Dixie van de Flier Davis,
Founder & President Emerita
I’m Smiling
If there are children and adolescents involved, Boondocks is a good place to play. With fun centers in multiple states, it has become a favorite of The Adoption Exchange.
There is something at Boondocks for everyone. And when you’re my age, it feels like all of those things are assaulting your senses at the same time. But no matter what the age, it’s a place to meet, and to play. Before you know it you find yourself having a good time. Even a kid like Edgar, who pretty much gave up on ever being adopted.
On April 3 Boondocks in Colorado will host another adoption networking party for children, youth, caseworkers, and prospective parents. It won’t just be fun. It will be life changing.
Early in the morning teenage employees of Boondocks will get up early and before they go to school they will come to the TV station to answer phones for A Day For Wednesday’s Child. Most are scarcely older than the children they volunteer their time to help.
Then…the party!! Pizza, games, prizes, and people who are dedicated to keeping the children safe while they meet families who just might become their own.
Last year five of the children who attended the party were subsequently adopted. I can tolerate a lot of noise and distraction for results like that!
I just found out that Edgar got adopted. With a family who found him at Boondocks. So I’m smiling.
Join us on April 3. It’s a big day in lots of ways.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis,
Founder & President Emerita
Treasures of a Different Sort
Today some of our staff begin to do some story telling. Faye Gardner agreed to write one of her favorite memories as a guest blogger here.
Throughout the year, The Adoption Exchange hosts adoption networking parties, which offer opportunities for prospective adoptive families, children, and caseworkers to connect while in a safe, relaxed, fun environment. In Colorado at the end of each party, every child who attends picks a toy from The Adoption Exchange’s treasure chests to take with them; this includes the birth children of foster or prospective adoptive parents as well as all of the waiting children.
A few years ago, I was helping with the adoption networking party at Boondocks Fun Center in Northglenn. The children were having a wonderful time, and the prospective adoptive parents were enjoying many fun activities as they played, talked and ate pizza with the children. I had the enviable job of helping set up the toy chests and making sure each child had a turn to go to one of the five toy chests to pick out his or her prize.
I watched when a boy about 10 years old dug through all of the treasures in his assigned toy chest and pulled out a wooden photo frame with a large, plastic horse head glued to one corner of the photo frame. It was the kind of photo frame that most 10 year old boys like and most adult women do not.
With a big smile on his face, David went over to his mom and said, “Look what I got for you!” With a shocked look on her face, his mom replied, “Wow! Thank you so much!” His dad said approvingly, “That was really kind of you.”
Isn’t that what moms and dads and families are all about? Our children bring us gifts that express their thoughtfulness and even if they are not items we would pick out, we thank them and are pleased at their generosity. I still hang the Christmas tree ornament that’s supposed to be a small tree but looks like a bunch of oddly shaped grapes with red glitter on them that my son made for me in preschool. I possess colorful art projects made lovingly just for me by my older daughter when she was in elementary school. I still have the carved wooden eagle that was purchased especially for me in Mexico by my then nine-year-old younger daughter.
I want that opportunity for all of our waiting children—to be able to give mom or dad that “awfully” beautiful object they made or chose just for them, to see the love in their mom or dad’s eyes as they thank them for the gift, to carry that beautiful memory with them well into their adult years. Those opportunities and the memories they generate are the real treasures in all of our lives.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis,
Founder & President Emerita
Jackie
Love is transformative for everyone involved. Jackie describes how she is impacted by her adopted children with these profound words:
“Hope may not see, but she can hear the birds sing and her eyes flutter when the wind blows. Matthew may not be able to walk, but his smile greets me every morning. Steven may not be able to speak, but I can hear him say he loves me hundreds of times a day.”
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
Every Day is Grandparents’ Day
Among the gifts adoptive parents give their children are grandparents. Relationships across the generation gap are more than precious. They shape the future in big ways.
Seeing the daily challenges from a long view, they help their grandchildren learn to find their way. Lots of the lessons are caught, not taught, as Dromgoole artfully describes in his poem that follows.
The Bridge Builder
An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
By Will Allen Dromgoole
Thanks to all of the grandparents. You gave the children parents, and you build the bridges they will cross.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
Is There A Teenager In Your Future?
The holidays are over. Decorations are packed away to make room for the new year.
Most of us got more than we needed. We can look at photographs and smile over the memories of the time we spent with family members.
But not Laura, who burst into tears and said, “I think I deserve to know what it is like to be loved.”
Hundreds of teenagers are waiting. I hope 2013 will be the year for Amanda, Breeanna and Glen. You can find their pictures along with 273 others who are over 13 years old and deserve to know what it’s like to be loved. Click here to browse our Children’s Gallery, fully searchable by age and other criteria.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
A Great Email
I could try to describe how adoption transforms lives. I might attempt to tell you stories to help you understand that we have the power to create the future. But it’s difficult to find words as profound as the truth.
But we don’t always need paragraphs or pages to describe how the world can change by our actions. Sometimes one sentence is enough to get a good idea of things that have happened through a series of hundreds of events over a dozen or more years.
This is an email message that made me smile and smile: “I was adopted through you, so it’s my turn to help!”
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
Daniel’s Comments on Self Esteem
Things people say to us and the way we are treated as we grow up have a powerful impact on how we see our selves. Healthy people (young and old) are people who have been valued and thereby know they are loveable and valuable people.
Children who are told by gesture or words that they matter very little, spend their young adulthoods trying to fill the empty places in their hearts.
Daniel described the challenge with eloquence. He said that he needed help after being adopted. He remembered his journey through foster care, moving from house-to-house-to-house with his meager belongings loaded into a trash bag … before he moved home.
“I wasn’t sure whether my stuff was trash or if I was trash,” he said.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
Questions
Children ask lots of questions. Sometimes it seems like too many questions. Sometimes we have trouble knowing the answers.
Brothers aged 4, 8 and 9 had lots of questions of their adoption caseworker. She told them she was looking for a family to adopt them. They were very distrustful of adults and quite concerned about the home they will go to. These are some of the questions the two oldest boys asked.
“How do you know the home will be safe?”
“What if they lie to you?”
“What kind of test do you give them to make sure they won’t hurt us?”
“We need a home that will feed us every day. Will they?”
Those are questions no child should ever have to ask.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
Been There
When a therapist told Barbara that she was too emotionally involved with the child in her caseload, Barbara wasn’t put off. “You’re acting like her grandmother,” the therapist accused
“Well, someone has to care!” was Barbara’s reply. She stopped listening to that therapist and found another, and she didn’t stop until she found an adoptive family for that child.
Young people know the difference between going through a system and having someone really and sincerely look out for you – someone who dares to take your future personally.
A young panelist at a national convening was courageous enough to tell us how the child welfare system felt to him as he experienced our services.
“Permanent is knowing you are wanted — having refrigerator privileges,” he said. “It means legal, physical and relational human connections.”
He told us that from his point of view the system is not set up to facilitate relationships. “Quit making policies,” he advised. “Start dealing with children individually … as a human being on this earth … as deserving to give and receive love.”
He would have liked Barbara.
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Learn more about Dixie.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Executive Director
A Mother Claims Her Son
Perhaps the poet was a man. And perhaps the subject of the poem is a girl. The author is unknown. But the act of claiming a child is familiar to every adoptive parent.
I did not plant you.
True.
But when the season is done
When the alternate
prayers for sun
and for rain
are counted
When the pain
of weeding
and the pride
of watching are through
Then I will hold you high.
A shining sheaf
above the thousand
seed grown wild.
Not my planting
But my heaven
my harvest
my child.
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Learn more about Dixie.