Sometimes people hesitate to adopt because they think they won’t be good enough.

The children have already been compromised by abuse and neglect. The child welfare, mental health, education and court systems have let them down. Won’t it take really incredible people to be their parents?

We are tempted to think the children deserve super-moms and super-dads, given the trauma they’ve survived. But if we wait for that, they won’t ever have stability and love.

Helen Costello says that happy endings only happen in fairy tales. Then she goes on to say that happiness in some stories come after trials and turbulence.

And she should know. Helen has been an adoption professional, teacher, psychotherapist, and child welfare worker for as long as I have worked in the field. She has been an enabling presence in the lives of hundreds of Montana families.

When one family called and asked her to come and get their adopted daughter, Helen didn’t panic. And she didn’t get angry. She just said, “I can’t. She is your daughter.” Then she made an offer to help them be the kind of parents their child needed. Helen had seen families in crisis. She didn’t rush out and remove the troubled teenager. But she did spend the next two years helping the family get back on track.

One of the chapters in her book, From the Heart, is titled “Parenting.” Helen begins the chapter with a sort of definition of good parenting: “We are here for you! We may stumble, but we will not let you down!”

Helen is a good therapist. The real life stories in her book remind us that it doesn’t take perfection. It takes commitment.

Costello, Helen. From the Heart, Great Falls, MT, 2010.

Brian recalls his initial meeting with Benjamin, who smiled, yelled, stomped his feet, screamed and refused to talk. In fact, experts had predicted that Benjamin might never speak…At their first meeting, Brian sat quietly across the room, holding a teddy bear and a book. After approaching him, giggling and running away repeatedly, little Benjamin shyly climbed into Brian’s lap, placed his hand on Brian’s face, and said, “Daddy!”

….It must have been a seminal moment for the little boy. When Brian recently asked Benjamin what his greatest memory is about the adoption process, he stated, “I remember calling you ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’ because I was so excited.”

Voice For Adoption shared Brian and Benjamin’s story with members of Congress through its annual Adoptive Family Portrait Project.

Voice for Adoption is a national advocacy organization, based in Washington DC. Nicole Dobbins, it’s Executive Director, knows what she is talking about when she describes the children in foster care. A few years ago she was one of them.

She wrote, “Children in foster care especially deserve, and want more than anything, for someone to hold them close to their hearts, nurture and cherish them. It is amazing what miracles can do and how severe trauma can be overcome when these children are placed in such an environment where they are loved, embraced and given an opportunity to flourish.”

Click here for more information on Voice for Adoption.

Behavior management is a pretty cold term. Who wants to do behavior management? People don’t adopt in order to spend their time managing behavior. People adopt because they want relationships.

Jeffrey Haugaard, Ph.D, reported on research conducted at Cornell University. Behavior management (there’s that term again!) of two parent families who had adopted school aged children were studied.

Dr. Haugaard reported that couples who agree on their behavior management methods had success. Couples who disagreed were raising children whose behavior continued to get worse.

The research suggests that the method of behavior management is less important than agreeing.

So that might mean that adoptive couples would benefit more from intervention for themselves on how to arrive at agreement than they would from training on how to manage difficult behavior.

Like most things in life, the outcomes have everything to do with relationships.

Jake has visual proof of what happens over time. When you’re up close, the changes are almost imperceptible. But after a bit of time, if you step back and look again, you see it. The proof is right in front of you.

The proof is in the photographs Jake shows us.

Several years ago he and Sandra adopted a sibling group. Their first family photograph brought tears. Everyone was smiling. All of us who saw the picture couldn’t keep from smiling and crying.

All of their hope for the future is evident in Jake’s and Sandra’s smiles. You can see their confidence in their roles as parents. You can see how eager they are to grab those children and hold them close. We can’t help but share their pride.

The new children, on the other hand, are smiling for the camera. They like the attention they’re getting. They’ve been groomed and coached, and they’ve cooperated for the photographer. But they are not smiling from their hearts. All in all it is a great picture of a collection of two happy, hopeful adults posed with a sibling group of cooperative children.

I can imagine little clouds over the heads of each of the people in the picture like you see in cartoons. One of the boys is thinking “I can’t wait to go ride that big wheel again.” While Sandra is thinking, “I’ve been waiting for this moment. This is the culmination of many months of waiting and planning and paperwork.” Jake’s cloud tells us, “Well, here we are. We did it! They belong to us now.”

A year later the family photograph documents some changes. The children are quite a bit taller, and their smiles seem more relaxed. The cloud over Sandra’s head says, “I think they are learning to love me.” Jake’s says, “I’m a pretty good dad most of the time.”

A few years later it is strikingly evident. All of the attention created by the newness of the adoption has worn off. Friends and teachers let Jake, Sandra and the kids blend into the community. In this photograph the faces and body language reflect a real family.

On National Adoption Day Judge Boatright said, “Adoption is a promise acted out over a lifetime.” He got that right. A lot happens between photo-shoots. There are quarrels, disciplinary meetings at school, music lessons, family therapy, picnics, birthdays, home work, learning to ride bikes, report cards, hugs, packing lunches, flu shots, doing laundry, playing sports, and so on.

Becoming a family is not an event. It happens over time. Post-adoption services are available to help families keep their promises. Click here to learn about lending libraries, support groups, qualified therapists, training workshops, newsletters, and more.

Nancy prefers peace. But she will fight for children.

She is an adoptive mom, a psychotherapist, a trainer and a writer. Our world is made better by Nancy’s wisdom. Here is a peek into her opinions about war.

“More than half million children live in foster care in the United States. Most are there because of a personal war of abuse and/or neglect. No twenty-four hour coverage by embedded journalists chronicles their story. No president promises them a quick end to their plight; no congress rallies around their need with emergency allocations. The fight against terrorism does not extend to the personal, private terror of vulnerable children.

What if, just once, our leaders directed their passionate patriotism toward a pre-emptive strike against the evil axis of poverty, neglect, violence and racism? What if it was a national imperative that all children lived in safe homes…

Now there’s one war I could support.”

In an article for Adoptive Families magazine, Nancy offers some useful suggestions for parents as they talk with their children’s teachers about adoption.
Click here to read more.

If you would like a copy of her article, titled At War, she invites you to simply email her and request a copy.

Chris grew up in foster care.

Following a six-week internship with Senators and Congressmen through the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, this is what he said:

“If you were considering companies to invest in, you would not choose a company that was … almost guaranteed to fail. But you have stepped up and made that very investment.”

He was talking about the personal, financial and emotional investment in children in foster care – children who come from circumstances that strip them of opportunities to learn and grow into their potential.

They’ve missed out on team sports (who would pay for their uniforms, or drive the car pool, or cheer for them from the sidelines?). They have likely moved from one school to another, so they’ve lost the chance to develop lasting relationships with teachers, coaches and friends.

But there are people who take the risks – people who do in fact invest in the dreams of those young people.

Here at The Adoption Exchange last fiscal year families invested in the futures of 393 children from foster care through adopting. Hundreds volunteered their time, contributed financially, or dedicated their professional skills to help make the dreams of those children come true.

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

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:

Born to a teenage mother, Tony was severely spanked as an infant for crying too much. Neighbors who were concerned about continued abuse and neglect alerted the social service agency, which intervened to protect him.

After failed attempts to help his birth mother develop skills to raise him, the agency placed Tony in foster care. By then he’d decided the world was a cold and hostile place. Smacking a babysitter or scuffling with a classmate was not uncommon.

And there were other problems. Tony lagged behind in developmental skills and vented his frustrations through long, loud temper tantrums.

Regarding him as a tough kid and a true survivor, Tony’s social worker saw promise. There was something really likeable about Tony. And so began his healing journey.

Despite therapy, Tony still had a lot of pent up hostility when he was placed for adoption. He feared rejection. He was only six, but he was able to upset a whole lot of people an awful lot of the time.

Years later Tony’s mom talks about the thrills of raising him and becoming a family. “Although Tony . . . made remarkable progress in every way, his most important achievement has been learning to trust.”

Read For the Love of Tony – A Mother’s Story in Adoption: Stories of Lives Transformed.