Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Welcoming my Husband to My Other World

Dunn Brothers has become my other world, and Bart will be joining me here in a few minutes for breakfast after another one of his long walks. I have a ton of work to do and I don't get it as much done at home for some reason.

This is a fun world for me. I can sit in the corner by the outlet and work undisturbed. Nobody talks to me, but if I get bored I can look around and see what others are doing. I enjoy seeing the business meetings taking place, the elderly couples having their breakfast or lunch, students studying, frazzled moms stopping by for a break after dropping kids off to school. I guess I've become a "regular" and that's OK.

Torina commented a few days ago about the kids I posted and the response I had gotten. I thought I'd give the report of the last week.

I've posted 54 kids. As you know, the posts go out to hundreds of people. I received 4 responses for a 2 year old Caucasian boy with medical issues. I received 5 responses to a legal risk 8 month old HIspanic boy and the only reason I only received 5 was because they had to be in that particular state. I received 2 responses for 3 AA boys under 7, and 2 responses for 2 Biracial girls under 10.

And that would be it. So of the 54 kids, I got responses for just 7 of them. Several of the other kids are over 10, but not all of them. But they do have issues.

I would say this is probably pretty representative of what is going on in the system. Families want kids with mild issues under 8 or so..... the kids are either over 10 or have major issues.

So the kids wait.

And the families wait.

Because families don't want to do anything that might be too hard.

4 comments:

flacius1551 said...

I think the last line of your post is a little harsh. I agree that adoptive parents should not expect to have a child "without a past"--that doesn't exist. And it is certainly the task of adoption workers to raise prospective families' consciousness about what they might be able to do. At the same time, however, is it so wrong to say "I can't parent a child with certain problems?" Isn't it better for everyone involved that if you know you can't deal with certain things, you stay away from them? If a family gets in over their heads and ends up feeling that they need to disrupt, who does that help?

The general gist of most advice for adoptive families is that "wanting to save a child" is not a good reason for adopting. Yet, it seems to me that only the people who have a firm conviction about wanting to save a child really have the kind of selflessness that you appear to be demanding here.

Claudia said...

You're right. I was being too harsh. It comes from frustration, I guess, in the way that agencies recruit families more than in the way that families respond.

Agencies recruit families luring them with the idea that there are lots of easy young kids with mild issues out there to be found, when in reality there aren't.

And having been a person who said 'These are things I can't parent" and ending up with those very things anyway, I realize that parents who try to stay away from certain things may not get what they are hoping for.

Wanting to save a child may not be a good reason for adopting. But wanting to fill a personal need to have a child certainly is not when it comes to adopting from foster care.

My comment also comes from my irritation that society teaches us that if something is hard we shouldn't do it.

But yes, thank you for calling me on it. I was blunt and harsh and shouldn't have been. Sorry.

flacius1551 said...

Sorry, I didn't see this before I replied on the other post. I think we're really in agreement, and I think it must be frustrating to have all kinds of kids waiting for a family that no one wants. On the other hand, it's frustrating enough (from my own experience) to have to integrate a child into your life who has no real problems except that their parents can't parent them. Having multiple special needs kids...it's a frightening thought.

QueenB said...

Claudia, where are you posting the children for whom you are trying to recruit families? We would be interested in seeing these posts. We are already homestudied.