
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Learning From Failure
We live in a world of instant messaging, fast food, and results by the end of the business day.
So it is no surprise that successful people who like to be in charge of their own lives sometimes look for short-cuts when they adopt.
If you’re considering adopting, I hope you won’t be tempted to look for the easiest process.
Sure, it’s possible to find loopholes and ways to avoid standard procedures. But I hope you won’t skip steps without thinking long and hard about the implications, because research has documented some things that lead to successful adoptions.
Two things that successful adoptions of older children have in common are: pre-adoption preparation, and post-adoption support services.
I don’t know what went wrong for the 8 year old boy who was recently put on a plane in Tennessee and returned to Russia. But I know that successful adoptive parents reach into their own local communities to participate in training and support activities before, during and after adoption.
Here are some resources that might be useful for you or someone you know.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Claiming Your Child
The question adoptive parents were asked was: When did you feel like your adopted child belonged to you? Their answers were:
“The moment she came through the door.” – Marco
“As soon as we met him.” – Jerry
“When I saw her photograph.” – Tania
Scientists are still learning a lot about bonding. We know that strong ties between parents and their children provide the foundation for subsequent intimate relationships. These bonds create a sense of security and build positive self-esteem.
Click here for a list of suggested books to read on the subject of bonding, claiming and attachment with children adopted from foster care.
You can also go to our on-line lending library and find books that will support you through your journey.
It doesn’t always happen in an instant. Another mom said, “One day, after months of caring for him and nursing him through an illness, I just realized that I would throw myself in front of a speeding bus for him. There is nothing I’d refuse to do for him. He is my son.”
I hope you’ll take a moment to comment below. Tell us about your experience.
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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
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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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Dixie’s Adoption Blog
What Is Your New Year’s Resolution?
As 2009 comes to a close, it’s time to look forward. Statistics suggest that there are some things we should be concerned about. If nothing changes in the United States between now and 2020:
That’s not good enough for our children.
Numbers like that are staggering. It would be easy to be overwhelmed and give up. But what if each one of us were to focus on just one thing?
I am going to focus my energy on the 261,000 who are at risk of growing up in foster care – those young people who might never have families.
I am going to work hard to lower that number.
What are you going to do?
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Some Numbers
The latest statistics from the federal government are that 123,000 children in the USA are waiting for adoption (down from 129,000 the prior year) and that 55,000 children moved from foster care into adoption in federal fiscal year 2008 (up from 51,000 in fiscal 2007).
I’m cheering for each of those. The children don’t really need for me to do that because they now have their very own families who are cheering for their progress.
But the families need for us to cheer them along and support them in their roles as they raise the children. That’s why the Board of Directors of The Adoption Exchange supports post-adoption programs in many of our states.
Okay, so the number of waiting children has dropped. On the surface that sounds good. But the same report from the government has another number in it that I don’t like at all.
In fiscal 2008 there were 29,516 children who emancipated from foster care. That number is up by about 18%. This figure has been steadily climbing for the past several years.
The government report doesn’t project into the future. But it’s clear to me that if nothing changes, the coming decade will see 295,160 young adults discharged from foster care – to what?
These numbers tell me that I need to focus on the teenagers – the youth who are hardly children anymore. I need to focus on the young people who are about to be thrust into adulthood before they are ready and without the typical supports that families provide.
It’s past time to get alarmed. But it certainly isn’t too late to act.
There is a teenager who needs you. I hope you’ll think about it and click here to meet Matthew.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Waiting Parents
We’ve often said that our ideal would be for the parents to be prepared and waiting, so that as children become legally free for adoption they don’t have to wait for families.
We have a long way to go in order to make that happen. But, oddly enough, parents still wait. Probably they wouldn’t be as frustrated about that, if there were no waiting children. But there are.
While the wheels of review and selection of families for specific children move in a slow, maddening pace, parents are impatient to hear if their offers to adopt will be accepted.
After you’ve taken the classes, completed the home study, and submitted your request to adopt a child or sibling group you’ve seen on Wednesday’s Child or on the internet, what then?
What can you do, if you’re the waiting parent(s)?
If you have tips for waiting parents, please click below and share them.
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Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis
Listening To Our Own Needs
The story is told of a woman who climbed a mountain high above the clouds to speak with her guru. “Oh wise one. Please tell me the difference between heaven and hell,” she pleaded. The guru told her to close her eyes and said that rather than be told, she would be shown.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a beautiful place. The grass was thick and green, making a soft carpet bounded by fragrant flowers of red and purple and yellow and orange. She walked into a stately mansion with shining marble floors and immediately was taken by the smells of carefully prepared food.
As she walked into the great hall, she noticed crystal chandeliers and a long table laden with a tempting meal. Soon people began to walk into the great hall. They were thin, emaciated, with vacant eyes and sad expressions on their faces.
When they sat down to eat, she noticed that they were given long, long forks – the length of their arms. And then she saw that this truly was hell. Their forks were so long that the people were unable to get their food from the plates and into their mouths.
The scene faded, and our inquirer again found herself in a verdant land. The deep blue skies had only an occasional white cloud, and the birds were chirping. Again she entered a mansion and found a wide spiral staircase and luring aroma of finely prepared food. The tables in the great hall nearly groaned from the platters of delicious looking food.
Presently people began to enter the hall. They appeared well fed; they walked energetically, smiling and talking to one another. She noticed when they sat down to the table that they too were given long, long forks.
Then she noticed something different. Each person dipped into his plate and with the long fork fed the person across the table. Indeed, this was heaven.
The Adoption Exchange offers opportunities for adoptive families and adoption professionals to feed one another. To listen. To walk beside one another. To share our hopes, and to foster recovery. Find out about some of the educational and support opportunities offered through The Adoption Exchange.
The daily work of adoption is born of loss. We stretch every hour to catch the tears of tragedy, and we live with the burden of believing we have not done enough. Each day we toil in the wake of natural disasters, criminal attacks, and acts of cruelty.
When we go to our homes at the end of our work days we carry our grief with us, and we return the following day to keep on working. Day after day. Hour after relentless hour. Weeks become months, and months turn to years.
And while the world goes clattering onward, the care-givers and victims and survivors are all locked in the seeming endless cycle of intensity and trauma of shattered lives. Over time the physical exhaustion coupled with emotional and mental stress takes a severe toll.
Eventually it becomes clear that a good education or an impressive job title cannot shield any one of us from the symptoms of secondary trauma and burn-out.
We look around us and see the signs of auto-immune disorder, memory lapses, hyper-vigilance, anger, depression, sleep disorders, emotional isolation, and loss of control.
If we listen to the lessons our children in foster care have been trying to teach us, we know there is no such thing as closure. Not for the victims of abuse. And not for those who seek to serve them.
It is never really over – we merely arrive at a “new normal.”
In this place our hope might be best expressed in the words of Admiral Nimitz, “Grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right, even though I know it is hopeless.”
The lessons of tragedy teach us that there are gifts to be discovered if we have the courage to grope through our grief. We eventually discover strengths that were once ignored. We learn new skills. And we find new sources of nutrition.
On the other side of grief we begin to create meaning from the hurt, the loss of control, and the constant sense of emptiness. Eventually we can come to redefine our work and our lives in new ways, and to discover our own purpose.
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