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Child Collectors Extraordinaire


dianapavelovna

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theresnoplacelikehome-family.blogspot.com/

They have 5 grown bio children and 8 younger children adopted from China. They are in the process of adopting 3 more kids from China.

QUICK UPDATE ON US!

Hubby and I have 5 bio kids that are currently 28- 19 yrs old. Matt is 28 yrs old, he is engaged to Caitlin. They will be married in the summer of 2013! They are living in Colorado. Matt is in graduate school at UC Denver. We miss them but we are happy they are happy! Plus they love to ski/ snowboard, so now he can do plenty of that on the weekends! Katie is 27 yrs old and married to Andrew! They are living in Germany where Andrew is stationed. Katie is an elementary school teacher and is taking classes towards her masters. Billy graduated from college in the spring of 2010 and he is continuing to take classes and preparing for the CPA exam. Mark graduated from Denver University in the spring of 2012 focusing on Biology and Chemistry. He is continuing to take classes at the U of MN and planning to do research and maybe apply to medical school. Johnny is a freshman at the U of St Thomas in St Paul, MN. He plays soccer for his college team.

We have adopted 8 waiting children from China! Anna came home first on August 8th, 2007 (at 16 months). She is currently 6 yrs old! Sarah came home on December 5th, 2008 (at 8.5 yrs old). She is 12 yrs old now. Emma and Ellie came home on July 19th, 2010! They are bio sibs, and were 9 and 8 yrs old when they came home! Next we brought home Sam 4.5 yrs old and Ava Marie 5.5 yrs old at the time of their adoption. They came home on April 1st, 2011 and are now 7 and 6 yrs old.! Both of the kids are from Henan Province.

On our 5th adoption trip we journeyed to Abby and Luke. They came home at 5.5 and 3 yrs old. They have adjusted well! They are currentlu 6.5 and almost 4 years old!

We have had many many procedures and surgeries over the years, God has been so kind and they have been amazingly successful!! Abby has a future bone marrow transplant coming up. Maybe in 2013 or 2014?

We will travel back to China for adoption trip #6 in January /February 2013. This time God is blessing us with 3 lovely daughters from China! Mia is 11 years old, Melissa is 7 years old and Madeline is 6 years old. They all have fall birthdays.

We are so excited to have them join our family!

We ask for your prayers for our journey to China and for our family at home.

Hubby and I are passionate about special needs adoption. We feel called to adopt and we are loving every minute of it! We are both in our mid 50's. We can't think of anything we would love to do more than what we are doing right now! We are thankful for this opportunity to enjoy these wonderful children!

We have chosen to homeschool our children from China. When adopting older children they really don't fit into one grade, they are combination of many grades (including Pre-K). We also feel like we missed out on so many years with our wonderful children, we don't want to miss out on any more! Plus it is great for attachment and bonding!!

So for those keeping track at home, they first adopted Anna as a baby. Just over a year later, they adopted Sarah, who was 8 at the time. A year and a half later, they adopted Emma and Ellie, who were 9 & 8. Less than a year later, they adopted Sam & Ava Marie, 4 & 5. About eight months later, they adopted Abby and Luke, who were 5 & 3. They are expecting to adopt a 10 year old, 7 year old, and six year old within the next several months. That's 11 kids added to the family in less than five years.

Several of the adoptees have special needs. Check out the year-in-review post for a taste of that: theresnoplacelikehome-family.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-time-to-reflect-on-amazing-god-filled.html

They seem like decent parents, and they are probably fundie light if anything, but that is some textbook child collecting.

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Guest Anonymous

Child collectors and proud of it, from the poem in the sidebar.

I WOULD GATHER CHILDREN

Some would gather money

Along the path of life

Some would gather roses,

And rest from strife.

But I would gather children

From among the thorns of sin,

I would seek a golden curl,

And a freckled, toothless grin.

For money cannot enter

In the land of endless day,

And roses that are gathered

Soon will wilt along the way.

But oh, the laughing children,

As I cross the sunset sea,

And the gates swing wide to heaven,

I can take them in with me!

~ Author Unknown~

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WTH, why are they trying to adopt more kids while they are waiting on a bone marrow transplant for one of their kids? Do they not realize the time commitment involved?! Not to mention how sick that child has to be to need one. They need to focus on caring for the kids they have, not adding new ones. How are the new kids supposed to adjust when mom and dad have to spend so much time caring for the others?

She also needs to seriously lay off the exclamation marks.

At least they let their older children go to real colleges.

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I don't know ~ if they have the love, energy, time, abilities, etc to take care of the kids, then isn't that a good thing? I'd rather see kids with homes than living in "the system". Overseas adoptions cost a LOT, I've heard, so they must be fairly well off.

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I don't know ~ if they have the love, energy, time, abilities, etc to take care of the kids, then isn't that a good thing? I'd rather see kids with homes than living in "the system". Overseas adoptions cost a LOT, I've heard, so they must be fairly well off.

The problem is even if they have the money and the resources to take care of the kids, it's impossible that between the two parents they have enough time to tend to the needs of all of these children as they go through the adoption process. And that's before you take into account the children who have special needs.

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Why do they keep collecting all these kids? How do they possibly have the time to make sure all of the kids are settled in and doing well before they add more, and theyre adopting multiple kids at a time. 8 kids in 5 years is way too many.

I think if you want to adopt a child, thats great, but its about the child, as well as the parents and the kids you already have.

I can understand adopting more than one child if theyre a group of siblings, as its better than seperating them, but its a bit much to be adopting groups of children every few years.

Some of the kids have illnesses that need treating, or have special needs, which means they need to have more attention and care rather than having new children introduced to the family.

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The media always makes an enormous fuss when people adopt lots of kids, particularly kids with special medical and developmental needs. When I was a child, I remember all the attention given to the [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Are_the_DeBolts%3F_And_Where_Did_They_Get_Nineteen_Kids%3F]DeBolts[/link]. On the one hand, I think it's great to celebrate all the ways people make families, and the bravery of international special-needs adoptee children, but on the other hand I think this inspires some weird child-collector competitiveness sometimes.

So I don't know.

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International adoption costs won't necessarily stop child collectors. A lot of them fund raise or other similar activities.

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Another family that has fascinated me for a while:

allourboys.com

This single mom (she was married for a while, but got divorced a few years ago) adopted 59 boys with special needs. Most were adopted at a fairly late age when they were not good candidates for adoption. Some came from other countries, some from the US, some from previous disrupted adoptions. She is not super religious (it looks like some kids go to church, but only those who want to), and she had a lot of hired help to give the kids individual attention. I liked their old website better since it gave more insight into their daily life, and this one looks like it's still under construction... I do admire this woman, she does not seem to have ulterior motives, and a lot of the boys came from really horrible situations.

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I don't know ~ if they have the love, energy, time, abilities, etc to take care of the kids, then isn't that a good thing? I'd rather see kids with homes than living in "the system". Overseas adoptions cost a LOT, I've heard, so they must be fairly well off.

No.

Ignoring the fact that it's unlikely this couple does have enough time, attention, or money to care for that many kids, love is NOT enough in an adoption.

Those kids are being uprooted from everything they know- their homes, their country, their culture, their language, etc.

They have special needs. They likely come from an institution. They may have never lived in a family environment before.

They need time and stability to cope with all the changes in their lives. They have to adjust to living in a family, living in a new country, suddenly being a minority race, a new language, new culture, different foods, different smells and sounds, medical treatment and/or therapies.

Most reputable adoption agencies counsel against adopting more than one child at a time and not allowing for adequate time to bond and adjust, for both parents and the child.

Adopting a bunch of kids on top of one another, before you've even had time to settle in with the previous child is reckless and unfair to the already-adopted child(ren).

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Another family that has fascinated me for a while:

allourboys.com

This single mom (she was married for a while, but got divorced a few years later) adopted 59 boys with special needs. Most were adopted at a fairly late age when they were not good candidates for adoption. Some came from other countries, some from the US, some from previous disrupted adoptions. She is not super religious (it looks like some kids go to church, but only those who want to), and she had a lot of hired help to give the kids individual attention. I liked their old website better since it gave more insight into their daily life, and this one looks like it's still under construction... I do admire this woman, she does not seem to have ulterior motives, and a lot of the boys came from really horrible situations.

If you have that many kids though, it doesn't really seem like a family... just maybe a better version of an institution. She seems caring, but has obviously admitted there's no way SHE (the mother) can give her attention to all of her kids.

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Actually, this may not be a bad thing.

I lived in China for some time, my degree is in China studies,and I volunteered in college helping older children adopted from China and their American families adjust. What I'm trying to say is, I know quite a bit about adopting older children from China.

Because there are SO MANY children in China who need families, when a child hits a certain age, has special needs, or has even a slight cosmetic defect, they are no longer considered viable adoption candidates. They are moved to orphanages in more remote provinces, live most times in terrible poverty (even the "good" orphanages in China are well below American standards), and are often verbally abused by their caretakers. As someone with a degree in China studies who has studied the politics and policies in China and as someone who has lived in the country, I understand why this happens. It's a cut-throat place. There are too many kids, and the idea is that you can't waste time and resources on children who "don't have a chance", when not all of the "perfect" children will even find homes. You gotta get out as many as you can and leave those who fall behind, behind. Please don't think China is this monstrous place. It isn't. The people are wonderful and kind. But when it can be a struggle just to make sure your baby has food, there isn't much time to pity those that don't.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. These older children are basically abandoned. There is no hope for them to get adopted, so they are given the bare physical necessities to survive and that is it. Basic education. Basic food and clothes. Little to no love or care. And when they can work, that's what they do, usually starting in their young teens (child labor laws, where they exist in China, are not always enforced). But there is no hope for them because China operates in many ways on social networks. A child without a social network is practically doomed to live a life of bottom-rung labor jobs.

I once worked with a 10 year old who had a small ear. As in, one ear was slightly smaller than the other. No special needs, nothing. But that defect meant that she got shipped off to Hunan (a lovely place, but inland. Not a good place to get a foreign adoption). The workers would tell her that no one would ever love her because of her ear. She was too ugly to be loved, and that's why she would never have a family. She was cared for by a "nanny" who she really loved, but even the nanny would tell her that she was ugly and could never be loved. She would NOT look at pictures of herself. She constantly thought the American family would send her back. That poor girl was gorgeous, and honestly, you never would have noticed her ear.

If these kids hear even one "I love you" a day, then their life is better than it was.

If they ever get a fancy set of clothes, their life is better than the kids they left back in the orphanage.

If they get to finish HS, then they are getting a better education than their former peers.

Most likely this family saw the situation and wanted to help as many of these poor kids as they could. And it's not all bad. The large numbers mean that they have a group to talk with to preserve their language and common heritage. One of the largest issues I saw with these kids once they came over were feelings of isolation and not being able to relate to their family and peers (even after language immersion). The large numbers of them mean that these kids most likely wont feel as isolated and will have people with common experiences to relate to. Plus, these are children that are used to living with large numbers of other kids AND are incredibly self-sufficient (we often have to tell the American mothers to step back and let the kids do their own chores if they want to).

This family may have too many kids, but I can 100% guarantee you that they have improved the fortunes of the children they adopted as older kids. And for that, I salute them.

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Collecting children, even for a good cause, is still collecting children.

Adoption is supposed to be about a child getting a home and a family. It's not a means to save the world.

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Collecting children, even for a good cause, is still collecting children.

Adoption is supposed to be about a child getting a home and a family. It's not a means to save the world.

:text-yeahthat:

I remember about a week or two ago I was watching some of the outrage on the news about Russia's decision to stop international adoption to the US. They had an "expert" on talking about the situation for orphans in Russia and the "If we can't do it, no one can!" attitude he had was sickening. Adoption shouldn't be used to satisfy anyone's hero complex.

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I struggle with this a little. Like, I believe that you should only adopt because you genuinely want to expand your family and be a good mom/dad to that child. But even if you are adopting in a way that is sub-optimal (but not abusive or focused on your own image; child-collecting with good intent behind it, if you will), if you are essentially saving the lives of kids, I think there's obvious value there.

For instance, the kids who are institutionalized with spinal bifida by the age of five in some Eastern European nations (I read about this a while ago, so forgive the lack of detail) who usually die within a few years of being sent to adult mental institutions. Hypothetically - is it really better to adopt only one of those children knowing you are leaving two others behind to suffer and die, giving that one child the best possible life, or (if you have the desire and feel able), is it reasonable to adopt all three and give all three a decent life, but not as ideal as one would have had? The ethics of that seem pretty blurry to me, personally.

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I struggle with this a little. Like, I believe that you should only adopt because you genuinely want to expand your family and be a good mom/dad to that child. But even if you are adopting in a way that is sub-optimal (but not abusive or focused on your own image; child-collecting with good intent behind it, if you will), if you are essentially saving the lives of kids, I think there's obvious value there.

For instance, the kids who are institutionalized with spinal bifida by the age of five in some Eastern European nations (I read about this a while ago, so forgive the lack of detail) who usually die within a few years of being sent to adult mental institutions. Hypothetically - is it really better to adopt only one of those children knowing you are leaving two others behind to suffer and die, giving that one child the best possible life, or (if you have the desire and feel able), is it reasonable to adopt all three and give all three a decent life, but not as ideal as one would have had? The ethics of that seem pretty blurry to me, personally.

The thing is- you can adopt 3 children. You can adopt more. Many people do. But they wait years in between adoptions, until each previously adopted child is secure in the household, fluent in their new language, thriving in school and their social group, bonded to their parents (and siblings, if they had them), medically stable, etc.

They don't pile 11 children on top of one another in 5 years. They especially don't look to add several more new children with special needs into the household while some of the children already there will be undergoing extremely involved and invasive medical interventions shortly. As someone mentioned above, all this family is basically doing is just moving the children to a slightly improved institutional setting.

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I struggle with this a little. Like, I believe that you should only adopt because you genuinely want to expand your family and be a good mom/dad to that child. But even if you are adopting in a way that is sub-optimal (but not abusive or focused on your own image; child-collecting with good intent behind it, if you will), if you are essentially saving the lives of kids, I think there's obvious value there.

For instance, the kids who are institutionalized with spinal bifida by the age of five in some Eastern European nations (I read about this a while ago, so forgive the lack of detail) who usually die within a few years of being sent to adult mental institutions. Hypothetically - is it really better to adopt only one of those children knowing you are leaving two others behind to suffer and die, giving that one child the best possible life, or (if you have the desire and feel able), is it reasonable to adopt all three and give all three a decent life, but not as ideal as one would have had? The ethics of that seem pretty blurry to me, personally.

I feel the same. I was blog surfing some fundy child-collector blogs recently and really judging the whole idea of adopting several of these incredibly neglected children at once. But, these are kids who are teenagers and still the size of newborns because of their severe lack of human contact, and if they don't die in the baby house because of it, they'll die when they are transferred at 18. So being part of a smaller institution where they are cleaned and fed more often, talked to and touched now and then is a massive improvement in their lives. I wish they could all go to loving parents at birth, but being a trophy for a fundy is at least a step up. Google Pleven orphanage for a sample of the horror.

And in the meantime, I'm looking for charities which improve orphanages. There's Half the Sky in China. Does anyone know of others?

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And in the meantime, I'm looking for charities which improve orphanages.

This is probably the better of ideas.

Let's face it, even if you adopt 11 or 20 or 50 kids from institutions, there are still tens of thousands (although hundreds of thousands is probably more likely) of kids still in the exact same situation.

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:text-yeahthat:

I remember about a week or two ago I was watching some of the outrage on the news about Russia's decision to stop international adoption to the US. They had an "expert" on talking about the situation for orphans in Russia and the "If we can't do it, no one can!" attitude he had was sickening. Adoption shouldn't be used to satisfy anyone's hero complex.

Just from someone who use to live in Russia, I can't for life of me wonder why Russia is a big draw for adoption. I know adoption is a risk, but most of those kids suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. Unless they understand that and go all in with the expectation of getting a special need child, then why? I'm sick of hearing all these cases of people not being able to cope when find out they have fetal alcohol syndrome and their not the perfect little international toy of charity.

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Shame they are rushing the adoptions...

I'm not against families who have the means to provide and care for a large number children adopting more. I definitely disagree with the claim that there is no possible way they are giving the children the attention they need. There is no possible way to know how much time they spend with each child. I do agree that it's best for children to be afforded the time to adjust, and I'm confused by the lack of regulations restricting their adoptions.

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The Russia/US adoption thing is a political ploy, not helped by a case a year or two ago where a woman returned a child because she couldn't deal with the child's issues.

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Sarah, Russia is popular because of blonde hair and blue eyes.

Yup.

Some potential adoptive parents get so caught up in the blonde hair and blue eyes that they're willing to overlook the high rate of fetal alcohol syndrome/effect. Loads of people assume that adopting a baby or toddler will let them bypass behavioral issues, too. And, finally, some of them are so in love with the idea of being a "hero" and having a child who will be so grateful to be "rescued" that they forget the kids might have some opinions about the whole thing.

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I am very, very concerned for these children. My older child was an infant when we adopted her and had a hard time adjusting, and an even harder time when it came to grieving for her former caretakers. Years later we are encountering issues we never thought possible because she was adopted at such a young age, but emotional scars can form quickly and are very, very deep. This family is adopting too often, too quickly, before any of the poor kids have a chance to settle in, without an opportunity to feel a part of a family before they're basically abandoned again. Special needs/special circumstance adoptions can be largely funded by grants and donations, but which agency would allow a family THIS many children? China is one of the strictest countries out there, especially when it comes to birth order and number of children overall. How is this family getting around the rules, even for waiting children? Something is fishy here....

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