Once again, this adoptive mom is pissing me off.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Theyve probably given her away :( Poor little one :( I hope whoever is looking after her now is a better person than this awful woman. She hasnt even been home for very long, they didnt even give her a chance to settle in :(

[GiGi_41]

"I wish to God I were making these horrendous stories up, and pray that the situation has changed in the decades since."

It has, and not for the better. It has become lucrative for states to provide children in foster care to hopeful adoptive parents (of whom there are many, given the lack of "available" white infants) rather than work toward reunification of families. Google "kentucky adoption scandal" for just one instance.

As a foster parent I totally disagree with your statement. The foster care system is all about reunification to the detriment of the children. We are a level 2 foster home, ie a home they send the hard to place children to, and these children are usually in their 4th or 5th home. They are reunified, then taken again, then reunified, then taken again, and so it goes. Luckily I was the one and only home for my adopted daughter, but it took 2 and a half years to get through the system and have the parents rights terminated.

Yes parents should receive all the help they need to become good parents but at some point you have to start thinking about the need for the child to have permanency.

As for open adoption...it depends on the state. Wisconsin does not have open adoptions. There can be an agreement between the adoptive and the natural parents but it will not hold up in court. My little girls parents know that I adopted her but she could have just as easily been adopted by a stranger. Truthfully, the judge was miffed because it was a single parent adoption, you know a blonde haired blue eyed children should be raised in a two parent home. But if she'd have had special needs (black) he could understand a single parent adoption. BTW he did say this in open court, in front of two social workers and a home coordinator.

[longskirtlotsakids]

What...fuck....NO.

If he truly said that, PM me his name. I'll get the court records and have his ass over the papers by nightfall.

Racist fuck and prejudiced against single mothers... He needs to be off the bench and disbarred.

[August]

I read a blog who went with international adoption partly because it would be closed, but after they had their daught for a few months, did a birth parent search in her home country. Found them, too. They did not want contact, but the child now has a lot of information.

[OkToBeTakei]

The training required in preparation for adoption is dependent upon both the state you reside in and the agency you work with. There IS training required. However, it's not always consistent. The answer to how people so advanced in age are adopting is simply--waivers. For children who have trouble finding families, you can apply for a waiver to the requirements. We got a family size waiver when we adopted from India because we had four kids at that point in time and the family size requirement for India was three children.

I've done adoptions in four states now (GOT to stop moving so darn much). The training requirements have been completely varied and inconsistent from state to state. One state our "training" consisted of several conversations with the adoption agency director. *I* did far more research on my own, and it's entirely possible she determined that I had self-educated and waived some greater requirement but we never discussed her having done so. In another state, technically, you had to do the foster training OR something your agency deemed more appropriate. Our worker had us write book summaries for several books on international adoption because none of us felt the foster training was not relevant to our specific adoption. In a third state, we did the foster training but we were doing a foster-adoption. This time, we are doing a private adoption and there has been no training/education requirement BUT the person the court will assign to do the home investigation can order training if they determine we need it. I sincerely doubt they will make that decision, but if they do I will comply like I always have.

That's part of the problem of talking about adoption requirements in the US, it's not determined by the Federal government. When you adopt internationally, then the Feds do have a level of requirements you have to meet, but it's only one level. You always have to meet the state requirements, and they can vary wildly from state to state. If you are adopting across state lines, then you have to meet the requirements for two states. If you are adopting internationally then you have to meet the requirements of the country you are adopting from. I've seen some CRAZY variations between the states I've actually adopted in, I can only imagine how inconsistent the system can get if you compare every single state and country.

FWIW, Guatemala is NOT open to adoptions at this point. It is in fact closed to adoption. When they closed it, they claimed they were going to grandfather the open cases and were going to eventually re-open under new processes. That has NOT been the case. There is a couple hundred cases still in purgatory of incompletion and no new adoptions have been processed since the changes were implemented.

It is like every state in the US is basically just it's own country. We have that here too..we call it Europe :lol:

Jokes aside. It just sounds so complicated. It would surely be easier to have one law, why does it differ so much? It is the same country right? Surely a child is just a US citizen whatever state they come from. Surely the child's needs are the same wherever they are from? Idealistic I know. I can understand adopting from different countries will involve different legal systems, but within one country seems bizarre.

[chaotic life]

Because powers not specifically given to the Federal government are reserved for the state by the US Constitution. Child welfare was not a top priority when the Constitution was written. They were focused on things such as commerce, treaties, taxes, etc. Child welfare agencies recieve Federal funding but are administered by the individual states. Federal reforms on child welfare and adoption come from when state laws appear to violate indiviual constitutional rights, such as racial discrimination or discrimination against long-term foster families that used to exist. To move children across state lines WILL invoke the Feds as it falls under commerce (don't you love that US laws equate children with property). The way the FBI was able to crack down on the underground rehoming of children several years ago was that families were violating ICPC. However, so long as the original parents retain parental rights, it's nearly impossible to do anything to the families that do this.

[LilMissMetaphor]

Christie has breast cancer.

[dianapavelovna]

Linzi is still unaccounted for, no?

[NurseNell]

Her blog is private. What is her FB page?

[dianapavelovna]

facebook.com/christie.vancamp/

[NurseNell]

Christie has breast cancer.

Triple negative, not good. This kind of breast cancer tends to be more aggressive than estrogen/progesterone positive breast cancer. Hope she does OK for the sake of her kids.

[LilMissMetaphor]

Linzi is still unaccounted for, no?

Yup. I really want to know what's happened to her. There are still pictures on the FB page so it's not as if Christie is pretending she never existed. Just that she was meant to be somebody else's precious little egg roll. :roll:

[France Nolan]

Sorry, thread bump.

myspecialks.com/

Renee from Life with My Special Ks has officially disrupted Kellsey's adoption. Not surprised because the poor kid was pawned off on grandma several months ago and hasn't been heard from since. She will be going to a "Christian" family with experience raising kids with RAD.

[lizziesmom]

There is something I don't understand. I hope someone can explain this to me. For the last ten years people from my country (in Europe) are adopting a lot of American baby's. Some special needs, but not all of them. The adopted children from the US I know are all Afro-American, I don't know if that's always the case. In my country very few children are being put up for adoption, so I can see why people desparate for a child go to foreign country's. But the US seems to have enough adoptable children to let some go abroad.

Wouldn't it make more sense if American family's adopted American children instead of Chinese and Russian children? I'm not judgmental about it at all, don't misunderstand me please, but an American child seems to be so much more easy. Same language, same culture. I just don't understand....

We have a lot of bigots in America that would never adopt an American black child.

[LilMissMetaphor]

I hate Christie. She just described her daughters as "Chinese tornadoes". OK, call them tornadoes, I guess that's cute or whatever, certainly better than calling them eggrolls, but what does their Chinese heritage have to do with it?? She's so weird!

[lizziesmom]

I hate Christie. She just described her daughters as "Chinese tornadoes". OK, call them tornadoes, I guess that's cute or whatever, certainly better than calling them eggrolls, but what does their Chinese heritage have to do with it?? She's so weird!

Do you remember when George Bush called Jeb's kids the 'little brownies'? He then got mad when people called him on it.

[August]

We have a lot of bigots in America that would never adopt an American black child.

Also, if an American family adopts from another country there's no pesky birth mother to deal with.

[lilah]

I read a blog who went with international adoption partly because it would be closed, but after they had their daught for a few months, did a birth parent search in her home country. Found them, too. They did not want contact, but the child now has a lot of information.

Yeah the internet and social media are real game changers for closed adoption. Iread this one blog where the adoptive mom tracked down her daughter's bio parents in part with social media.

[chaotic life]

Of my three international adoptions, one is completely open (and his older brother calls every couple of months to ask for money that we won't give him, but whatever), one hit a total dead-end and cannot proceed until the child is 18 and goes to his birthcountry himself to petition to have the records opened (determined by a professional in-country searcher who looked for us) and the third we continue to search without much success still.

I am aware that most who pursue international adoption consider closed adoptions to be a benefit of the situation. I completely disagree. I believe children need their history and all who they are related to regardless of whether that crosses international borders or not.

[NurseNell]

Of my three international adoptions, one is completely open (and his older brother calls every couple of months to ask for money that we won't give him, but whatever), one hit a total dead-end and cannot proceed until the child is 18 and goes to his birthcountry himself to petition to have the records opened (determined by a professional in-country searcher who looked for us) and the third we continue to search without much success still.

I am aware that most who pursue international adoption consider closed adoptions to be a benefit of the situation. I completely disagree. I believe children need their history and all who they are related to regardless of whether that crosses international borders or not.

My 31 y.o. son, adopted internationally, has known both birthparents since he was 15. He and I visited them 3 times. Now he is living in his home country and has taken back his citizenship. His wife is from the same country, she came to the U.S. for college.

My 36 y.o. son, from the same country as his brother, is not reunited mainly because I believe most of the information we have in his records is false. And his mother's name is Maria Garcia, along with a billion other women in the country.

My 34 y.o. daughter, adopted in the U.S., learned when she was 15 her mother had died many years before that. She is reunited with her mother's family. There is very little hope of ever learning who the birthfather was.

I agree with you on the need for children to know their family history. I believe all adoptees have the right to their original birth certificate. An on-going relationship is a decision only the people involved can make but the information belongs to the adoptees, no one has the right to deny that to them.

[Emme]

Agreed, NurseNell and CL. Also one unique difficulty I've witnessed is when there are multiple birth families and one kid has an open adoption, one has no idea, etc. In some cases it has created jealousy, but in others, the birth mom or dad has taken on a "big sibling" role to the other sibs, in others, the kids are too little to understand.

[lawlifelgbt]

Bloody hell, is this the hidden biological clock ticking? I sure as fuck hope not. It's never done it before.

But I saw the pictures of Linzi and went "Oh you know what? Small and Smaller would really like her, I bet. Hasn't she a gorgeous wee face. They could all play together. I could enroll her in the primary down the street. Or if she's not ready, she could go to the nursery maybe. I could fit up a wee bed for her in my room..."

OMG :o

I know I'm really late to the party, but I was reading about her and had the same reaction!

"Partner and I were going to move out to Loring Park- we could scrape up a two-bedroom. I could watch her when I have fewer classes on some days, put her in kindergarten, and she could play with one of my colleague's daughters that's her age. I'm sure in the city I could find someone to speak Chinese to her. Would she mind the cold? Would she be able to grasp having two moms?"

[ILoveJellybeans]

Im the same with a lot of the kids mentioned in this forum :( I feel like such a child collector in thinking that I want to adopt all these kids who have parents who don't deserve to be parents.

[tlcarlaw]

I read this women's blog for the first time the other day. It seems she did give up Linzi about 2 months after she got her. She is living with another family now who are planning on adopting her. The couple that took her are a friend of theirs that only had 2 other kids and mom is a SAHM. I'm shocked that she gave up her "daughter" after only 2 months but I'm glad Linzi does seem to have found her forever family.

[Hisey]

Also, if an American family adopts from another country there's no pesky birth mother to deal with.

I adopted from China, twice, and it is my dearest wish that we could have contact with the birthmother. In pursuit of that, I have kept in touch with the orphanage (in case the birth mother ever shows up). I send pictures of my girls every year to the orphanage (same reason). I have tracked down every bit of information I can about how they were found (in case my girls want to search when adults). I keep the limited birthparent information I have in the safe deposit box, with copies in my daughter's lifebooks, which they can access anytime.

Most adoptive parents I know do the same things, and feel the same way.

I don't know why people have to trash so hard on adoptive parents. Even if you don't care about us, do you really think it helps the adopted kids you claim to care so much about? If my kids ever read your comment, they would be terribly hurt and confused. Your comment shows so much anger, and so little caring about the kids involved.